A New Year's Masque, and Other Poems (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VESTA. I Saw a city builded in the fire, Entire; Walled with live ember, that none violates Its gates. None egress may obtain, nor way therein May win; But watchmen, ready with the sword and lance, Advance. On every castled tower and parapet Are set Banners of goodly crimson, and of white, Star-bright: And in that city, fair with lambent heats, Are streets, ? Streets paven, full of stirs, and toiling arts, And marts, Villas, and gardens where the fountains play Rose spray, And beds of amaranth wave to and fro, Aglow. And in that city's heart there is a shrine Divine, Of ebony built, with great doors open wide, Each side, And pillars wreathen with a cloudy gyre Of fire. 16 VESTA. There on the altar, in a chaliced urn, Doth burn A spirit from the ether spaces sown, Unknown: And maidens four the glowing germ preserve, And serve, Singing alway: ? Queen Vesta, grave and dear, Dwells here; Pleasant the wreaths of frankincense and myrrh To her. She hath, beside, in the deep-caverned Earth, Her hearth, And luminous cells beneath the tided deeps She keeps; The rolling planet-fires are hers to feed, And speed; Hers, on the kindled plumes of birds, to fare Through air; Hers, in the pulse of all small grass and plants, To dance; In man's heart, too, deep in its purple wells, She dwells! DOOM. The doom of Oleg by a priest foretold: " O Prince, if brief or long thy years shall be, Know this: thy noble war-steed, swift and bold, Shall bring thy death to thee." " Not so! " cried Oleg, wroth, with flashing eyes; " My steed ? best friend ? a traitor's heart reveal! I save his honor, for this hour he dies ! " And, saying, drove the steel. But who the point of fate can turn or dull...