Pastel

AMONG the priceless gems and treasures rare

Old Versailles shelters in its halls sublime,

I can recall one faded image fair,

A girl's sad face, praised once in every clime.

Poets have sung, in rich and happy rhyme,

Her violet eyes, the wonder of her hair.

An art-bijou* it was, but dimmed by time,          [artistic jewel]

A dreamy pastel of La Valliere!

I, too, remember in my heart a face

Whose charm I deemed would ever with me dwell;

But as the days went by, its peerless grace

Fled like those dreams that blooming dawn dispel,

Till of its beauty there was left no trace,

Time having blurred it like that pale pastel!

Francis S. Saltus

The Ideal

TOIL on, poor muser, to attain that goal

Where Art conceals its grandest, noblest prize;

Count every tear that dims your aching eyes,

Count all the years that seem as days, and roll

The death-tides slowly on; count all your sighs;

Search the wide, wondrous earth from pole to pole,

Tear unbelief from out your martyred soul;

Succumb not, chase despondency, be wise;

Work, toil, and struggle with the brush or pen,

Revel in rhyme, strain intellect and ken;

Live on and hope despite man's skeptic leers;

Praise the Ideal with your every breath,

Give it life, youth and glory, blood and tears,

And to possess it pay its tribute--Death.

Francis S. Saltus

The Bayadere

[Ed. Note: "Bayadere" means "Hindu dancing girl."]

NEAR strange, weird temples, where the Ganges' tide

Bathes domed Lahore, I watched, by spice-trees fanned,

Her agile form in some quaint saraband,

A marvel of passionate chastity and pride.

Nude to the loins, superb and leopard-eyed,

With fragrant roses in her jeweled hand,

Before some Kaat-drunk Rajah, mute and grand,

Her flexile body bends, her white feet glide.

The dull Kinoors throb one monotonous tune,

And wail with zeal as in a hasheesh trance;

Her scintillant eyes in vague, ecstatic charm

Burn like black stars below the Orient moon,

While the suave, dreamy languor of the dance

Lulls the grim, drowsy cobra on her arm.

Francis S. Saltus

The Sphinx Speaks

CARVED by a mighty race whose vanished hands

Formed empires more destructible than I,

In sultry silence I forever lie,

Wrapped in the shifting garment of the sands.

Below me, Pharaoh's scintillating bands

With clashings of loud cymbals have passed by,

And the eternal reverence of the sky

Falls royally on my and all my lands.

The record of the future broods in me;

I have with worlds of blazing stars been crowned,

But none my subtle mystery hath known

Save one, who made his way through blood and sea,

The Corsican*, prophetic and renowned,          [Napoleon]

To whom I spake, one awful night alone!

Francis S. Saltus

The Andalusian Sereno

[Ed. Note: Sereno is "night watchman," so called

from his cry "Sereno!" the equivalent of "All's well."

WITH oaken staff and swinging lantern bright,

  He strolls at midnight when the world is still

Through dismal lanes and plazas plumed with light,

  Guarding the drowsy thousands in Seville.

Gazing upon his ever star-thronged sky

  With careless step he wanders to and fro;

The gloomy streets reecho with his cry,

  His slow, low, sad, and dreary "Se-re-no!"

He sees the blond moon fleck the rosy towers

  Of old giralda* with its opal sheen,          [weathervanes]

And in broad alamedas, warm with flowers,

  He sees the Moorish cypress bend and lean.

Then, vaguely dreaming, he recalls the nights

  His faher passed beneath those very stars,

The tales of escaladed walls, the fights,

  The mirth, the songs, the Babel of guitars!

And all his sire had told him years ago,

  How, often, in the gardens dim and dark,

He met full many a mantled Romeo,

  And stumbled over corpses cold and stark.

But he, alas! had heard no serenade;

  No ladder hangs from Donna Linda's bars,

And the wan glint of an assassin's blade

  He ne'er has seen beneath these quiet stars.

So, weary, in the dead calm of the town,

  His soul regrets the Past's romantic glow,

While mute, despondent, pacing up and down,

  He sadly moans his dreary "Se-re-no!"

But sometimes in the grayish light of dawn

  He stops and trembles in his clinging cape,

For he can see a lady's curtain drawn,

  And, in the street below, a phantom shape,

Draped in quaint, antique garb, with sword and glove,

  Sombrero vast, and mandolin on arm,

Which seems to play a weird, wild lay of love,

  And at his coming shows no quick alarm;

But turns, and there a skeleton, all lean

  And haggard, leers within the lightless lane!

And the Sereno knows that he has seen

  The spectre of the Past, the ghost of Spain.

Francis S. Saltus