Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

When you were born, the Earth obeyed;
(Call her, Echo!)
Fragrancies from the distance blew,
Beanfields and violets were made,
And jasmine by the cypress grew—
Jasmine by the cloudy yew—
(Call, her, Echo!
(Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, despairs must die,
(Call her, Echo!)
Sweet tongues were loosened from a spell—
Snow mountains glistened from on high
And torrents to the valleys fell—
A song into Man's bosom fell—
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, hid lightning's shape
(Call her, Echo!)
Took up the poor man's altar coal,
His green vine throbbed into the grape,

And in the dastard sprang a soul—
Even in the dastard sprang a soul!
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, all golden shot
(Call her, Echo!)
Fountains of daybreak from the sea,
And still, if near I find you not—
If steps I hear, but you come not—
Darkness lies on the world for me!
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

2: THE CROCUS

I

On mountains the crocus
Ere hollows be clear
In the bed of the snowdrift
Will rise and appear;
Aloft the pure crocus
Born under the snow
In the sun is left trembling,
All bare to his glow,
Like the heart of the woman who listens to
love in the forests below:

II

“O light-born, how oft
Shall I drink in, like wine,
Thy body cloud-soft,
Earth's marvel, yet mine?
How oft shall I dare,
Unabsolvèd by death,
In the flood of thy hair,
In the flame of thy breath?
From the incense-boat Sun hast thou wandered,
a dream from a time beyond death?”

III

She yearns to respond
To that strain out of reach,
To that glowing and subtle
Stream-spirit of speech.
But she weeps—ah, too childish—
For love is the span
Of the half-bestrung lyre
Of the language of man;
She breathes the sun-song of the crocus,—
reveal it, repeat it, who can!

In the Jura, June.

3: THE NIGHT

I put aside the branches
That clothe the Door in gloom;
A glow-worm lit the pathway
And a lamp out of her room
Shook down a stifled greeting.
How could it greet aright
The thirst of years like deserts
That led up to this night?

But she, like sighing forests,
Stole on me—full of rest;
Her hair was like the sea's waves,
Whiteness was in her breast.
(So does one come, at night, upon a wall of roses.)

As in a stone of crystal
The cloudy web and flaw
Turns, at a flash, to rainbows,
Wing'd I became—I saw,
I sang—but human singing
Ceased, in a burning awe.
Slow, amid leaves, in silence,
Rapt as the holy pray,
Flame into flame we trembled,
And the world sank away.

4: THE REPARATION

When Man was hounded from glens of Eden, a rover,
By reason of her, his mate,
And under the pair lay the stone of the world, and over
Terrors of Night and Fate,
O then did the sorrowful hands of the Woman discover
A roof against despair,
And spread for the rebel head of her dreaming lover
The shadow of her hair.

5: THINE EYES IN MINE EYES

Thine eyes in mine eyes
Swift though the flame dies
Each to each, mirror-wise,
Open infinities.

Freely without end
Light may the soul spend.
Rings of the pool blend;
So thou and I, friend.

6: COME, LET US MAKE LOVE DEATHLESS

Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief—
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take;
If we go hence to-day
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they!

Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I'll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendour that we wear.
Great be the love, if with the lover dies
Our greatness past recall,
And nobler for the fading of those eyes
The world seen once for all!

7: SONG ON BLACKDOWN

Since it was love of you that first revealed
Rapture of glens and blown dance of the sky,
The march of storm and rivers in the field
And hanging blaze of ocean, how should I
Without your presence feel that spirit strong
That kissed my soul to song,
And showed me the moon's race, of dreamy nights,
When through the pearly reefs she foams along
Zoned with a flame athwart the wine-dark heights
To build about the night-paths of the summer
Her sunken palaces of silver lights?

Come, come, and climb with me to this great Down
Where the sea-roar of pines puts care to sleep,
And 'midst the blaeberry and heather brown
Watch far below resistless shadows sweep
The Wealden plain whose villages ray fire
From many a chanted shire—
Walk with me now above the plains and seas,
Ere in us both the springs of life expire—
And leave with hearts flung open to the breeze
Self-muttering cities, that have lost horizons,
To sink behind the mountains and the trees!

8: THERE IS A PLANT THAT BLOSSOMS AT MIDNIGHT

There is a plant that blossoms at midnight
And fosters in itself a sombre dawn;
And some in passion only find delight
Leaping to sorrow, like seed furnace-drawn;

But thou upon the forces that enslave
Breakest like light, where the deep chasms immure,
For thou art of the race of them that save,
And where thy footstep passes it makes pure.

Like the first hour of morning, sleep-washed, free,
When every pulse of man's collected soul
Ascends to be what it was born to be,
Returning like the needle to the pole,

Noiselessly as a perfume or a prayer,
Or lake-born cloud, the flame that in thee lies
Unseals over the mountains of dense care
The welling golden water of sunrise.

Gignese, above Lago Maggiore, 1912.

9: SHE COMES NOT WHEN NOON IS ON THE ROSES

She comes not when Noon is on the roses—
Too bright is Day.
She comes not to the soul till it reposes
From work and play.

But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices
Roll in from sea,
By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight
She comes to me.

10: A SONG

Her, my own sad love divine,
Did I pierce as with a knife,
Stabbed with words that seemed not mine
Her more dear to me than life.

And she raised, she raised her head,
Slow that smile, pale to the brow:
“Lovely songs when I am dead
You will make for me; but how
Shall I hear them then?” she said,
“Make them now, O make them now!”

11: REQUICKENING VOICE

Tired with the day's monotony of dreamèd joys
I turn to a requickening voice,
A voice whose low tone devastates with nightly thrill
The cities I have wrought at will:
Stone forts depart, and armies heroic flee away
Like the wild snow of spray,
Deep down the green Broceliande's branch'd corridors
That voice of April pours;
Light as a bird's light shadow fled across my pages
A touch disturbs the ages,
And the crags and spears of Troy and the courts of Charlemain,
Odin, and the splendid strain
Of Cuchullain's self, that with his heart's high brother strove,—
Fade at the low voice I love!

12: TO-NIGHT DARK SEAS AND LANDS

To-night dark seas and lands
Between us lie
And, to taunt these graceless hands,
Stern mountains high.
Yet to-night your voice from home
Most soft, most clear,
Over the gulfs hath come
Straight to mine ear.

Still chain'd between two poles
Must mortals move
Fronting with Janus souls
On war, on love?
Descend on them that steer it—
Our ship ill-guided—
Descend, sweet-counsell'd spirit,
On Earth divided!

Long since, in the desert's heat,
I swooned, I fell,
To find your love at my feet
Like the desert's well;
Now, loftier and more profound
Than the Dawn at sea,
Your spirit, like heavenly sound,
Delivers me.

13: TO AROLILIA, URGING HIM

Not laurels,—were they lying at my feet!
Let hot-foot boys hunt the gold leaves of Fame.
Received at thy hands, once they had been sweet,
But not now; less than silence is a name.

Fame! When thy thousand graces ask no praise—
When all that perfect soul shall disappear,
And leave no footprint of thy lovely ways
Save in the desperate heart that held thee dear!

Namelessly still, and yet all Fame surviving
Beyond Death's baulk thy very self shalt move—
All that's most thou in thee light on the living,
Never to hear of thee, nor of thy love.

We once found, where the Alpine forests blow,
Columbine floating, heavenliest dreamer there;
Nothing of its own beauty could it know,
And for nothing less than for our praises care.

That chalice would not last! O, had it choice
'Twould drain at once the whole illumin'd sky
That enters it in rushing light and voice,
To change into an “I” greater than “I”!

Thy leaves ask not to last! Too close, too fine,
That glow of the Absolute, inhung, they feel;
The quick breath-sweeping thrill of the divine—
Its very warmth left fresh on thee for seal!

What's Fame to me, when thou wilt smile and pass
Dew-like? For mean lives trumpets shall be blown;
Thou wilt go wandering through the gate of grass,
And thy place after thee be all unknown.