Fatima

First printed in 1833.

The 1833 edition has no title but this quotation from Sappho prefixed:--

_'Phainetai moi kaenos isos theoisin Emmen anaer'_--SAPPHO.

The title was prefixed in 1842; it is a name taken from 'The Arabian Nights' or from the Moall�kat. The poem was evidently inspired by Sappho's great ode. 'Cf.' also Fragment I. of Ibycus. In the intensity of the passion it stands alone among Tennyson's poems.

  O Love, Love, Love! O withering might!
  O sun, that from [1] thy noonday height
  Shudderest when I strain my sight,
  Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,
  Lo, falling from my constant mind,
  Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind,
  I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.
  Last night I wasted hateful hours
  Below the city's eastern towers:
  I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:
  I roll'd among the tender flowers:
  I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth:
  I look'd athwart the burning drouth
  Of that long desert to the south. [2]

  Last night, when some one spoke his name, [3]
  From my swift blood that went and came
  A thousand little shafts of flame.
  Were shiver'd in my narrow frame
  O Love, O fire! once he drew
  With one long kiss, my whole soul thro'
  My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew. [4]
  Before he mounts the hill, I know
  He cometh quickly: from below
  Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow
  Before him, striking on my brow.
  In my dry brain my spirit soon,
  Down-deepening from swoon to swoon,
  Faints like a dazzled morning moon.
  The wind sounds like a silver wire,
  And from beyond the noon a fire
  Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher
  The skies stoop down in their desire;
  And, isled in sudden seas of light,
  My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight,
  Bursts into blossom in his sight.
  My whole soul waiting silently,
  All naked in a sultry sky,
  Droops blinded with his shining eye:
  I 'will' possess him or will die.
  I will grow round him in his place,
  Grow, live, die looking on his face,
  Die, dying clasp'd in his embrace.

[Footnote 1: 1833. At.]

[Footnote 2: This stanza was added in 1842.]

[Footnote 3: 'Cf.' Byron, 'Occasional Pieces':--

They name thee before me A knell to mine ear, A shudder comes o'er me,
Why wert thou so dear?]

[Footnote 4: 'Cf,' Achilles Tatius, 'Clitophon and Leucippe', bk. i., I:

[Greek: '�de (psyche) tarachtheisa tps philaemati palletai, ei de mae tois splagchnois in dedemenae aekolouthaesen an elkaetheisa ano tois philaemasin.']

(Her soul, distracted by the kiss, throbs, and had it not been close bound by the flesh would have followed, drawn upward by the kisses.)]