Page:Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia.djvu/23

Brought only sorrow with him, for behold,
In learning to forbear I learned to love;
And battling pale on his impassioned breast
I felt run through my veins some golden pang
Of dear defeat, some subjugation dim,
Presaging all this bosom once was made
To be thus crushed, ere once it could be glad.
Thus are we fashioned, Mother, though we live
Immortal or the sons of men; and so
Each day on my disdain some tendril new
Bound me the closer to him; loving not,
Some wayward bar of pity caged me down,
And day by languid day amid Death’s gloom,
I grew to lean upon him, and in time
I watched his coming and his absence wept.
I walked companion to his pallid shades,
And pale as yon thin crescent noonday moon
I dwelt with him, a ghost amid his ghosts.
If this was love, I loved him more than life.
And now he means to me what flame and ruin
And tumultuous conflagration of great towers
And citadels must mean to martial eyes,
Bewildering the blood like dizzy wine
And sweeping on to any maddened end:
I came to glory in him,—felt small hands
Clutch at my breast when he was standing near,
And knew his cruel might, yet thrilled to it
And in his strength even took my weak delight.
Stern were his days, yet leaned he patient o’er