I part with all the Past, forgive, deny,
Refuse to see it. All my soul is yours;
I never loved a moment in this world,
But what was love was wholly meant for you.
Yea, even before I saw you as you are,
Or knew your name, the vaguest breaths of love
Were but sent forward to me from the days
When you should come, preparing me for you.
I know in truth there never was a time
Wherein I saw no part of you--nor sign
To love you by; for all my sun, my light,
My flowers, my world would be the saddest blank,
The day you were not; you have these in you,
And are yourself in them; and, on the day
You go, you take them all away with you;
And so ’twas you I saw when I saw them
And said:--“_That Lady mine_ shall have a head
Like yonder drooping lily on whose white
The summer’s breath may never set a stain;
And She shall have a heaven for her hair
As deep, and dark, and splendid, as the one
I dream beneath; and She shall have such eyes
As ever seem to me those still blue lakes
I come on in the twilight of the woods
And find wide open under the thick fringe
Of violets--that fascinate me so
With gazing on me; yes, and, for her smile,
She shall but use that magic of the sun
That so transfigures all the day with light,
And gives my heart already such a thrill
As if She smiled at me:”--my Love, ’twas you
I saw then, dreamed of, waited for; ’twas you;
My heart attests it, looking on you now.--
So this of mine is such a perfect love
You see, it could not change nor turn away;--
It is the only love God made for you,
As you He made for me and from the first
Revealed to me. Therefore it cannot be
That you are false to me,--that I no way
Can save and keep you mine--you whom He gave
To me for ever, to be brought as mine
Before Him at the last. My precious one,
You are all worthy of me--are my crown
Untarnished, perfect, for you have not sinned;
’Tis I have sinned,--not being strong at once
To save both pure in you. Did not your lips
Completely make you mine of your own will?
Did you not swear yourself to me at first,
Yea, in God’s name, before him? So that I--
Yes, I, have let you, all against your heart,
Be brought to do sad things you would have shunned;
Because I had the way, and used it not,
To keep you from them.--Ah, I curse myself!
--My own, my Love!--those gentle words of yours,
Those promises--repeat them; yes, once more:
You will be mine; you are mine; yes, my Love,
I do believe you now; I may, I can--
(For _that_ sings under the pillow; believe Me!--)
I bless and kiss you for them all.
She sleeps.
_The Steel is singing to me now; its voice_
_Creeps through and through;_--go on, she cannot hear--
_The things it sings are death and love; ay, love_
_That death keeps true;_--She sleeps, she cannot hear.
There is no sort of madness in my brain;
But rather a great strength, a calm, as though
A more than human spirit dwelt with mine.
And yet I do perceive that, since last night,
My eyes have been bewildered with the glare
Of mighty blades and swords that seem to whirl
And strike around me, and transform the world
With an exceeding splendour cold and bare;
A thousand films are as it were cut through;
And all the beauty, supernatural
And real of things seems only to endure.
The Steel is an immense magician: yes--
Love, Beauty, Life--a touch can change them all
And make them wholly fit for me and great.
See now where _it_ is gleaming through her hair!
’Tis like a fair barbaric ornament
Ablaze with glancing points of diamonds
Stuck in and out between the writhing black.
Or, rather, ’tis as fearful and as bright
As some fierce snake of azure lightning curled
Sinister under the dark mass of night,
That ever, with his sudden forkéd flash
Piercing some crevice, doth illumine it.
I could be gazing on this sight for hours.
O, Woman!--you are greatest in the world:
You have all fairest things; all joy is yours
To give and take away; you have all love;
Your beauty is to man’s heart as the sun
That doles out day and night to the whole earth;
You have strange gifts of passion and sweet words:
In truth you are right splendid,--and well fit,
I think, to be the leman of a god;
But all too fair, and yet not good enough,
To be the spouse and helpmate of one man.
--For this: there is a serpent in you hid;
It dwells in the invisible of thought,
Or crouches in some corner of your heart,
Or is engendered in the ardent flame
Of your quick passions,--where, it matters not;
But never doth it cease so to distil
Its wily poison into all you are
Or do or feel, it makes you turn and stab
Where most you thought to love,--it sets your lips
In league with falsehood to betray your heart,
Puts plotting in your heart against your lips.
You cannot will your heart to any man
But you must seek, for very wantonness--
As tempts the snake within you--just the straight
Betrayal of that man--his love, his faith,
As though you had not willed yourself at first:
And if you did not this somehow, your life
Would seem to you a nipped and withered thing,
Your beauty good for nought. You are made so.
--Therefore, my Love, I will not let you wake.
Nay--though you are so pure now and have sworn--
Lest you betray me as you did last time,
And times before that, having sworn as now.
But you are mine--my beautiful, my own!
And your lips said it while your heart beat here
Against mine--thrilling with a thought of me;
Your looks were almost piteous with a prayer
That I--that God would save you. Shall your mouth,
The chaste, the holy one that I have kissed
Be desecrate once more? Shall your own arms
Embrace and hug the very shame of you?
Shall this, your heart that made you mine, be false
--Go once more seeking out adulteries?
Not so: I strike the holy steel in it.
--It was the only way to keep her mine.
[Illustration]
(1867.)
O woman whose familiar face I hold
In my most sacred thought as in a shrine,
Who in my memories art become divine--
Dost thou remember now those years of old
When out of all thine own life thou didst mould
This life and breathe thy heart in this of mine,
Winning, for faith in that fair work of thine,
To rest and be in heaven?--Alas, behold!--
Another woman coming after thee
Hath had small pity,--with a wanton kiss
Hath quite consumed my heart and ruined this
The life that was thy work: O, Mother, see;
Thou hast lived all in vain, done all amiss;
Come down from heaven again, and die with me!
DEATH.
I close my eyes and see the inward things:
The strange averted spectre of my soul
Is sitting undivulged, angelic, whole,
Beside the dim internal flood that brings
Mysterious thought or dreams or murmurings,
From the immense Unknown: beneath him roll
The urging formless waves beyond control
And darkened by the vague foreshadowings
As heretofore; yea, for He hath not stirred.
Too weak was that my life, too poor each word
To lure my soul from all it waiteth for:
--I am with God who holds His purpose still
And maketh and remaketh evermore;
I am with God and waiting for His will.
THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.
If you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length,--to the Fountain of Tears.
Very peaceful the place is, and solely
For piteous lamenting and sighing,
And those who come living or dying
Alike from their hopes and their fears;
Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,
And statues that cover their faces:
But out of the gloom springs the holy
And beautiful Fountain of Tears.
And it flows and it flows with a motion
So gentle and lovely and listless,
And murmurs a tune so resistless
To him who hath suffered and hears--
You shall surely--without a word spoken,
Kneel down there and know your heart broken,
And yield to the long curb’d emotion
That day by the Fountain of Tears.
For it grows and it grows, as though leaping
Up higher the more one is thinking;
And ever its tunes go on sinking
More poignantly into the ears:
Yea, so blesséd and good seems that fountain,
Reached after dry desert and mountain,
You shall fall down at length in your weeping
And bathe your sad face in the tears.
Then, alas! while you lie there a season,
And sob between living and dying,
And give up the land you were trying
To find mid your hopes and your fears;
--O the world shall come up and pass o’er you;
Strong men shall not stay to care for you,
Nor wonder indeed for what reason
Your way should seem harder than theirs.
But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses.
And look how the cold world appears,--
O perhaps the mere silences round you--
All things in that place grief hath found you,
Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting,
May soothe you somewhat through your tears.
You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes
Your face, as though some one had kissed you;
Or think at least some one who missed you
Hath sent you a thought,--if that cheers;
Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken,
May pass for a tender word spoken:
--Enough, while around you there rushes
That life-drowning torrent of tears.
And the tears shall flow faster and faster,
Brim over, and baffle resistance,
And roll down bleared roads to each distance
Of past desolation and years;
Till they cover the place of each sorrow,
And leave you no Past and no morrow:
For what man is able to master
And stem the great Fountain of Tears?
But the floods of the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
--O into what bosom, I wonder,
Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God then, the Maker and Father--
May He find a place for the tears!
LOVE AFTER DEATH.
There is an earthly glimmer in the Tomb:
And, healed in their own tears and with long sleep,
My eyes unclose and feel no need to weep;
But, in the corner of the narrow room,
Behold Love’s spirit standeth, with the bloom
That things made deathless by Death’s self may keep.
O what a change! for now his looks are deep,
And a long patient smile he can assume:
While Memory, in some soft low monotone,
Is pouring like an oil into mine ear
The tale of a most short and hollow bliss,
That I once throbbed indeed to call my own,
Holding it hardly between joy and fear,--
And how that broke, and how it came to this.
SOWN SEED.
I wandered dreaming through a mead;
And it was sowing-season there;
As one who sows and takes no heed
I cast my dreams upon the air:
And each dream was a golden seed
That in my life some flower should bear.
--O sowing-season bright and gay,
To have you back I am most fain!
O sowing season find some way
To bring me here each golden grain
I cast upon the air that day,
That I may sow them all again.
For some, that fairest should have been,
About the world they have been tost
And borne no flowers that I have seen;
And some have taken wing and crost
The sea, or through the blue serene
Gone up to heaven and been lost.
O, sowing season, come once more,
Bring back each golden seed to me!
For one, indeed, grew up and bore
No flower of gladness, good to see--
A thing to look upon right sore
--A grief that in my life should be.
One other truly did beget
Some blossom of the June that fell
In May; and one, a violet
Whose death upon my heart doth dwell;
The last seed hath not blossomed yet:
Come back and bring this one as well.
--What! the whole sudden summer? Yea;
The last one hath come up a rose!
O sowing season, you may stay;
It is in my Love’s heart it grows;
And she hath shown it me to-day:
I keep this one and give up those.
A DISCORD.
It came to pass upon a summer’s day,
When from the flowers indeed my soul had caught
Fresh bloom, and turned their richness into thought,
That--having made my footsteps free to stray--
They brought me wandering by some sudden way
Back to the bloomless city, and athwart
The doleful streets and many a closed-up court
That prisoned here and there a spent noon-ray.
O how most bitterly upon me broke
The sight of all the summerless lost folk!--
For verily their music and their gladness
Could only seem to me like so much sadness,
Beside the inward rhapsody of art
And flowers and _Chopin_-echoes at my heart.
GALANTERIE.
O angel, that in some unmeasured region
Keepest the store of beauteous things unsaid!
Once more do thou take even from their legion
Verse of the sweetest, verse no man hath read;
And go with that--saying thou art from me--
Unto my Love wherever she may be;
And speak therewith all tender things and fair
Touching the beauty of her eyes and hair,
Her hands, her feet--all of Her thou may’st see,
E’en to the jewels she shall chance to wear.
As to her eyes, I think thou shalt have reason
Setting the azure of them far above
God’s blue of heaven; yea, who shall know thy treason
But I who teach it thee and She my love?
And therefore, fear thou nowise to express,
Touching her hair, how much its every tress
Doth shine above all gold that the sun yields
And the fair colour of the harvest fields:
But scarce shalt thou be slow to praise, I guess,
Soon as thou know’st what spell her beauty wields.
And, if so be she cease that she is doing,
And give thee welcome for thy verses’ sake,
Do thou with some most tender sort of wooing
Engage her hand, and cause it to forsake
Its silken task or pastime on the lute;
For of its beauty thou shouldst not be mute,
But celebrate it soon in such a strain
Thenceforward it shall be no longer fain
To do its lightest toil: so for thy suit
My Lady’s whole attendance thou shalt gain.
Then, howsoe’er thou dost behold that wonder,
The rare imperial foot of Her my queen;
--Yea, if thou may’st but glimpse it nestled under
The broidered border of her robe, or e’en
If haply, some unguarded hour of rest,
Thou hast such bliss as I have never possest,
To see that spotless Lady all reclined
And through dim tumbled veils with thine eye find
Her spirit-slender foot,--then do thy best,
And be thou neither faint of heart nor blind!
But so with every spell of piteous pleading,
And the full magic that was wont of old
To fill my verse and charm all men to heeding,
Frame thou thy praise of that thou dost behold--
That her most matchless foot shall even start
Out of its languishment and take my part,
To bring my Love not otherwhere than here,
To me, and to the place where she is dear:
Go now and do this, if thou still hast art;
And I shall wait the while in love and fear.
THE GLORIOUS LADY.
“La gloriosa donna della mia mente.”
DANTE.
I.
I see You in the time that’s fled,
Long dead;
I see you in the years to be
After me;
And for all solace I am given,
Night or day,
To dream or think of you in heaven
Far away.
I have the colour of your hair
Everywhere;
I have your beauty all by heart,
Cannot part
From aught of you--I love you so--
Though I try,
I know I shall not find you though
Till I die.
When I have darkened all the day,
Put away
The world and the world’s sights and sweets
--Mere deceits,
The blinding blaze of the false lights
That arise
Between my spirit and the heights
And the skies--
When I have turned from the pale face,
Sickly grace,
Faint hair and hue of heart, thin smiles
That cover wiles
Of looks that fail and lips that chill,
--All the drear
And pallid cheats of love that kill
The heart here--
Then do I dream--oh far away--
Another day;
Another light where truer hues,
Reds and blues,
Live as in living eyes and cheeks;
Where love lives,
And all my spirit loves and seeks
Love gives.
Nay, your true heart is not this pale
Thing to fail
Short of such promised love as dies
In such eyes:
I build up all the world anew,--
Nay, above,
I make another world--where You
Build up Love;
Behold your eyes are in the stead
Of these dead,--
Pure seas of looks, with many a shore
Of worlds more;
Behold, instead of these poor moulds,
These mere casts
In some first clay--no stuff that holds
Love that lasts--
Why! life--_that_ love; and then its fresh
Robe of flesh,
With--O what chords of sense that thrill
With love’s will,
Unchecked by death or weariness,
Those dull foes
Of every feeling, more or less,
The world knows!
In place of all the glassy cheats--
Your true sweets,
--Of all the lives with which Death plays,
All the days
Left dim and void when Hope’s own sun
Dare not shine--
In place of all and every one,
You divine!
I know the splendour that you were--
--You shall be;
I see that nothing is so fair
As you there;
I know that you--the thing I crave--
Men shall see
Again, when I am in the grave,
--After me.
O, whose shall be the barren years?
Whose the tears?
God, who of all this world of ours
Gathers flowers
--Taketh and maketh heaven, and faileth
Not at all,
Maketh a heaven that prevaileth
Out of all--
Shall God have care for this and this
--Flowers that miss
The love that gathers and that saves?
For these graves,
Shall love to be, or love that’s past,
Safe above,
Be less than perfected at last,
Less than Love?
O, who shall have the barren years?
Who the tears?
You, World that gave me a false kiss,
Shall have this:
But I--I know that Love hath been,
And shall be
Again, when I am no more seen,
--After me.
II.
I see You with the face they paint
For some saint
Born and saved in some sublime
Olden time,
Crowned with the gorgeous golden-waved
Aureole;
Just such a saint as should have saved
My own soul.
Yes; for you have the human grace
In your face
Painted upon the panel there,
And what hair!
‘Fra’--who was he? I forget--
Who could paint
Such a woman wholly, and yet
Such a saint?
From the dim cathedral height
Falls the light;
I could think it for a while
Christ’s smile
From the great window-scene above
Strangely shed
Toward you, resting like Christ’s love
On your head.
O the splendid purple niche
Deep and rich,
Stained of the colour of your soul
Strong and whole,
Full of the prevalence of prayers
And piteous plaint
You made for men and sins all theirs
--You a saint!
The niche a little narrow: well,
As the cell
Your world, your body--all things seen--
Must have been
About the soul that day by day
Groped and felt
To God’s own house and found the way
As you knelt:
In an attitude of prayer
O how fair!
All the body crouched, constrained
As if pained
With the spirit’s inward groan
To entreat
For a sin you could not own,
O how sweet!
Hands God making must have praised;
Clasped and raised
Holy mediæval way
Used to pray;
Sky all wrapped about your head
Blue and sweet,
Earth all golden from the tread
Of your feet.
God, who of all this world of ours
Gathers flowers,
Gathered you in the old sublime
Flower time:
If God had left some flowers like you--
Who can tell?--
He might have had yet one or two
Flowers that fell.
O then there were great sins of course;
Men were worse
Some ways no doubt; at any rate
Men were great:
We cannot bear their mail, much less
Lose or win
Their heavens, through their great holiness
Or great sin.
There were high things for men to see,
Do, or be;
Fair struggles after every throne:
And to atone
Fair crowns and kingdoms for the best;
All men strove,
And, loss or gain, for each man’s rest
There was love.
And men and women bore their part
Heart to heart,
For oh! the women and the men
Loved then;
And love from love you could not break,
Half to save;
If one sinned, for the other’s sake
God forgave.
Would thou wert yet, thou great and old
Time of gold!
Wert thou with me, or could I flee
Back to thee,
God might have had one other flower
Nigh to fall,
And I known love at least one hour
--Once for all.
O who shall have the barren years?
Who the tears?
One with false bosom and cold kiss
May have this:
But somewhere, unless love forget
His old way,
There shall be something better yet
--Ay, some day.
LOST BLISSES.
Think, O Heart, what sweet--had you waited
A moment, on such a day--
Had yet been to do or to say
That shall never be said now or done!
Think what beautiful worlds uncreated
The clouds then bore back to the sun;
What blisses were all frustrated;
What loves, that were almost begun!
Think, O Life,--had your stream but drifted
To this or that holier Past,
Or Future that must come at last--
Think, O sorrowful Life, and repent--
How the sorrowful days had been gifted
With solace and ravishment,
And year after year slowly lifted
To heavens of golden content!
THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST.
On the great day of my life--
On the memorable day--
Just as the long inward strife
Of the echoes died away,
Just as on my couch I lay
Thinking thought away;
Came a Man into my room,
Bringing with him gloom.
Midnight stood upon the clock,
And the street sound ceased to rise;
Suddenly, and with no knock,
Came that Man before my eyes:
Yet he seemed not anywise
My heart to surprise,
And he sat down to abide
At my fireside.
But he stirred within my heart
Memories of the ancient days;
And strange visions seemed to start
Vividly before my gaze,
Yea, from the most distant haze
Of forgotten ways:
And he looked on me the while
With a most strange smile.
But my heart seemed well to know
That his face the semblance had
Of my own face long ago
Ere the years had made it sad,
When my youthful looks were clad
In a smile half glad;
To my heart he seemed in truth
All my vanished youth.
Then he named me by a name
Long since unfamiliar grown,
But remembered for the same
That my childhood’s ears had known;
And his voice was like my own
In a sadder tone
Coming from the happy years
Choked, alas, with tears.
And, as though he nothing knew
Of that day’s fair triumphing,
Or the Present were not true,
Or not worth remembering,
All the Past he seemed to bring
As a piteous thing
Back upon my heart again,
Yea, with a great pain:
“Do you still remember the winding street
In the grey old village?” He seemed to say;
“And the long school days that the sun made sweet
And the thought of the flowers from far away?
And the faces of friends whom you used to meet
In that village day by day,
--Ay, the face of this one or of that?” he said,
And the names he named were names of the dead
Who all in the churchyard lay.
“Do you still remember your brother’s face,
And his soft light hair, and his eyes’ deep blue,
And the child’s pet name that in every place
Was once so familiar to him and to you?
And the innocent sports and the butterfly chase
That lasted the bright day through?”
--O this time, I thought of the churchyard and sighed,
For I thought of the dead lying side by side,
And my brother who lay there too.
“And do you remember the far green hills;
Or the long straight path by the side of the stream;
Or the road that led to the farm and the mills,
And the fields where you oft used to wander or dream
Or follow each change of your childish wills
Like the dance of some gay sunbeam?”--
Then, alas, from right weeping I could not refrain,
For indeed all those things I remembered again,--
As of yesterday they did seem.
And I thought of a day in a far lost Spring,
When the sun with a kiss set the wild flowers free;
When my heart felt the kiss and the shadowy wing
Of some beautiful spirit of things to be,
Who breathed in the song that the wild birds sing
Some deep tender meaning for me,--
Who undid a strange spell in the world as it were,
Who set wide sweet whispers abroad in the air,--
Made a presence I could not see.
O that whisper my heart seemed to understand!
O that spell it took hold on right willing feet!
To that beautiful spirit I gave my hand,
And he led me that day up the village street,
And out through the fields and the fragrant land,
And on through the pathways sweet;
Yea, still on, with a semblance of some new bliss,
Through the world he has led me from that day to this
With a tender and fair deceit.
“O for what have you wandered so far--so long?”
Said the voice that was e’en as my voice of old:
“O for what have you done to the Past such wrong?
Was there no fair dream on your own threshold?
In your childhood’s home was there no fresh song?
--Was your heart then all so cold?
Why, at length, are you weary and lone and sad,
But for casting away all the good that you had
With the peace that was yours of old?
“Have you wholly forgotten the words you said,
When you stood by a certain mound of earth,
When you vowed with your heart that that place you made
The last burial place for your love and your mirth,
For the pure past blisses you therein laid
Were surely your whole life’s worth?--
O, the angels who deck the lone graves with their tears
Have cared for this, morning and evening, for years,
But of yours there has been long dearth:
“In the pure pale sheen of a hallowed night,
When the graves are looking their holiest,
You may see it more glistering and more bright
And holier-looking than all the rest;
You may see that the dews and the stars’ strange light
Are loving that grave the best;
But, perhaps, if you went in the clear noon-day,
After so many years you might scarce find the way
Ere you tired indeed of the quest:
“For the path that leads to it is almost lost;
And quite tall grass-flowers of sickly blue
Have grown up there and gathered for years, and tost
Bitter germs all around them to grow up too;
For indeed all these years not a man has crost
That pathway--not even You!”--
But alas! for these words to my heart he sent,
For I knew it was Marguérite’s grave that he meant,
And I felt that the words were true.