The Lamia

"O! come to my arms, thou beautiful youth,
With that soft brown hair and those eyes of truth, 
With lips blushing down in thy beard's crispy floss, 
Like twin berries ripening in clusters of moss;
I will weave in the curls of that sunny brown hair
Rich roses of ruby, immortal and rare, 
And kindle those eyes to a glory divine 
In the amethyst flash of a life-giving wine, 
And thy lips the inspirings of wisdom shall hymn 
As a spring overbubbles its roseate brim."

He was wise, he was brave, and though Wisdom grew grave,
His daring could toy with the danger which gave 
A delight to his soul, a career to his feet;
And entranced while he listened, his lip whispered, "Sweet !"
She saw not, she heard not, or seemed not to hear, 
As her honeyed persuasion she poured on his ear.
"Oh! let me not say, 'I am fair, I am sweet,' 
That the cup which I bear is no well of deceit:
Oh! let me not say that the dance of my tongue 
Is attuned to the rhythms by seraphim sung.
Thou hast eyes—ay, they melt through the frost of my power;
Thou hast senses that thrill at the breath of a flower;
Thou hast ears, and they hear if my utterance wrong
The notes of an angel's mellifluous song!
If I seem to thee sweet, all divine as thou art,
Judge the worth of my charms by the wealth of thy heart."

And he said unaware, “Thou art sweet, thou art fair!”
As her words bubble dout with a negligent care.

“Oh! follow me, then, to the bower of my rest:
I will rock thee asleep on the wave of my breast;
I will wake thee with song when the morning, aswoon,
Sinks breathless with love in the lap of the noon.
But my home shall be cool in the heart of the grove,
Where Twilight forever with Zephyr shall rove;
Then come to my bower in thy beauty and pride—
Thy daring and wisdom shall make me thy bride."

He was brave, he was wise; but those beautiful eyes,
That flashed on his vision a happy surprise, 
And the lips, and the breath, which were honey and myrrh,
Shed a mist o'er his soul with a slumberous stir;
And an odor went up from her foam-beaded cup
That wrought on his brain but one image of her—
One dazzling, alluring, yet vanishing form,
With which the wide landscape grew rosy and warm.
Like the beautiful Wonder half-uttered in flame;
And he sped as she fled, till her mazy dance led
Where the deep verdure glooms of her bower, overhead,
Met the rich purple darkness that curtained her bed.

In the rapture of song, that now murmured, now burst 
In billows to Music's insatiate thirst;
In the waltzing of houris, that broke not a flower 
As their rapid feet fell like a silvery shower;
In the trancing of odors that hung like a mist, 
Just flushing the air to a pale amethyst, 
He was mad with excess of delight; and again 
Seemed afloat on the clouds of a slumberous rain, 
So lulled by the undulant swell of her breast 
It seemed more deliciously restful than rest!

In the rapture he breathed, so replete and intense, 
Could it be that his soul was the thrall of his sense?
He was brave, he was wise; but those glittering eyes 
Held him bound like a bird in inscrutable ties!
"Thine am I, forever, my charmer, my bride!"
He whispered, and drained the full cup at her side;
"Thee only, thee ever, divinest, I wed,
And the angels shall witness the vow I have said." 
Bloomed his lips to a kiss, but ere yet it had shed 
Its petals on hers o'er the pale marriage-bed, 
His soul was aware of a voice in the air:
Here, there, everywhere was the hoarse cry, "Beware!
'Tis a serpent, a Lamia! and back in her lair
Lie the white bones of thousands all bleaching and bare 
Whom the pest of her breath sent to death and despair!” 

Ere the voice a clear image grew, crushing his bliss, 
Fell the faltering kiss, and her lips answered his, 
Unsheathing her fangs with a venomous hiss.
Thin, fleshless, and blue, her plump, cherry lips grew, 
And a dew filtered through, as her double tongue flew, 
That was deathly, venenate, and sickly of hue!
Her human expired with an agonized cry;
His wild shriek of horror, and blood-bursting eye, 
And a mad bound to fly, were his only reply.

Oh! burning as are the red pebbles that break 
The fires of that lake where the Ruined would slake 
The insatiable thirst which their own passions wake, 
Were the eyes of the Snake; yet he knew them the same
With their terrible beauty distinct in their flame!
United, the lithe limbs behind her uprolled,
In the horror of scales flashing purple and gold,
Scale plaited on scale, an impervious mail, 
From the white-girdled throat to the barbated tail.
How they crackled and gleamed! how their hues went and came,
Interfused as they waved like a phosphorent flame;
As she glided along through her latered abode,
Where nightshade and dogwood their death-cerdure strewed.

A hot reeking smell of the verminous breeds
That coiled in the branches, and crawled through the reeds,
And a feverous steam from the leaves lush and rank,
In the sweltering noon, made the fen-arbor dank.

Now rigid with horror the youth stood aghast,
As a leaflet too frozen to shake in the blast;
The cup of the charmer lay large at his feet, 
A fountain with blood and confusion replete;
And through the red mass, as it bubbled and leapt, 
Coiled adders like eels, and green centipedes crept!

With infinite loathing he hung o'er the brink,
And felt his stiff knees irresistibly sink,
As a voice of keen mockery bade him to drink!
Twas the voice of a fiend from the tongue of the snake;
"O God! can it be, I am thus, and awake?"
He shrieked, and still bowed to the loathly abyss, 
To quench in its flood that indelible kiss
Which burned on his lip with more horror than this!

Will he taste? Will he quaff? “Ha! ha! ha!” what laugh!
It scatters his sense as the wind scatters chaff.
“Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!” all the air is ajar,
With the gibbering mockery, near and afar’
It laughs from the hill-side, it laughs from the fen,
From the trees, from the leas, from the sky and the glen;
It bursts from that hell-wine in bubbles that fling
Its stain on his lips as they shrink from the spring;
Every thing to the scoff lends a wing or a sting.

Now coldly and tightly, how tightly and cold, 
Around him and round is the lithe serpent [???] 
Around him and round him her live links have bound him,  
The chill to his will stiffly striking its hold.
Too stark for more horror, too stunned for [???]
He sees the old passion burn clear in his eyes;
Her subtle head slides through his clammy, damp tresses,
And on his cold cheek are her slimy carcasses.
The death-cup expands to a geyser of hell, 
And higher and higher red billows swell, 
Tossing up to their crest the thick tangle of [???] 
The fierce anaconda upheaves in her coils 
The shuddering wretch she has bound with her [???],
Upheaves for one plunge in that Etna of fire,
Whose adders are passions that never expire, 
And the green centipedes are each groveling desire!
‘Tis the home of the Lamia, the bitumen lake 
Where the lovely receiver returns to the snake, 
Whose coils on her victim are cordage and stake 
In the dread holocaust of the lost for her sake. 

Come, Angels of mercy! and snatch away
Ere that shivering heart sink to deeper dismay!
Come warn the fresh thousands who gather behind,
Whom the beautiful Wine Gods “dazzle to blind;
Though her lips may be sweet in the troth-plighting kiss,
Her nuptial caress is the death boding hiss, 
And her bed, when they wed, is the burning Abyss!