LUCIFER

Once on a time, as poets sing
High tales with fancy laden,
Born of a very noble king
There lived a wondrous maiden.

An only child, her kinsfolk boon,
So fair, imagination faints;
As though amidst the stars the moon,
Or Mary amidst the saints.

From 'neath the castle's dark retreat,
Her silent way she wended
Each evening to the window-seat
Where Lucifer attended.

And secretly, with never fail,
She watched his double race,
Where vessels drew their pathless trail
Across the ocean's face.

And as intent she drank his light,
Desire was quickly there;
While he who saw her every night
Soon fell in love with her.

And sitting thus with rested head,
Her elbows on the sill,
Her heart by youthful fancy led
Did with deep longing fill.

While he, a brilliant shining spark,
Glowed always yet more clear
Towards the castle tall and dark
Where she would soon appear.

*

Until one night with shower of rays
He slips into her room,
As though a strange and silver haze
Did round about her loom.

And when at last the child to rest
Upon her sofa lies,
He lays her arms across her breast
And closes her soft eyes.
             *

While where his ray on mirror lands
And is upon her couch redrifted,
It falls upon her throat and hands
And on her face uplifted.

A smile is on her lips it seems;
He in the mirror trembles,
For smooth his ray glides midst her dreams
And round her soul assembles.

And while she is in slumber gone
She murmurs through her sighs:
'Come down to me beloved one,
Fair prince of the clear skies.

Come down, good Lucifer and kind,
O lord of my aspire'
And flood my chamber and my mind
With your sweetest fire!'

And Lucifer beams still more bright
To hear her word's emotion;
Then like a comet in its flight
Dives down into the ocean.

And where his bolt is lost to view
The sea in whirlpool surges,
Till out of the unfathomed blue
A handsome youth emerges,

Who, leaping off the fretful wave,
Lightly through her casement passes;
And in his hand he holds a stave
Crowned with a wreath of grasses.

A prince indeed of royal stock,
With heavy hanging golden hair;
A purple winding-sheet his smock,
Hung round his shoulders bare.

A starry glow shines from his eyes,
His cheeks are deathly white;
A lifeless thing in living guise,
A youth born of the night.