You loved me on that moonlit night long since. You were my queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men. You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then, You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had in store for me, Nor know again the voice upon the stair, The little studio in the candle-glare, And all that makes in word and touch and glance The bliss of the first nights of a romance When will to love and be beloved casts out The want to question or the will to doubt. You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas The pale moon settles and the Pleiades. The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan -- The hour advances, and I sleep alone.* -- * <Greek> D|/eduke m|\en |'a sel|/anna ka|\i Plh|/iadec, m|/essai de n|/uktec, p|/ara d' |'/erxet' |'/wra |'/egw de m|/ona kate|/udw. <EndGreek>--Sappho. <See appendix for an ASCII to Greek mapping.> -- III Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing! If I have erred I plead but one excuse -- The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing That cost a lesser agony to lose. I had not bid for beautifuller hours Had I not found the door so near unsealed, Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, For that one flower that bloomed too far afield. If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, I felt perhaps more poignantly than some The blank eternity from which we waken And all the blank eternity to come. And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender (In the regret with which my lip was curled) Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor My transit through the beauty of the world. The Bayadere Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though above the gates of Paradise Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice! O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom, Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom, She floated with delicious arms outspread. There was no pose she took, no move she made, But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh And smote as with his triple-forked blade. I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled Fierce exhalations of hot human love, -- Around her beauty valuable above The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world; Flowing as ever like a dancing fire Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists, Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists The nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire. Eudaemon