I would to God thou wert mine own good son
Thy face is fair, thy body strong and pure,
Thy spirit nobly high, thy deeds well done,
Thy heart well set to love and to endure.
'Tis such a fearless boy I would beget,
To give the venerable world its due;
Yea, to be bold and lovely ere I set,
To take the time, and mould what shall ensue.
I would thou wert the fruit of my best hour,
So that I might bequeathe thee my strong fire;
But I am like to die before my flower
And lose inheritors for my desire.
O if thou wert mine own, I had this boast;
Therefore I love thee better than thou know'st.
_CHAMAN LALL_
(_JESUS_)
"THIRTY YEARS AFTER"
It is thirty years since we two parted,
It is thirty unswept, cobweb years
Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance,
Like some knowing, hungering bird,
Like some forewarned, huckstering drone of a butterfly,
Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied.
And I am now a very old man--almost dead;
I am now a very old ornament of lead;
Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read
These thirty years in bed.
This room;
And the shadows lengthening on the lawn;
And the distant boom, boom of the world;
Wearisome watchings for the first star;
And the toil, toil of the dawn:
These have emptied my soul of its waves,
These have made cold prisons of my faery caves,
These have frosted
The red, red poppy-leaf of time.
Who now cares for my politics?
Who now cares for my brilliant repartees
That crushed one with an epigram,
That struck one like an oriflamme?
But now they ask me who I am.
Once women came to me,
And she,
Once women came to me with their offerings
Like long lines of brown bees
Burdened with offerings,
Like naked houris of turbaned Kings,
Once----But now drifts
Across the living-deadness
Of an Egyptian desert
My barren Arab way,
My unflowered desert way.
It is thirty years since we two parted,
It is thirty unswept, cobweb years
Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance,
Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied.
And I am now a very old man--almost dead;
I am now a very old ornament of lead;
Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read
These thirty years in bed.
_M. LEIGH_
(_SOMERVILLE_)