Antinous: A Poem

Excerpt

+ANTINOUS+

It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul.

The boy lay dead
On the low couch, on whose denuded whole,
To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled,
The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed.

The boy lay dead and the day seemed a night
Outside. The rain fell like a sick affright
Of Nature at her work in killing him.
Through the mind's galleries of their past delight
The very light of memory was dim.

O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands,
That now found them but cold!
O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands!
O eyes too diffidently bold!
O bare female male-body like
A god that dawns into humanity!
O lips whose opening redness erst could strike
Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety!
O fingers skilled in things not to be named!
O tongue which, counter-tongued, the throbbed brows flamed!
O glory of a wrong lust pillowed on
Raged conciousness's spilled suspension!
These things are things that now must be no more.
The rain is silent, and the Emperor
Sinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage,
For the gods take away the life they give
And spoil the beauty they made live.
He weeps and knows that every future age
Is staring at him out of the to-be.
His love is on a universal stage.
A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery.

Antinous is dead, is dead forever,
Is dead forever and the loves lament.
Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover,
Seeing him again, having lived, dead again,
Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent
With Hadrian's pain.

Now is Apollo sad because the stealer
Of his white body is forever cold.
In vain shall kisses on that nippled point
Covering his heart-beats' silent place implore
His life again to ope his eyes and feel her
Presence along his veins this fortress hold
Of love. Now no caressing hands anoint
With growing joy that body's lusting lore.

The rain falls, and he lies like one who hath
Forgotten all the gestures of his love
And lies awake waiting their hot return.
But all his vices' art is now with Death:
He lies with her, whose sex cannot him move,
Whose hand, were't not cold, still ne'er his could burn.
Lilies were on his cheeks and roses too.
His eyes were sad in joy sometimes. He said
Oft in his close abandonments, that woo
Love to be more love than love can be, «Kiss
My eyelids till my closed eyes seem to guess
The kiss they feel laid in my heart's breast-bed.»

O Hadrian, what shall now thy cold life be?
What boots it to be emperor over all?
His absence o'er thy visible empery
Throws a dim pall.
Now are thy nights widowed of love and kisses,
Now are thy days robbed of the night's awaiting,
Now are thy lips purposeless and thy blisses
No longer of the size of thy life, mating
Thy empire with thy love's bold tendernesses.

Now are thy doors closed upon beauty and joy.
Throw ashes on thy head!
Lo, lift thine eyes and see the lovely boy!
Naked he lies upon that memoried bed;
By thine own hand he lies uncovered.
There was he wont thy dangling sense to cloy,
And uncloy with more cloying, and annoy
With newer uncloying till thy senses bled....