Merope
Far in the ways of the hyaline wastes -- in the face of the splendid
Six of the sisters -- the star-dowered sisters ineffably bright,
Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a monarch unfriended
Of Ades -- of Orcus, the fierce, the implacable god of the night.
Merope -- fugitive Merope! lost to thyself and thy lover,
Cast, like a dream, out of thought,
with the moons which have passed into sleep,
What shall avail thee? Alcyone's tears, or the sight to discover
Of Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter lights of the deep --
Pallid, but patient for sorrow? Oh, thou of the fire and the water,
Half with the flame of the sunset, and kin to the streams of the sea,
Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy dark-featured daughter,
Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O Aethra! with tokens of thee --
Songs that would lull her, like kisses forgotten of silence where speech was
Less than the silence that bound it as passion is bound by a ban;
Seeing we know of thee, Mother, we turning and hearing how each was
Wrapt in the other ere Merope faltered and fell for a man?
Mortal she clave to, forgetting her birthright, forgetting the lordlike
Sons of the many-winged Father, and chiefs of the plume and the star,
Therefore, because that her sin was the grief of the grand and the godlike,
Sitteth thy child than a morning-moon bleaker, the faded, and far.
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