' ease,
Prattling the love of timid infancies,
Are tearing the green bark from the young trees.

Others, like sisters, slowly walk and grave;
By rocks that swarm with ghostly legions,
Where Anthony saw surging on the waves
The purple breasts of his temptations,

Some, by the light of crumbling, resinous gums,
In the still hollows of old pagan dens,
Call thee in aid to their deliriums
O Bacchus! cajoler of ancient pains.

And those whose breasts for scapulars are fain
Nurse under their long robes the cruel thong.
These, in dim woods, where huddling shadows throng.
Mix with the foam of pleasure tears of pain.

LE VOYAGE A CYTHERE

Bird-like, my heart was glad to soar and vault;
Fluttering among the cordages; and on
The vessel flew, under an empty vault:
An angel drunken of a radiant sun.

Tell me, what is that gray, that sombre isle?
'Tis Cythera, famed on many a poet string;
A name that has not lacked the slavering smile;
But now, you see, it is not much to sing.

Isle of soft whispers, tremours of the heart!
The splendid phantom of thy rude goddess
Floats on thy seas like breath of spikenard,
Charging men's souls with love and lusciousness.

Sweet isle of myrtles, once of open blooms:
Now only of lean lands most lean: it seems
A flinty desert bitter with shrill screams:
But one strange object on its horror looms.

Not a fair temple, foiled with coppiced trees,
Where the young priestess, mistress of the flowers,
Goes opening her gown to the cool breeze,
To still the fire, the torment that devours.

But as along the shore we skirted, near
Enough to scare the birds with our white sails,
We saw a three-limbed gibbet rising sheer.
Detached against the sky in spare details.

Perched on their pasturage, ferocious fowl
Riddled with rage a more than putrid roast;
Each of them stabbing, like a tool, his foul
Beak in the oozing members of his host.

Below, a troop of jealous quadrupeds,
Looking aloft with eye and steadfast snout;
A larger beast above the others' heads,
A hangman with his porters round about.

The eyes, two caves; and from the rotten paunch,
Its freight, too heavy, streamed along the haunch,
Hang for these harpies' hideous delight,
Poor rag of flesh, torn of thy sex and sight!

Cythera's child, child of so sweet a sky!
Silent thou bearest insult--as we must--
In expiation of what faults deny
Thee even a shallow shelter in the dust.

Ludicrous sufferer! thy woes are mine.
The