Sing to me of the labyrinth
In which the monstrous bull was stalled
Sing to me of the night you crawled
Across the temple’s granite plinth,
When through the painted corridors
The screaming scarlet ibis flew
In terror, and a horrid dew
Dripped from the moaning mandragores,
And the great torpid crocodile,
Within the tank, shed slimy tears,
And tare the jewels from his ears,
And staggered back into the Nile,
And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms,
And in your claws you seized their snake,
And crept away with it, to slake
Your passion by the shuddering palms.
Who were your lovers? who were they
That wrestled for you in the dust?
Which was the vessel of your lust?
What leman had you, every day?
Did monstrous lizards come and crouch
Before you on the reedy banks?
Did gryphons with huge metal flanks
Leap on you in your trampled couch?
Did winged horses whinny round
That basalt-cavern, where you slept
Beside the dreadful Katalept,
Whose eyes were chained unto the ground ?
And from the brick-built Lycian tomb
What horrible Chimaera came,
With fearful heads, and fearful flame,
To breed new wonders from your womb?
Or had you shameful secret quests,
And did you harry to your home
Some Nereid, coiled in amber foam,
With curious rock-crystal breasts?
Or did you, when the sun was set,
Climb up the cactus-covered slope,
To meet your swarthy Ethiope
Whose body was of polished jet?
Or did you, while the earthen skiffs
Dropt down the grey Nilotic flats
At twilight, and the flickering bats
Flew round the temple's triple glyphs,
Steal to the border of the bar
And swim across the silent lake,
And slink into the vault, and make
The pyramid your lupanar,
Till from each black sarcophagus
Rose up the painted swathed dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed
The ivory-horned tragelaphos?
Or did you love the God of Flies,
That plagued the Hebrews, and was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht
Who had green beryls for his eyes?
Or that sea-God, whose burnished nails
Were cream-blue like turkis-stone
And wore a twisted saffron zone
Above his gleaming fishes’ scales ?
Or that young God, the Tyrian,
Who was more amorous than the dove
Of Cythera? Or did you love
The god of the Assyrian,
Whose wings, like strange transparent talc,
Rose high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red,
And ribbed with rods of oreichalch?
How strange and subtle is your smile:
Did you love none then? Nay, I know,
Great Ammon was your bed-fellow,
He lay with you beside the Nile.
His feet were shod with sardonyx,
His throne was made of thyine wood,
And on his horned head there stood
The crimson phoenicopteryx.
His throne was stained with terebinth,
And strewn with tissued tapestries;
His cloak had gilded dragon-flies
Inwoven on the hyacinth.
His long hair was a cubit’s span,
And coloured like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment's hem
The merchants bear from Kurdistan.
His face was as the must that lies
Upon a vat of new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine
The perfect azure of his eyes.
On pearl and porphyry pedestalled
He was too bright to look upon,
For from his ivory breast there shone
The wondrous ocean emerald.
