brideoffrankenstein | John Addington Symonds

Hiaaa, long time no see, I'm a mess, etc etc

But today I am sharing with you a poem, because I have it in hard copy but can't see it online in an easily accessible format! Which is a shame, because it's ludicrously gay. John says "it's just...a study,,,,of men in venice who wear blue...." but I, knowing he's slept with at least one of such men in blue (he wrote a different poem about it), am not convinced by his "seriously i'm not gay" prevarications

This is pulled from A.J.A Symons' "An Anthology of 'Nineties' Verse", which is an absolutely lovely book I'm very, very lucky to own.

In the Key of Blue

A symphony of black and blue-
Venice asleep, vast night, and you,
The skies were blurred with vapours dank:
The long canal stretched inky-blank,
With lights on heaving water shed
From lamps that trembled overhead.
Pitch-dark! You were the one thing blue;
Four tints of pure celestial hue:
The larkspur blouse by tones degraded
Through silken sash of sapphire faded,
The faintly floating violet tie,
The hose of lapis lazuli.
How blue you were amid that black,
Lihting the wave, the ebon wrack!
The ivory pallor of your face
Gleamed from those glowing azures back
Against the golden gaslight; grapes
Of dusky curls your brows embrace,
And round you all the vast night gapes

A symphony of blues and white-
You, the acacias, dewy-bright,
Transparent skies of chrysolite.
We wind along these leafy hills;
One chord of blue the landscape thrills,
Your three blent azures merged in those
Cerulean heavens above the blouse.
The highest tones flash forth in white:
Acacia branches bowed with snow
Of scented blossom; broken light;
The ivory of your brows, the glow
Of those large orbs that are your eyes:*
Those starry orbs of lustrous jet
In clear enamelled turquoise set,
Pale as the marge of morning skies

A symphony of blues and brown-
We were together in the town:
A grimy tavern with blurred walls,
Where dingy lamplight floats and falls
On working men and women, clad
In sober watchet, umber sad.
Two viols and one 'cello scream
Waltz music through the smoke and steam:
You rise, you clasp a comrade, who
Is clothed in triple blues like you:
Sunk in some dream voluptuously
Circle those azures richly blent,
Swim through the dusk, the melody:
Languidly breathing, you and he,
Uplifing the environment;
Ivory face and swart face laid
Cheek unto cheek, like man, like maid.

A symphony of pink and blue,
The lamp, the little maid, and you.
Your strong man's stature in those three
Blent azures clothed, so loved by me;
Your grave face framed in felt thrown back;
Your sad sweet lips, eyes glossy black,
Now laughing, while your wan cheeks flush
Like warm white roses with a blush.
Clasped to your breast, held by your hands,
Smothered in blues, the baby stands:
Her frock like some carnation gleams;
Her hair, a golden torrent, streams:
Blue as forget-me-not, her eyes,
Or azure-winged butterflies:
Her cheeks and mouth so richly red,
One would not think her city-bred.
Your beautiful pale face of pain
Leaned to the child's cheeks breathing health;
Like feathers dropped from raven's wing.
The curls that round your forehead rain
Merged with her tresses' yeallowy wealth;
Her mouth that was a rose in spring
Touched yours, her pouting nether lip
Clasped your fine upper lip, whose brink
Wherefrom Love's self a bee might sip,
Is pencilled with faint Indian ink.
Such was the group I saw one night
Illuminated by a flaring light,
In that dim tavern where we meet
Sometimes to smoke, and drink and eat;
Exquisite contrast, not of tone,
Or tint, or form, or face alone.

A symphony of blues and gold,
Among ravines of grey stones rolled
Adown the steep from mountains old.
Laburnum branches drop their dew
Of amber bloom on me, on you:
With cytisus and paler broom,
Electron glimmering through the gloom.
Around us all the field flames up,
Goldenrod, hawkweed, buttercup;
While curling through lush grass one spies
Tendrils of honeyed helichryse.
'Tis saffron, topaz, solar rays,
Dissolved in fervent chrysoprase.
Cool, yet how luminous, the blue,
Centred in triple tones by you,
Uniting all that yellow glare
With the blue circumambient air,
The violet shades, the hard cobalt
Of noon's inexorable vault.

A symphony of blues and green,
Swart indigo and eau-marine.
Stripped to the waist two dyers kneel
On grey steps strewn with orange peel;
The glaucous water to the brink
Welters with clouds of purplish ink:
The men wring cloth that drips and takes
Verditer hues of water-snakes,
While pali paled by sun and seas
Repeat the tint in verdigris.
Those brows, nude breasts, and arms of might,
The pride of youth and manhod white,
Now smirched with woad, proclaim the doom
Of labour and its life-long gloom.
Only the eyes emergent shine,
These black as coals, those opaline;
Lighten from storms of tangled hair,
Black curls and blonde curls debonnair,
Proving man's untamed spirit there.

A symphony of blues and red-
The broad lagoon, and overhead
Sunset, a sanguine banner, spread.
Fretty of azure and pure gules
Are sea, sky, city, stagnant pools:
You, by my side, within the boat,
Imperially purple float,
Beneath a burning sail, straight on
Into the west's vermillion.
The triple azures melt and glow
Like flaunting iris-flowers arow;
One amethystine gem of three
Fused by the heavens effulgency.
Now fails the splendour, day dies down
Beyond the hills of Padua's town;
And all along the eastern sky
Blue reassumes ascendency.
Lapped in those tints of fluor-spar,
You shine intense, an azure star,
With roses flushed that slowly fade
Against the vast aerial shade.

At Castelfranco, with a blouse
Venetian, blent of triple blues,
I walked all through the sleepy town,
Worshipped Madonna gazing down
From that high throne Giorgione painted
Above that knight and friar sainted,
Drank in the landscape golden-green,
The dim primeval pastoral-scene.
The blouse beside me thrilled no less
Than I to that mute loveliness;
Spoke little, turned aside, and dwelt
Perchance on what he dumbly felt.
There throbbed a man's heart neath the shirt,
The sash, the hose, a life alert,
Veiled by that dominating hurt.
Then swept a storm-cloud from the hills;
Eddying dust the city fills,
The thunder crashes, and the rain
Hisses on roof and flooded plain.
Ere midnight, when the moon sailed low,
Peering through veils of indigo,
We went abroad, and heard the wail
Of many a darkling nightingale,
Pouring as only birds will pour
Their souls forth when heaven's strife is o'er.
Those red walls, and the mighty towers,
Which lustrous ivy over-flowers,
Loomed through the murk divinely warm,
As palpitating after storm.
Hushed was the night for friendly talk;
Under the dark arcades we walk,
Pace the wet pavement, where light steals
And swoons amid the huge abeles:
Then seek our chamber. All the blues
Dissolve, the symphony of hues
Fades out of sight, and leaves at length
A flawless form of simple strength
Sleep-seeking, breathing, ivory-white,
Upon the couch in candlelight

*John here prefiguring every fanfic everywhere