The Ring

The ring is lost! The wedding ring is gone!

A folk song.

My mother planned a wedding feast for me And chose me for a wife a Nereid, A tender flower of beauty and of faith. My mother wished to wed me with thy charms, O Fairy Life, thou first of Nereids!

And hastily she goes to seek advice, Begging for gold from every sorceress And powerful witch, and gold from forty brides Whose wedding crowns are fresh upon their brows; And making with the gold a ring enchanted, She puts it on my finger and she binds With golden bond my youthful human flesh To the strange Fairy--how strange a wedding ring!--

I was the boy that always older grew With the transporting passion of a pair Bethrothed who, lured by longing, countenance Their wedding moment as an endless feast Upon a bridal bed of lily white.

The boy I was that always older grew Gold-bound with Life, the Fairy conqueress; The boy I was that always older grew With love and thirst unquenchable for Life; The boy I was that always older grew Destined to tread upon a path untrod Amidst the light, illumined. I was he Whose brow like an Olympian victor's shone And like the man's who tamed Bucephalus. I was the nimble dolphin with gold wings, Arion's watchful and quick deliverer.

But then, one day,--I know not whence and how-- Upon a shore of sunburned sands, the hour Of early evening saddened with dark clouds, I wrestled with a strange black boy new-come, Risen to life from the great sea's abyss; And in the savage spite of that long struggle, The ring fell from my finger and was gone!

Did the great earth engulf it? Did the wave Swallow it? I know not. But this I know: For ever since, the binding spell is rent! And Fairy Life, the first of Nereids, My own bethrothed, that was my slave and queen, Vanished away like a fleet cloud of smoke!

And ever since, from my first-blooming youth To the first flakes of silver that now fall On the black forest of my hair, since then, Some power dumb and dreadful holds me bound With a mere shadow fleeting and unknown That seems not to exist, yet ever longs And vainly strives to enter into being.

And now I am Life's widowed mate and hapless, Life's great and careless patient! Woe is me! And I am like the fair Alcithoe, Daughter of the ancient king, who changed her form And as a sign of the gods' vengeful wrath Is now instead of princess a night-bat!