Mistress of Mistresses. E. Eddison R.
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Antiquus spawn’d in the days of old.
I will have columns of Parian vein’d with gems,
Their capitals by Pheidias’ self design’d,
By his hand carv’d, for flowers with strong smooth stems,
Nepenthe, Elysian Amaranth, and their kind.
I will have night: and the taste of a field well fought,
And a golden bed made wide for luxury;
And there – since else were all things else prov’d naught –
Bestower and hallower of all things: I will have Thee.
—Thee, and hawthorn time. For in that new birth though all
Change, you I will have unchang’d: even that dress,
So fall’n to your hips as lapping waves should fall:
You, cloth’d upon with your beauty’s nakedness.
The line of your flank: so lily-pure and warm:
The globéd wonder of splendid breasts made bare:
The gleam, like cymbals a-clash, when you lift your arm;
And the faun leaps out with the sweetness of red-gold hair.
My dear – my tongue is broken: I cannot see:
A sudden subtle fire beneath my skin
Runs, and an inward thunder deafens me,
Drowning mine ears: I tremble. – O unpin
Those pins of anachite diamond, and unbraid
Those strings of margery-pearls, and so let fall
Your python tresses in their deep cascade
To be your misty robe imperial—
The beating of wings, the gallop, the wild spate,
Die down. A hush resumes all Being, which you
Do with your starry presence consecrate,
And peace of moon-trod gardens and falling dew.
Two are our bodies: two are our minds, but wed.
On your dear shoulder, like a child asleep,
I let my shut lids press, while round my head
Your gracious hands their benediction keep.
Mistress of my delights; and Mistress of Peace:
O ever changing, never changing, You:
Dear pledge of our true love’s unending lease,
Since true to you means to mine own self true—
I will have gold and jewels for my delight:
Hyacinth, ruby, and smaragd, and curtains work’d in gold
With mantichores and what worse shapes of fright
Terror Antiquus spawn’d in the days of old.
Earth I will have, and the deep sky’s ornament:
Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea—
And still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,
Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have Thee.
Half blinded with tears, I read the stanzas and copied them down. All the while I was conscious of the Señorita’s presence at my side, a consciousness from which in some irrational way I seemed to derive an inexplicable support, beyond comprehension or comparisons. These were things which by all right judgement it was unpardonable that any living creature other than myself should have looked upon. Yet of the lightness of her presence (more, of its deep necessity), my sense was so lively as to pass without remark or question. When I had finished my writing, I saw that she had not moved, but remained there, very still, one hand laid lightly on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, between the ears of the great golden hippogriff. I heard her say, faint as the breath of night-flowers under the stars: ‘The fabled land of ZIMIAMVIA. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?’
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Who dares say he knows?’
Then I heard her say, in her voice that was gentler than the glow-worm’s light among rose-trees in a forgotten garden between dewfall and moonrise: Be content. I have promised and I will perform.
And as my eyes rested on that strange woman’s face, it seemed to take upon itself, as she looked on Lessingham dead, that unsearchable look, of laughter-loving lips divine, half closed in a grave expectancy, of infinite pity, infinite patience, and infinite sweetness, which sits on the face of Praxiteles’s Knidian Aphrodite.
PRINCIPAL PERSONS
LESSINGHAM
BARGANAX
FIORINDA
ANTIOPE
A COMMISSION OF PERIL • THE THREE KINGDOMS MASTERLESS • POLICY OF THE VICAR • THE PROMISE HEARD IN ZIMIAMVIA.
‘BY all accounts, ’twas to give him line only,’ said Amaury; ‘and if King Mezentius had lived, would have been war between them this summer. Then he should have been boiled in his own syrup; and ’tis like danger now, though smaller, to cope the son. You do forget your judgement, I think, in this single thing, save which I could swear you are perfect in all things.’
Lessingham made no answer. He was gazing with a strange intentness into the wine which brimmed the crystal goblet in his right hand. He held it up for the bunch of candles that stood in the middle of the table to shine through, turning the endless stream of bubbles into bubbles of golden fire. Amaury, half facing him on his right, watched him. Lessingham set down the goblet and looked round at him with the look of a man awaked from sleep.
‘Now I’ve angered you,’ said Amaury. ‘And yet, I said but true.’
As a wren twinkles in and out in a hedgerow, the demurest soft shadow of laughter came and went in Lessingham’s swift grey eyes. ‘What, were you reading me good counsel? Forgive me, dear Amaury: I lost the thread on’t. You were talking of my cousin, and the great King, and might-a-beens; but I was fallen a-dreaming and marked you not.’
Amaury gave him a look, then dropped his eyes. His thick eyebrows that were the colour of pale rye-straw frowned and bristled, and beneath the sunburn his face, clear-skinned as a girl’s, flamed scarlet to the ears and hair-roots, and he sat sulky, his hands thrust into his belt at either side, his chin buried in his ruff. Lessingham, still leaning on his left elbow, stroked the black curls of his mustachios and ran a finger slowly and delicately over the jewelled filigree work of the goblet’s feet. Now and again he cocked an eye at Amaury, who at last looked up and their glances met. Amaury burst out laughing. Lessingham busied himself still for a moment with the sparkling, rare, and sunset-coloured embellishments of the goldsmith’s art, then, pushing the cup from him, sat back. ‘Out with it,’ he said; ‘’tis shame to plague you. Let me know what it is, and if it be in my nature I’ll be schooled.’
‘Here were comfort,’ said Amaury; ‘but that I much fear ’tis your own nature I would change.’
‘Well, that you will never do,’ answered he.
‘My