Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=348109" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Chione</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair<br>Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,<br>Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,<br>Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.<br>A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed<br>The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,<br>And sank into the inner court, and crept<br>From column unto column thickly wreathed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,<br>When hearts beat fainter, and the hands of death<br>Are strengthened,--with lips white and drawn<br>And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,<br>The hapless mother, tender Chione,<br>Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,<br>After long bursts of weeping sharp and wild<br>Lay broken, silent in her agony.<br>At first in waking horror racked and bound<br>She lay, and then a gradual stupor grew<br>About her soul and wrapped her round and round<br>Like death, and then she sprang to life anew<br>Out of a darkness clammy as the tomb;<br>And, touched by memory or some spirit hand,<br>She seemed to keep a pathway down a land<br>Of monstrous shadow and Cimmerian gloom.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A waste of cloudy and perpetual night--<br>And yet there seemed a teeming presence there<br>Of life that gathered onward in thick flight,<br>Unseen, but multitudinous. Aware<br>Of something also on her path she was<br>That drew her heart forth with a tender cry.<br>She hurried with drooped ear and eager eye,<br>And called on the foul shapes to let her pass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For down the sloping darkness far ahead<br>She saw a little figure slight and small,<br>With yearning arms and shadowy curls outspread,<br>Running at frightened speed; and it would fall<br>And rise, sobbing; and through the ghostly sleet<br>The cry came: 'Mother! Mother!' and she wist<br>The tender eyes were blinded by the mist,<br>And the rough stones were bruising the small feet.<br>And when she lifted a keen cry and clave<br>Forthright the gathering horror of the place,<br>Mad with her love and pity, a dark wave<br>Of clapping shadows swept about her face,<br>And beat her back, and when she gained her breath,<br>Athwart an awful vale a grizzled steam<br>Was rising from a mute and murky stream,<br>As cold and cavernous as the eye of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And near the ripple stood the little shade,<br>And many hovering ghosts drew near him, some<br>That seemed to peer out of the mist and fade<br>With eyes of soft and shadowing pity, dumb;<br>But others closed him round with eager sighs<br>And sweet insistence, striving to caress<br>And comfort him; but grieving none the less,<br>He reached her heartstrings with his tender cries.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And silently across the horrid flow,<br>The shapeless bark and pallid chalklike arms<br>Of him that oared it, dumbly to and fro,<br>Went gliding, and the struggling ghosts in swarms<br>Leaped in and passed, but myriads more behind<br>Crowded the dismal beaches. One might hear<br>A tumult of entreaty thin and clear<br>Rise like the whistle of a winter wind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still the little figure stood beside<br>The hideous stream, and toward the whispering prow<br>Held forth his tender tremulous hands, and cried,<br>Now to the awful ferryman, and now<br>To her that battled with the shades in vain.<br>Sometimes impending over all her sight<br>The spongy dark and the phantasmal flight<br>Of things half-shapen passed and hid the plain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And sometimes in a gust a sort of wind<br>Drove by, and where its power was hurled,<br>She saw across the twilight, jarred and thinned,<br>Those gloomy meadows of the under world,<br>Where never sunlight was, nor grass, nor trees,<br>And the dim pathways from the Stygian shore,<br>Sombre and swart and barren, wandered o'er<br>By countless melancholy companies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And farther still upon the utmost rim<br>Of the drear waste, whereto the roadways led,<br>She saw in piling outline, huge and dim,<br>The walled and towered dwellings of the dead<br>And the grim house of Hades. Then she broke<br>Once more fierce-footed through the noisome press;<br>But ere she reached the goal of her distress,<br>Her pierced heart seemed to shatter, and she woke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It seemed as she had been entombed for years,<br>And came again to living with a start.<br>There was an awful echoing in her ears<br>And a great deadness pressing at her heart.<br>She shuddered and with terror seemed to freeze,<br>Lip-shrunken and wide-eyed a moment's space,<br>And then she touched the little lifeless face,<br>And kissed it, and rose up upon her knees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And round her still the silence seemed to teem<br>With the foul shadows of her dream beguiled--<br>No dream, she thought; it could not be a dream,<br>But her child called for her; her child, her child!--<br>She clasped her quivering fingers white and spare,<br>And knelt low down, and bending her fair head<br>Unto the lower gods who rule the dead,<br>Touched them with tender homage and this prayer:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O gloomy masters of the dark demesne,<br>Hades, and thou whom the dread deity<br>Bore once from earthly Enna for his queen,<br>Beloved of Demeter, pale Persephone,<br>Grant me one boon;<br>'Tis not for life I pray,<br>Not life, but quiet death; and that soon, soon!<br>Loose from my soul this heavy weight of clay,<br>This net of useless woe.<br>O mournful mother, sad Persephone,<br>Be mindful, let me go!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How shall he journey to the dismal beach,<br>Or win the ear of Charon, without one<br>To keep him and stand by him, sure of speech?<br>He is so little, and has just begun<br>To use his feet<br>And speak a few small words,<br>And all his daily usage has been sweet<br>As the soft nesting ways of tender birds.<br>How shall he fare at all<br>Across that grim inhospitable land,<br>If I too be not by to hold his hand,<br>And help him if he fall?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then before the gloomy judges set,<br>How shall he answer? Oh, I cannot bear<br>To see his tender cheeks with weeping wet,<br>Or hear the sobbing cry of his despair!<br>I could not rest,<br>Nor live with patient mind,<br>Though knowing what is fated must be best;<br>But surely thou art more than mortal kind,<br>And thou canst feel my woe,<br>All-pitying, all-observant, all-divine;<br>He is so little, mother Proserpine,<br>He needs me, let me go!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus far she prayed, and then she lost her way,<br>And left the half of all her heart unsaid,<br>And a great languor seized her, and she lay,<br>Soft fallen, by the little silent head.<br>Her numbed lips had passed beyond control,<br>Her mind could neither plan nor reason more,<br>She saw dark waters and an unknown shore,<br>And the grey shadows crept about her soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again through darkness on an evil land<br>She seemed to enter but without distress.<br>A little spirit led her by the hand,<br>And her wide heart was warm with tenderness.<br>Her lips, still moving, conscious of one care,<br>Murmured a moment in soft mother-tones,<br>And so fell silent. From their sombre thrones<br>Already the grim gods had heard her prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Archibald+Lampman">Archibald Lampman</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=348109" data-title="Chione de Archibald Lampman" data-description="Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,
Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,
Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.
A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed
The dripping walls and portal ..."></div>
</div>
</div>