Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/162

 And Venus cried, 'It is dread Artemis

Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty,

Or else that mightier maid whose care it is

To guard her strong and stainless majesty

Upon the hill Athenian,—alas!

That they who loved so well unloved into death's house should pass.'

So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl

In the great golden waggon tenderly,

Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl

Just threaded with a blue vein's tapestry

Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast

Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest.

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,

The bright car soared into the dawning sky,

And like a cloud the aerial caravan

Passed over the Ægean silently,

Till the faint air was troubled with the song

From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal

Where the wide stair of orbèd marble dips

Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul

Just shook the trembling petals of her lips 148