majestic forms forget!

Well I knew the first! Her head
Glittered with the crescent moon.
Haughty, like some ivory statue
Sat the goddess on her steed.

And her fluttering tunic fell
Loose about her hips and breasts,
And the torchlight and the moon
Laved with love her snowy limbs.

Marble seemed her very face
And like marble cold. How dread
Was the pallor and the chill
Of that stern and noble front!

But within her dusky eye
Smouldered a mysterious,
Cruel and enticing fire
Which devoured my poor soul.

What a change has come o'er Dian
Since in outraged chastity
She smote Actaeon to a stag
As a quarry for his hounds!

Doth she now requite this crime
In this gallant company,
Riding like some ghostly mortal
Through the bleak, nocturnal air?

Late did passion wake in her
But for that the stronger burns,
And within her eyes its flames
Gleam like fiercest brands of hell.

For those vanished times she grieves
When the men were beautiful;
Now in quantity perchance,
She forgets their quality.

At her side a fair one rode--
Fair, but not by Grecian lines
Was she fair; for all her features
Shone with wondrous Celtic glow.

'Twas Abunda, fairy queen,
Whom to know I could not fail
By the sweetness of her smile
And the madness of her laugh!

Full and rosy was her face,
Like the faces limned by Greuze;
And from out her heart-shaped mouth
Flashed the splendour of her teeth!

All the winds made dalliance
With her robe of azure blue,
And such shoulders never I
In my wildest dreams beheld.

I was almost moved to leap
From the window for a kiss;
This had been sheer folly, true,
Ending in a broken neck!

Ah, and she, she would have laughed
If within that awful gulf
I had fallen at her feet;--
Laughter such as this I know!

And the third fair phantom, she
Who so moved my errant heart,--
Was this but some female fiend
Like the other figures twain?

Whether devil this or saint
Know I not. With women, ah,
None can ever know where saint
Ends nor where the fiend begins.

All the magic of the East
Lay within her glowing face,
And her dress brought memories
Of Scheher