An Ode to Antares

At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide     Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills     The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills     Clamor from every copse and orchard-side,     I watched the red star rising in the East,     And while his fellows of the flaming sign     From prisoning daylight more and more released,     Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher,     Out of their locks the waters of the Line     Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire,     Rose in the splendor of their curving flight,     Their dolphin leap across the austral night,     From windows southward opening on the sea     What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too,     Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony.     Where, from the garden to the rail above,     As though a lover's greeting to his love     Should borrow body and form and hue     And tower in torrents of floral flame,     The crimson bougainvillea grew,     What starlit brow uplifted to the same     Majestic regress of the summering sky,     What ultimate thing - hushed, holy, throned as high     Above the currents that tarnish and profane     As silver summits are whose pure repose     No curious eyes disclose     Nor any footfalls stain,     But round their beauty on azure evenings     Only the oreads go on gauzy wings,     Only the oreads troop with dance and song     And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng     Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar     Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.     Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night     Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair.     Her breasts are distant islands of delight     Upon a sea where all is soft and fair.     Those robes that make a silken sheath     For each lithe attitude that flows beneath,     Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers,     Call them far clouds that half emerge     Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge,     Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers     Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod,     And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod;     There always from serene horizons blow     Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow     That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest     Each hundred years in Araby the Blest.     Star of the South that now through orient mist     At nightfall off Tampico or Belize     Greetest the sailor rising from those seas     Where first in me, a fond romanticist,     The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles     Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles -     Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst,     O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim     Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose,     Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows     Among the palms where beauty waits for him;     Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North,     Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts,     Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts     And all the joys a summer can bring forth - -     Be thou my star, for I have made my aim     To follow loveliness till autumn-strown     Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame     As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown.     Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate     Than reconcilement to a common fate     Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed     In hues of high romance. I cannot rest     While aught of beauty in any path untrod     Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad     Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see     In Life's profusion and passionate brevity     How hearts enamored of life can strain too much     In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch.     Now on each rustling night-wind from the South     Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth     Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled     May point the path through this fortuitous world     That holds the heart from its desire. Away!     Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day,     Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set     With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret.     Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here,     White roads wind up the dales and disappear,     By silvery waters in the plains afar     Glimmers the inland city like a star,     With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze     And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze,     Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems!     How like a fair its ample beauty seems!     Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise:     What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise,     Down seething alleys what melodious din,     What clamor importuning from every booth!     At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in     Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!