: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,
And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,
How with mad torches there--
Reddening the cedars of Cithaeron's peaks--
With gesture and fierce glance,
Lascivious Maenad bands
Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance,
With Bacchanalian hands.

III.

The music now that lays
Dim lips against my ears,
Some wild sad thing it says,
Unto my soul, of years
Long passed into the haze
Of tears.

Meseems, before me are
The dark eyes of a queen,
A queen of Istakhar:
I seem to see her lean
More lovely than a star
Of mien.

A slave, I stand before
Her jeweled throne; I kneel,
And, in a song, once more
My love for her reveal;
How once I did adore
I feel.

Again her dark eyes gleam;
Again her red lips smile;
And in her face the beam
Of love that knows no guile;
And so she seems to dream
A while.

Out of her deep hair then
A rose she takes--and I
Am made a god o'er men!
Her rose, that here did lie
When I, in th' wild-beasts' den,
Did die.

IV.

Old paintings on its wainscots,
And, in its oaken hall,
Old arras; and the twilight
Of slumber over all.

Old grandeur on its stairways;
And, in its haunted rooms,
Old souvenirs of greatness,
And ghosts of dead perfumes.

The winds are phantom voices
Around its carven doors;
The moonbeams, specter footsteps
Upon its polished floors.

Old cedars build around it
A solitude of sighs;
And the old hours pass through it
With immemorial eyes.

But more than this I know not;
Nor where the house may be;
Nor what its ancient secret
And ancient grief to me.

All that my soul remembers
Is that,--forgot almost,--
Once, in a former lifetime,
'Twas here I loved and lost.

V.

In eoens of the senses,
My spirit knew of yore,
I found the Isle of Circe,
And felt her magic lore;
And still the soul remembers
What flesh would be once more.

She gave me flowers to smell of
That wizard branches bore,
Of weird and sorcerous beauty,
Whose stems dripped human gore--
Their scent when I remember
I know that world once more.

She gave me fruits to eat of
That grew beside the shore,
Of necromantic ripeness,
With human flesh at core--
Their taste when I remember
I know that life once more.

And then, behold! a serpent,
That glides my face before,
With eyes of t