Will love delay, will love delay till death

Hath sealed these lips and locked these eyes in night?

Till unto love and hate indifferent quite

This form shall lie? Then wilt thou, wild of breath,

Bend down and kiss me there

When I no more shall care?

II

If thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes

And beckons through the World, far must thou seek!...

She is no shadow wreathed with hemlock wreaths;

No drowsy sorrow whose wan eyes are weak

With melancholy vigils; and no shade

Of tragic sin of the sweet sun afraid:

No tearful anger torn of truthless love,

Who stabs her sick heart to the dagger’s hilt

For vengeance sweet; no miser mood, or maid,

In owlet towers!--Nay! she sings above

On morning meads ’mid flowers that never wilt.

If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware!

Lest thou discover her, nor know ’tis she;

And she enslave thee to thy heart’s despair,

And fill thy soul with yearning, utterly,

For that wild-rose which is her mouth, that brings

Dew-odors of the dawn; for those twin springs

Of light, her eyes; the bloom of her white brow,

O’er which the foliage of her dark hair lies:

The melody which is her heart, that sings

The poetry of love, to which all bow,

Both gods and men, the love that never dies.

Lost art thou then, lost as the first lone star

Set in the splendor of the sunset’s wave;

Lost in thy loneliness of searching far,

Striving to clasp her, evermore her slave:

Lost--gladly lost! a devotee to her

Who, in the end, perhaps may let thee share

A portion of her bliss, her heritage

Of happiness in the same way and wise

As woods and waters share it.--Then prepare

Thy soul,--made perfect,--for its final wage,

Her kiss, whose touch shall apotheosize.

III

Now that the orchard’s leaves are sere,

And drip with rain instead of dew,

No moon-bright fruit hangs moon-like here,

And dead your long white lilies too,--

And dead the heart that broke for you:

How comes the dim touch of your arm?

Your faint lips on my feverish cheek?

Your eyes near mine? deep as a charm,

And gray, so gray! till I am weak,

Weak with wild tears and can not speak.

I am as one who walks in dreams;

Sees, as in youth, his father’s home;

Hears from his native mountain streams

Far music of continual foam,

And one sweet voice that bids him come.

AT HER GRAVE

I

With your eyes of April blue,

And your mouth

Like a May-rose, fresh with dew,

Of the South,

With your hair as golden sweet

As the ripples of ripe wheat,

How you make my old heart beat!--

Who are you?

II

There is something that I knew,

Long ago,

In your voice that thrills me through

With the glow

Of remembered happiness;

And your look--I can not guess

What it is there, nor express.--

Who are you?

III

You are like her! even the hue

Of her eyes!--

It is strange you stop here, too,

Where she lies!--

Where she lies who was, you see,

All to me a girl could be--

But no wife.--You stare at me.--

Who are you?

IV

Well, I left her. That ’s not new--

God above!

Men, who live so, often do.

’T is n’t love.

So I broke her heart, they say,--

And been wretched since that day:

And our child--don’t turn away!--

Who are you?

A CONFESSION

These are the facts:--I was to blame.

I brought her here and wrought her shame.

She came with me all trustingly.

Lovely and innocent her face:

And in her perfect form, the grace

Of purity and modesty.

I think I loved her then: would dote

On her ambrosial breast and throat,

Young as a wildflower’s tenderness:

Her eyes, that were both glad and sad:

Her cheeks and chin, that dimples had:

Her mouth, red-ripe to kiss and kiss.

Three months passed by; three moons of fire;

When in me sickened all desire:

And in its place a devil,--who

Filled all my soul with deep disgust,

And on the victim of my lust

Turned eyes of loathing,--swiftly grew.

One night, when by my side she slept,

I rose: and leaning, while I kept

The dagger hid, I kissed her hair

And mouth: and, when she smiled asleep,

Into her heart I drove it deep--

And left her dead, still smiling there.

LAST DAYS

Ah! heartbreak of the tattered hills,

And heartache of the autumn sky!

Heartbreak and heartache, since God wills,

Are mine, and God knows why!

I held one dearer than each day

Of life God sets in sunny gold--

But Death hath ta’en that gem away,

And left me poor and old.

The heartbreak of the hills is mine,

Of trampled twig and rain-beat leaf,

Of wind that sobs through thorn and pine

An unavailing grief.

The sorrow of the loveless skies’

“Farewells” are wild as those I said

When last I kissed my child’s blue eyes

And lips, ice-dumb and dead.

AT TWILIGHT

Once more she holds me with her pensive eyes;

Once more I feel her voice’s witchery

Within my heart unfountain tears and sighs,

And fill the soul of me.

Once more she bends a silent face above;

Once more I feel her hands’ soft touches shake

My life, unbinding long-imprisoned love,

Bidding my lost dreams wake.

Once more I see her serious smile; and touch

Once more the lips of her whose kisses say--

“The night was long, and thou hast suffered much:

At last, dear heart, ’t is day!”

DAY AND NIGHT

They said to me, “The days are not so far off

When she will come, who gave her heart to thee;”

And still I wait, while twilight’s lonely star, off

Her long-loved hills, dips dewy to the sea.

And I recall that night, which gave its soul of

Calm beauty to the earth, when she did give

Her love’s white starlight to the rugged whole of

My barren life and bade me see and live.

The days go by, and my sick soul recalls but

The revelation of that evening sky:

The days! whose hours are as narrow walls,--but

Of whiter shadow,--where hearts break and die.

The day is error’s: it can but deceive us

With shows of Earth, blind with the primal curse.

The night is truth’s: its myriad fires weave us

The thoughts of God, the visible universe.

THREE BIRDS

A red bird sang upon the bough

When wind-flowers nodded in the dew:

My spring of bird and flower wast thou,

O tried and true!

A brown bird warbled on the wing

When poppy buds were hearts of heat:

I wooed thee with a golden ring,

O sad and sweet!

A black-bird twittered in the mist

When nightshade blooms were filled with frost:

The leaves upon thy grave are whist,

O loved and lost!

UNREQUITED

Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes:

One hand among the deep curls of her brow,

I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs:

She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow.

So have I seen a clear October pool,

Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere

Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool,

Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year.

Sweetheart? not she! whose voice was music-sweet;

Whose face was sweeter than melodious prayer.

Sweetheart I called her.--When did she repeat

Sweet to one hope, or heart to one despair!

So have I seen a wildflower’s fragrant head

Sung to and sung to by a longing bird,

And at the last, albeit the bird lay dead,

No blossom wilted, for it had not heard.

THE HEART’S DESIRE

God made her body out of foam and flowers,

And for her hair the dawn and darkness blent;

Then called two planets from their heavenly towers,

And in her face, divinely eloquent,

Gave them a firmament.

God made her heart of rosy ice and fire,

Of snow and flame, that freezes while it burns;

And of a starbeam and a moth’s desire

He made her soul, to’ards which my longing turns,

And all my being yearns.

So is my life a prisoner unto passion,

Enslaved of her who gives nor sign nor word;

So in the cage her loveliness doth fashion

Is love endungeoned, like a golden bird

That sings but is not heard.

Could it but once convince her with beseeching!

But once compel her as the sun the south!

Could it but once, fond arms around her reaching,

Upon the red carnation of her mouth

Dew its eternal drouth!

Then might I rise victorious over sadness,

O’er fate and change, and, with but little care,

Torched by the glory of that moment’s gladness,

Breast the black mountain of my life’s despair,

And die, or do and dare.

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

I

Let me forget her face!

So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place

Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;

Of dreams and moods that moved my soul’s dim deeps,

As strong winds stir

Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.--

In every lineament the mind can trace,

Let me forget her face!

II

Let me forget her form!

Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,

Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;

And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,

That makes men’s eyes

Bondsmen of beauty, eager still to serve.--

In every part that memory can warm,

Let me forget her form!

III

Let me forget her, God!

Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod

To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;

To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!--

Oh, hear my prayer!

Out of the hell of love’s unquenchable fire

I cry to thee, with face against the sod,

Let me forget her, God!

“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER”

This is the face of her

I’ve dreamed of long

That in my heart I bear:

This is the face of her

Pictured in song.

Look on the lily lids,

The eyes of dawn,--

Deep as a Nereid’s,

Swimming with dewy lids

In waters wan.

Look on the brows of snow,

The locks of night:

Only the gods can show

Such brows of placid snow,

Such locks of light.

The cheeks, like rosy moons;

The lips of fire:

Love sighs no sweeter tunes

Under romantic moons

Than these suspire.

Loved lips and eyes and hair!

Look, this is she!

She, who sits smiling there,

Throned in my heart’s despair,

Never for me!

INDIFFERENCE

She is so dear the wildflowers near

Each path she passes by,

Are over fain to kiss again

Her feet and then to die.

She is so fair the wild birds there

That sing upon the bough,

Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,

And sing no other now.

Alas! that she should never see,

Should never care to know,

The wildflower’s love, the bird’s above,

And his, who loves her so.

GHOST WEATHER

Wild gusts of drizzle hoot and hiss

Through writhing lindens torn in two--

The dead’s own days are days like this!

Yea; let me sit and be with you.

Here in your willow chair, whose seat

Spreads purple plush.--Hark! how the gusts

Seem moaning voices that repeat

Some grief here; in this room, where dusts

Make dim each ornament and chair;

This locked-in memory where you died:

Since angels stood here, saintly fear

Guards each dark corner, mournful-eyed.

Through this dim light bend your dim face;

Or, like a rain-mist, gray of gleam,

A soft, dim cloudiness of lace,

Stand near me while I dream, I dream.

THE FOREST POOL

One memory persuades me when

Dusk’s lonely star burns overhead,

To take the gray path through the glen--

That finds the forest pool, made red

With sunset--and forget again,

Forget that she is dead.

Once more I look into the spring,

That on one rock a finger white

Of foam that beckons still doth bring--

Some moon-wan spirit of the night,

Who dwells within its murmuring,

Her life the sad moonlight.

I see the red dusk touch it here

With fire like a blade of blood;

One star reflected, white and clear,

Like a wood-blossom’s drowning bud;

While all my grief stands very near,

Pale in the solitude.

And then, behold, while yet the moon

Hangs--silver as a twisted horn

Blown out of Elfland--sweet with June,

White in white clusters of the thorn,

Slow, in the water as a tune,

An image pale is born:

That has her throat of frost; her lips--

Her mouth where God’s anointment lies;

Her eyes, wherefrom love’s arrow-tips

Break, like the starlight from dark skies;

Her hair, a hazel heap that slips;

Her throat and hair and eyes.

And then I stoop; the water kissed,

The face fades from me into air;

And in the pool’s dark amethyst

My own pale face returns my stare:

Then night and mist--and in the mist

One dead leaf drifting there.

AT SUNSET

Into the sunset’s turquoise marge

The moon dips, like a pearly barge

Enchantment sails through magic seas,

To fairyland Hesperides,

Over the hills and away.

Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,

The young-eyed dusk comes slowly down;

Her apron filled with stars she stands.

And one or two slip from her hands

Over the hills and away.

Above the wood’s black caldron bends

The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends

The dew and heat, whose bubbles make

The mist and musk that haunt the brake

Over the hills and away.

Oh, come with me, and let us go

Beyond the sunset lying low,

Beyond the twilight and the night,

Into Love’s kingdom of long light,

Over the hills and away.

DEAD AND GONE

Can you tell me how he rests,

Flowers, growing o’er him there?

His a right warm heart, my sweets,--

So, cover it with care.

Can you tell me how he lies

Such nights out in the cold,

O cricket, with your plaintive call,

O glow-worm, with your gold?

If my eyes are sorrowful,

Well may they weep, I trow,--

Since his dead eyes gazed into them,

They have been sad enow.

If my heart make moan and ache,

Well may it break, I’m sure--

For his dead love is more, ah me!

More than it can endure.

ONE NIGHT

I

A night of rain. The wind is out.

And I had wished it otherwise:

A calm, still night; no scudding skies;

Or, in the scud, above the rout,

The moon; by whose pale light my eyes

Might meet her eyes; the smile that tries

To come but will not; lips, that pout

With seeming anger, all surmise,

When I have said “I love your lies”--

Lips I shall kiss before she dies.

II

What force this wind has! As it runs

Around each unprotecting tree

It seems some beast; and now I see

Its form, its eyes; a woman’s once:--

Dark eyes! that blaze as lionly

As some bayed beast’s, that will not flee

The pine-knots and derides the guns.--

Or is it but the thought in me!

The thought of that which is to be,

The deed, that rises shadowy?

III

And now the trees and whipping rain

Confuse them.... I must drive it hence,

The memory of her eyes! the tense

Wild look within them of hard pain!...

Yet she must die--with every sense

Strung to beholding knowledge, whence

My heart shall be made whole again.--

Here I will wait where night is dense.

Soon she will come, like Innocence,

Thinking her youth is her defense.

IV

And when she leaves,--and none perceives,--

The old gray manor, where the eight

Old locusts, (twisted shadows), freight

With mossy murmurings its eaves,

One moment at the iron gate

She ’ll tarry. Then, with breath abate,

Come rustling through the autumn leaves.

And I will take both hands and sate

My mouth on hers and say, “You ’re late”;

She ’ll laugh to hear I had to wait....

V

O passion of past vows, revive

Imagination, and renew

The ardor of love’s language you

For love’s rose-altar kept alive!

Repeat the oaths that rang with dew

And starlight!--Tell her she is true

As beautiful.--I will contrive

To make her think I have no clue

To all her falseness. I will woo

As once I wooed before I knew.

VI

And we will walk against the wind;

The shuffling leaves about our feet;

Our ruin, as the wood’s, complete,

Because one woman so hath sinned

And never suffered. She shall meet

No murder in my eyes; no heat

Of fate in holding hand that ’s pinned

To hers. To make her trust to beat,

I ’ll kiss her hand, her hair,--like wheat

Of affluent summer,--saying “Sweet.”

VII

And should I bungle in this thing,

This purpose that must see her dead

To cure this fever in my head?--

What other thing is there to bring

Soul satisfaction? when is shed

No real blood, save what makes red

The baulked intention?--I will fling

The mask aside!--But hate hath led

Desire too far now to be fed

With failure. I have naught to dread.

VIII

When we have reached the precipice

That thwarts the battling of the sea,

And wallows out great rocks, that knee

The giant foam with roar and hiss,

I will not cease to coax and be

The anxious lover. Trusting she

Will not suspect my farewell kiss

Until it turns a curse, and we

Sway for an instant totteringly,

And she has shrieked some prayer at me.

IX

O let me see wild terror there

Upon her face! the wilder frown

Of crime’s apprisal, and renown

Of my life’s injury, that bare

This horror with its bloody crown!--

No pity, God! For, if her gown,

Suspending looseness of her hair,

Delay the plunge ... the night is brown ...

My heel must crush her white face down,

And Hell and Heaven see her drown.

THE PARTING

She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed

Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze,

Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost,

And mouthed and mumbled in the sickly trees,

Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.

Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore.

Some stars made misty blotches in the sky.

And all the wretched willows on the shore

Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye.

She felt deep sorrow yet could only sigh.

She heard his skiff grind on the river rocks

Whistling he came into the shadow made

By the great tree. He kissed her on her locks;

And round her form his eager arms were laid.

Passive she stood her purpose unbetrayed.

And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss

Stung in her hair. She did not dare to lift

Her face to his; her anguished eyes to his

While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift

Of weakness humored might set all adrift.

Anger and shame were his. She meekly heard.

And then the oar-locks sounded, and her brain

Remembered he had said no farewell word;

And swift emotion swept her; and again

Left her as silent as a carven pain....

She, in the old sad farm-house, wearily

Resumed the drudgery of her common lot,

Regret remembering.--’Midst old vices, he,

Who would have trod on, and somehow did not,

The wildflower, that had brushed his feet, forgot.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW

Though the panther’s footprints show,

And the wild-cat’s, in the snow,

You will never find a trace

Of the footsteps of a certain

Maiden with a paler face

Than the drifts that fill and curtain

Hillside, valley, and the wood,

Where the hunter’s wigwam stood

In the winter solitude.

What white beast hath grown the fur

For the whiter limbs of her?--

Raiment of the frost and ice

To her supple beauty fitting;

Wampum strouds, as white as rice,

Of the frost’s fantastic knitting,

Wrap her form and face complete;

Glove her hands with ice; her feet

Moccasin with beaded sleet.

’Though he knew she made a haunt

Of the dell, it did not daunt:

Where the hoar-frost mailed each tree

In soft, phantom alabaster,

And hung ghosts of bud and bee

On each autumn-withered aster;

By the frozen waterfall,

There she stood, beneath its wall,

In the ice-sheathed chaparral.

Where the beech-tree and the larch

Built a white triumphal arch

For the Winter, marching down

With his icy-armored leaders;

Where each hemlock had a crown,

And pale diadems the cedars;

Where the long icicle shone,

There he saw her, standing lone,

Like a mist-wraith turned to stone.

And she led him many a mile

With her hand-wave and her smile,

And the printless swiftness of

Feet of frost, and snowy flutter

Of her raiment; now above,

Now below, the boughs of utter

Winter whiteness. Led him on

Till the dawn and day were gone,

And the evening star hung wan....

Hunters found him dead, they tell,

In the winter-wasted dell,

With his quiver and his bow,

Where the cascade ran a rafter,

White, of crystal and of snow;

Where he listened to her laughter,

Promises, that were as far

As the secrets of a star,

And her love that naught could mar.

And her countenance is this

Stamped on his: and this her kiss,

Haunting still his mouth and eyes,

Colder than the cold December:

This her passion, that defies

All control, the stars remember

Filled him, killed him: this is she

Clinging to him, neck and knee,

Where his limbs sank wearily.

THE SPIRIT OF THE STAR

(_Love Spiritual_)

“_This union of the human soul with the divine æthereal substance of the

universe, is the ancient doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato._”--Divine

Legation.

There is love for love: the heaven

Teems with possibilities:

And, when love is purely given,

Love returns from where none sees:

And such love becomes a ladder

Reaching heavenward, from the sadder

Night of Earth; from out the driven

Darkness of its miseries.

There is love for love: and Beauty,

From her star above the Earth,

Smiles, and straight each cloud of sooty

Night takes on celestial worth:

And, like some white flower unfolding,

Love is born; and softly holding

Up its face, as if in duty,

Grows to that which gave it birth.

Earth and Heaven are prolific

Of love’s wonders: and the sky

Teems with spirits, fair, terrific,

Who, if loved, shall never die:

Dæmons, haggard as their mountains;

Naiads, sparkling as their fountains;

Sylphids of the winds, pacific

As the stars they tremble by....

Such was I; who long had waited

For the everlasting sleep:

Where, around me, worlds dilated,

Waned or waxed within the deep:

Where, beneath my star, a planet

Whirled and shone, like glowing granite,

While around it ne’er abated

One white satellite its sweep.

I was sad: my beauty wearied,

Useless as a scentless bud

Fading ere it blooms. The serried

Mists of worlds, as red as blood,

Streamed beneath me. And the starry

Firmament above bent, barry

With the wild auroras, ferried

Of the meteors’ sisterhood.

[Illustration:

Something drew me, unreturning,

Filled me with a finer flame

Page 418

_The Spirit of the Star_]

I was loveless with a yearning

After love that never came;

All my astral being burning

Towards that world without a name,

World I knew not: till, with splendor

Of compulsion that was tender,

Something drew me, unreturning,

Filled me with a finer flame.

So I left my star, whose lances

Pierced with arrowy gold the heat

Of heaven’s hyacinth; its glances

Saddened me. No more to meet,

Then I left my star; and, beating

Downward, heard it still repeating

Far farewells; and through the trances

Of dark space its face looked sweet.

Passed your moon: a melancholy

Disc at first; then, vast and sharp,

Lo, a world, all white and holy!

Where, upon the crystal scarp

Of a mountain,--like a story

Of high Heaven revealed in glory,--

Gradual, as if music slowly

Built it, rolling from a harp,--

Rose a city: cloudy nacre

Were its walls, that towered round

Acre upon arch-piled acre

Of a marble-terraced ground:

Caryatids alternated

With Atlantes, sculpture-weighted:

And its gates--some god the maker--

Rhombs of symboled diamond.

In the white light glittered swimming

Domes of dazzle: swirl on swirl,

Temples lifted columns, brimming

Crystal flame, that seemed to whirl:

Battlemented moonstone darkled;

Palaces, pale-pillared, sparkled,

Cloudy opal: and, far dimming,

Aqueducts of ghostly pearl.

Streaming steeples shone, of dædal

Emblem; each an obelisk:

Minarets, each one a needle,

Balancing a bubble-disc;

Some of diamond, like a blister

Frozen; some of topaz-glister,

Vinous; in whose blinding middle

Blazed an orb of burning bisque.

And I saw where, silvery slanted,

A vast pyramidic heap

Rose of spar; whereon was planted

The acropolis of Sleep,--

God of these:--that, looming higher,

Wrought of seeming ice and fire,

Where pale rainbow-colors panted,

Gleamed above the lunar deep.

Robed in white simarre and chiton,

Visions filled its every square,

Moving like a finer light on

Light: and in the glory there

Music rang and golden laughter;

And before each shape, and after,

Radiance went, that shadowed white, on

Temple and on palace stair.

Though they called me, I descended

Earthward. For great longing drew

Me and, drawing me, was blended

With your world. I never knew

It was Earth, until,--forsaking

Heaven,--I beheld it taking,--

A great azure sphere,--its splendid

Way along the singing blue.

And when night came, here, above you,--

Sleeping by your folded sheep

On the hills,--I stooped: whereof you

Dreamed: I kissed you in your sleep:

I, your destiny, who wrought it

So you knew me: you, who thought it

Not so strange that I should love you,

I a spirit of the deep.

’Twas your love that sought and found me,

Drew me from that star-life sad;

Won my soul to yours and bound me

With such love as none hath had:

I am she, you may remember,

That fair star that seemed an ember

O’er you, that you loved.--Around me

Wrap your arms now and be glad.

Look above: what seems a petal,

Burning, of a rose; that far

Point of radiance, bright as metal,

Fiery silver, is your star!

Look above you: rise unto it.

Let it lead you now who drew it

Down to Earth, where shadows settle!--

On that star no shadows are!

THE SPIRIT OF THE VAN

(_Love Ideal_)

“_Among the mountains of Carmarthen, lies a beautiful and romantic piece

of water, named The Van Pools. Tradition relates, that after midnight,

on New Year’s Eve, there appears on this lake a being named The Spirit

of the Van. She is dressed in a white robe, bound by a golden girdle;

her hair is long and golden; her face is pale and

melancholy_.”--Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”

Midsummer-night; the Van. Through night’s wan noon,

Wading the storm-scud of an eve of storm,

Pale o’er Carmarthen’s peaks the mounting moon.--

Wilds of Carmarthen! sombre heights, that swarm

Girdling this water, as old giants might

Crouch, guarding some enchanted gem of charm,--

Wilds of Carmarthen, that for me each night

Reëcho prayers and pleadings,--all the year

Unanswered,--made to listening waters white!

Mountains, behold me yet again! Bend near!

Behold her lover! hers, that shape of snow,

Who dwells amid these pools; who will not hear

My heart’s wild pleading, calling loud, now low,

Unhappy, to her, ’mid the lonely hills.

Whene’er a ripple trembles into glow,

Where yeasty moonshine scuds the foam, straight thrills

Heart’s expectation through my veins, and high

With “she!” each pulse the exultation fills.

But she ’tis never. Once ... and then! would I,

Would I had perished, so beholding!--World,

’Twas you, O world, who would not let me die!

Once I beheld her!--If some fiend had curled

Stiff talons in my hair, and, twisting tight,

Had raised me high, then into Hell had hurled;

Fresh from that vision of her beauty white,

With Heaven in my soul, I, unamerced,

Shackled with tortures, yet might mock Hell’s spite.

Immortal memory, quench in me this thirst!--

O starlike vision, that a moment clove

My sight, and then for ever left me curst!

Oh, make me mad with love, with all thy love!

Me, me, who seek thee ’mid these wilds when gloom

Storms or drip gold the sibylline stars above!--

Let thy high coming in a flash consume

The light of all the stars! and make me mad,

Mad with love’s madness! fill me with sweet doom!

Sleep will I not now, for my soul is sad:

For, should I sleep, there might come other dreams,--

Sadder than thou art,--in thy beauty clad

And all thy tyranny. To me it seems

Better to wake here, underneath this pine,

Until thy face upon my vision gleams.--

Thou, who art wrought of elements divine,

And I of crasser clay, clay that will think,

“Since I am hers, why should she not be mine?”

Again, its usual phantom, on the brink

Of thy lone lake, I ask thee: “Must I yearn

Forever, haunted of that vision’s wink?”--

When, glassing out great circles, which did urn

Some intense essence of interior light,

(As clouds, that clothe the moon, unbinding, burn,

Riven, erupt her orb, triumphant white,)

I saw, midmost the Van, a feathering fire

Dilating ivory-wan.--Expectant night

Tiptoed attentive, fearful to suspire.--

Wherefrom arose--what white divinity?

What godhead sensed with glory and desire?

Born for the moment for the eyes of me!

Then re-absorbed into the brassy gloom

Of whispering waves that sighed their ecstasy.

Thou! in whose path harmonious colors bloom,

Pale pearl and lilac, asphodel and rose,--

Like many flow’rs auroral of perfume,--

Thou leftst me thus, to marvel as who knows

He is not dead and yet it seems he is,

Since all his soul with spirit-rapture glows.--

O sylph-like brow! lips like an angel’s kiss!

High immortality! whose face was such

As starlight in a lily’s loveliness!...

The gold that bound thee seemed too base to clutch

Thy chastity, though clear as golden gum

That almugs sweat, and fragrance to the touch!

Thy hair--not hair!--seemed rays, like those that come

Strained through the bubble of a chrysolite.--

No word I said: thy beauty struck me dumb.

Thy face, that is upon my soul’s quick sight

Eternal seared, hath made of me a shade,

A wandering shadow of the day and night:

A seeker ’mid the hoary hills for aid,

The sole society of my sick heart, who

Shuns all companionship of man and maid:

Who, comrade of the mountain blossoms blue,

And intimate of old trees, goes dreaming they,--

As in that legendary world that drew

Oracles from lips in oaks--, may sometime say

Prophetic precepts to it: how were won

A spirit loved to love a mortal;--yea,

In vain.--

But one day, frog-like in the sun,

Beside a cave,--the nightshade vines made rank

And hairy henbane, where huge spiders spun,--

Wrinkled as Magic, I a grizzled, lank,

Squat something startled, naught save skin and hair;

With eyes wherein dwelt demons; flames, that shrank

And grew;--familiars, who fixed me with glare

As, raising claw-like hands when I drew near,

Frog-like he croaked, “Thou fool! go seek her there!

Woo her with thy heart’s actions! making clear

Thy soul’s white passage for her coming feet!--

In! in! thou fool! plunge in! Fear naught but fear!”

Yet I have waited many weeks. Repeat.

Acts of the heart with passionate offering

Of love whose anguish makes it seven times sweet.

Still all in vain, in vain. To-night I bring

My self alone; my soul unfearing, see!

My soul unto thee!--Shall the clay still cling

Clogging fulfillment? and achievement be

Balked still by flesh?--no! let me in--to die,

Haply; or, for a moment’s mystery,

Gaze in thine eyes: one splendid instant lie

In thy white arms and bosom; and thy kiss,

My elemental immortality!--

Part of thy breathing waves, to laugh or hiss

In foam; or winds, that rock the awful deeps,

Or build with song vast temples for thy bliss.

Wherein, responsive as thy white hand sweeps

The chords of some sad shell, I’ll dream and roam

Through glaucous chambers where the green day sleeps.

Dead not with death, what secrets hath thy home

Not mine then, epoched in exultant foam?...

Deeper, down deeper! yea, at last I come!

THE CAVERNS OF KAF

(_Love Sensual_)

“_‘Where am I?’ cried he; ‘what are these dreadful rocks? these

valleys of darkness? are we arrived at the horrible

Kaf?’_”--Vathek.

One, Benreddin, I have heard,

Near the town of Mosul sleeping,

In a dream beheld a bird,

Wonderful, with plumes of sweeping

Whiteness, crowned pomegranate-red:

And, it seemed, his soul it led,

Brilliant as a blossom, keeping

Near the Tigris as it fled.

Following, at last he came

To a haggard valley, shouldered

Under peaks that had no name:

Where it vanished. ’Mid the bouldered

Savageness a woman, fair,

In a white simarre, stood there,

Auburn-haired; around whom smoldered

Pensive lights of purple air.

And she led him down to vast

Caves of sardonyx, whose ceiling

Domed one chrysoberyl. Blast

On blast of music,--stealing

Out of aural atmospheres,--

Beat like surf upon his ears;

Then receded, faintly pealing

Psalteries and dulcimers.

Living figures seemed to heave

High the walls, where, wild, embattled,

Warred Amshaspand and the Deev:

Over all two splendors rattled

Arms of Heaven, arms of Hell;

Forms of flame that seemed to swell

Godlike: Aherman who battled

With Ormuzd he could not quell.

There she left him wond’ring; till

The reverberant music, drifting,

Strong beyond his utmost will,

Drew him onward where, high lifting

Pillar and entablature,

Vast with emblem, yawned a door--

Valves of liquid lightning, shifting

In and out and up and o’er.

Through the door he swept: deep-domed,

Green with serpentine and beryl,

Loomed a cavern, crusted, foamed,

Tortuous with gems of peril:

Difficult, a colonnade

Seemed, of satin-spar, to braid

Deeps of labyrinthed and sterile

Tiger-spar that, twisting, rayed.

Dizzy stones of magic price

Crammed volute and loaded corbel:

Irridescent shafts of ice

Leapt: with long reëchoed warble

Waters unto waters sang:

Crystal arc and column sprang

Into fire as each marble

Fountain flung its foam that rang.

And around him, filled with sound,

Streams of resonant colors jetted:

Rainbow surf that interwound

Crypts and arcades, crescent-fretted:

Mists of citron and of roon;

Lemon lights that mocked the moon;

Shot with scarlet, veined and netted,

Beating golden hearts of tune.

Suns arose, of blinding blue;

Moons of green-dilating splendor:

In whose centers slowly grew

Spots like serpents’ eyes that, slender,

Glared; at first, prismatic beams;

Then, intolerable gleams;

Hissing trails of fire, tender

As an houri’s breath that dreams.

Characters of Arabic,

Cabalistic, red as coral,

Flashed through violet veils, so quick

None might read: as if, in quarrel,

Iran wrote of Turan there

Hate and scorn, or, everywhere,

Wrought some talisman of moral

Strength no Afrit’s heart would dare.

Sounding splendors drew him on

To another cavern; hollow;

Hewn of alabastar wan;

Lucid; where his gaze could follow

Caves in caves; transparent flights

Rolling, lost in moving lights,

Glaucous gold: he like a swallow

O’er a lake the morning smites.

Down the dome flashed out and in

Instant faces of the Peris:

Restless eyes of Deevs and Jinn

In the walls watched: unseen Faeries

Out of rainbows rained and tossed

Flowers of fire full of frost;

Blossoms where the fire varies,

Gold and green and crimson-mossed.

Then there met him, face to face,

Seven odalisques of Heaven,

Swinging in a silver space

Flaming censers: and the seven,

Crowned with stars of burning green,

Seemed to turn to incense; seen,

As it rose, to be a driven

Hippogrif, or rosmarine.

Aloes, Nard, and Ambergris,

Sandal, Frankincense, and Civet,--

Genii of the fragrances,--

Rein each winged aroma; give it

Spurs and race it down the lull

Of the caverns, clouded dull

With wild manes of musk; now vivid,

Vaporous white and wonderful.

And Benreddin’s aching soul,

In each sense intoxicated,

Reached, at last, what seemed the goal

Of all passion: golden-gated,

Vast, a fountain: where he saw

Limbs of light without a flaw;

Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited

For his soul to nearer draw.

Houri faces shimmered there;

Fluid forms.--It, with a thunder

Of wild music, like the hair

Of a genie, flamed from under

Caverns of the demon-world:

Filled with voices, high it hurled,

Calling him, with beckoning wonder

Of cœrulean forms that swirled.

And with burning lips and eyes

In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted,

Demon laughter: then sad sighs,

Dying downward: passion-heated

Hands seemed drawing him away,

Downward: where a rocking ray

Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted

Shadows wandered ghostly gray.

* * * * *

And, ’tis said, that he was young,

Young that morning. When the darting,

Anguish-throated bulbuls sung,

In the silent starlight starting,

One, a Baghdad merchant, led

By the hoarness of its head,

Found what seemed a mummy: parting

Hair from brow, Benreddin--dead.

THE SALAMANDER

(_Love Dæmonic_)

“_The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught

that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved

out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last

and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being

searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up

into it._”--The Rosicrucians.

Once she breathed upon my eyes,

Touched the soul that dreamed within me;

All the magic that might win me

Whispered to my heart with sighs--

Darkness can not make them lies!...

Bring me moly, hellebore!

Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe,

For my spirit’s dread Amenti,

For the curse that comes once more

With unutterable lore!

Sunlight, starlight or the moon,

Stormlight, firelight or the sheening

Witchlight intimate no meaning

Of her glory’s plenilune;

Of her soul’s unriddled rune,

And most awful beauty! nor

Actual, nor yet ideal!--

Insubstantial and yet real;

Partly flame and partly star,

Yet no part of what these are.

I am hers and--woe is mine!...

Has she drugged me with the sadness

Of some elemental madness?--

Like a demigod I pine

’Twixt the mortal and divine....

When I see her, lo, she stands

In the luminous electre

Of a star: a smiling spectre

With white scintillating hands

Luring to unhallowed lands.

Then, behold, in fearful file,

A mirage of tower and terrace,

Lawn and mountain range,--that buries

Flame in frost,--looms! mile on mile

Of her crescent-glowing Isle:

Where the lurid waters lull

Shores that roll the rainbow fire;

Where, with living lute and lyre,

Rose-red, swiftly as a gull,

Glides her star-like galley’s hull.

And, behold, before I know,

I am where her walls of amber,

Towers of limpid ruby, clamber

Over terraces below

Summits of refulgent snow.

Lambent lazuli and shell

Colonnade her courts of marble;

Where, of lightning, fountains warble

Out of basined pearl, or well

Into hollowed carbuncle.

Rosy silver seems her skin,

And a flame her arm commanding,

With its gleaming hand, me, standing

At her gates, to enter in,

Burning as a Seraphin.

Lucid darkness are her eyes,

Where the frozen fire smolders;

And upon her shining shoulders,

Like a tangible glitter, lies

Auburn hair like sunset skies.

Mouth of sibilant soft flame;

Lilith lips, whose roses lighten

With illusive love; and brighten

With wild passion and the name

Of desire no man may tame.

Passion, and the thoughts that wed

Love and loathing; such caresses

Of sweet touch as naught expresses

Here on Earth, yet full of dread,

Madness, whereof death is bred.

She hath drawn me to her lips;

Borne me through her palace portal;

And the fire, which is immortal,

From me like a garment slips--

Ah, the spirit-part’s eclipse!

As when moon and planet swoon

Unto each, my body kindles,

Strangely, while my spirit dwindles,

Like the Earth-o’ershadowed moon,

Darkening from lune to lune.

Then she laughs; and leads me where

Cloudy, wild, chameleon color

Marbles halls with hues, the duller

For her astral presence there,

Beaming white with beaming hair:

Where, in roses purple pale,--

Dropping like a ruby bubble

Through the moon dust,--“double double,”

Throbs the crimson nightingale,

There she lures me with some tale.

Or to where the scarlet snake

Coils beneath great flaming flowers;

Where the musk mimosa bowers

Roll their rosy clouds, and make

Sunset heavens of each lake.

Where the bees and moths go by,

Fiery diamond; opal-burning

Butterflies, and iris-turning

Peacock-painted birds, that vie

With the flow’rs, like fragments fly

Of wild rainbow: Where, in rills,

Down the rocks, that lichens redden,

Constellated moss and leaden

Fungus glow; and all the hills,

As with flames, the orchid fills.

Where, in coruscating light,

Glare the golden-checkered zinnias;

And the bugle-bloomed gloxinias,

Making morning of each height,

Float like mists of ruby white.

There, beneath some blazing vine,

Where the liquid moonlight glitters

Of a river,--coral litters

Red with grail,--like prisms in wine

I have watched the fishes shine.

Or, o’er sunset-colored moss,

Glow-worms trail their beryls; sprinkling

Green the smouldering shade; while, twinkling,

With convulsive sapphire gloss,

Fireflies rained blue lights across.

Where the reeds seemed rays of rose,

And white mirrored moons, the lotus--

Each a spirit giving notice

Of the inner light that glows

Where the under water flows--

Shapes arose of flashing spray:--

Where, a wild auroral splendor,

Rolled the forest,--emerald-tender

As the light of breaking day,--

Beckoned forms of starry ray.

Through the violetish light,

Winged with nautilus and lily

Flame, adown the forests stilly

Vistas, moony whirls of white,

Floated shapes with eyes of night.

I must follow where she leads.--

Blinding portals of her castle

To my entering feet are facile....

Love no terrible trumpet needs

At her gates to bugle deeds....

Lo, my being never veils

Aught from her. To her caresses

All my heart knows it confesses

With a faith that never fails,

Though it hears the truth that wails

In its soul’s admonishment,

Of the curse that sits in session

In each amorous expression

Of her love; its violent

Flame, by which my life is rent.

I have drained the feverish cup

Of all darkness. Made a leman

Of an elemental demon;

And my soul lies, staring up,

Draining poison at each sup.--

While she smiles on me ’tis well:

I shall follow, though she make me

What her self is; never wake me

From the dream I can not tell,

That is neither heaven nor hell:

Where I drink mesmeric gold

Of wild vision,--that romances

In informing Protean fancies

With a beauty never old,

And emotion never cold.--

Let me drink and never wake

From the trances that environ

Me, and ’neath the subtle siren

See the demon, like a snake,

With destroying eyes that ache.

While the slow laconic look

Of her eyes express no censure,

Gazing in them, I adventure,--

Far beyond the wisest book,--

Ways her serpent fancy took.

Yet I know I reverence

One whose gaze in God’s negation;

One who, like an emanation

Of all evil, chains my sense

With satanic influence.

Yet, while still I hear her say,

“One more kiss before the morning!

One more bliss for love’s adorning!

One more kiss ere break of day,”

Still my soul with her must stay.

Stay, nor know, nor ever see!

Till her basilisk beauty flashes,

And the curse, from out the ashes

Of her passion, fiery,

Strikes--destroying utterly.

LYANNA.

“_These elementary beings, we are told, were by their constitution more

long-lived than man, but with this essential disadvantage, that at death

they wholly ceased to exist. In the meantime they were inspired with an

earnest desire for immortality; and there was one way left for them, by

which this desire might be gratified. If they were so happy as to awaken

in any of the initiated (Rosicrucians) a passion, the end of which was

marriage, then the sylph became immortal._”--Godwin’s “Lives of the

Necromancers.”

Summer came over the Indian Ocean

Girdled with fire, tiaraed with light;

Her eyes all languor, her lips--a potion

To quaff--of poppy. And gold and white

She flashed and sparkled; all gleam and motion,

All blush and blossom she came; and I,

Of the race of the sylphs, o’er the Indian Ocean

Followed her through the sky.

Self-exiled so from the sylphs that cluster,

Pulsing with pearl and burning with blue,

In domes of the dawn,--where the organs bluster

Low of the winds,--where they glow like dew

As the day dreams up, and their armies muster,

Ranges of glitter, in cloudy gold,

At the gates of the Dawn, of blinding luster,

To forth when her gates unfold.

For Summer murmured me, “Follow! follow!”

Whispered one word that was all of love.--

Winged with the speed of the sweeping swallow,

I followed the word she had breathed above:

“Follow! follow!”--the god Apollo

Never followed, with speed as strong

The flying nymph through holt and hollow,

As I that word of song.

Fleet as the winds are fleet, yea, and fleeter

Far than the stars that throb, like foam,

Through the firmament’s blue, in musical metre

Winnowed my wings; and the golden gloam

Rang; and life was a passion, completer

Than a life in Eden; and love,--a lyre

That sang in my heart and made life sweeter

With hope,--a leaping fire.

Thus to the north my wings went maying

Radiant ways, till a castle shone

Gaunt on great cliffs, with the late skies graying

O’er walls of war and their towers lone,

With tortuous steps to the sea, where, spraying,

Thundered the breakers; and terrace and stair,

Rock o’er the waters, rose rosy and raying

Deep in the sunset’s glare.

A dewdrop burns when the dawn lights prickle:

And all my being tingled with light,

Bloomed when I saw her, tarrying fickle,

White on the castled height:

Slender she shone as the moon in sickle,

The slim new-moon, like a pearl-pale streak;

And golden, too, as the honey-trickle

Of combs where the wax is weak.

In dreams I came to her, lo! as a vision:

Yea, by her side as a dream I stood;

To her innermost spirit I sighed my mission,

In the vestal ear of her maidenhood:

And she deemed me a dream; and I made a prison

Of my arms for her soul while she, smiling, slept:

Her body lay still, but her soul had arisen,

And looked on my face and wept:

“Lyanna, I hoop thee with arms of fire!”--

My words were music, a harp afloat,--

“Lyanna, my heart is a vibrant wire,

Thy love is its only note.

Let it sing forever. Let it sound entire,

Full as the angels’ who hover and harp

To the glory that’s God, like a golden lyre

Borne in a beam that is sharp....

“Behold me, thy rose! full of flame and splendor!

Thy rose to pluck: thy ruby bloom:

Thy sylphid rose, with eyes that are tender;

Lips that are fire; and limbs of perfume

And fragrant fire: thy heart’s defender!

Thy airy lover!” ... And, bending above,

Sweeter my speech than a flower’s that, slender,

Tells to the stars its love.

Lo, as I spoke, with thoughts that thicken,

Her heart seemed filled; and she spoke; but sleep

Shadowed her words, till my kiss did quicken

And free, like stars from the night that leap:--

“Long I have waited; and long did sicken

To clasp thee thus, O my rose of love!

Oft have I dreamed of thee, yea, and was stricken

With joy at the thought thereof.

“White are the clouds; but I saw thee whiter

’Mid dazzling domes of the dawn; and knew

Tho’ bright are God’s stars, that thine eyes were brighter,

Brighter and burning blue.

And my heart was thine, though it held thee slighter

Than hues that the mists of the morning take:

And waited and yearned, and the yearning tighter

Than tears in the hearts that break.

“‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ I heard thee ever

Calling ‘Lyanna,’ a ripple of flame:

‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ like song forever;

And I marveled at my name.

The sound was such--that if stars could sever

And silver-syllable a word of beams,

So would it sound.--I turned; but never

Beheld thee, only in dreams.

“Thou walkedst a beauty afar: a glitter

Of gleaming aroma: and I, with moan,

Reached thee my arms: but thy gaze was bitter,

Calmer and sterner than stone:

Avoiding thou passedst in scorn: a sitter,

I seemed, on the uttermost bounds of bliss:

When, lo! on the wind,--a flame, a flitter

Of fire,--thy laugh, and thy kiss!”--

I had won her love. And, behold! the thunder

Trumpeted tempest: I heard the seas

Lunge at the walls like a roaring wonder,

And the rain-wind sing in the trees.--

Lyanna my bride.--And the heavens asunder

Rushed--chasms of glaring storm, where poured

The thunder’s cataracts, rolling under--

And showed me, horde on horde,

The shouting spirits of storm.--The portal

Of sleep was riven; she rose, and saw:

And I said to her soul, “Of the utterly mortal

Mine the eternal lot and law.”--

“I love thee!” she answered.--And I, “Immortal

Am I through thy love!” ... And so we fled....

Behold! when they came in the morn, astartle,

Men whispered--“Lyanna is dead!”

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

_Voices of Darkness_

Ere the birth of Death and of Time,

And of Hell, with its tears and its torments:

Ere the waves of heat and of rime,

And the winds to the heavens were as garments:

Cloud-like in the womb of Space,

Mist-like from her monster womb,

We sprang, a myriad race

Of thunder and tempest and gloom.

_Voices of Light_

As from the evil good

Springs, and desire:

As the white lily’s hood

Buds from the mire:

So from this midnight brood

Sprang we with fire.

_Voices of Darkness_

We had lain for long ages asleep

In her bosom, a bulk of torpor,

When down through the vasts of the deep

Clove a sound, like the notes of a harper:

Clove a sound, and the horrors grew

Tumultuous with turbulent night,

With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,

And storm that was godly in might.

And the walls of our dungeon were shattered

Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world:

As torrents of clouds that are scattered,

From the womb of the deep we were hurled.

_Voices of Light_

Us in unholy thought

Patiently lying,

Eöns of violence wrought,

Violence defying;

When, on a mighty wind,

Voiced of a godly mind,

Big with a motive kind,

Girdled with wonder,

Flame and a strength of song,

Rolling vast light along,

Thundered the Word, and Wrong

Vanished,--and we were strong,

Strong as the thunder.

_Voices of Darkness_

We people the lower spaces,

Where our cities of silence make scorn

Of the sun, and our shadowy faces

Are safe from the splendors of morn.

Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet

Whose sun is a light that is sped;

Bleak moons, whose cold bodies of granite

Are hollow and flameless and dead.

_Voices of Light_

We in the living sun

Live like a passion:

Ere the sad Earth begun

We and the sun were one,

As God did fashion.

Lo! from our burning hands,

Flung like inspired brands,

Sowed we the worlds, like sands,

Countless as ocean:

And ’tis our breath gives life,

Life to those stars, all rife

With iridescent strife,

Music and motion.

_Voices of Darkness_

We joy in the hate of all mortals;

Inspire their crimes and the thought

That falters and halts at the portals

Of actions, intentions unwrought.

We cover the face of to-morrow:

We frown in the hours that be:

We breathe in the presence of sorrow:

And death and destruction are we.

_Voices of Light_

We are man’s hope and ease,

Joy and his pleasure;

Authors of love and peace,

Love that shall never cease,

Free as the azure.

Lo! we but look, and light

Heartens the world with might,

Vanquishes death and night

Hate and its burnings:

And from our bosoms stream

Beauty and yearnings

For a diviner dream,

Higher discernings.

_Voices of the Break of Day_

Morning and birth are ours;

Light that is blown

From our fair lips; and flowers,

Dropped from our hands in showers,

Seeds that are sown:

Song and the bursting buds,

Life of the fields and floods;

Strength that’s full-grown:

And, from our beryl jars,

Filled with the clouds and stars,

Pour we the winds and dew;

While by our eyes of blue

Darkness is rent in two,

Conquered and strown.

_Voices of the Dawn_

Ye in your darkness are

Dark and infernal;

Subject to death and mar!

But in the spaces far,

Like our effulgent star,

We are eternal.

THE WATER WITCH

See! the milk-white doe is wounded.

He will follow as it bounds

Through the woods. His horn has sounded,

Echoing, for his men and hounds.

But no answering bugle blew.

He has lost his retinue

For the shapely deer that bounded

Past him when his bow he drew.

Not one hound or huntsman follows.

Through the underbrush and moss

Goes the slot; and in the hollows

Of the hills, that he must cross,

He has lost it. He must fare

Over rocks where she-wolves lair;

Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows:

So he leaves his hunter there.

Through his mind then flashed an olden

Legend told him by the monks:--

Of a girl, whose hair is golden,

Haunting fountains and the trunks

Of the woodlands; who, they say,

Is a white doe all the day,

But when woods are night-enfolden

Turns into an evil fay.

Then the story once his teacher

Told him: of a mountain lake

Demons dwell in; vague of feature,

Human-like; but each a snake,

She is queen of.--Did he hear

Laughter at his startled ear?

Or a bird?--And now, what creature

Is it,--or the wind,--stirs near?

Fever of the hunt! This water,

Falling here, will cool his head.

Through the forest, dyed in slaughter,

Slants the sunset; ruby-red

Are the drops that slip between

Hollowed hands, while on the green,--

Like the couch of some wild daughter

Of the forest,--he doth lean.

But the runnel, bubbling, dripping,

Seems to bid him to be gone;

As with crystal words and tripping

Steps of sparkle luring on.

Now a spirit in the rocks

Calls him; now a face that mocks,

From behind some boulder slipping,

Laughs at him through lilied locks.

And he follows through the flowers,

Blue and gold, that blossom there;

Thridding twilight-haunted bowers

Where each ripple seems the bare

Beauty of white limbs that gleam

Rosy through the running stream;

Or bright-shaken hair, that showers

Starlight in the sunset’s beam.

Till, far in the forest, sleeping

Like a luminous darkness, lay

A deep water, wherein, leaping,

Fell the Fountain of the Fay,

With a singing, sighing sound,

As of spirit things around,

Musically laughing, weeping

In the air and underground.

Not a ripple o’er it merried:

Like the round moon in a cloud,

In its rocks the lake lay buried:

And strange creatures seemed to crowd

Its dark depths: dim limbs and eyes

To the surface seemed to rise

Spawn-like; or, all formless, ferried

Through the water shadow-wise.

Foliage things with woman faces,

Demon-dreadful, pale and wild

As the forms the lightning traces

On the clouds the storm has piled

In the darkness.--On the strand--

What is that which now doth stand?--

’Tis a woman: and she places

On his arm a spray-white hand.

Ah! two mystic worlds of sorrow

Were her eyes; her hair, a place

Whence the moon its gold might borrow;

And a dream of ice her face:

Round her hair and throat in rims

Pearls of foam hung; and through whims

Of her robe, as breaks the morrow,

Gleamed the rose-light of her limbs.

Who could help but gaze with gladness

On such beauty? though within,

Deep within the beryl sadness

Of those eyes, the serpent sin

Seemed to coil.--She placed her cheek

Chilly upon his, and weak

With love-longing and its madness

Grew he. Then he heard her speak:--

“Dost thou love me?”--“If surrender

Of the soul means love, I love.”

“Dost not fear me?”--“Fear?--more slender

Art thou than a wildwood dove.

Yet I fear--I fear to lose

Thee, thy love.”--“And thou dost choose

Aye to be my heart’s defender?”--

“Take me. I am thine to use.”

“Follow then.--Ah, love, no lowly

Home I give thee.”--With fixed eyes

To the water’s edge she slowly

Drew him.... Nor did he surmise

Who this creature was, until

O’er his face the foam closed chill,

Whispering, and the lake unholy

Rippled, rippled and was still.

THE SUCCUBA

I have dreams where I believe

That a queen of some dim palace,

One, whose name is Genevieve,

Weighs me with her love or malice:

She is dead and yet my bride:

And she glimmers at my side

Offering a crystal chalice

Filled with fire, diamond-dyed.

I have dreams. Ah, would that I

Might forget them!--I remember

How her gaze, all icily

Draws me, like a glowing ember,

Up her castle-stair’s pale-paved

Alabaster, from the waved

Ocean, grayer than November,

Where I linger, soul-enslaved.

Walls of shadow and of night

Lit with casements full of fire,

Somber red or piercing white:

As the wind breathes lower, higher,

Round the towers spirit-things

Whisper, and the haunted strings

Moan of each huge, plangent lyre

Set upon its four chief wings.

In its corridors at tryst

Flame-eyed phantoms meet. Its sparry

Halls are misty amethyst:

Battlemented ’neath the starry

Skies it looms; the strange unknown

Skies where, green as glow-worms, sown,

Gloom the stars; the moon hangs barry

Beryl, low and large and lone....

Can it be a witch is she?

Or a vampire? she, far whiter

Than the spirits of the sea!--

She whose eyes are cold, yet brighter

Than her throat’s pale jewels. Lo!

Flame she is though seeming snow:

And her love lies tighter, tighter

On my heart than utter woe.

Though I dream, it seems I live;

And my heart is sick with sorrow

Of the love that it must give

To her; passion, it must borrow

Of herself, unhallowed, vain;

Then return it her again:

Thus she holds me; and to-morrow

Still will hold with sweetest pain.

In her garden’s moon-white space

Strangest flowers bloom: huge lilies,

Each one with a human face;

Knots of spirit-amaryllis;

Cactus-bulks with pulpy blooms

Gnome-like in the silver glooms;

And dim deeps of daffadillies,

Fay-like, brimming faint perfumes.

But to me their fragrance seems

Poison; and their lambent lustre,

Spun of twilight and of dreams,

Poison; and each pearly cluster

Hides a serpent’s fang. And I,

Looking from an oriel, sigh;

For my soul is fain to muster

Heart to breathe of them and die.

Then I feel big eyes, as bright

As the sea-stars. Gray with glitter,

She behind me, moony white,

Smiles, ’mid hangings wherein flitter

Loves and deeds of Amadis

Darkly worked. And then her kiss

On my mouth falls; sweet and bitter

With a bliss that is not bliss.

And I kiss her eyes and hair;

Smooth her tresses till their golden

Glimmer sparkles. Everywhere

Shapes of strange aromas, holden

Of the walls, around us troop;

And in golden loop on loop,--

Of the lull’d eyes vague beholden,--

Forms of music o’er us stoop.

Yet I see beneath it all,

All this sorcery, a devil,

Beautiful, and white, and tall,

Broods with shadowy eyes of evil:

She, who must resume with morn

Her true shape: a cactus-thorn,

Monstrous, on some lonely level

Of that demon-world forlorn.

I have dreams where I believe

That a queen of some dim palace,

One, whose name is Genevieve,

Weighs me with her love or malice:

And all night I am her slave

There beside the demon wave,

Where I drain the loathsome chalice

Of her love, that is my grave.

MASKS

_Cucullus non facit monachum_

Live it down! as you have spoken

You could live it ere you knew

What love was--“a bauble broken,

Foolish, of a thing untrue.”--

You, Viola, with your beauty,

Cloistered, die a nun? No! you--

You must wed: it is your duty.

There’s your poniard; for the second

In this tazza dropped: the blood

On it scarcely hard.... I reckoned

Happily that hour we stood

There upon your palace-stairway,

How, with the Franciscan hood

Cowled, I said, there was a bare way.

In the minster there I found it--

Our revenge. I saw him, wild,

Stalking towards the church: around it

Dogged him, marking how he smiled

In the moonlight where I waited.

When the great clock, beating, dialed

Ten, I knew he would be mated.

Heaven or my better devil!--

Hardly had his sword and plume

Vanished in the dark, when, level

On the long lagoon, did loom,

Under moonlight-woven arches,

Her slim gondola: all gloom:

One tall gondolier: no torches.

Dusky gondolas kept bringing

Revellers: and far the night

Rang with instruments and singing.--

From the imbricated light

Of the oar-vibrating water,

Gliding up the stairway, white,

Velvet-masked,--the count’s own daughter!

Quick I met her: whispered, “Flora,

Gaston.--_Mia_, till they go,

One brief moment here, Siora.--

She’ll perceive us--she, below,

See! the duchess’ diamonds sparkling

Round the inviolable glow

Of her throat--there, dimly darkling:

“That’s Viola!” ... Thus I drew her

In the church’s ancient pile--

Under her black mask I knew her,

By her chin, her lips, her smile.

Through one marble-foliated

Window fell the moon-rays. While

All the maskers passed we waited.

I had drawn the dagger. Turning

Called her by her name. Some lie

Of a passion sighed, her burning

Hand in mine; when, stalking by,

In the square, _his_ form bejeweled

Gleamed. My very blood burned dry

With the hate his presence fueled.

Our revenge! up-pushing slightly

Cowl, the mask fell, and revealed

Balka, as the poniard whitely

Flashed. The hollow nave re-pealed

One long shriek the loft repeated.

Swift, I stabbed her thrice. She reeled

Dead. I thought of you, the heated

Horror on my hands; and tarried

Still as silence. Drawn aside

On her face the mask hung, married

To its camphor-pallor: wide

Eyes with terror--stone. One second

I regretted; then defied

All remorse. Your promise beckoned;

And I left her. Love had pointed

Me this way. I walked the way

Clear-eyed and ... it has anointed

Us fast lovers?--Do not say,

Now, that you will go and nun it!

For this man who scorned you?--Nay!--

Live to hate him! You ’ve begun it.

CARMEN

_La Gitanilla_, tall dragoons

In Andalusian afternoons,

With ogling eye and compliment,

Smiled on you as along you went

Some sleepy street of old Seville;

Twirled with a military skill

Moustaches; buttoned uniforms

Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.

Proud, wicked head, and hair blue-black,

Whence the mantilla, half thrown back,

Discovered shoulders and bold breast

Bohemian brown. And you were dressed

In some short skirt of gypsy red

Of smuggled stuff; and stockings,--dead

White silk,--that, worn with many a hole,

Let the plump leg peep through; while stole,

Now in, now out, your dainty toes,

Sheathed in morocco shoes, with bows

Of scarlet ribbon.--Flirtingly

You walked by me; and I did see

Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip

That gnawed the rose I saw you flip

At bashful José’s nose while loud

The gaunt guards laughed among the crowd.

And in your brazen chemise thrust,

Heaved with the swelling of your bust,

A bunch of white acacia blooms

Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.

As in a cool _neveria_

I ate an ice with Mérimée,

Dark Carmencita, very gay

You passed, with light and lissome tread,

All holiday bedizenéd;

A new mantilla on your head:

Your crimson dress gleamed, spangled fierce;

And crescent gold, hung in your ears,

Shone, wrought Morisco; and each shoe,

Of Cordovan leather, buckled blue,

Glanced merriment; and from large arms

To well-turned ankles all your charms

Blew flutterings and glitterings

Of satin bands and beaded strings:

Around each tight arm, twisted gold

Coiled serpents, and, a single fold,

Wreathed wrists; each serpent’s jeweled head,

With rubies set, convulsive red.

In flowers and trimmings, to the jar

Of mandolin and gay guitar,

You in the grated patio

Danced: the curled coxcombs’ staring row

Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,

With wily motion and glad glance,

Voluptuous, the wild _romalis_,

Where every movement was a kiss,

A song, a poem, interwound

With your Basque tambourine’s dull sound.

I,--as the ebon castanets

Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,--

Saw angry José through the grate

Glare on us, a pale face of hate,

When some indecent officer

Presumed too lewdly to you there.

Some still night in Seville: the street

Candilejo: two shadows meet:

Swift sabres flash within the moon--

Clash rapidly.--A dead dragoon.

AT NINEVEH

There was a princess once, who loved the slave

Of an Assyrian king, her father; known

At Nineveh as Hadria; o’er whose grave

The sands of centuries have long been blown;

Yet sooner shall the night forget its stars

Than love her story:--How, unto his throne,

One day she came, where, with his warriors,

The King sat in his hall of audience,

’Mid pillared trophies of barbaric wars,

And, kneeling to him, asked, “O father, whence

Comes love and why?”--He, smiling on her said,--

“O Hadria, love is of the gods, and hence

Divine, is only soul-interpreted.

But why love is, ah, child, we do not know,

Unless ’t is love that gives us life when dead.”--

And then his daughter, with a face aglow

With all the love that clamored in her blood

Its sweet avowal, lifted arms of snow,

And, like Aurora’s rose, before him stood,

Saying,--“Since love is of the powers above,

I love a slave, O Asshur!--Let the good

The gods have giv’n be sanctioned.--Speak not of

Dishonor and our line’s ancestral dead!

_They_ are imperial dust. _I_ live and love.”--

Black as black storm then rose the King and said,--

A lightning gesture sweeping at her there,--

“Enough! ho, Rhana, strike me off her head!”

And at the mandate, with his limbs half bare

A slave strode forth. Majestic was his form

As some young god’s. He, gathering up her hair,

Wound it three times around his sinewy arm;

Then drew his sword. It for one moment shone

A semicircling light, and, dripping warm,

Lifting the head he stood before the throne.

Then said the despot, “By the horn of Bel!

This was no child of mine!”--Like chiseled stone

Stern stood the slave, a son of Israel.

Then striding towards the monarch, in his eye

The wrath of heaven and the hate of hell,

Shrieked, “Beast! I loved her! look on us and die!”

Swifter than fire clove him to the brain.

Then kissed her face, and, holding it on high,

Cried out, “Judge thou, O God, between us twain!”

And, fifty daggers in his heart, fell slain.

SENORITA

An agate black, her roguish eyes

Claim no proud lineage of the skies,

No starry blue; but of good earth

The reckless witchery and mirth.

Looped in her raven hair’s repose,

A hot aroma, one red rose

Droops; envious of that loveliness,

Through being near which, its is less.

Twin sea-shells hung with pearls, her ears;

Whose delicate rosiness appears

Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire

Binds the attention these inspire.

One slim hand crumples up the lace

About her bosom’s swelling grace;

A ruby at her samite throat

Lends the required color-note.

The moon brings up the violet night

An urn of pearly-chaliced light;

And from the dark-railed balcony

She stoops and waves her fan at me.

O’er orange blossoms and the rose

Vague, odorous lips the South Wind blows,

Peopling the night with whispers of

Romance and palely passionate love.

And now she speaks; and seems to reach

My soul like song that learned its speech

From some dim instrument--who knows?--

Or flow’r, a dulcimer or rose.

SINCE THEN

I found myself among the trees

What time the reapers ceased to reap;

And in the sunflower-blooms the bees

Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,

Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.

I saw the red fox leave his lair,

A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;

And, tunnelling his thoroughfare

Beneath the soil, I watched the mole--

Stealth’s own self could not take more care.

I heard the death-moth tick and stir,

Slow-honeycombing through the bark;

I heard the cricket’s drowsy chirr,

And one lone beetle burr the dark--

The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.

And then the moon rose: and a white

Low bough of blossoms--grown almost

Where, ere you died, ’t was our delight

To tryst,--dear heart!--I thought your ghost:

--The wood is haunted since that night.

AFTER DEATH

At moonset, when ghost speaks with ghost

And spirits meet where once they sinned,

Between the whispering wood and coast,

My soul met her soul on the wind,

My late-lost Evalind.

I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.

Two burning shadows were her eyes,

Wherein the love,--that once had smiled

A heartbreak smile,--in some strange wise,

I did not recognize.

Then suddenly I seemed to see

How sin had damned my soul and doomed

To wander thus eternally

With love and loathing, that assumed

The form of her entombed.

THE OLD MAN DREAMS

The blackened walnut in its spicy hull

Rots where it fell;

And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,

The pear’s brown bell

Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,

From whose low door

Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,

He sees once more.

The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;

And o’er its gate,

All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine

Its leafy weight:

And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,

With eyes of joy

Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,

A brown-faced boy.

Then, whistling, through the underwoods he goes,

Out of the wood,

Where, with young cheeks, red as an autumn rose,

In gingham hood,

His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm:

And now it seems

Beside his chair bends down his wife’s fair form--

The old man dreams.

MEMORIES

Here where Love lies perishéd,

Look not in upon the dead,

Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken

In my Heart’s dark chamber, waken

Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow

Whilom gladness bows his head:

When you come at morn, to-morrow,

Look not in upon the dead,

Here where Love lies perishéd.

Here where Love lies cold interred,

Let no syllable be heard,

Lest the hollow echoes, housing

In my Soul’s deep tomb, arousing

Wake a voice of woe, once laughter

Claimed and clothed in joy’s own word:

When you come at dusk, or after,

Let no syllable be heard,

Here where Love lies cold interred.

MARCH AND MAY

Windy the sky and mad;

Surly the gray March day;

Bleak the forests and sad,--

Oh, that it only were May!

On maples, tasseled with red,

No blithe bird, fluting, swung;

The brook, in its swollen bed,

Raved on in an unknown tongue.

We walked in the wind-tossed wood:

Her face as the May’s was fair;

Her blood was the May’s own blood;

And May’s her radiant hair.

And we found in the woodland wild

One cowering violet,

Like a frail and timorous child,

In the caked leaves bowed and wet.

And I said, “We have walked in vain!

To find but this shivering bud,

Weighed down with its weight of rain,

Crouched here in the wild March wood.”

But she said, “Though the day be sad,

And the skies be dark with fate,

There is always something glad

That will help our hearts to wait.

“Look, now, at this beautiful thing,

In this wood’s wild hollow curled!

’Tis a promise of joy and spring,

And of love, to the waiting world.

“Ah, the sinless Earth is fair,

And man’s are the sin and the gloom--

Come, bury the days that were,

And look to’ard the days to come!”

* * * * *

And the May came on with her charms,

With twinkle and rustle of feet;

Blooms stormed from her luminous arms

And songs that were wildly sweet.

Now I think of her words that day,

This day that I longed so to see,

That finds her dead with the May,

And my life but a withered tree.

IN AUTUMN

I

Sunflowers wither and lilies die,

Poppies are pods of seeds;

The first red leaves on the pathway lie,

Like blood of a heart that bleeds.

Weary alway will it be to-day,

Weary and wan and wet;

Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray,

And the autumn wind will sigh and say,

“He comes not yet, not yet,

Weary alway, alway!”

II

Hollyhocks bend all tattered and torn,

Marigolds all are gone;

The last pale rose lies all forlorn,

Like love that is trampled on.

Weary, ah me! to-night will be,

Weary and wild and hoar;

Rain and mist will blow from the sea,

And the wind will sob in the autumn tree,

“He comes no more, no more.

Weary, ah me! ah me!”

“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR”

I

When she draws near,

I seem to hear

The shy approach of some wild innocence:

As if--in acorn crown--

A dryad should step down

From some dim oak-tree where the woods are dense.

II

When she’s with me,

I seem to see

The brambles blossom where just touched her dress:

As, with her love’s perfume,

She touches into bloom

The thorns of life and gives them loveliness.

REED CALL FOR APRIL

I

When April comes, and pelts with buds

And apple-blooms each orchard space,

And takes the dogwood-whitened woods

With rain and sunshine of her moods,

Like your fair face, like your sweet face:

It’s honey for the bud and dew,

And honey for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

II

When April comes and tints the hills

With gold and beryl that rejoice,

And from her airy apron spills

The laughter of the winds and rills,

Like your young voice, like your sweet voice:

It’s gladness for God’s bending blue,

And gladness for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

III

When April comes, and binds and girds

The world with warmth that breathes above,

And to the breeze flings all her birds,

Whose songs are welcome as the words

Of you I love, O you I love:

It’s music for all things that woo,

And music for the heart!

And, oh, to be away with you

Beyond the town and mart.

HER VIOLIN

I

Her violin!--Again begin

The dream-notes of her violin;

And tall and fair, with gold-brown hair,

I seem to see her standing there,

Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:

The room again, with strain on strain,

Vibrates to Love’s melodious pain,

As, sloping slow, is poised her bow,

While round her form the golden glow

Of sunset spills its splendor.

II

Her violin!--Now deep, now thin,

Again I hear her violin;

And, dream by dream, again I seem

To see the love-light’s tender gleam

Beneath her eyes’ long lashes:

While to my heart she seems a part

Of her pure song’s inspired art;

And, as she plays, the rosy grays

Of twilight halo hair and face,

While sunset burns to ashes.

III

O violin!--Cease, cease within

My soul, O haunting violin!

In vain, in vain, you bring again,

Back from the past, the blissful pain

Of all the love then spoken;

When on my breast, at happy rest,

A sunny while her head was pressed--

Peace, peace to these wild memories!

For, like my heart naught remedies,

Her violin lies broken.

MEETING IN SUMMER

A tranquil bar

Of rosy twilight under dusk’s first star.

A glimmering sound

Of whispering waters over grassy ground.

A sun-sweet smell

Of fresh-reaped hay from dewy field and dell.

A lazy breeze

Jostling the ripeness from the apple-trees.

A vibrant cry,

Passing, then gone, of bullbats in the sky.

And faintly now

The katydid upon the shadowy bough.

And far off then

The little owl within the lonely glen.

And soon, full soon,

The silvery arrival of the moon.

And, to your door,

The path of roses I have trod before.

And, sweetheart, you!

Among the roses and the moonlit dew.

HER VIVIEN EYES

Her Vivien eyes,--beware! beware!--

Though they be stars, a deadly snare

They set beneath her night of hair.

Regard them not! lest, drawing near--

As sages once in old Chaldee--

Thou shouldst become a worshiper,

And they thy evil destiny.

Her Vivien eyes,--away! away!--

Though they be springs, remorseless they

Gleam underneath her brow’s bright day.

Turn, turn aside, whate’er the cost!

Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,

Through which thy captive soul were lost,

As was young Hylas once of old.

Her Vivien eyes,--take heed! take heed!--

Though they be bibles, none may read

Therein of God or Holy Creed.

Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,--

As Merlin was, romances tell,--

And in their sorcerous spells immersed,

Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell.

[Illustration:

I look into thy heart and then I know

The wondrous poetry of the long-ago

Page 496

_Reasons_]

REASONS

I

Yea, why I love thee let my heart repeat:

I look upon thy face and then divine

How men could die for beauty, such as thine,--

Deeming it sweet

To lay my life and manhood at thy feet,

And for a word, a glance,

Do deeds of old romance.

II

Yea, why I love thee let my heart unfold:

I look into thy heart and then I know

The wondrous poetry of the long-ago,

The Age of Gold,

That speaks strange music, that is old, so old,

Yet young, as when ’t was born,

With all the youth of morn.

III

Yea, why I love thee let my heart conclude:

I look into thy soul and realize

The undiscovered meaning of the skies,--

That long have wooed

The world with far ideals that elude,--

Out of whose dreams, maybe,

God shapes reality.

HER VESPER SONG

The summer lightning comes and goes

In one white cloud above the hill,

As if within its soft repose

A burning heart were never still--

As in my bosom pulses beat

Before the coming of his feet.

All drugged with odorous sleep, the rose

Breathes dewy balm about the place,

As if the dreams the garden knows

Arose, in immaterial grace--

As in my heart sweet thoughts arise

Beneath the ardour of his eyes.

The moon above the darkness shows

An orb of silvery snow and fire,

As if the night would now disclose

To heav’n her one divine desire--

As in the rapture of his kiss

All my glad soul is drawn to his.

The cloud divines not that it glows;

The rose knows nothing of its scent;

Nor knows the moon that it bestows

Light on our earth and firmament--

So is the soul unconscious of

The beauties it reveals through love.

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

There in the past I see her as of old,

Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room

Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;

Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom

Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold

Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,

As of a moonlit lily brimmed with rain,

Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.

Her head is bent; some red carnations glow

Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;--

Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,

Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream.--

I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow

As thoughts of love that haunt a poet’s dream:

And at her feet once more I sit and hear

Wild words of passion--dead this many a year.

SNOW AND FIRE

Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk

And lilies of the morn;

And cactus, holding up a slender tusk

Of fragrance on a thorn;

All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,

Her presence puts to scorn.

For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,

Scentless and chaste of heart;

The moonflower, making spiritual the air,

Like some pure work of art;

Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,

And virtue’s counterpart.

Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when

Her lips to mine are pressed,--

Why are my veins all fire then? and then

Why should her soul suggest

Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men,

And prurient with unrest?

IN MAY

I

When you and I in the hills went Maying,

You and I in the bright May weather,

The birds, that sang on the boughs together,

There in the green of the woods, kept saying

All that my heart was saying low,

“I love you! love you!” soft and low;--

And did you know?

When you and I in the hills went Maying.

II

There where the brook on its rocks went winking,

There by its banks where the May had led us,

Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,

Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking

All that my soul was thinking there,

“I love you! love you!” softly there;--

And did you care?

There where the brook on its rocks went winking.

III

Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling,

Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,

In the Mays to-come I shall feel forever

The wildflowers thinking, the wild-birds telling,

In words as soft as the falling dew,

The love that I keep here still for you,

As deep and true,

Whatever befalls through fate’s compelling.

“WERE I AN ARTIST”

Were I an artist, Lydia, I

Would paint you as you merit,

Not as my eyes, but dreams descry;

Not in the flesh, but spirit.

The canvas I would paint you on

Should be a strip of heaven;

My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn

And night and starry even.

Your form and features to express

Likewise your soul’s chaste whiteness,

I’d take the primal essences

Of darkness and of brightness.

I’d take pure night to paint your hair;

Stars for your eyes; and morning

To paint your skin--the rosy air

Which is your limbs’ adorning.

To paint the love-bows of your lips,

I’d mix, for colors, kisses;

And for your breasts and finger-tips,

Sweet odors and soft blisses.

And to complete the picture well,

I’d temper all with woman,--

Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell,

To show you yet are human.

THE RIDE

She rode o’er hill, she rode o’er plain,

She rode by fields of barley,

By morning-glories filled with rain,

Along the wood-side gnarly.

She rode o’er plain, she rode o’er hill,

By orchard land and berry;

Her eyes were sparkling as the rill,

Cheeks, redder than the cherry.

A bird sang here, a bird sang there,

Then blithely sang together;

Sang sudden greeting everywhere,

“Good-morrow!” and “Good weather!”

The sunlight’s laughing radiance

Laughed in her radiant tresses;

The bold breeze made her wild curls dance,

And flushed her face with kisses.

“Why ride you here, why ride you there,

Why ride you here so merry?

The sunlight living in your hair,

And in your cheek the berry?

“Why ride you with your sea-green plumes,

Your sea-green silken habit,

By balmy bosks of faint perfumes,

And haunts of roe and rabbit?”

“The morning ploughed the east with gold,

And planted it with holly;

And I was young and he was old,

And rich, and melancholy.

“A wife they ’d have me to his bed,

And to the church they hurried;

But now, gramercy! he is dead!

Thank God! is dead and buried.

“I ride by tree, I ride by rill,

I ride by rye and clover,

For by the church beyond the hill

Awaits my first true lover.”

AT PARTING

What is there left for us to say,

Now it is time to speak good-by?

And all our dreams of yesterday

Are one with yester-evening’s sky--

What is there left for us to say,

Now different ways before us lie?

A word of hope, a word of cheer,

A word of love, whose help shall last,

When we are far to bring us near

Through memories of the happy past;

A word of hope, a word of cheer,

To keep our young hearts true and fast.

What is there left for us to do,

Now it is time to say farewell?

And care, that bade us once adieu,

Returns again with us to dwell--

What is there left for us to do,

Now different ways our fates compel?

Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile,

And look the love that shall remain--

When severed so by many a mile--

The sweetest balm for bitterest pain:

Clasp hands and kiss, touch lips and smile,

And trust to God to meet again.

IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS

Serious, but smiling, stately and serene,

And lovelier than a flower,

She stands; in whom all sympathies convene

As perfumes in a bower;

Through whom I feel what soul and heart must mean,

And all their love and power.

Eyes, that commune with the frank skies of truth,

Beneath their cloud-like curls;

Lips of immortal rose, where joy and youth

Nestle like priceless pearls;

Hair, that suggests the Bible braids of Ruth,

Deeper than any girl’s.

When first I saw her, ’t was as if within

My gaze took shape some song--

Played by a master of the violin--

A music, pure and strong,

That rapt my soul above all earthly sin

To heights that know no wrong.

“COME TO THE HILLS”

Come to the hills, the woods are green--

The heart is high when lovers meet--

There is a brook that flows between

Mossed rocks where we will make our seat,

Where we will sit and speak unseen.

I hear you laughing in the lane--

The heart is high when lovers meet--

The clover smells of sun and rain

And spreads a carpet for our feet,

Where we will walk and dream again.

Come to the woods, the dusk is here--

The heart is high when lovers meet--

A bird upon the branches near

Sets music to our hearts’ sweet beat,

Our hearts that beat with something dear.

I hear your step; the lane is passed--

The heart is high when lovers meet--

The little stars come bright and fast,

Like happy eyes that watch us, Sweet,

That see us greet and kiss at last.

EVASION

I

Why do I love you, who have never given

My heart encouragement or any cause?

Is it because, as earth is held of heaven,

Your soul holds mine by some mysterious laws?

Perhaps, unseen of me, within your eyes

The answer lies.

II

From your sweet lips no word hath ever fallen

To tell my heart its love is not in vain--

The bee that woos the flow’r hath honey and pollen

To cheer him on and bring him back again:

But what have I, your other friends above,

To feed my love?

III

Still, still you are my dream and my desire;

Your love is an allurement and a dare

Set for attainment, like a shining spire,

Far, far above me in the starry air:

And gazing upward, ’gainst the hope of hope,

I breast the slope.

WILL YOU FORGET?

In years to come, will you forget,

Dear girl, how often we have met?

And I have gazed into your eyes

And there beheld no sad regret

To cloud the gladness of their skies,

While in your heart--unheard as yet--

Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?--

In years to come, will you forget?

Ah, me! I only pray that when,

In other days, some man of men

Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep

With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken

When love awakens in their deep,--

I only pray some memory then,

Or sad or sweet, you still will keep

Of me and love that might have been.

CONTRASTS

No eve of summer ever can attain

The gladness of that eve of late July,

When ’mid the roses, dripping with the rain,

Against the wondrous topaz of the sky,

I met you, leaning on the pasture bars,--

While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars.

No night of blackest winter can repeat

The bitterness of that December night,

When, at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet,

Within the glimmering square of window-light,

We parted,--long you clung unto my arm,--

While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm.

CARISSIMA MEA

I look upon my sweetheart’s face,

And, in the world about me, see

No face like hers in any place.

It is not made, as others sing

Of their young loves, like ivory,

But like a wild-rose in the spring.

Her brow is low and very fair,

And o’er it, smooth and shadowy,

Lies deep the darkness of her hair.

Beneath her brows her eyes gleam gray,

And gaze out glad and fearlessly--

Their wonder haunts me night and day.

Her eyebrows, arched and delicate,--

Twin curves of penciled ebony,--

Within their spans contain my fate.

Her mouth, that was for kisses curved,--

So small and sweet!--it well may be

That it for me is yet reserved.

Between her hair and rounded chin,

Calm with her soul’s calm purity,

There lies no shadow of a sin.

Of perfect form, she is not tall,--

Just higher than the heart of me,

O’er which I place her, all in all.

She is not shaped, as some have sung

Of their young loves, like some slim tree,

But like the moon when it is young.

Her hands, that smell of violet,

So white and fashioned fragrantly,

Have woven round my heart a net.

Yea, I have loved her many a day;

And though for me she may not be,

Still at her feet my love I lay.

Albeit she be not for me,

God send her grace and grant that she

Know naught of sorrow all her days,

And help me still to sing her praise!

AN AUTUMN NIGHT

Some things are good on autumn nights,

When with the storm the forest fights,

And in the room the heaped hearth lights

Old-fashioned press and rafter:

Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,

A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,

And at your side a face petite,

With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,

And, tapping at the window-pane,

The wind that seems a witch’s cane

That summons spells together:

A hand within your own a while;

A mouth reflecting back your smile;

And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile

All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit

And watch her fire-lit needles flit

A-knitting, and to feel her knit

Your very heart-strings in it:

Then, when the old clock ticks “’t is late,”

To rise, and at the door to wait

Two words, or, at the garden-gate,

A kissing minute.

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES

She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen

Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes,

Wherein th’ unconquerable soul defies,

And Love sits throned, imperious and serene.

And I have thought that Liberty, alone

Among her mountain stars, might look like her,

Kneeling to God, her only emperor,

Kindling her torch on Freedom’s altar-stone.

For in her self, regal with riches of

Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born--

Boadicea, meeting scorn with scorn,

And Ermengarde, returning love for love.

THE QUARREL

An instant only and her eyes

Flashed lightning like the angry skies;

And o’er her forehead, curving down,

Fell dark the shadow of a frown;

Then backward, deep and stormy fair,

She tossed the tempest of her hair;

Then of her lips’ full rose disdain

Made a pink-folded bud again;

Then quicker than all utterance,

All changed: and at a word, a glance,

Her anger rained its tears, then passed;

And she was in my arms at last;

The austere woman, doubly dear,

And lovelier for each falling tear:

But why we quarreled, how it grew,

I can not tell, I never knew:

Perhaps ’t was Love; he, who, with tears,

Would show how fair a face appears;

As, after storm, the sky ’s more blue,

A wildflower ’s fairer for the dew.

MIRIAM

What better praise for all her ways

Than that all days her ways illume?

Such brightness as the maiden year

Knows, when God’s kindness seems as near

As flowers whose wisdom ’s but to bloom.

Hers the deep hair: a face more fair

Than roses June sets blossoming:

The sunshine of her gladness gleams

In bloom-bright lips and cheeks, and dreams

Upon her throat’s soft coloring.

Her voice is sweet as birds that greet

With song the coming of the light:

The serious happy gleam that lies

In the dark lustre of her eyes

Is as the starlight to the night.

Beyond the sea such girls as she

It was whom Titian loved to paint,

With calm Madonna eyes, and hair

Rich auburn; robed in gold and vair,

Fair as the vision of a saint.

THE SUMMER SEA

Over the summer sea,

When the white-eyed stars look pale,

And the moonbeams make a trail

Of gold through the waves for me,

I turn my ghostly sail

Away, away,

And follow the form I see

Over the summer sea.

Over the misty sea,

Ere the cliff which highest soars

From the billow-beaten shores

Reddens all rosily,

Where the witch-white water roars,

Far on, far on.

Through the foam she beckons me

Over the summer sea.

Over the haunted sea,

When the great, gold moon low lies

On the rim of the western skies,

’Twixt the moon, she comes, and me,

And gazes in my eyes;

Low down, low down,

’Twixt the orbéd moon and me,

Over the summer sea.

Deep in the bitter sea,

Wilt thou drag me down, O sweet?

Down, down! from hair to feet

Filled with thee utterly?

Against thy heart’s wild beat?--

At last! at last!

Wilt drag me down with thee,

Deep in the summer sea?

FINALE

So let it be. Thou dare not say ’t was I!--

Here in life’s temple, where thy soul can see,

Look where the beauty of our love doth lie,

Shattered in shards, a dead divinity!--

Approach: kneel down: yea, render up one sigh!

This is the end. What need to tell it thee!

So let it be.

So let it be. Care, who hath stood with him,

And sorrow, who sat by him deified,--

For whom his face made comfort,--lo! how dim

They heap his altar which they can not hide,

While memory’s lamp swings o’er it, burning slim.--

This is the end. What shall be said beside?

So let it be.

So let it be. Did we not drain the wine,

Red, of love’s sacramental chalice, when

He laid sweet sanction on thy lips and mine?

Dash it aside! Lo, who will fill again

Now it is empty of the god divine!--

This is the end. Yea, let us say Amen.

So let it be.

CONCLUSION

The songs Love sang to us are dead:

Yet shall he sing to us again,

When the dull days are wrapped in lead,

And the red woodland drips with rain.

The lily of our love is gone,

That graced our spring with golden scent:

Now in the garden low upon

The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.

Our rose of dreams is passed away,

That lit our summer with sweet fire:

The storm beats bare each thorny spray,

And its dead leaves are trod in mire.

The songs Love sang to us are dead:

Yet shall he sing to us again,

When the dull days are wrapped in lead,

And the red woodland drips with rain.

The marigold of memory

Shall fill our autumn then with glow:

Haply its bitterness will be

Sweeter for love of long-ago.

The cypress of forgetfulness

Shall haunt our winter with its hue:

Its apathy to us not less

Dear for the dreams love’s summer knew.