Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Maria GowenBrooks

106 The Respite

THE BANQUET-CUPS, of many a hue and shape,

Bossed o’er with gems, were beautiful to view;

But, for the madness of the vaunted grape,

Their only draught was a pure limpid dew,

To Spirits sweet; but these half-mortal lips

Longed for the streams that once on earth they quaffed;

And, half in shame, Tahathyam coldly sips

And craves excuses for the temperate draught.

“Man tastes,” he said, “the grape’s sweet blood that streams

To steep his heart when pained; when sorrowing he

In wild delirium drowns the sense, and dreams

Of bliss arise, to cheat his misery.”

Nor with their dews were any mingling sweets

Save those, to mortal lip, of poison fell;

No murmuring bee was heard in these retreats,

The mineral clod alone supplied their hydromel.

The Spirits while they sat, in social guise,

Pledging each goblet with an answering kiss,

Marked many a Gnome conceal his bursting sighs;

And thought death happier than a life like this.

But they had music; at one ample side

Of the vast area of that sparkling hall,

Fringed round with gems that all the rest outvied,

In form of canopy, was seen to fall

The stony tapestry, over what at first

An altar to some deity appeared;

But it had cost full many a year to adjust

The limpid crystal tubes that ’neath upreared

Their different gleaming lengths; and so complete

Their wondrous rangement, that a tuneful Gnome

Drew from them sounds more varied, clear, and sweet,

Than ever yet had rung in any earthly dome.

Loud, shrilly, liquid, soft,—at that quick touch

Such modulation wooed his angel ears

That Zophiël wondered, started from his couch,

And thought upon the music of the spheres.