Sad are they who drink life's cup Till they have come to the bitter-sweet: Better at once to toss it up, And trample it beneath the feet; For venom-charged as serpents' eggs 'Tis then, and knows not other change. Early, early, early, have I reached the dregs Of life, and loathe and love the bittersweet, revenge! Then turned she aside, and sang musingly: I came to his arms like the flower of the spring, And he was my bird of the radiant wing: He flutter'd above me a moment, and won The bliss of my breast as a beam of the sun, Untouch'd and untasted till then-- The voice in her throat was like a drowning creature, and she rose up, and chanted wildly: I weep again? What play is this? for the thing is dead in me long since: Will all the reviving rain Of heaven bring me back my Prince? But I, when I weep, when I weep, Blood will I weep! And when I weep, Sons for fathers shall weep; Mothers for sons shall weep; Wives for husbands shall weep! Earth shall complain of floods red and deep, When I weep! Upon that she ran up a secret passage to her chamber and rubbed the Jewel, and called the serpents, to delight her soul with the sight of her power, and rolled and sported madly among them, clutching them by the necks till their thin little red tongues hung out, and their eyes were as discoloured blisters of venom. Then she arose, and her arms and neck and lips were glazed with the slime of the serpents, and she flung off her robes to the close-fitting silken inner vest looped across her bosom with pearls, and whirled in a mazy dance-measure among them, and sang melancholy melodies, making them delirious, fascinating them; and they followed her round and round, in twines and twists and curves, with arched heads and stiffened tails; and the chamber swam like an undulating sea of shifting sapphire lit by the moon of midnight. Not before the moon of midnight was in the sky ceased Bhanavar sporting with the serpents, and she sank to sleep exhausted in their midst. Such was the occupation of the Queen of Mashalleed when he came not to her. The women and slaves of the palace dreaded her, and the King himself was her very slave.