The sun drops luridly into the west; darkness has raised her arms to draw him down before

The sun drops luridly into the west; darkness has raised her arms to draw him down before the time, not waiting as of wont till he has come to her behind the sea; and the smooth waves grow sullen in the gloom and wear their threatening purple; more and more the plain of waters sways and seems to rise convexly from its level of the shores; and low dull thunder rolls along the beach: there will be storm at last, storm, glorious storm. Oh welcome, welcome, though it rend my bowers, scattering my blossomed roses like the dust, splitting the shrieking branches, tossing down my riotous vines with their young half-tinged grapes like small round amethysts or beryls strung tumultuously in clusters, though it sate its ravenous spite among my goodliest pines standing there round and still against the sky that makes blue lakes between their sombre tufts, or harry from my silvery olive slopes some hoary king whose gnarled fantastic limbs wear crooked armour of a thousand years; though it will hurl high on my flowery shores the hostile wave that rives at the poor sward and drags it down the slants, that swirls its foam over my terraces, shakes their firm blocks of great bright marbles into tumbled heaps, and makes my preached and mossy labyrinths, where the small odorous blossoms grow like stars strewn in the milky way, a briny marsh. What matter? let it come and bring me change, breaking the sickly sweet monotony. I am too weary of this long bright calm; always the same blue sky, always the sea the same blue perfect likeness of the sky, one rose to match the other that has waned, to-morrow’s dawn the twin of yesterday’s; and every night the ceaseless crickets chirp the same long joy and the late strain of birds repeats their strain of all the even month; and changelessly the petty plashing surfs bubble their chiming burden round the stones; dusk after dusk brings the same languid trance upon the shadowy hills, and in the fields the waves of fireflies come and go the same, making the very flash of light and stir vex one like dronings of the spinning wheel. Give me some change. Must life be only sweet, all honey-pap as babes would have their food? And, if my heart must always be adrowse in a hush of stagnant sunshine, give me then something outside me stirring; let the storm break up the sluggish beauty, let it fall beaten below the feet of passionate winds, and then to-morrow waken jubilant in a new birth: let me see subtle joy of anguish and of hopes, of change and growth. What fate is mine who, far apart from pains and fears and turmoils of the cross-grained world, dwell, like a lonely god, in a charmed isle where I am first and only, and, like one who should love poisonous savours more than mead, long for a tempest on me and grow sick of resting, and divine free carelessness! Oh me, I am a woman, not a god; yea, those who tend me even are more than I, my nymphs who have the souls of flowers and birds singing and blossoming immortally. Ah me! these love a day and laugh again, and loving, laughing, find a full content; but I know nought of peace, and have not loved. Where is my love? Does some one cry for me, not knowing whom he calls? does his soul cry for mine to grow beside it, grow in it? does he beseech the gods to give him me, the one unknown rare woman by whose side no other woman, thrice as beautiful, should once seem fair to him; to whose voice heard in any common tones no sweetest sound of love made melody on silver lutes, or singing like Apollo’s when the gods grow pale with happy listening, might be peered for making music to him; whom once found there will be no more seeking anything? Oh love, oh love, oh love, art not yet come out of the waiting shadows into life? art not yet come after so many years that I have longed for thee? Come! I am here. Not yet. For surely I should feel a sound of his far answering, if now in the world he sought me who will seek me–Oh ye gods will he not seek me? Is it all a dream? will there be never never such a man? will there be only these, these bestial things who wallow in my styes, or mop and mow among the trees, or munch in pens and byres, or snarl and filch behind their wattled coops; these things who had believed that they were men? Nay but he will come. Why am I so fair, and marvellously minded, and with sight which flashes suddenly on hidden things, as the gods see who do not need to look? why wear I in my eyes that stronger power than basilisks, whose gaze can only kill, to draw men’s souls to me to live or die as I would have them? why am I given pride which yet longs to be broken, and this scorn cruel and vengeful for the lesser men who meet the smiles I waste for lack of him and grow too glad? why am I who I am, but for the sake of him whom fate will send one day to be my master utterly, that he should take me, the desire of all, whom only he in the world could bow to him? Oh sunlike glory of pale glittering hairs, bright as the filmy wires my weavers take to make me golden gauzes; oh deep eyes, darker and softer than the bluest dusk of August violets, darker and deep like crystal fathomless lakes in summer noons; oh sad sweet longing smile; oh lips that tempt my very self to kisses; oh round cheeks, tenderly radiant with the even flush of pale smoothed coral; perfect lovely face answering my gaze from out this fleckless pool; wonder of glossy shoulders, chiselled limbs; should I be so your lover as I am, drinking an exquisite joy to watch you thus in all a hundred changes through the day, but that I love you for him till he comes, but that my beauty means his loving it? Oh, look! a speck on this side of the sun, coming–yes, coming with the rising wind that frays the darkening cloud-wrack on the verge and in a little while will leap abroad, spattering the sky with rushing blacknesses, dashing the hissing mountainous waves at the stars. ‘Twill drive me that black speck a shuddering hulk caught in the buffeting waves, dashed impotent from ridge to ridge, will drive it in the night with that dull jarring crash upon the beach, and the cries for help and the cries of fear and hope. And then to-morrow they will thoughtfully, with grave low voices, count their perils up, and thank the gods for having let them live, and tell of wives or mothers in their homes, and children, who would have such loss in them that they must weep, and may be I weep too, with fancy of the weepings had they died. And the next morrow they will feel their ease and sigh with sleek content, or laugh elate, tasting delights of rest and revelling, music and perfumes, joyaunce for the eyes of rosy faces and luxurious pomps, the savour of the banquet and the glow and fragrance of the wine-cup; and they’ll talk how good it is to house in palaces out of the storms and struggles, and what luck strewed their good ship on our accessless coast. Then the next day the beast in them will wake, and one will strike and bicker, and one swell with puffed up greatness, and one gibe and strut in apish pranks, and one will line his sleeve with pilfered booties, and one snatch the gems out of the carven goblets as they pass, one will grow mad with fever of the wine, and one will sluggishly besot himself, and one be lewd, and one be gluttonous; and I shall sickly look, and loathe them all. Oh my rare cup! my pure and crystal cup, with not one speck of colour to make false the passing lights, or flaw to make them swerve! My cup of Truth! How the lost fools will laugh and thank me for my boon, as if I gave some momentary flash of the gods’ joy, to drink where I have drunk and touch the touch of my lips with their own! Aye, let them touch. Too cruel am I? And the silly beasts, crowding around me when I pass their way, glower on me and, although they love me still, (with their poor sorts of love such as they could,) call wrath and vengeance to their humid eyes to scare me into mercy, or creep near with piteous fawnings, supplicating bleats. Too cruel? Did I choose them what they are? or change them from themselves by poisonous charms? But any draught, pure water, natural wine, out of my cup, revealed them to themselves and to each other. Change? there was no change; only disguise gone from them unawares: and had there been one right true man of them he would have drunk the draught as I had drunk, and stood unchanged, and looked me in the eyes, abashing me before him. But these things– why, which of them has even shown the kind of some one nobler beast? Pah, yapping wolves and pitiless stealthy wild-cats, curs and apes and gorging swine and slinking venomous snakes all false and ravenous and sensual brutes that shame the Earth that bore them, these they are. Lo, lo! the shivering blueness darting forth on half the heavens, and the forked thin fire strikes to the sea: and hark, the sudden voice that rushes through the trees before the storm, and shuddering of the branches. Yet the sky is blue against them still, and early stars glimmer above the pine-tops; and the air clings faint and motionless around me here. Another burst of flame–and the black speck shows in the glare, lashed onwards. It were well I bade make ready for our guests to-night.Circe -- source link

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