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A Wine of Wizardry

   "When mountains were stained as with wine
   By the dawning of Time, and as wine
   Were the seas."
            -AMBROSE BIERCE.

   WITHOUT, the battlements of sunset shine,

'Mid domes the sea-winds rear and overwhelm.

Into a crystal cup the dusky wine

I pour, and, musing at so rich a shrine,

I watch the star that haunts its ruddy gloom.

Now Fancy, empress of a purpled realm,

Awakes with brow caressed by poppy-bloom,

And wings in sudden dalliance her flight

To strands where opals of the shattered light

Gleam in the wind-strewn foam, and maidens flee

A little past the striving billows' reach,

Or seek the russet mosses of the sea,

And wrinkled shells that lure along the beach,

And please the heart of Fancy; yet she turns,

Tho' trembling, to a grotto rosy-sparred,

Where wattled monsters redly gape, that guard

A cowled magician peering on the damned

Thro' vials wherein a splendid poison burns,

Sifting Satanic gules athwart his brow.

So Fancy will not gaze with him, and now

She wanders to an iceberg oriflammed

With rayed, auroral guidons of the North—

Wherein hath winter hidden ardent gems

And treasuries of frozen anadems,

Alight with timid sapphires of the snow.

But she would dream of warmer gems, and so

Ere long her eyes in fastnesses look forth

O'er blue profounds mysterious whence glow

The coals of Tartarus on the moonless air,

As Titans plan to storm Olympus' throne,

'Mid pulse of dungeoned forges down the stunned,

Undominated firmament, and glare

Of Cyclopean furnaces unsunned.



Then hastens she in refuge to a lone,

Immortal garden of the eastern hours,

Where Dawn upon a pansy's breast hath laid

A single tear, and whence the wind hath flown

And left a silence. Far on shadowy tow'rs

Droop blazoned banners, and the woodland shade,

With leafy flames and dyes autumnal hung,

Makes beautiful the twilight of the year.

For this the fays will dance, for elfin cheer,

Within a dell where some mad girl hath flung

A bracelet that the painted lizards fear—

Red pyres of muffled light! Yet Fancy spurns

The revel, and to eastern hazard turns,

And glaring beacons of the Soldan's shores,

When in a Syrian treasure-house she pours,

From caskets rich and amethystine urns,

Dull fires of dusty jewels that have bound

The brows of naked Ashtaroth around.

Or hushed, at fall of some disastrous night,

When sunset, like a crimson throat to hell,

Is cavernous, she marks the seaward flight

Of homing dragons dark upon the West;

Till, drawn by tales the winds of ocean tell,

And mute amid the splendors of her quest,

To some red city of the Djinns she flees

And, lost in palaces of silence, sees

Within a porphyry crypt the murderous light

Of garnet-crusted lamps whereunder sit

Perturbéd men that tremble at a sound,

And ponder words on ghastly vellum writ,

In vipers' blood, to whispers from the night—

Infernal rubrics, sung to Satan's might,

Or chaunted to the Dragon in his gyre.

But she would blot from memory the sight,

And seeks a stainéd twilight of the South,

Where crafty gnomes with scarlet eyes conspire

To quench Aldebaran's affronting fire,

Low sparkling just beyond their cavern's mouth,

Above a wicked queen's unhallowed tomb.

There lichens brown, incredulous of fame,

Whisper to veinéd flowers her body's shame,

'Mid stillness of all pageantries of bloom.

Within, lurk orbs that graven monsters clasp;

Red-embered rubies smolder in the gloom,

Betrayed by lamps that nurse a sullen flame,

And livid roots writhe in the marble's grasp,

As moaning airs invoke the conquered rust

Of lordly helms made equal in the dust.

Without, where baleful cypresses make rich

The bleeding sun's phantasmagoric gules,

Are fungus-tapers of the twilight witch

(Seen by the bat above unfathomed pools)

And tiger-lilies known to silent ghouls,

Whose king hath digged a somber carcanet

And necklaces with fevered opals set.

But Fancy, well affrighted at his gaze,

Flies to a violet headland of the West,

About whose base the sun-lashed billows blaze,

Ending in precious foam their fatal quest,

As far below the deep-hued ocean molds,

With waters' toil and polished pebbles' fret,

The tiny twilight in the jacinth set,

The wintry orb the moonstone-crystal holds,

Snapt coral twigs and winy agates wet,

Translucencies of jasper, and the folds

Of banded onyx, and vermilion breast

Of cinnabar. Anear on orange sands,

With prows of bronze the sea-stained galleys rest,

And swarthy mariners from alien strands

Stare at the red horizon, for their eyes

Behold a beacon burn on evening skies,

As fed with sanguine oils at touch of night.

Forth from that pharos-flame a radiance flies,

To spill in vinous gleams on ruddy decks;

And overside, when leap the startled waves

And crimson bubbles rise from battle-wrecks,

Unresting hydras wrought of bloody light

Dip to the ocean's phosphorescent caves.



So Fancy's carvel seeks an isle afar,

Led by the Scorpion's rubescent star,

Until in templed zones she smiles to see

Black incense glow, and scarlet-bellied snakes

Sway to the tawny flutes of sorcery.

There priestesses in purple robes hold each

A sultry garnet to the sea-linkt sun,

Or, just before the colored morning shakes

A splendor on the ruby-sanded beach,

Cry unto Betelgeuse a mystic word.

But Fancy, amorous of evening, takes

Her flight to groves whence lustrous rivers run,

Thro' hyacinth, a minster wall to gird,

Where, in the hushed cathedral's jeweled gloom,

Ere Faith return, and azure censers fume,

She kneels, in solemn quietude, to mark

The suppliant day from gorgeous oriels float

And altar-lamps immure the deathless spark;

Till, all her dreams made rich with fervent hues,

She goes to watch, beside a lurid moat,

The kingdoms of the afterglow suffuse

A sentinel mountain stationed toward the night—

Whose broken tombs betray their ghastly trust,

Till bloodshot gems stare up like eyes of lust.

And now she knows, at agate portals bright,

How Circe and her poisons have a home,

Carved in one ruby that a Titan lost,

Where icy philters brim with scarlet foam,

'Mid hiss of oils in burnished caldrons tost,

While thickly from her prey his life-tide drips,

In turbid dyes that tinge her torture-dome;

As craftily she gleans her deadly dews,

With gyving spells not Pluto's queen can use,

Or listens to her victim's moan, and sips

Her darkest wine, and smiles with wicked lips.

Nor comes a god with any power to break

The red alembics whence her gleaming broths

Obscenely fume, as asp or adder froths,

To lethal mists whose writhing vapors make

Dim augury, till shapes of men that were

Point, weeping, at tremendous dooms to be,

When pillared pomps and thrones supreme shall stir,

Unstable as the foam-dreams of the sea.



But Fancy still is fugitive, and turns

To caverns where a demon altar burns,

And Satan, yawning on his brazen seat,

Fondles a screaming thing his fiends have flayed,

Ere Lilith come his indolence to greet,

Who leads from hell his whitest queens, arrayed

In chains so heated at their master's fire

That one new-damned had thought their bright attire

Indeed were coral, till the dazzling dance

So terribly that brilliance shall enhance.

But Fancy is unsatisfied, and soon

She seeks the silence of a vaster night,

Where powers of wizardry, with faltering sight

(Whenas the hours creep farthest from the noon)

Seek by the glow-worm's lantern cold and dull

A crimson spider hidden in a skull,

Or search for mottled vines with berries white,

Where waters mutter to the gibbous moon.

There, clothed in cerements of malignant light,

A sick enchantress scans the dark to curse,

Beside a caldron vext with harlots' blood,

The stars of that red Sign which spells her doom.



Then Fancy cleaves the palmy skies adverse

To sunset barriers. By the Ganges' flood

She sees, in her dim temple, Siva loom

And, visioned with the monstrous ruby, glare

On distant twilight where the burning-ghaut

Is lit with glowering pyres that seem the eyes

Of her abhorrent dragon-worms that bear

The pestilence, by Death in darkness wrought.

So Fancy's wings forsake the Asian skies,

And now her heart is curious of halls

In which dead Merlin's prowling ape hath spilt

A vial squat whose scarlet venom crawls

To ciphers bright and terrible, that tell

The sins of demons and the encharneled guilt

That breathes a phantom at whose cry the owl,

Malignly mute above the midnight well,

Is dolorous, and Hecate lifts her cowl

To mutter swift a minatory rune;

And, ere the tomb-thrown echoings have ceased,

The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast,

Smiles bloodily against the leprous moon.



But evening now is come, and Fancy folds

Her splendid plumes, nor any longer holds

Adventurous quest o'er stainéd lands and seas—

Fled to a star above the sunset lees,

O'er onyx waters stilled by gorgeous oils

That toward the twilight reach emblazoned coils.

And I, albeit Merlin-sage hath said,

"A vyper lurketh in ye wine-cuppe redde,"

Gaze pensively upon the way she went,

Drink at her font, and smile as one content.

George Sterling

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