or stood
With the blood upon his mail, and the Queen--Cleopatra,
Frozen to white marble--the Maenads raised their timbrels,
Tossed their white arms, with a clash--_All hail!_
Like wild swimmers, pale, in a sea of blood and wine,
_All hail! All hail!_ Then they swept into the darkness
And the darkness buried them. Their tale was told--utterly--
Told.

And following them, O softer than the moon upon the sea,
Aphrodite, implacably, shone.
Like a furnace of white roses, Aphrodite and her train
Lifted their white arms to those twain in the silence
Once, and were gone into the darkness;
Once, and away into the darkness they were swept
Like a pageantry of cloud, without praise, without pity.
Then the dark City slept. And the Queen--Cleopatra--
Subtlest of women that this earth has ever seen,
Turning to her lover in the darkness where he stood,
With the blood upon his mail,
Bowing her head upon that iron in the darkness,
Wept.

THE CRAGS

(_In memory of Thomas Bailey Aldrich_)

Falernian, first! What other wine
Should brim the cup or tint the line
That would recall my days
Among your creeks and bays;

Where, founded on a rock, your house
Between the pines' unfading boughs
Watches through sun and rain
That lonelier coast of Maine;

And the Atlantic's mounded blue
Breaks on your crags the summer through,
A long pine's length below,
In rainbow-tossing snow.

While on your railed verandah there
As on a deck you sail through air,
And sea and cloud and sky
Go softly streaming by.

Like delicate oils at set of sun
Smoothing the waves the colours run--
Around the enchanted hull,
Anchored and beautiful,--

Restoring to that sun-dried star
You brought from coral isles afar--
With shells that mock the moon--
The tints of their lagoon;

Till, from within, your lamps declare
Your harbours by the colours there,
An Indian god, a fan
Painted in Old Japan.

But, best of all, I think at night,
The moon that makes a road of light
Across the whispering sea,
A road--for memory.

When the blue dusk has filled the pane,
And the great pine-logs burn again,
And books are good to read.
--For his were books indeed.--

Their silken shadows, rustling, dim,
May sing no more of Spain for him;
No shadows of old France
Renew their court