From Tales of Ancient Greece, No. 1, Eudiades and a Cretan Idyll, 1878. A brief excerpt from a long poetic narrative written in 1868, shortly after Symonds met Norman Moor. It formed part of a cycle of poems celebrating Uranian love in all periods of civilisation, written over a period of ten or twelve years, up to 1878, which several friends tried to persuade him to burn.

It was a still and lonely place, where stood
A statue, wrought of old in cedar wood,
Of the young Love-God and fair Anteros,
Set 'neath a marble canopy. The gloss
Of gold was on a palm branch, which the boy
Held in his right hand; and the glittering toy
Moved the quick wish of Anteros, who strove
To steal it from the powerful lord of love.
But Eros smiled upon him, and the pair,
Hand locked in hand and hair with golden hair
Twined in a labyrinth of brightness, held
Perpetual strife, which never might be quelled
Till from the shrine those lovely shapes were thrust
Or the wise carver's work had fallen to dust.

Here stayed Eudiades, obscure, alone;
For of his friends and comrades everyone
Joined in the race or quoiting-match, or tried
New wrestling-feats, or boxed, or leaped; the wide
Garden around them ringing. Then there came
Who made the stripling's forehead burn like flame:
Yea, to the tree he crept and clung and cowered
Into its shadow; for his lover towered
Before his dazzled eyes, Melanthias,
White and large-limbed, bruising the thin wan grass.
He by the statue stood with arms outstretched
And moving lips that murmured; then he fetched
From that deep chest a sigh, but not of grief,
And with a rose thorn on a broad palm leaf
Pricked the plain words: "Eudiades the fair!"
And underneath again: "Thrice fair, most fair!"
As though he could not tire of writing "fair".

Upon the pedestal of Love he placed
The votive branch; then lightly turning faced
Eudiades, unseen before, who shrank
Close to the tree, while on his bosom sank
The beauteous weight of blushing head, and heaved
The fluttering heart that scarcely still conceived
Its overmeasure of excessive bliss.
Melanthias stooped, and took one hand in his,
And stroking those soft tresses murmured low
Such little words as all true lovers know.
Nor need my tale to teach them: then he kissed
The rosy fingers, and to his bosom pressed
At last the boy, who now, more bold, dared lift
Quick furtive eyes, yet still away would shift,
To hide, if so might be, the strong delight
That swayed him. As he moved, the ribbands white
And scarlet fell: Melanthias laughed outright;
Nor could Eudiades refuse a smile:
What further need had he of craft or guile?
Thus by the Love-God's shrine, beneath the trees,
Fragrant with summer, musical with bees,
While in the boughs the loud cicada sang,
And through the field glad boyish laughter rang,
These lovers vowed unspoken vows and blent
Their throbbing souls in love's accomplishment.
All was so calm, so fair, they scarce could think
'Twas but this morn had brought them to the brink
Of that full stream from which they slaked at will
The strange sweet thirst that burned and pleased them still
But - so they feigned - the years before had been
Some tedious prologue to this blissful scene,
Through which their joy before them ever moved
And told them it was life to be beloved -
The rest mere death and dark monotony
Tried by the light of their felicity.

Enough! Joy needs no words. I cannot tell -
Though of Love's dear delights I wot full well -
What strain of bliss between these lovers fell,
What bloom of kisses, what soul-nourishing sighs,
What long unutterable gazing of great eyes,
What silences like stars that in clear skies
Tremble with mute and eloquent ecstasies!
Ah me! words fail. I bow my head and seem
To be but singing in a golden dream.
I cannot bring again the days of Greece,
Or raise to life beloved Eudiades:
I cannot make superb Melanthias grow
In glory of orbed manhood here, or glow
Before your aching eyes; or teach you how
No shame or fear obscured his lucid brow,
No sin was in his soul, no dull distress
Marred the calm sunlight of his comeliness:
But in his breast saw aweful sense of good,
And his strong heart was armed with hardihood
To do and dare all things that might not shame
The boy he loved or taint his own proud name.

Do ye believe - dull generations, dead
In the cold mire of ignorance and dread -
Do ye believe the pure and lofty love
That stirred these children of the seed of Jove?
Oh! that in fact and deed I might rebuild
Those spacious shrines, now marred, I can but gild -
Bruised statues, ruined walls, fast fading forms,
Blurred with dank mists and soaked with ceaseless storms!
In vain. I faint. Yet listen, and endure:
The men of whom I speak were strong and pure.
No shame oppressed them: they could fight and fall;
And the whole earth mourned at their funeral.

What Might Have Been

From Rhaetica, privately printed in 1878, a celebration of Symonds' love for Willie Dyer which remained unfulfilled because of the intercession of Symonds' father.

What might have been, what might have been!

Is there a sadder word than this?

Are any serpent's teeth more keen

Than memories of what we miss?

The wreaths we might have worn, if but

Our feet had found the fields of May,

Instead of jolting down the rut

Of traffic on life's hard high-way!

The love we might have known, if we

Had turned this way instead of that;

The lips we might have kissed, which he

For whom they parted, pouted at!

The joys we might, when blood was young,

Have garnered in a goodly sheaf;

The summer songs we might have sung,

While still our life was but in leaf!

What might have been, what might have been!

Sad thought, when age before us lowers,

And dark is the December scene,

And fallen even autumn's flowers!

From Friend to Friend

From New and Old, 1880; reprinted in Vagabunduli Libellus, 1884. The friend is probably Willie Dyer.

Oh friend, I know not if such days and nights

Of fervent comradeship as we have spent,

Or if twin minds with equal ardour bent

To search the world's unspeakable delights,

Or if long hours passed on Parnassian heights

Together in rapt interminglement

Of heart with heart on thought sublime intent,

Or if the spark of heaven-born fire that lights

Love in both breasts from boyhood, thus have wrought

Our spirits to communion; but I swear

That neither chance nor change nor time nor aught

That makes the future of our lives less fair,

Shall sunder us who once have breathed this air

Of soul-commingling friendship passion-fraught.

The Passing Stranger

Sonnet I first appeared in New and Old, 1880, and Sonnet II appeared in Animi Figura, 1882.

I

Of all the mysteries wherethrough we move,

This is the most mysterious - that a face,

Seen peradventure in some distant place,

Whither we can return no more to prove

The world-old sanctities of human love,

Shall haunt our waking thoughts, and gathering grace

Incorporate itself with every phase

Whereby the soul aspires to God above.

Thus are we wedded through that face to her

Or him who bears it; nay, one fleeting glance,

Fraught with a tale too deep for utterance,

Even as a pebble cast into the sea,

Will on the deep waves of our spirit stir

Ripples that run through all eternity.

II

Soul cries to soul, as star to sundered star

Calls through the void of intermediate night;

And as each tiniest spark of stellar light

Includes a world where moving myriads are,

Thus every glance seen once and felt afar

Symbols an universe: the spirit's might

Leaps through the gazing eyes, with infinite

Pulsations that no lapse of years can mar.

He therefore dwells within me still; and I

Within him dwell; though neither clasp of hand

Nor interchange of converse made us one:

And it shall surely be that when we die,

In God shall both see clear and understand

What soul to soul spake, sun to brother sun.

L'amour de l'impossible

From Animi Figura, 1882. "Chimaera" is Symonds' code-word for the wolf within: the homosexual instinct.

Chimaera

Childhood brings flowers to pluck, and butterflies;

Boyhood hath bat and ball, shy dubious dreams,

Foreshadowed love, friendship, prophetic gleams;

Youth takes free pastime under laughing skies;

Ripe manhood weds, made early strong and wise;

Clasping the real, scorning what only seems,

He tracks love's fountain to its furthest streams,

Kneels by the cradle where his firstborn lies.

Then for the soul athirst, life's circle run,

Yet nought accomplished and the world unknown,

Rises Chimaera. Far beyond the sun

Her bat's wings bear us. The empyreal zone

Shrinks into void. We pant. Thought, sense rebel,

And swoon desiring things impossible.

The Pursuit of Beauty

Man's soul is drawn by beauty, even as the moth

By flame, the cloud by mountains, or as the sea,

Roaming around earth's shore incessantly,

Ebbs with the moon and surges with her growth;

And as the moth singes her wings in fire,

As clouds upon the hillsides melt in rain,

As tides with change unceasing wax and wane,

Nor in the moon's white kisses quell desire;

So the soul, drawn by beauty, nothing loth,

Burns her bright wings with rapture that is pain,

Faints and dissolves or e're her goal she gain,

Flies and pursues that unclasped deity,

Fretful, forestalled, blown into foam and froth,

Following and foiled, even as I follow Thee!

The Vanishing Point

There are who, when the bat on wing transverse

Skims the swart surface of some neighbouring mere,

Catch that thin cry too fine for common ear:

Thus the last joy-note of the universe

Is borne to those few listeners who immerse

Their intellectual hearing in no clear

Paean, but pierce it with the thin-edged spear

Of utmost beauty which contains a curse.

Dead on their sense fall marches hymeneal,

Triumphal odes, hymns, symphonies sonorous;

They crave one shrill vibration, tense, ideal,

Transcending and surpassing the world's chorus;

Keen, fine, ethereal, exquisitely real,

Intangible as star's light quivering o'er us.

The Use of Pain

He that hath once in heart and soul and sense

Harboured the secret heat of love that yearns

With incommunicable violence,

Still, though his love be dead and buried, burns:

Yea, if he feed not that remorseless flame

With fuel of strong thought for ever fresh,

The slow fire shrouded in a veil of shame

Corrodes his very substance, marrow and flesh:

Therefore, in time take heed. Of misery

Make wings for soaring o'er the source of pain.

Compel thy spirit's strife to strengthen thee:

And seek the stars upon that hurricane

Of passionate anguish, which beyond control

Pent in thy breast, would rack and rend thy soul.

Read some more of Symonds' poems in the following page.

Source: For a complete and incredibly good page about Symonds see the site of Rictor Norton at http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/symindex.htm

Go to Symonds' page.