Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Le Jeune Homme Caressant Sa Chimère

John Addington Symonds (1840–1893)

A BOY of eighteen years mid myrtle-boughs

Lying love-languid on a morn of May,

Watch’d half-asleep his goats insatiate browse

Thin shoots of thyme and lentisk, by the spray

Of biting sea-winds bitter made and grey:

Therewith when shadows fell, his waking thought

Of love into a wondrous dream was wrought.

A woman lay beside him,—so it seem’d;

For on her marble shoulders, like a mist

Irradiate with tawny moonrise, gleam’d

Thick silken tresses; her white woman’s wrist,

Glittering with snaky gold and amethyst,

Upheld a dainty chin; and there beneath,

Her twin breasts shone like pinks that lilies wreathe.

What colour were her eyes I cannot tell;

For as he gazed thereon, at times they darted

Dun rays like water in a dusky well;

Then turn’d to topaz: then like rubies smarted

With smouldering flames of passion tiger-hearted;

Then ’neath blue-veinèd lids swam soft and tender

With pleadings and shy timorous surrender.

Thus far a woman: but the breath that lifted

Her panting breast with long melodious sighs,

Stirr’d o’er her neck and hair broad wings that sifted

The perfumes of meridian Paradise;

Dusk were they, furr’d like velvet, gemm’d with eyes

Of such dull lustre as in isles afar

Night-flying moths spread to the summer star.

Music these pinions made—a sound and surge

Of pines innumerous near lisping waves—

Rustling of reeds and rushes on the verge

Of level lakes and naiad-haunted caves—

Drown’d whispers of a wandering stream that laves

Deep alder-boughs and tracts of ferny grass

Border’d with azure-bell’d campanulas.

Potent they were: for never since her birth

With feet of woman this fair siren press’d

Sleek meadow swards or stony ways of earth;

But ’neath the silken marvel of her breast,

Display’d in sinuous length of coil and crest,

Glitter’d a serpent’s tail, fold over fold,

In massy labyrinths of languor roll’d.

Ah, me! what fascination! what faint stars

Of emerald and opal, with the shine

Of rubies intermingled, and dim bars

Of twisting turquoise and pale coralline!

What rings and rounds! what thin streaks sapphirine

Freckled that gleaming glory, like the bed

Of Eden streams with gems enamellèd!

There lurk’d no loathing, no soul-freezing fear,

But luxury and love these coils between:

Faint grew the boy; the siren fill’d his ear

With singing sweet as when the village-green

Re-echoes to the tinkling tambourine,

And feet of girls aglow with laughter glance

In myriad mazy errors of the dance.

How long he dallied with delusive joy

I know not; but thereafter never more

The peace of passionless slumber soothed the boy;

For he was stricken to the very core

With sickness of desire exceeding sore,

And through the radiance of his eyes there shone

Consuming fire too fierce to gaze upon.

He, ere he died—and they whom lips divine

Have touch’d, fade flower-like and cease to be—

Bade Charicles on agate carve a sign

Of his strange slumber: therefore can we see

Here in the ruddy gem’s transparency

The boy, the myrtle boughs, the triple spell

Of moth and snake and white witch terrible.