No More Learning

" Poor Lamia answer'd not.
He gaz'd into her eyes, and not a jot
Own'd they the lovelorn piteous appeal:
More, more he gaz'd: his human senses reel:
Some hungry spell that loveliness absorbs;
There was no recognition in those orbs. 260
"Lamia! " he cried--and no soft-toned reply.
The many heard, and the loud revelry
Grew hush; the stately music no more breathes;
The myrtle sicken'd in a thousand wreaths.
By faint degrees, voice, lute, and pleasure ceased;
A deadly silence step by step increased,
Until it seem'd a horrid presence there,
And not a man but felt the terror in his hair.
"Lamia! " he shriek'd; and nothing but the shriek
With its sad echo did the silence break. 270
"Begone, foul dream! " he cried, gazing again
In the bride's face, where now no azure vein
Wander'd on fair-spaced temples; no soft bloom
Misted the cheek; no passion to illume
The deep-recessed vision:--all was blight;
Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white.
"Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man!
Turn them aside, wretch! or the righteous ban
Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images
Here represent their shadowy presences, 280
May pierce them on the sudden with the thorn
Of painful blindness; leaving thee forlorn,
In trembling dotage to the feeblest fright
Of conscience, for their long offended might,
For all thine impious proud-heart sophistries,
Unlawful magic, and enticing lies.
Corinthians! look upon that gray-beard wretch!
Mark how, possess'd, his lashless eyelids stretch
Around his demon eyes! Corinthians, see!
My sweet bride withers at their potency. " 290
"Fool! " said the sophist, in an under-tone
Gruff with contempt; which a death-nighing moan
From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost,
He sank supine beside the aching ghost.
"Fool! Fool! " repeated he, while his eyes still
Relented not, nor mov'd; "from every ill
Of life have I preserv'd thee to this day,
And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey? "
Then Lamia breath'd death breath; the sophist's eye,
Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, 300
Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging: she, as well
As her weak hand could any meaning tell,
Motion'd him to be silent; vainly so,
He look'd and look'd again a level--No!
"A Serpent! " echoed he; no sooner said,
Than with a frightful scream she vanished:
And Lycius' arms were empty of delight,
As were his limbs of life, from that same night.
On the high couch he lay! --his friends came round--
Supported him--no pulse, or breath they found, 310
And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound. [45:A]


FOOTNOTES:

[45:A] "Philostratus, in his fourth book _de Vita Apollonii_, hath a
memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus
Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going betwixt
Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair
gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her
house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by
birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play,
and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him;
but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him, that was
fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid
and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love,
tarried with her a while to his great content, and at last married her,
to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some
probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that
all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no
substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept,
and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and
thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an
instant: many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the
midst of Greece.