I have accorded you incessant praise_From the hidden way

And song and service, dear, because of this;

And always I have dreamed incessantly

Who always dreamed,--_When in oncoming days

This man or that shall love you, and at last

This man or that shall win you, it must be

That, loving him, you will have pity on me

When happiness engenders memory

And long thoughts nor unkindly of the past,

Yolande!_

Of this I know not surely,--who am sure

That I shall always love you while I live,

And that, when I am dead, with naught to give

Of song or service, Love will yet endure,

And yet retain his last prerogative,

When I lie still, and sleep out centuries

With dreams of you and the exceeding love

I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,

And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,

Yolande!

AN ARCADIAN APOLOGIZES

--After CHARLES GARNIER.

I pray you do not marvel, dear, that I,

Whenever with fond hardihood I try

To rhyme your praises, fail ingloriously.

And marvel not that I in happier wise

Have hymned Félise and lauded Sylvia’s eyes,

And now may offer you no melodies.

We poets are so made that when we be

Unscathed by love none woos so well as we,

But, wounded once, we worship silently.

ARCADIANS CONFER IN EXILE

--After CHARLES GARNIER.

So long ago it was! Nay, is it true

In verity we passed a month or so

In Arcady when life and love were new

So long ago?

The tide of time’s indomitable flow,

Augmenting, rears a drearier realm, whereto

We twain are exiled. Yet ... I do not know ...

Now that a woman calls, whose eyes are blue,

Whose speech is gracious--strangely sweet and low

She calls, and smiles as STELLA used to do

So long ago.

I am not fit to follow; yet I pray

Some mighty task be set me, to commit

In her dear name, for trifles to essay

I am not fit.

Nay, I, unstable and infirm of wit--

Even I!--return to my old love to-day,

Whose bounty is so fond and infinite

That I am heartened, and made strong, and may

Not ever falter in deserving it,

If but for dread lest of such grace men say

I am not fit.

III

Time has changed naught in us; for now the din

And darkness of tempestuous years, that wrought

So vainly, lift; and it is lightly seen

Time has changed naught.

Such knowledge of those brawling years I bought:

_The thing which shall be is that which has been,

When heaven again surprises us, unsought,

And life returns full circle; and we win

Again to realms which with how little thought

We ceded, and find loyalty wherein

Time has changed naught._

Sweetheart, I wait; now, as in time gone by,

Your suppliant, half-frightened, half-elate,

Outside the trellised doors of Arcady,

Sweetheart, I wait.

Again I glimpse its meadows--through a grate,

Alas!--and streams and groves and cloudless sky;

And cry to you to be compassionate,--

Yea, as of old to STELLA, now I cry

To you that once were STELLA; and my fate

Attends your piloting, for whose reply,

Sweetheart, I wait.

THE EAVESDROPPERS

--After ALPHONSE MOREAU.

The heart of the twilight is troubled; and there

Where the stubbled fields bathe in colorless air,

And show as the chin of a giant unshorn,

Dog-weary, and dreaming of days unborn,

The east is perturbed; and night kindles to morn.

Wide world, that wakes to each miracle

Each dawn engenders, thou wilt not tell,

If mother of me indeed thou art,

How gladly and furtively I depart

Master and lord of Phyllida’s heart.

Hah, Lady Moon, so we meet again!

I remember. Who silvered the window-pane,

Climbed over heaped faggots with noiseless tread,

Turned velvet the cobwebs that gleamed overhead,

Stealthily, hearkening to all we said?

Eavesdropper, keep my secret well!

Remember the tales that old poets tell

Of the Latmian hills, and a cave thereon

Whereinto passed when each day was done--

Eavesdropper!--not only Endymion.

Ye will not tell of it. Nor will he,

The owl that hoots now in yonder tree,

And flutters his wings, with a watchful eye

Bent through the boughs at a passer-by

Who laughs, in the dawn ... and he wonders why.

NOSTALGIA

--After ALPHONSE MOREAU.

Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)

Would be all high and true;

Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise

Simply because of you....

_With whom I have naught to do,

And who are no longer you!_

Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be

What we became,--I believe

Were there a way to be what it was play to be

I would not greatly grieve....

_Hearts are not worn on the sleeve.

Let us neither laugh nor grieve!_

BUT, OH, THE WORLD IS WIDE, DEAR LASS,

THAT I MUST WANDER THROUGH,

AND MANY A WIND AND TIDE, DEAR LASS,

MUST FLOW ’TWIXT ME AND YOU,

ERE LOVE THAT MAY NOT BE DENIED

SHALL BRING ME BACK TO YOU,

--DEAR LASS!

SHALL BRING ME BACK TO YOU.

APATURIA

“_Ainsi m’ont amours abusé_”

GRAY DAYS

--After NICOLAS DE CAEN.

I can find no meaning in life.

That have weighed the world,--and it was

Abundant with folly, and rife

With sorrows brittle as glass,

And with joys that flicker and pass

Like dreams through a fevered head;

And as the dripping of rain

In gardens naked and dead

Is the obdurate thin refrain

Of our youth which is presently dead.

And Chloris, whom last I loved,

Looks ever with loathing on me,

As one she hath seen disproved

And stained with such smirches as be

Not ever cleansed utterly;

And is loth to remember the days

When destiny fixed her name

As the theme and the goal of my praise;

And my love engenders shame,

And I stain what I strive for and praise.

Chloris, most perfect of all,

Just to have known you is well!

And it heartens me now to recall

That just to have known you is well.

And naught else is desirable

Save only to do as you willed

And to love you my whole life long;--

But this heart in me is filled

With hunger cruel and strong,

And with hunger unfulfilled.

Fond heart, though thy hunger be

As a flame that wanders unstilled,

There is none more perfect than she!

A WOOD-PIECE

Yes, you will soon forget. Leaf-shadowed ways

Are disenchanted now; the kindly haze

Of love-light lifts from too-long loitering;

A kiss is now at most two lips that cling;

And mirth is dead now; and desire decays.

Even now Love flutters restive wings, and stays

Impatient of restraint, what while I praise

Love’s old lost favor, past replevining,--

But you will soon forget.

Yes, you will soon forget: and naught betrays

That any heart save mine even now inveighs

In futile rage because nor youth nor spring

Can stay or solace light love’s vanishing.

I shall remember, dear, through all my days,

But you will soon forget.

LOVE GOES INTO WINTER QUARTERS

--After ANTOINE RICZI.

(THE SCENE a dale, somewhere in Arcady,

But filled with snow and sleet, made horrible

By many tramplings; there anon must be

A CRIER, robed in black and with a bell;

To whom a POET, peering curiously.)

“What are thou calling, small sombre Crier?--

Who seeks what fugitive? who is beguiled?

Is it a theft or a house to hire,

A sheriff’s sale or a stolen child?”

_For none of these do I play the crier.

And toll a reward where the winds are wild,

And I strive knee-deep in the sleet and the mire

In quest of a kingdom undefiled._

“Reward, quoth he!--and how darest thou prattle

Of guerdon-giving, that goest in black,

Sans cap and sandals, where bleak winds battle

Which first may strip the rags from thy back?”

_Of no compulsion save my own pleasure’s

I wear this black--for a mourning sign,--

Till Yesterday waken, and yield the treasures

And gold-wrought garments which once were mine._

“Faith, only a madman dreams to muster

The bygone hours, bid them live again ...

Though Crœsus wheedle or Charlemaigne bluster,

Time heeds not at all, and they strive in vain.”

_Nay, Time forgets them; for these--unlanded,

Unkinged, uncarnate, and cold,--lie hid

Where Time comes never, to be commanded;--

Time cannot hear through the coffin’s lid._

“So it matters naught with what pomp they wended,

What queens they wed, and what realms they won!

These things were goodly; these things are ended;

And naught sleeps sounder than joy fordone.”

_Cry Absit omen! the sermon is stupid--

Hey, even of sermons I grow afraid,

Who am no madman, but outlawed_ CUPID,

_With never a place to lay my head_.

_But Yesterday! for Yesterday!

I cry a reward for a Yesterday

Now lost or stolen or gone astray,

With all the laughter of Yesterday!_

(FOR WE HAVE MADE AN END OF AMOROUS PLAYING,

AND SHALLOW-HEARTED LOVE IS TURNED ASTRAY,

WITH CHILDISH SORROWING AND WEAK-VOICED PRAYING

FOR YESTERDAY.)

FLOTSAM

We did not share the same inheritance,--

I and this woman, five years older than I,

Yet daughter of a later century,--

Who is therefore only wearied by that dance

Which has set my blood a-leaping.

It is queer

To note how kind her face grows, listening

To my wild talk, and plainly pitying

My callow youth, and seeing in me a dear

Amusing boy,--yet somewhat old to be

Still reading _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_

And _Water Babies_....

With light talk we pass.

And I that have lived long in Arcady--

I that have kept so many a foolish tryst,

And written drivelling rhymes--feel stirring in me

Droll pity for this woman who pities me,

And whose weak mouth so many men have kissed.

HEIRS UNAPPARENT

How very heartily I hate

The man that will love you,

Some day, somewhere, and more than I,

And with a love more true;--

Whom for that reason you will love

As you may not love me,--

Though I might hold your heart, I think,

Held I one heart in fee.

My dear, too many ghosts arise

Between us when I woo,

One mocking me with softer lips,

And one with eyes more blue,

And one with hands more fine than yours,

And one with lovelier hair,

Proclaiming:--_She is fair enough,

But then ... I too was fair._

_What of thy heart thou gavest me_

(“And me!”--“And me!”)--_is thine

No more to give again. That part

Is mine._--(“And mine!”--“And mine!”)

_And he that plays with love too long

Gets love of many-an-one,

But is denied Love’s crowning grace,

And can give love to none._

Since these be truthful ghosts, I shrug

And woo you without tears

Or too much laughter, till with time

A properer Prince appears,

Whom very heartily I hate,--

The man that will love you,

Some day, somewhere, and more than I,

And with a love more true.

THE SUN’S HIGHWAY

--After ANTOINE RICZI.

Though long be the way to the Limit of Lands,

And through leagues and leagues of treacherous sands,

And miles of marsh and mire,

One must win, if at all, to the rim of the west

Ere one enter the kingdom the sun loves best,

Yet there is my heart’s desire.

And lately I learned of a pleasanter way

Which two of us travel on every day--

Oh, for all that a staid world deems

None cross high heaven, men have forgot

The sun in his flamy chariot

And me in my car of dreams!

Whereby we win to a land of ease

In whose stately glittering palaces

Wracked lives are lived anew,--

For the sun and I go on pilgrimage

To the lovelier land of a younger age,

Where what might have been is true.

I may not know on what lordly quest

The sun fares sturdily into the west,

But I know that he goes with joy,

And espies, perhaps, past the mountained rim

Repentant Daphnê awaiting him,

Or Creusa no longer coy.

There, too, she waits whom alone I love;

And a chill light heart that I could not move

And bright eyes which would not see

My heart’s hard hunger, no more the same,

Enkindle and nourish love’s lovely flame,

And its beacon burns for me.

Well! I must win to her; I must kneel--

Kneel at her naked feet,--and feel

Soft hands that caress my hair

Silently--oh, in such tender wise

That I shall not hasten to raise tired eyes

To a face however fair.

Fair face unstained by the grave’s eclipse!

Fair face that lifts now to no man’s lips

And troubles no man’s sleep!

The woman that wore you has children now ...

But that is nothing; I keep my vow,

And I have a tryst to keep.

And so in a world whose tumults seem

Intriguing shadows I tread, and dream

Of a maiden who dreams of me:

For the tryst is set; be it late, be it soon,

Or east of the sun or west of the moon,

I shall win to you, Dorothy.

THE OLDEST DITTY

--After NICOLAS DE CAEN.

And so farewell;--for now assuredly

Did the long pulse of the profoundest sea,

So deep it knows not light nor any heat,

Vex now some seaweed thick about my feet

Which there had nodded through a century,

All faith in you were not more dead in me,--

And so farewell!

And so, _Farewell!_ I cry,--that may not see

Love quicken in the eyes of Dorothy

Ever again, nor evermore repeat

Mad rhymes to her, nor ever bend to meet

Her lips this side of all eternity;--

_Love hath nowhere enfixed pre-potency,

And so farewell!_

TO THE SAME AIR AS THE PRECEDING

_And so farewell_ (as my rondeau wails

In obsolete accents and absolute truth),

For all is over, and nothing avails

To capture the rapture of last year’s youth.

All is quite over. Touch hands. Good-bye.

For you the future is nowise dim;

For me there are other women, and I

Must forget you now, since that is your whim.

And we will laugh in the after-times

At two young people we knew, no doubt,

Who scribbled each other such woeful rhymes

And played a comical tragedy out.

We shall not die of it. We shall be

Contented and healed of the passing smart;

And yet if you had not tired of me,

Life while life lasted were yours, sweetheart.

ARMATA

“_Ainsi le bon temps regretons_”

LIGHT COINAGE

--“MERCURIENS”: PAUL VERVILLE.

“_C’est une comédie, qui termine aujourd’huy_”

That comedy we end, content to please

Its players merely, was a comedy

Wherein Love had no part. It may not be

Enrolled among Love’s mighty memories,

And men unborn will read of Héloïse,

And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semelê,

When none remembers your name’s melody

Or rhymes your name enregistered with these.

And will my name wake moods as amorous

As that of Abélard or Lancelot

Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus

And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?--

Time’s laughter answers, who accords to us

More gracious fields, wherein we harvest--what?

XXIII

“_Voicy! un autre chante!--Il n’est pas interdit_”

_A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings

Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies

Entinge and taint too deep his melodies;

See that his lute has no discordant strings

To harrow us; and let his vaporings

Be all of virtue and its victories,

And of man’s best and noblest qualities,

And scenery, and flowers, and similar things._

Thus bid our paymasters, whose mutterings

Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes

At random; and, as ever, on frail wings

Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes

Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs

From hell’s midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes.

GRAVE GALLANTRY

--After CHARLES GARNIER.

My rival Death is fashioned amorously;--

No caliph boasts more comely wives than he,

For whom crowned Cleopatra reft the snare

Of careful-eyed Octavius, and--less fair

Than she, but lovely still--Leucothoë,

And Atalanta, and Antigonê,

Loosed virgin zones.... What need hadst thou to be

Desirous then of this girl’s lips and hair,

My rival Death?

What need hadst thou likewise of Dorothy!

What need of that which was all life to me!

What need, lascivious Death, that she forswear

Fond oaths to me--fond oaths made otherwhere--

In thy lank arms, and leave me friends with thee,

My rival, Death!

Had she divined how many virelais

Have feebly parodied some piercing phase

Of love for her whom love lacked might to claim--

How many rhymes have marshalled frail and lame,

Yet fervent-hearted, to avouch her praise,--

Such pity had been mine as well repays

Drear years of waiting. Ey, in kindlier days

Compassion might have worn some kinglier name

Had she divined.

Now that may never be; divergent ways

Allured; and all is ended; and naught betrays

Dead cheeks to kindle, now, with livelier flame

For aught I utter.... Yet it were no shame

To dream a little on her softening gaze

Had she divined.

III

That she is dead breeds no uncouth despair,

However,--as death bred when men would bear

A glove upon their helms, and slay or sing

In honor of its giver, hazarding

Life and life’s aims because a girl was fair ...

Grotesque their liege-lord seems when we compare

That Cupidling who spurs me to declare

Sedate regret, in rhythmic sorrowing

That she is dead.

Nay, he is much the punier of the pair,--

My little lord, who dreads lest critics stare

Too pointedly,--a flimsy fainéant king;--

Yet hearts may crack without crude posturing.

This girl is dead; and I confess I care

That she is dead.

BY-WORDS

--After ALPHONSE MOREAU.

Not even now in all things may there be

An end of folly; nor, as mutineers

Against love’s lunacy, that now appears

Of no more weight or worth or urgency

Than last night’s dreams,--not wholly yet may we

Become in all things like all our compeers,

That are armored by interminable years

And keep no vestige of insanity.

_What yet remains, now we drift far apart,

With seas between, and each of us forgets

The happenings of all our happy days?_--

Your by-words, heard on other lips, to raise

Love’s pitiable phantom in my heart,

And waken mirthful memories and regrets.

ANOTHER LABORER WEIGHS HIS HIRE

“_Amors, tant vos ai servit_”

--RAIMBAUT DE VAQUEIRAS.

Lord, I have worshipped thee ever,--

Through all these years

I have served thee, forsaking never

Light Love that veers

As a child between laughter and tears.

Hast thou no more to afford,--

Naught save laughter and tears,--

Love, my lord?

I have borne thy heaviest burden,

Nor served thee amiss:

When thou hast given a guerdon,

Lo, it was this--

A sigh, a shudder, a kiss.

Hast thou no more to accord?

I would have more than this,

Love, my lord.

I am wearied of love that is pastime

And gifts that it brings;

I entreat of thee, lord, at this last time

Ineffable things.

Nay, have proud long-dead kings

Stricken no subtler chord,

Whereof the memory clings,

Love, my lord?

But for a little we live;

Show me thine innermost hoard!

Hast thou no more to give,

Love, my lord?

RETRACTIONS

--After THÉODORE PASSERAT.

YOU ASK A SONNET?--WELL, IT IS YOUR RIGHT.

I GRANT IT, LAUGH, SHRUG, SET ABOUT THE TASK,

AND MAKE A SEQUENCE, SINCE IT IS MY RIGHT

NO MORE TO GIVE YOU ONLY WHAT YOU ASK.

Although as yet my cure be incomplete,

Yet love of you, time-lulled and vigorless,

Engenders now no more unhappiness,

Not even discontent. And now we meet

Unmoved--half-waggish,--and my pulses beat

Quite calmly as I wonder now, _Is he

As proud as I was? and--as once to me--

To him is her love lovely and very sweet?_

Nor do I grudge him any joy of his

Who follows on a road that I have trod,

And sues for love where I was wont to sue;

I am contented by remembrances,

And know that neither fate nor time, nor God,

Robs me of that first mastery of you.

I am contented by remembrances,--

Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times,

Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes,--

Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas

Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies

Which, launched for traffic in the Isles of Love,

Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof,

Encradled by eternal silences.

Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy,

Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do

When common ventures fail; for it may be

These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true

To some fair woman’s hearing, so that she

Will listen and think of love, and I of you.

III

You have chosen the love “that lives sans murmurings,

Sans passion,” and incuriously endures

The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours

A level life of little happenings;

And through the long autumnal evenings

Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company,

And hugs your ingleside contentedly,

Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings.

And yet I think that sometimes memories

Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine

On moonlit nights, and of that first long kiss

Whereby your lips were first made one with mine,

Awake and trouble you, and loving is

Once more important and perhaps divine.

You have chosen; and I cry content thereto,

And cry your pardon also, and am reproved

In that I took you for a woman I loved

Odd centuries ago, and would undo

That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue,

Your speech is gracious, but you are not she;

And I am older,--and changed how utterly!--

I am no longer I, you are not you.

Time, destined as we thought but to befriend

And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset

With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend

Who am a stranger; and we two are met

Nor wholly glad nor sorry, and the end

Of too much laughter is a faint regret.

It is in many ways made plain to us

That love must grow like any common thing,

Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering

The mellow fruitage front us; even thus

Must Helena encounter Thesëus

Ere Paris come, and every century

Spawn divers queens who die with Antony

But live a great while first with Julius.

Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play

Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit

Contented in the wings, whilst you portray

An amorous maid with gestures that befit

This lovely rôle,--as who knows better, pray.

Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?

With Love I garnered mirth, and dreams, and shame;

And half his playmate, half his worshipper,

I flouted him, and yet might not demur

To do his bidding, or in aught defame

Love’s tutorage,--not even when you came,

And at the portal of Love’s golden house

We hazarded stray kisses, sighs and vows,

And lightly staked them in a hackneyed game.

And now the game is ended, dear; and we

May not re-enter that august domain

Which we, encoasting, lost eternally;

And now, although beloved by many men,

You may love no man as you have loved me,

Who have loved you as I may not love again.

VII

Unto how many futures I was heir

In those old talks, which fixed what must be done

When we at last should rule (in Babylon

Perhaps, or in Caer-Is, or Kennaquhair),

And must do this or that, and bravely share

Fantastic fates, whose frolic freakishness

Seems how less quaint than this is,--to confess

That I have lost you, and do not greatly care!

Well! had we never cared, in all that fleet

Sweet time which passed so swiftly and is gone--

And gone eternally!--yet it was sweet

To play at loving, for all that every groan,

And gainless grieving, was in counterfeit

And parody of love, ungained, unknown.

VIII

And so we played at loving. So we played

With love as venturous children in the sea

Wade ankle-deep, and laugh, and wistfully

Peer at the world’s far rim, being half-afraid.

Half-wistful. So we laughed, and we obeyed

That changeless law which sways the cosmic plan,

And ever draws the maid unto the man,

And ever draws the man unto the maid.

The sea hides deep our fragile argosy,

And idle doubts quest fruitlessly above

Those shattered hulks, too frail to brave the sea,

Too frail to brave the wrath and mirth thereof:

I had not heart to love you heartily,

You were too shrewd to be befooled by love.

Time was I coveted the woes they rued

Whose love commemorates them--I that meant

To get like grace of love then!--and intent

To win, as they had done, love’s plenitude,

Rapture and havoc, vauntingly I sued

That love like theirs might make a toy of me,

At will caressed, at will (if publicly)

Demolished, as Love found or found not good.

To-day I am no longer overbrave.

I have a fever--I that always knew

This hour was certain!--and am too weak to rave,

Too tired to seek (as later I must do)

Tried remedies--time, manhood and the grave,--

To drug, abate and banish love of you.

Time was I loved you.... And indeed I came

To love you so time hardly washes out

The scars of an old moment which, as flame

Leaps toward chaff, bereft me even of doubt:

And then indeed I knew you had deceived me--

You, even you!--and counterfeiting truth

So cunningly that you and I believed me,

I cried, _I will forget!_ ... This was in youth.

Now, being older and less over-nice,

I estimate these follies, breed of them

My little books,--shift, polish and re-price

The jewels of a battered diadem,--

And cry, _What hope of heaven for those who sell

What I am vending? and what need of hell?_

We are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal

To shape out nobler fortunes or contend

Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend

The allotted pattern of things temporal,

Or alter it a thread’s-width, or let fall

A single stitch thereof, until at last

The web and its drear weavers be overcast,

And predetermined darkness swallow all.

They have ordained for us a time to sing,

A time to love, a time wherein to tire

Of all spent songs and kisses; carolling

Such elegies as buried dreams require,

Love now departs, and leaves us shivering

Beside the embers of a burned-out fire.

XII