C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Charmian
By Bayard Taylor (1825–1878)
O
Who gave the keys of passion unto thee?
Who taught the powerful sorcery
Wherein my soul, too willing to be won,
Still feebly struggles to be free.
But more than half undone?
Within the mirror of thine eyes,
Full of the sleep of warm Egyptian skies,—
The sleep of lightning, bound in airy spell,
And deadlier, because invisible,—
I see the reflex of a feeling
Which was not till I looked on thee;
A power, involved in mystery,
That shrinks, affrighted, from its own revealing.
Too calm to feel a breath of passion start
The listless fibres of thy sense,
The fiery slumber of thy heart.
Thine eyes are wells of darkness, by the veil
Of languid lids half-sealed; the pale
And bloodless olive of thy face,
And the full, silent lips that wear
A ripe serenity of grace,
Are dark beneath the shadow of thy hair.
Not from the brow of templed Athor beams
Such tropic warmth along the path of dreams;
Not from the lips of hornèd Isis flows
Such sweetness of repose!
For thou art Passion’s self, a goddess too,
And aught but worship never knew;
And thus thy glances, calm and sure,
Look for accustomed homage, and betray
No effort to assert thy sway:
Thou deem’st my fealty secure.
The undisturbèd mysteries that press
Too deep in nature for the heart to feel
Their terror and their loveliness.
Thine eyes are torches that illume
On secret shrines their unforeboded fires,
And fill the vaults of silence and of gloom
With the unresisting life of new desires.
I follow where their arrowy ray
Pierces the veil I would not tear away,
And with a dread, delicious awe behold
Another gate of life unfold,
Like the rapt neophyte who sees
Some march of grand Osirian mysteries.
The startled chambers I explore,
And every entrance open lies,
Forced by the magic thrill that runs before
Thy slowly lifted eyes.
I tremble to the centre of my being
Thus to confess the spirit’s poise o’erthrown,
And all its guiding virtues blown
Like leaves before the whirlwind’s fury fleeing.
And beaming steadily and clear,
Scatters the lurid thunder-clouds that roll
Through Passion’s sultry atmosphere.
An alchemy more potent borrow
For thy dark eyes, enticing Sorceress!
For on the casket of a sacred Sorrow
Their shafts fall powerless.
Nay, frown not, Athor, from thy mystic shrine:
Strong Goddess of Desire, I will not be
One of the myriad slaves thou callest thine,
To cast my manhood’s crown of royalty
Before thy dangerous beauty: I am free!