The poems of Madison Cawein

Would I could sing of joy I only
Remember as without alloy:
Of life full-filled, that once was lonely:
Of love a treasure, not a toy:
Of grief, regret but makes the keener,
Of aspiration, failure mars—
These would I sing, and sit serener
Than song among the stars.

Would I could sing of faith unbroken;
Of heart-kept vows, and not of tears:
Of promised faith and vows love-spoken,
That have been kept through many years:
Of truth, the false but leaves the truer;
Of trust, the doubt makes doubly sure—
These would I sing, the noble doer
Whose dauntless heart is pure.

I would not sing of time made hateful;
Of hope that only clings to hate:
Of charity, that grows ungrateful;
And pride that will not stand and wait.—

261

Of humbleness, care hath imparted;
Of resignation, born of ills,
These would I sing, and stand high-hearted
As hope upon the hills.

Once on a throne of gold and scarlet
I touched a harp and felt it break;
I dreamed I was a king—a varlet,
A slave, who only slept to wake!—
Still on that harp my memory lingers,
While on a tomb I lean and read,
“Dust are our songs, and dust we singers,
And dust are all who heed.”

265

[What though I dreamed of mountain heights]

What though I dreamed of mountain heights,
Of peaks, the barriers of the world,
Around whose tops the Northern Lights
And tempests are unfurled!

Mine are the footpaths leading through
Life's lowly fields and woods,—with rifts,
Above, of heaven's Eden blue,—
By which the violet lifts

Its shy appeal; and, holding up
Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine,
Along the hillside, cup on cup,
Blooms bright the celandine.

Where soft upon each flowering stock
The butterfly spreads damask wings;
And under grassy loam and rock
The cottage cricket sings.

Where overhead eve blooms with fire,
In which the new moon bends her bow,
And, arrow-like, one white star by her
Burns through the afterglow.

266

I care not, so the sesame
I find; the magic flower there,
Whose touch unseals each mystery
In water, earth, and air.

That in the oak tree lets me hear
Its heart's deep speech, its soul's dim words;
And to my mind makes crystal clear
The messages of birds.

Why should I care, who live aloof
Beyond the din of life and dust,
While dreams still share my humble roof,
And love makes sweet my crust.

267

GERTRUDE

When first I gazed on Gertrude's face,
Beheld her loveliness and grace;
Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair,
Her ways, more winsome than the spring's;
Her smile, like some sweet flower, that flings
Its fragrance on the summer air;
And when, like some wild-bird that sings,
I heard her voice,—I did declare,—
And still declare!—there is no one,
No girl beneath the moon or sun,
So beautiful to look upon!
And to my heart, as I know well,
Nothing seems more desirable,—
Not Ophir gold, nor Orient pearls—
Than seems this jewel-girl of girls.

268

LOVE

For him, who loves, each mounting morn
Breathes melody more sweet than birds';
And every wind-stirred flower and thorn
Whispers melodious words:—
Would you believe that everything
Through her loved voice is made to sing?

For her, the faultless skies of day
Grow nearer in eternal blue,
Where God is felt as wind and ray,
And seen as fire and dew:—
Would you believe that all the skies
Are Heaven only through his eyes?

For them, the dreams that haunt the night
With mystic beauty and romance,
Are presences of starry light,
And moony radiance:—
Would you believe this love of theirs
Could make for them a universe?

269

HEART OF MY HEART

I

Here where the season turns the land to gold,
Among the fields our feet have known of old,—
When we were children who would laugh and run,
Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,—
Before came toil and care and years went ill,
And one forgot and one remembered still;
Heart of my heart, among the old fields here,
Give me your hands and let me draw you near,
Heart of my heart.

II

Stars are not truer than your soul is true;
What need I more of heaven then than you?
Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet—
What need I more to make my world complete?

270

O woman nature, love that still endures,
What strength hath ours that is not born of yours?
Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come,
To you the lead, whose love hath led me home.
Heart of my heart.

271

STROLLERS

I

We have no castles,
We have no vassals,
We have no riches, no gems and no gold:
Nothing to ponder;
Nothing to squander—
Let us go wander
As minstrels of old.

II

You with your lute, love;
I with my flute, love,
Let us make music by mountain and sea:
You with your glances,
I with my dances,
Singing romances
Of old chivalry.

272

III

“Derry down derry!
Good folk, be merry!
Hither! and hearken where happiness is!
Never go borrow
Care of to-morrow,
Never go sorrow
While life hath a kiss!”

IV

Let the day gladden,
Or the night sadden,
We will be merry in sunshine or snow:
You with your rhyme, love,
I with my chime, love,
We will make Time, love,
Dance as we go.

V

Nothing is ours;
Only the flowers,
Meadows, and stars, and the heavens above:
Nothing to lie for,
Nothing to sigh for,
Nothing to die for
While still we have love.

273

VI

“Derry down derry!
Good folk, be merry!
Hither! and hearken a word that is sooth:—
Care ye not any,
If ye have many,
Or not a penny,
If still ye have youth!”

274

THE BURDEN OF DESIRE

I

In some dim way I know thereof:
A garden glows down in my heart,
Wherein I meet and often part
With many an ancient tale of love.
A Romeo garden, banked with bloom,
And trellised with the eglantine;
In which a rose climbs to a room,
A balcony one mass of vine,
Dim, haunted of perfume.
A balcony, whereon she gleams,
The soft Desire of all Dreams,
And smiles and bends like Juliet,
Year after year,
While to her side, all dewy wet,
A rose stuck in his ear,
Love climbs to draw her near.

275

II

And in another way I know,
Down in my soul a graveyard lies,
Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise,
With many an ancient tale of woe.
A graveyard of the Capulets,
Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom,
Through whose dark yews the moonlight jets
On many a wildly carven tomb,
That mossy mildew frets.
A graveyard where the Soul's Desire
Sleeps, pale-entombed; and, kneeling by her,
Love, like that hapless Montague,
Year after year,
Weary and worn and wild of hue,
Within her sepulchre,
Falls bleeding on her bier.

276

THE TRYST

At dusk there fell a shower:
The leaves were dripping yet:
Each fern and rain-weighed flower
Around was gleaming wet,
When, through the evening glower,
His feet towards her were set.

The dust's damp odor sifted
Around him, cool with rain,
Mixed with the musk that drifted
From woodland and from plain,
Where white her garden lifted
Its pickets down the lane.

And there she stood! 'mid scattered
Clove-pink and pea and whorl
Of honeysuckle,—flattered
To sweetness wild,—a girl,
O'er whom the clouds hung shattered
In moonlit peaks of pearl.

277

She made the night completer
For him; and earth and air,
In that small spot, far sweeter
Than heaven or anywhere.—
Swift were his lips to greet her,
Her lips love lifted there.

278

GYPSYING

Your heart's a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember 's the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.

A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we'll read the rune,
While we two go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
A love-word of the water we'll often stop to hear—
The echoed words and whispers of our own hearts, my dear.

279

And all our paths shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.

It will not be forever; yet merry goes the tune
While we two still are rovers beneath the summer moon.
A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight,
When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:
Where we can dream together above the logs and croon
The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.

280

UNCERTAINTY

“‘He cometh not,’ she said.”— Mariana.

It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met
With the old doubt in hope's disguise.

The panes were sweated with the dawn;
Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
The aigret of one princess-feather,
One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan,
I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.

This morning when my window's chintz
I drew, how gray the day was!—Since
I saw him, yea, all days are gray!—
I gazed out on my dripping quince,
Defruited, torn; then turned away

281

To weep, but did not weep: but felt
A colder anguish than did melt
About the tearful-visaged Year!—
Then flung the lattice wide and smelt
The autumn sorrow. Rotting near

The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached,
Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached
And morning-glories, seeded o'er
With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched
One last bloom, frozen to the core.

The podded hollyhocks—that Fall
Had stripped of finery—by the wall
Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped,
The fog thick on them: near them, all
The tarnished, hag-like zinnias tipped.

I felt the death and loved it: yea,
To have it nearer, sought the gray,
Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep,
But wandered in an aimless way,
And yearned with weariness to sleep.

Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks,
The weak lights on the leafy walks,
The shadows shivering with the cold;
The breaking heart; the lonely talks;
The last, dim, ruined marigold.

282

But when, to-night, the moon swings low—
A great marsh-marigold of glow—
And all my garden with the sea
Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know
His ghost will come to comfort me.

283

LOST LOVE

I loved her madly. For—so wrought
Young Love, divining Isles of Truth
Large in the central seas of Youth—
“Love will win love,” I thought.

Once when I brought a rare wild pink
To place among her plants, the wise,
Soft lifting of her speaking eyes
Said more than thanks, I think. ...

She loved another.—Yes, I know
All you would say of woman. You,
Like other men, would comfort too. ...
But then I loved her so.

She loved another.—Ah! too well
I know the story of her soul!—
A weary tale the weary whole
Of how she loved and fell.

284

I loved her so! ... Remembering now
My mad grief then, I wonder why
Grief never kills. ... I could not die.—
She died—I know not how.

Strange, is it not? For she was dear
To me as life once.—A regret
She is now; just to make eyes wet
And bring a fullness here.

Yet, had she lived as dead in shame
As now in death, Love would have used
Pride's pitying pencil and abused
The memory of her name.

This helps me thank my God, who led
My broken life in sunlight of
This pure affection, that my love
Lives through her being dead.

285

OVERSEAS

Non numero horas nisi serenas.

When fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
In soul I am a part of it;
A portion of its humid beams,
A form of fog, I seem to flit
From dreams to dreams.

An old chateau sleeps 'mid the hills
Of France: an avenue of sorbs
Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs
Like iron bills.

I pass the gate unquestioned, yet,
I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
Dark pools of restless violet.
Between high bramble banks a lake,—
As in a net

286

The tangled scales twist silver,—shines ...
Gray, mossy turrets swell above
A sea of leaves. And where the pines
Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
My heart divines.

I know her window, dimly seen
From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged:
Her garden, with the nectarine
Espaliered, and the peach-tree, wedged
'Twixt walls of green.

Cool-babbling a fountain falls
From gryphons' mouths in porphyry;
Carp haunt its waters; and white balls
Of lilies dip it that the bee
Sucks in and drawls.

And butterflies, each with a face
Of faëry on its wings, that seem
Beheaded pansies, softly chase
Each other down the gloom and gleam
Trees interspace.

And roses! roses, soft as vair,
Round sylvan statues and the old
Stone dial—Pompadours that wear
Their royalty of purple and gold
With queenly air. ...

287

Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe
The perfume of her touch; her gloves,
Modeling the daintiness they sheathe;
Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves,
Lie there beneath

A bank of eglantines that heaps
A rose-strewn shadow.—Naïve-eyed,
With lips as suave as they, she sleeps;
The romance by her, open wide,
O'er which she weeps.

288

AT THE STILE

Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
Over the stile when the sun was sinking;
'T was only Carrie; just Mary's sister!—
And love hath a way of thinking.

“Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry.”
Over the stile one star hung yellow.—
“Just to the spring, my dearest Harry.”—
And Love is a heartless fellow.

“Thou saidst me ‘yea’ in an April shower
Under this tree with leaves a-quiver.”—
“I say thee nay now the cherry 's in flower,
And love is taker and giver.”

“O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!”—
The light in her eyes grew trist and trister:
“To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart,
I never was aught but Mary's sister.

289

“Sweet Mary's sister! just little Carrie!—
But what avail my words or weeping?—
Next month, perhaps, you two will marry—
And I in my grave be sleeping.”

Alone she stands 'mid the meadow millet,
Wan as the petals the wind is strewing:
Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it—
And love hath a way of doing.

290

FERN-SEED

“We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible.”—

Henry IV.

And you and I have met but thrice!—
Three times enough to make me love!—
I praised your hair once; then your glove;
Your eyes; your gown—you were like ice.
And yet this might suffice, my love,
And yet this might suffice.

I know now what it is I'll do:
I'll search and find the ferns that grow
The fern-seed that the fairies know,
And sprinkle fern-seed in my shoe,
And haunt the steps of you, my dear,
And haunt the steps of you.

You'll see the poppy-pods dip here,
The blow-ball of the thistle slip,
And no wind breathing—but my lip
Next to your anxious cheek and ear,
To tell you I am near, my love,
To tell you I am near.

291

On wood-ways I will tread your gown—
You'll know it is no brier!—then
I'll whisper words of love again,
And smile to see your quick face frown;
And then I'll kiss it down, my dear,
And then I'll kiss it down.

You'll sit at home and read or knit,
When suddenly the page is blotted—
My hands!—or all your needles knotted:
And in your rage you'll cry a bit:
But I—I'll laugh at it, my love,
But I—I'll laugh at it.

The secrets which you say at prayer
I too will hear; or, when you sing,
I too will sing, and whispering
Bend down and kiss your eyes and hair,
And you will know me there, my dear,
And you will know me there.

Would it were true what people say!—
Would I could find that faëry seed!
Then would I win your love, indeed,
By being near you night and day:—
There is no other way, my love,
There is no other way.

292

PORPHYROGENITA

I

Was it when Kriemhild was queen
That we rode by ways forgotten
Through the Rhineland, dimly seen
'Neath a low moon white as cotton?
I, a knight? or troubadour?
Thou, a princess?—or a poor
Damsel of the Royal Closes?—
For, I met thee—somewhere sure! ...
Was it 'mid Kriemhilda's roses?

II

Or in Venice, by the sea?—
What romance grew up between us?
Thou, a doge's daughter?—She,
Titian painted once as Venus?—
I, a gondolier whose barque
Glided past thy palace dark?—
Near St. Mark's? or Casa d'Oro?—
From thy casement didst thou hark
To my barcarolle's “Te oro”?

293

III

Klaia wast, of Egypt: yea,
Languid as its sacred lily.
Didst with me a year and day
Love upon the Isle of Philæ?
I, a priest of Isis?—Sweet,
'Neath the date-palms did we meet
By a temple's pillared marble?
While, from its star-still retreat,
Sank the nightingale's wild warble?

IV

Have I dreamed that I, thy slave,
From thy lattice, my sultana,
Beckoning, thy white hand did wave,
Dropped me once a rose? sweet manna
Of thy kiss warm in its heart?
That, through my Chaldæan art,
With thy Khalif's bags of treasure,
From Damascus we did start,
Fled to some far land of pleasure?

V

Was I one? another thou?—
Let it be. What of it, dearest?—

294

Haply 'tis the memory now
Of these passions dead thou fearest?—
Nay! those loves are portions of,
Evolutions of this love,
Present love, where thou appearest
To combine them all and prove.

295

THE CASTLE OF LOVE

He
speaks

I

Now listen! 'tis time that you knew it.—
Like the prince in the Asian tale,
I wandered on deserts that panted
With noon to a castle enchanted,
That Afrits had built in a vale;
A vale where the sunlight lay pale
As moonlight. And round it and through it
I searched and I searched. Like the tale,

II

No eunuch, black-browed as a Marid,
Prevented me. Shadows it seemed
Were the slaves there, with kohl and with henné
In eyes and on fingers; and many
The phantoms of beauty, that dreamed
Where censers of ambergris steamed.
And I came on a colonnade, quarried
From silvery marble it seemed.

296

III

And here, in a court, wide, estraded,
Rich tulips, like carbuncles, bloomed,
And jonquils and roses:—and lories,
And cockatoos, brilliant in glories
Of plumes, like great blossoms illumed,
Winged, splashed in a fountain perfumed:
Kept captive by network of braided,
Spun gold where stone galleries gloomed.

IV

From nipples of back-bending Peris
Of gold, glowing auburn, in rays
The odorous fountain sprang calling:
I heard through the white water's falling,—
As soft as the zephyr that plays
With moonlight on bloom-haunted ways,—
A music; a sound, as if fairies
Touched wind-harps whose chords were of rays.

V

I followed: through corridors paneled
With sandal; through doorways deep-draped
With stuffs of Chosroës, rich-garded

297

With Indian gold; up the corded
Stone stairway, bronze-dragoned, wing-shaped:
Through moon-spangled hangings escaped—
'Twixt pillars of juniper channeled—
To a room constellated and draped.

VI

As in legends of witchcraft: a vassal
Of visions beholds naught yet hears
Sweet voices that call and he follows,—
So me, like the fragrance of aloes,
That chamber with song, it appears,
Surrounded; the song of the spheres ...
My soul found your soul such a castle—
Your love is the music it hears.

298

CONSECRATION

She
speaks

Last night you told me, where we, parting, waited,
Of love somehow I'd known before you told.—
Long, long ago, perhaps, this love was fated,
For why was it made suddenly so old?

Is it because the love we have and cherish
Born with us seems, and as ourselves shall last?
Part of our lives, we can not let it perish
Out of our present's future or its past?

Yet, all was changed; and, still, I did not wonder
That, robed in vaster splendor, broke the dawn:
Nor marvel that, beside my feet and under,
Each flower seemed fairer than the flower gone.

299

The wild bird's silvery warble seemed completer;
A whiter magic filled the morn and noon,
And night—each night!—seemed holier grown and sweeter
With Babylonian witchcraft of the moon.—

Is love an emanation? whose ideal
Communicates its beauty?—Is it moved
Through some strange means to consecrate the real?
Making the world the worthier to be loved?

300

ROMANTIC LOVE

I

Is it not sweet not know?—
The moon hath told me so—
That in some lost romance, love,
Long lost to us below,
A knight with casque and lance, love,
A thousand years ago,
I kissed you from a trance, love?—
The moon hath told me so.

II

Or were it strange to wis?—
The stars have told me this—
That once a nightingale, love,
Sang on an Isle of Greece;
From whose melodious wail, love,
Its song's wild harmonies,
Was born a spirit-woman—
Yourself! whom I, a human,
Made mine! ... So goes the tale, love!—
The stars have told me this.

301

III

Is it not quaint to tell?—
The flowers remember well—
How once a wild-rose blew, love,
Dim in a haunted dell;
To which a bee was true, love.
The bee, so it befell,
Was I: the rose was you, love! ...
The flowers remember well.

IV

To moon and flower and star
We are not what we are.—
Sometimes, from o'er that sea, love,
Whose golden sands are far,—
From shores of Destiny, love,—
The dreams that know no bar,
Will waft a truth that glistens
To Memory who listens,
Reminding you and me, love,
We are not what we are.

302

PASTORAL LOVE

The pied pinks tilt in the wind that worries—
Sing, Oh, the wind and the red o' her cheek!—
And the slow sun creeps on the rye nor hurries—
And what shall a lover speak?

The toad-flax brightens the flaxen hollows—
Sing, Ay, the bloom and her yellow hair!—
And the greenwood brook a wood-way follows—
And what shall a lover dare?

The deep woods gleam that the sunlight sprinkles—
Sing, Hey, the day and her laughing eye!—
And a brown bird pipes and a wild fall tinkles—
And what may a maid reply?

303

Hey, the hills when the evening settles!
Oh, the heavens within her eyes!
What will he ask 'mid the dropping petals?
And what will she say with sighs?—

“Look, where the west is a blur of roses!”—
“There's naught like the rose o' the cheeks I see!”—
“Look, where the first star's eye uncloses!”—
“But what of your eyes, my destiny?”

304

ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME

I

Blow, winds, and waken her!
You, who have taken her,
Never forsaken her,
Filled her with spring!
My mad and merriest
Part of the veriest
Season and cheeriest:
Blow, winds! and sing,
Birds of the spring! that taught her
Airs of the woods; this daughter
Wild of the winds, that waft her
Into my heart with laughter,
Wild as a wildwood thing.

II

She, who is fraught with it,
Thrilled with it, brought with it,
Spring!—like a thought, with it
Beautiful too!

305

Now like a dream of it;
Filled with the gleam of it;
Now a bright beam of it,
Piercing me through,
Sweet, with her eyes that are often
Laughter and languor; that soften
Dreamily, drowsily, slowly,
Then, on a sudden, are wholly
Dancing as dew.

III

Face,—like the sweetest of
Perfumes,—completest of
Flowers God's fleetest of
Months ever bear!—
Listen, O lisper wind,—
Lighter and crisper wind,—
Have you a whisper, wind,
Soft as her hair?
Night and the stars did spin it;
Darkness and brightness are in it:
Let but a ray of it bind me,
Wrap it around me and wind me,
Blind as the blind are and blinder,
Yet through my heart would I find her,
Lost though I were.

306

OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN

Not redder than her lips
This weather!
Not rosier two rose-hips
Together!
As she comes carolling
Down wildwood ways, where sing
The birds, and flowers swing
In many a feather.

Of her belovéd cheeks
October
Makes flame-flushed leaves, and speaks,—
Now sober,
Now wild,—its happiness
In gold, and on her dress
Lays many a bright caress
As if to robe her.

The wild-birds praise her eyes
Each hour;
Above her bend the skies
And shower

307

Around her, there and here,
Strays of the passing year,
Azure and gold and sere
Of weed and flower.

The wood-winds kiss her hair
And wonder
What flower blossoms there:
And, under
Its deeps of acorn-brown,
Her glory and her crown,
The sunbeams lay them down,
And dream and ponder.

And I—I take her hands,
Her lover;
And kiss her where she stands;
And over
Our heads the soft winds call,
And heav'n smiles down; and all
The golden dreams of Fall
Around us hover.

308

SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND

I

O you, who know our Mays that blow
The bluets by the ways;
The Indian-pink,—whose bloom you 'd think
Was blood for some wild bee to drink,—
How—can you say—in their wise way
Is it you 're like our Mays?—
In gleam and gloom and wild perfume
Of moods that run from shade to sun:—
While in you seems the light that dreams
In thoughts of other days.

II

Meseems some song, for which I long,
From you to me takes wing
Each time you speak; a bird, whose beak
Is in my heart; whose wildwood art
Makes every beat say “Sweet, sweet, sweet,”
And all its pulses sing.

309

And when I gaze upon your face,
I seem to look into a brook,
That laughs through buds and leafing woods,
Reflecting all the spring.

III

You spoke but now—and, lo! I vow,
From haunts of hart and hind
I seemed to hear Romance draw near,
White hand in hand with Song, and stand,
In some green aisle of wood, and smile,
Beguiling soul and mind:
You laugh—and, lo! I seem to go
In Mirth's young train; and bird-songs rain
Around, above; and Joy and Love
Come dancing down the wind.

310

WITNESSES

I

You say I do not love you!—Tell me why,
When I have gazed a little on your face,
And then gone forth into the world of men,
A beauty, neither of the earth nor sky,
A glamour, that transforms each common place,
Attends my spirit then?

II

You say I do not love you!—Yet, I know,
When I have heard you speak and dwelt upon
Your words a while, my heart has gone away
Filled with strange music, very soft and low,
A dim companion, touching with sweet tone
The discords of the day.

III

You say I do not love you!—Yet, it seems,
When I have kissed your hand and said farewell,

311

A fragrance, wilder than the wood's wild bloom,
Companions dim my soul and fills, with dreams,
The sad and sordid streets where people dwell,
Dreams of spring's wild perfume.

312

A PUPIL OF PAN

My love's adorable and wise
As heaven and the winds of spring:
Go thou and gaze into her eyes—
Such scholars of the starry skies!
—Canst marvel at the thing?

My love is like a bud that blows
With fragrant honey in its heart:
Go, watch her smile—Wouldst not suppose
She from some warm, white, serious rose
Had learned the happy art?

The thoughts she speaks are pearls unstrung
That strew her fancy's golden floor:
Go listen—For, the woods among,
She met with Pan, when very young,
Who taught her all his lore.

313

LORA OF THE VALES

Lora is her name that slips
Soft as love between the lips:
You must know she is so wise
All she does is lift her eyes,—
Larkspur-blue as April skies,—
At her name—and that replies—
She 's so wise, is Lora.

Lora is her name whose sound
Hedges all my heart around
With the gold of happiness:
When she speaks, you will confess,
Music's self her words express,
Every vowel a caress—
She 's so kind, is Lora.

Lora is her name that brings
Thoughts to me of morning things:
Songs of birds; of bees that creep
In the rumpled bluebells deep;
Butterflies, that, half asleep,
On some rose their vigil keep—
She 's so young, is Lora.

314

Lora, lean to mine your face;
So; and round you let me lace
One firm arm, and gently woo
Your small mouth, as fresh as dew,
Till it says your heart is true,
True to me as mine to you,
Sunny-hearted Lora!

315

PLEDGES

I

What the May-apple or
Woodland anemone—
Star-perfect as a star—
Says to the honey-bee:
Or to the winds that woo,
Filling their hearts with dew:
What says the bluet's blue
To the sun's ray—do you
Know or do I?—

II

Listen, and you may hear
What the oxalis says
Into the downy ear
Of the pale moth that sways
There on its heart and drinks:
Or what the forest-pinks
Say to the dew that winks,
Butterfly-wing that blinks—
Glimmering by.

316

III

They say: “When April trod
By in a blowing blush,—
Wise as a word of God
Holding all Heaven a-hush,—
Singing a song of love,
We, as she passed above,
Sprang from the notes thereof,
Filling with joy each grove,
Beauty and mystery.”

317

ORIENTAL ROMANCE

I

Beyond lost seas of summer she
Dwelt on an island of the sea,
Last scion of that dynasty,
Queen of a race forgotten long,—
With eyes of light and lips of song,
From seaward groves of blowing lemon,
She called me in her native tongue,
Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen.

II

I was a king. Three moons we drove
Across green gulfs, the crimson clove
And cassia spiced, to claim her love.
Packed was my barque with gums and gold;
Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old
With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,—
Than her white breasts less white and cold;—
And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman.

318

III

From Bassora I came. We saw
Her condor castle on a claw
Of soaring precipice, o'erawe
The surge and thunder of the spray:
Like some great opal, far away
It shone, with battlement and spire,
Wherefrom, with wild aroma, day
Blew splintered lights of sapphirine fire.

IV

Lamenting caverns, dark and deep,
That catacombed the haunted steep,
Led upward to her castle-keep ...
Fair as the moon, whose light is shed
In Ramadan, was she, who led
My love unto her island bowers,
To find her ... lying young and dead
Among her maidens and her flowers.

319

THE TOLLMAN'S DAUGHTER

She stood waist-deep among the briers:
Above, in twisted lengths, were rolled
The sunset's tangled whorls of gold,
Blown from the west's cloud-pillared fires.
And in the hush, no sound did mar,
You almost heard, o'er hill and dell,
Deep, bubbling over, star on star,
The night's blue cisterns slowly well.
A crane, a shadowy crescent, crossed
The sunset, winging 'thwart the west;
While up the east her silver breast
Of light the moon brought, white as frost.

So have I painted her, you see,
The tollman's daughter.—What an arm
And throat were hers! and what a form!
—Art dreams of such divinity.
What braids of night to smooth and kiss!—
There is no pigment anywhere
A man might use to picture this—
The splendor of her raven hair.

320

A face as beautiful and bright,
As rosy fair as twilight skies,
Lit with the stars of hazel eyes
And eyebrowed black with penciled night.

For her, I know, where'er she trod
Each dewdrop raised a looking-glass,
To catch her image, from the grass;
That wildflowers bloomed along the sod,
And whispered perfume when she smiled;
The wood-bird hushed to hear her song,
Or, heart-enamoured, tame though wild,
Before her feet flew fluttering long:
The brook went mad with melody,
Eddied in laughter when she kissed
With naked feet its amethyst—
And I—she was my world, ah me!

321

CREOLE SERENADE

Under moss-draped oak and pine,
Murmuring, falls the fountained stream;
In its pool the lilies shine,
Silvery, each a glimmering gleam.

Roses bloom and roses die
In the warm rose-scented dark,
Where the firefly, like an eye,
Winks and glows, a golden spark.

Amber-belted through the night
Drifts the alabaster moon,
Like a big magnolia white
On the fragrant heart of June.

With a broken syrinx there,
With bignonia overgrown,
Is it Pan in hoof and hair?—
Or his image carved from stone?

322

See! her casement's jessamines part;—
Through their stars and swooning scent
Like the moon she leans. O heart,
'T is another firmament!

Sings:

The dim verbena drugs the dusk
With lemon odors; everywhere
Wan heliotropes breathe drowsy musk
Into the jasmine-heavy air;
The moss-rose bursts its dewy husk
And spills its attar there.

The orange at thy casement flings
Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;
The clematis, long-petaled, swings
Deep clusters of dark purple blooms;
With flowers, like moons or sylphide wings,
Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!
Thy balmy hair,
Unbounden, deep on deep,
Like blossoms there,—
That dew and fragrance weep,—
Will fill the night with prayer.
Awake, awake from sleep!

323

And dreaming here it seems to me
A dryad's bosom grows confessed,
Nude in the dark magnolia tree,
That rustles with the murmurous West—
Or is it but some bloom I see,
White as thy virgin breast?

Through Southern heavens above are rolled
A million feverish stars, that burst,
Like gems, from out the caskets old
Of night, with fires that throb and thirst:
An oleander, showering gold,
The heav'n seems, star-immersed.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes!—
Too long her rod
Queen Mab sways o'er their skies
In realms of Nod!—
Their starry majesties
Will fill the night with God.
Unseal, unseal thine eyes!

324

IDEAL DIVINATION

How I have thought of her,
Her I have never seen!—
Now from a raying air
She, like the Magdalene,
Flowers—a face serene,
Radiant with raven hair.

Now in a balsam scent
Laughs from the stars that gleam;
Naked and redolent,
Bends to me breasts of beam,
Eyes that were made to dream,
Throat that the dimples dent.

Would she were real, ah me!
Would she were real and here!
And no “impossible she”!
But one to draw me near,
Hold me and name me dear!—
But, that can never be!

325

“Living, each learns to know
Life is not worth its pain;
Loving, each finds a woe
Or, at the end, a chain:
Fardled of hope we strain
Whither no hope may know.

“Life is too credulous
Of time that beckons on.
Memory still serves us thus—
Gauging each coming dawn
By a day dead and gone,
Day that 's a part of us.”

So says my soul, that 's mocked
Here of the flesh and held;
Ever rebellion rocked,
Fighting, forever quelled;
Titan-like, fate-compelled,
Yearning to rise, but locked

Supine where torrents pour
Hellward; on crags that, high,
Scarred of the thunder, gore
Heaven ... The vulture's eye
Swims, and the harpies' cry
Clangs through the ocean's roar. ...

326

Then, like æolian light,
Calling, it hears her lips:
Scorched by her burning white
Splendor of arms and hips,
Slimy each horror slips
Back to its native night. ...

Rul'st thou some brighter star?
Inviolable queen
Of what the destinies are?
Thou, with thy light unseen
Filling my life with sheen,
Leading my soul afar!

Thou, who oft leav'st thy skies,
Comest in dreams to me,
With amaranthine eyes,
Asphodel shadowy
Hair, and mysteriously
Say'st to my heart, “Arise!

“Be not afraid to dare
All of life's tyranny!
I will reward thee there!
There, where my love shall be
Thine to eternity!—
Only be brave and bear!”

327

APOCALYPSE

Before I found her I had found
Within my heart, as in a brook,
Reflections of her: now a sound
Of imaged beauty, now a look.

So when I found her, gazing in
Those Bibles of her eyes, above
All earth, I saw no word of sin;
Their holy chapters all were love.

I read them through. I read and saw
The soul impatient of the sod—
Her soul, that through her eyes did draw
Mine—to the higher love of God.

328

CAN I FORGET?

Can I forget how Love once led the ways
Of our two lives together, joining them;
How every hour was his anadem,
And every day a tablet in his praise!
Can I forget how, in his garden's place,
Among the purple roses, stem to stem,
We heard the rumor of his robe's bright hem,
And saw the aureate radiance of his face!—
Though I beheld my soul's high dreams down-hurled,
And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white,
And in Love's place usurping Lust and Shame,
Though flowers be dead within the winter world,
Are flowers not there? and starless though the night,
Are stars not there, eternal and the same?

329

MY ROSE

There was a rose in Eden once: it grows
On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume:
And Paradise is poorer by one bloom,
And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows
More loveliness than old seraglios
Or courts of kings did ever yet illume:
More purity than ever yet had room
In soul of nun or saint.—O human rose!—
Who art initial and sweet period of
My heart's divinest sentence; where I read
Love, first and last, and in the pauses, love;
Who art the dear ideal of each deed
Through which my life is strong to attain its goal,—
Set in the mystic garden of my soul!

330

RESTRAINT

Dear heart and love! what happiness is it
To watch the firelight's varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine—
As through clear windows—to behold them flit,
In sumptuous chambers of thy mind's chaste wit,
Thy soul's fair fancies! then to take in mine
Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart's divine
Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!
When I remember how thy look and touch
Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,
I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead
Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much
Sweet hell,—beyond all help of me,—might be,
Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!

331

IN JUNE

I

Hotly burns the amaryllis,
Starred with ruby red:
Coolly stand the snowy lilies
In the lily-bed:
Emerald gleams the wild May-apple,
'Neath its parasol,
And where gold the sunbeams dapple
Woods, and thrushes call,
Marion strolls with Moll,
Singing, “Fol-de-rol;
Fol-de, fol-de-rol.

II

“March was but a blustering liar;
April, sad as night:
May, a milkmaid from the byre,
Full of love but light.
June, sweet June!—ah! she's My Lady,
Fair and fine and tall,

332

Strolling down the woodways shady—
June is best of all!
She is like my Moll!
Fol-de-rol-de-rol!
She is like sweet Moll!”

333

WILL O' THE WISPS

Beyond the barley meads and hay,
What was the light that beckoned there?
That made her young lips smile and say:
“Oh, busk me in a gown of May,
And knot red poppies in my hair.”

Over the meadow and the wood
What was the voice that filled her ears?
That sent into pale cheeks the blood,
Until each seemed a wild-brier bud
Mowed down by mowing harvesters? ...

Beyond the orchard, down the hill,
The water flows, the water swirls;
And there they found her past all ill,
Her pale dead face, sweet, smiling still,
The cresses caught among her curls.

At twilight in the willow glen
What sound is that the silence hears,
When deep the dusk is hushed again,
And homeward from the fields strong men
And women go, the harvesters?

334

One seeks the place where she is laid,
Where violets bloom from year to year—
“O sunny head! O bird-like maid!
The orchard blossoms fall and fade
And I am lonely, lonely here.”

Two stars look down upon the vale;
They seem to him the eyes of Ruth:
The low moon rises very pale
As if she, too, had heard the tale,
All heartbreak, of a maid and youth.

335

IN A GARDEN

The pink rose drops its petals on
The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;
The moon, like some wide rose of white,
Drops down the summer night.
No rose there is
As sweet as this—
Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.

The lattice of thy casement twines
With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;
The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie
About the glimmering sky.
No jasmine tress
Can so caress
Like thy white arms' soft loveliness.

About thy door magnolia blooms
Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;
A moon-magnolia is the dusk
Closed in a dewy husk.
However much,
No bloom gives such
Soft fragrance as thy bosom's touch.

336

The flowers blooming now will pass,
And strew the grass, and strew the grass;
The night, like some frail flower, dawn
Will soon make gray and wan.
Still, still above,
The flower of
True love shall live forever, Love.

337

“IF I WERE HER LOVER”

I

If I were her lover,
I'd wade through the clover
Over the fields before
The gate that leads to her door;
Over the meadows,
To wait, 'mid the shadows,
The shadows that circle her door,
For the heart of my heart and more.
And there in the clover
Close by her,
Over and over
I'd sigh her:
“Your eyes are as brown
As the Night's, looking down
On waters that sleep
With the moon in their deep” ...
If I were her lover to sigh her.

338

II

If I were her lover,
I'd wade through the clover
Over the fields before
The lane that leads to her door;
I'd wait, 'mid the thickets,
Or there by the pickets,
White pickets that fence in her door,
For the life of my life and more.
I'd lean in the clover—
The crisper
For the dews that are over—
And whisper:
“Your lips are as rare
As the dewberries there,
As ripe and as red,
On the honey-dew fed” ...
If I were her lover to whisper.

III

If I were her lover,
I'd wade through the clover
Over the field before
The pathway that leads to her door;
And watch, in the twinkle
Of stars that sprinkle

339

The paradise over her door,
For the soul of my soul and more.
And there in the clover
I'd reach her;
And over and over
I'd teach her—
A love without sighs,
Of laughterful eyes,
That reckoned each second
The pause of a kiss,
A kiss and ... that is
If I were her lover to teach her.

340

NOËRA

Noëra, when sad fall
Has grayed the fallow,
Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl
In pool and shallow;
When, by the wood-side, tall
Stands sere the mallow:

Noëra, when gray gold
And golden gray
The crackling hollows fold
By every way,
Shall I thy face behold,
Dear bit of May?

When webs are cribs for dew,
And gossamers
Streak past you, silver-blue;
When silence stirs
One leaf, of rusty hue,
Among the burrs:

341

Noëra, thro' the wood,
Or thro' the grain,
Come, with the hoiden mood
Of wind and rain
Fresh in thy sunny blood,
Sweetheart, again!

Noëra, when the corn,
Heaped on the fields,
The asters' stars adorn—
And purple shields
Of ironweeds lie torn
Among the wealds:

Noëra, haply then,
Thou being with me,
Each ruined greenwood glen
Will bud and be
Spring's with the spring again,
The spring in thee.

Thou of the breezy tread,
Feet of the breeze:
Thou of the sunbeam head,
Heart like a bee's:
Face like a woodland-bred
Anemone's.

342

Thou to October bring
An April part!
Come, make the wild-birds sing,
The blossoms start!
Noëra, with the spring
Wild in thy heart!

Come with our golden year;
Come as its gold:
With the same laughing, clear,
Loved voice of old:
In thy cool hair one dear
Wild marigold.

343

AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD

I

“I know, I know;
The way doth go
Athwart a greenwood glade, oh!
White bloom the wild-plums in that glade,
White as the bosom of the maid
Who, stooping, sits, and milks and sings
Among the dew-dashed clover rings,
When fades the flush, the henna blush,
The orange-glow of sunset low,
And all the winds are laid, oh!”

II

“I wot, I wot.—
And is it not
Right o'er the viney hill?—”
“Yea: where the wild-grapes mat and make
Penthouses of each bramble-brake,
And dangle plumes of fragrant blooms:

344

Where threads of sunbeams string the glooms
With beaded gold; and flowers unfold
Their eyes of blue;—and all night through
Sings, wildly shrill, one whippoorwill.”

III

“I ween, I ween,
The path is green
'Neath beechen boughs that let
Soft glimpses of the sapphire sky
Gleam downward like a wood-nymph's eye:
At night one far and lambent star
Shines o'er it, like a watching Lar,
'Mid branching buds a tangled bud
Among the acres of the wood,
Where blooms the wet wild violet
And only we have, trysting, met.”

345

WORDS

I can not tell what I would tell thee,
What I would say, what thou shouldst hear;
Words of the soul that should compel thee,
Words of the heart to draw thee near.

For when thou smilest, thou, who fillest
My life with joy, and I would speak,
'Tis then my lips and tongue are stillest,
Knowing all language is too weak.

Look in my eyes: read there confession:
The truest love hath least of art:
Nor needs it words for its expression
When soul speaks soul and heart speaks heart.

346

THE SIRENS

Wail! wail! and smite your lyres' sonorous gold,
And beckon naked beauty; luring me
With arms and breasts and hips of godly mold,
Dark, wind-wild locks seen through the surf-blown sea!

Vain all your magic! dull in unclosed ears!
Beside one voice sweet-calling o'er the foam,
That, in my heart, like some strong hand appears
To gently, firmly draw my vessel home.

347

WHY?

Why are the bright stars brighter after rain?
Why is strong love the stronger after pain?
Reply, reply!

Why sings the wild swan heavenliest when it dies?
Why is fair love the fairest when it flies?
Oh why! Oh why!

Why are sweet kisses sweetest when they're dead?
Why is love loveliest when 'tis buriéd?
Reply, reply!

348

NOCTURNE

A disc of violet blue,
Rimmed with a thorn of fire,
The new moon hangs in a sky of dew;
And under the vines, where the sunset's hue
Is blent with blooms, first one, then two,
Begins the crickets' choir.

Bright blurs of golden white,
With points of pearly glimmer,
The first stars wink in the web of night;
And through the flowers the moths take flight,
In the honeysuckle-colored light,
Where the shadowy shrubs grow dimmer.

Soft through the dim and dying eve,
Sweet through the dusk and dew,
Come, while the hours their witchcraft weave,
Dim in the House of the Soul's-sweet-leave,
Here in the pale and perfumed eve,
Here where I wait for you.

349

A great, dark, radiant rose,
Dripping with starry glower,
Is the night, whose bosom overflows
With the balsam musk of the breeze that blows
Into the heart, as each one knows,
Of every nodding flower.

A voice that sighs and sighs,
Then whispers like a spirit,
Is the wind, that kisses the drowsy eyes
Of the primrose open, and, rocking, lies
In the lily's cradle, and soft unties
The rose-bud's crimson near it.

Sweet through the deep and dreaming night,
Soft through the dark and dew,
Come, where the moments their magic write,
Deep in the Book of the Heart's-delight,
Here in the hushed and haunted night,
Here where I wait for you.

350

METAMORPHOSIS

Before Love's lofty goddess—Life hath toiled
To mold from burning dew and dewy fire—
Who kneel and worship with a heart sin-soiled,
Within the secret Temple of Desire;

Their curse is such: that, even while they pray,—
They shall not see, nor shall they know thereof!—
Their Deity is changed from fire to clay—
Lust! fashioned in the very form of Love.

351

AT TWENTY-ONE

The rosy hills of her high breasts,
Whereon, like misty morning, rests
The breathing lace; her auburn hair,
Wherein, a star-point sparkling there,
One jewel burns: her eyes, that keep
Recorded dreams of love and sleep:
Her mouth, with whose comparison
The richest rose were poor and wan:
Her throat, her form—what masterpiece
Of man can picture half of these!—
She comes! a classic from the hand
Of God! wherethrough I understand
What Nature means and Art and Love,
And all the immortal myths thereof.

352

KINSHIP.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No April flower, as fair as she:
O white anemone, who hast
The wind's wild grace,
Know her a cousin of thy race,
Into whose face
A presence like the wind's hath passed.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No May-day flower, as fair as she:
O bluebell, tender with the blue
Of sapphire skies,
Thy lineage hath kindred ties
In her, whose eyes
The heaven's own qualities imbue.

There is no flower of wood or lea,
No June-time flower, as fair as she:
Rose,—odorous with beauty of
Her lips that pressed,—
Behold thy sister here confessed!
Whose maiden breast
Is fragrant with the dreams of love.

353

“SHE IS SO MUCH”

She is so much to me, to me,
And, oh, I love her so,
I look into my soul and see
How comfort keeps me company
In hopes she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.

So dear she is to me, so dear,
And, oh, I love her so,
I listen in my heart and hear
The voice of gladness singing near
In thoughts she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.

So much she is to me, so much,
And, oh, I love her so,
In heart and soul I feel the touch
Of angel callers, that are such
Dreams as she, too, may know.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
This I know.

354

HER EYES

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.

In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,
Her soul's soft moods I see:
Of hope and faith, that make life wise;
And charity, whose food is sighs—
Not truer than her own true eyes
Is truth's divinity.

In her dark eyes the knowledge lies
Of an immortal sod,
Her soul once trod in angel guise,
Nor can forget its heavenly ties,
Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes
Once gazed the eyes of God.

355

MESSENGERS

The wind, that gives the rose a kiss,
With murmured music of the south,
Hath kissed a sweeter thing than this;—
The wind, that gives the rose a kiss,—
Hath kissed the red rose of her mouth.

The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,
And echoes in a grottoed place,
Hath held a fairer thing than these;—
The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,
Hath held the image of her face.

O happy wind! O happy brook!
What message from her do you bear?—
“We bear from her her kiss and look—”
O happy wind! O happy brook!—
“That blessed us unaware.”

356

APART

I

While sunset burns and stars are few,
And roses scent the fading light;
And, like a slim urn, dripping dew,
A spirit carries through the night,
The pearl-pale moon hangs new,—
I think of you, of you.

II

While waters flow, and soft winds woo
The golden-hearted bud with sighs;
And, like a flower an angel threw,
Out of the momentary skies
A star falls, burning blue,—
I dream of you, of you.

III

While love believes and hearts are true,
So let me think, so let me dream;
The thought and dream so wedded to
Your face, that, far apart, I seem
To see each thing you do,
And be with you, with you.

357

THE BLIND GOD

I know not if she be unkind;
If she have faults, I do not care.
Search through the world—where will you find
A face like hers, a form, a mind?—
I love her to despair!

If she be cruel, cruelty
Is a great virtue, I will swear:
If she be proud, then pride must be
Better than all humility.—
I love her to despair!

Why speak to me of that or this?
All you may say weighs not a hair!
To me, naught but perfection is
In her, whose lips I may not kiss!—
I love her to despair!

358

CARA MIA

I

Sweet lips, where kisses sleep,
Soft eyes, so filled with dreams,
Waken, oh waken!
Open your blossoms deep,
Sweet lips, where kisses sleep:
Unfold your brightest beams,
Soft eyes, so filled with dreams:
Waken, oh, waken!

II

Sweet lips, that give perfume,
Soft eyes, that kindle light,
Come, let me kiss you!—
To every flower in bloom,
Sweet lips, you lend perfume!
In every star at night,
Soft eyes, you kindle light!—
Come, let me kiss you!

359

III

Who would not love to rest?
Who would not love to lie?
Who would not love them?
Of such sweet flowers caressed,
Who would not love to rest?
With such stars in their sky,
Who would not love to lie?
Who would not love them?

360

MARGERY

I

When spring is here and Margery
Goes walking in the woods with me,
She is so white, she is so shy,
The little leaves clap hands and cry—
“Perdie;
So white is she, so shy is she,
Ah me!
The maiden May hath just passed by!”

II

When summer 's here and Margery
Goes walking in the fields with me,
She is so pure, she is so fair,
The wildflowers eye her and declare—
“Perdie!
So pure is she, so fair is she,
Just see,
Where our sweet cousin takes the air!”

361

III

Why is it that my Margery
Hears nothing that these say to me?
She is so good, she is so true,
My heart it maketh such ado,
Perdie!
So good is she, so true is she,
You see,
She can not hear the other two.

362

CONSTANCE

Beyond the orchard, in the lane,
The crested red-bird sings again—
O bird, whose song says, “Have no care,”
Should I not care when Constance there,—
My Constance with the bashful gaze,
Pink-gowned like some sweet hollyhock,—
If I declare my love, just says
Some careless thing as if in mock?
Like—“Past the orchard, in the lane,
Hark! how the red-bird sings again!”

There, while the red-bird sings his best,
His listening mate sits on the nest—
O bird, whose patience says, “All 's well,”
How can it be with me, come, tell?
When Constance, with averted eyes,—
Soft-bonneted as some sweet-pea,—
If I talk marriage, just replies
With some such quaint irrelevancy,
As, “While the red-bird sings his best,
His loving mate sits on the nest.”

363

What shall I say? what can I do?
Would such replies mean aught to you,
O birds, whose music says, “Be glad”?
Have I not reason to be sad
When Constance, with demurest glance,
Her face all poppied with distress,
If I reproach her, pouts, perchance,
And answers thus in waywardness?—
“What shall I say? what can I do?
My meaning should be plain to you!”

364

LYDIA

When Autumn's here and days are short,
Let Lydia laugh and, hey!
Straightway 't is May-day in my heart,
And blossoms strew the way.

When Summer 's here and days are long,
Let Lydia sigh and, ho!
December's fields I walk among,
And shiver in the snow.

No matter what the seasons are,
My Lydia is so dear,
My heart admits no calendar
Of Earth when she is near.

365

HELEN

Heaped in raven loops and masses
Over temples smooth and fair,
Have you marked it, as she passes,
Night and starlight mingled there,—
Braided strands of midnight air,—
Helen's hair?

Deep with dreams and moony mazes
Of the thought that in them lies,
Have you seen them, as she raises
Them in question or surprise,—
Two gray gleams of daybreak skies,—
Helen's eyes?

Fresh as dew and honied wafters
Of a music sweet that slips,
Have you marked them, brimmed with laughter's
Song and sunshine to their tips,—
Blossoms whence the perfume drips,—
Helen's lips?

366

He who sees her needs must lover her:
But, beware, whoe'er thou art!
Lest like me thou shouldst discover
Nature overlooked one part,
In this masterpiece of art—
Helen's heart.

367

MIGNON

Oh, Mignon's mouth is like a rose,
A red, red rose, that half uncurls
Sweet petals o'er a crimson bee:
Or like a shell, that, opening, shows
Within its rosy curve white pearls,
White rows of pearls,
Is Mignon's mouth that smiles at me.

Oh, Mignon's eyes are like blue gems,
Two azure gems that gleam and glow,
Soft sapphires set in ivory:
Or like twin violets, whose stems
Bloom blue beneath the covering snow,
The lidded snow,
Are Mignon's eyes that laugh at me.

O mouth of Mignon, Mignon's eyes!
O eyes of violet, mouth of fire!—
Within which lies all ecstasy
Of tears and kisses and of sighs:—
O mouth, O eyes, and O desire,
O love's desire,
Have mercy on the soul of me!

368

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

I

A sunbeam and a drop of dew
Lay on a red rose in the South:
God took the three and made her mouth,
Her sweet, small mouth,
So red of hue,—
The burning baptism of His kiss
Still fills my heart with heavenly bliss.

II

A dream of truth and love come true
Slept on a star in daybreak skies:
God mingled these and made her eyes,
Her dear, clear eyes,
So gray of hue,—
The high communion of His gaze
Still fills my soul with deep amaze.

369

LOVE AND A DAY

I

In girandoles of gladioles
The day had kindled flame;
And Heaven a door of gold and pearl
Unclosed, whence Morning,—like a girl,
A red rose twisted in a curl,—
Down sapphire stairways came.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?”
Said I to Love: “What must I do,
All on a summer's morning?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”
Said Love to me: “Go woo.
If she be milking, follow, O!
And in the clover hollow, O!
While through the dew the bells clang clear,
Just whisper it into her ear,
All on a summer's morning.”

370

II

Of honey and heat and weed and wheat
The day had made perfume;
And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised,
Whence Noon, like some pale woman, gazed—
A sunflower withering at her waist—
Within a crystal room.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?”
Said I to Love: “What must I do,
All in the summer nooning?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”
Said Love to me: “Go woo.
If she be 'mid the rakers, O!
Among the harvest acres, O!
While every breeze brings scents of hay,
Just hold her hand and not take ‘nay,’
All in the summer nooning.”

III

With song and sigh and cricket cry
The day had mingled rest;
And Heaven a casement opened wide

371

Of opal, whence, like some young bride,
The Twilight leaned, all starry eyed,
A moonflower on her breast.

Said I to Love: “What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?”
Said I to Love: “What must I do,
All in the summer gloaming?”

Said Love to me: “Go woo, go woo.”
Said Love to me: “Go woo,
Go meet her at the trysting, O!
And 'spite of her resisting, O!
Beneath the stars and afterglow,
Just clasp her close and kiss her—so,
All in the summer gloaming.”

372

LOVE IN A GARDEN

I

Between the rose's and the canna's crimson,
Beneath thy window in the night I stand;
The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on
The white moonflowers; each a spirit hand
That points the path to mystic Shadowland.

Awaken, sweet and fair!
And add to night thy grace!
Suffer its loveliness to share
The white moon of thy face,
The dark cloud of thy hair.
Awaken, sweet and fair!

II

A moth, like down, swings on th' althea's pistil,—
Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell's deep dome;—

373

And in the August-lily's cone of crystal
A firefly hangs the lantern of a gnome,
Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam.

Approach! the moment flies!
O sweetheart of the South!
Come! mingle with night's mysteries
The red rose of thy mouth,
The dark stars of thine eyes.—
Approach! the moment flies!

III

Dim through the dusk, like some unearthly presence,
The night-song silvers of a dreaming bird;
And with it borne, faint on a breeze-blown essence,
The rainy whisper of a fountain's heard—
As if young lips had breathed a perfumed word.

How long, my love, my bliss!
How long must I await
With night—that all impatience is—
Thy greeting at the gate,
And at the gate thy kiss?
How long, my love, my bliss!

374

FLORIDIAN

I

The cactus and the aloe bloom
Beneath the window of your room;
That window where, at evenfall,
Beneath the twilight's first pale star,
You linger, tall and spiritual,
And hearken my guitar.

It is the hour
When every flower
Is wooed of moth or bee—
Would, would you were the flower, dear,
And I the moth to draw you near,
To draw you near to me,
My dear,
To draw you near to me!

II

The jasmine and bignonia spill
Their balm about your windowsill;

375

That sill where, when magnolia-white,
In foliage mists, the moon hangs far,
You lean with bright deep eyes of night,
And hearken my guitar.

It is the hour
When from each flower
The wind woos essences—
Would, would you were the flower, love,
And I the wind to breathe above,
To breathe above and kiss,
My love,
To breathe above and kiss!

376

WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA

I

It's “Sweet, good-by,” when pennants fly
And ships put out to sea;
It 's a loving kiss, and a tear or two
In an eye of brown or an eye of blue:—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

II

It's “Friend or foe?” when signals blow
And ships sight ships at sea;
It's “Clear for action! and man the guns!”
As the battle nears and the battle runs;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

III

It's deck to deck, and wrath and wreck,
When ships meet ships at sea;

377

It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,
And hull and turret a roaring hell;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

IV

It's doom and death, and pause a breath,
When ships go down at sea;
It's hate is over and love begins,
And war is cruel whoever wins;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

378

A CHRISTMAS CATCH

When roads are mired with ice and snow,
And the air of morn is crisp with rime;
When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,
And bells ring in the Christmas-time:—
It's—Saddle, my Heart! and ride away
To the sweet-faced girl with eyes of gray!
Who waits with a smile for the gifts you bring—
A man's strong love and a wedding-ring—
It's—Saddle, my Heart, and ride!

When vanes veer north and storm-winds blow,
And the sun at noon is a blur o'erhead;
When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,
And the Christmas service is sung and said:—
It's—Come, O my Heart, and wait a while,
Where the organ peals, in the altar aisle,
For the gifts that the church now gives to you—
A woman's hand and a heart that's true.
It's—Come, O my Heart, and wait!

379

When rooms gleam warm with the fire's glow,
And the sleet raps sharp on the window-pane:
When the holly hangs by the mistletoe,
And Christmas revels begin again:—
It's—Home, O my Heart, and love, at last!
And her happy breast to your own held fast:
A song to sing and a tale to tell,
A good-night kiss and all is well.
It's—Home, O my Heart, and love!

380

A SONG FOR YULE

I

Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way,
And bells peal out, 'Tis Christmas Day!
The world is better then by half,
For joy, for joy:
In a little while you will see it laugh—
For a song's to sing and a glass to quaff,
My boy; my boy.
So here 's to the man who never says nay!—
Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas Day!

II

Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow,
And homes are hung with mistletoe:
Old Earth is not half bad, I wis—
What cheer! what cheer!
How it ever seemed sad the wonder is—
With a gift to give and a girl to kiss,
My dear; my dear.
So here 's to the girl who never says no!
Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe!

381

III

No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong
When the soul of a man walks out with song;
Wherever they go, glad hand in hand,
And glove in glove,
The round of the land is rainbow-spanned,
And the meaning of life they understand
Is love; is love.
Let the heart be open, the soul be strong,
And life will be glad as a Christmas song.

382

CHORDS

I

When love delays, when love delays and joy
Steals like a shadow o'er the happy hills;
When hope is gone; and no to-morrow fills
The promise of to-day; still I employ
My soul with thoughts of thee,
Who 'rt not for me, for me!

When love delays, when love delays and song
Aches at wild lips, unutterable, as the sound
Of ocean strives, within the shell's mouth bound;
And hope is gone for ever, slain of wrong;
Still in my heart one word
Keeps calling like a bird.

When love delays, when love delays and sleep
Seals tired eyelids,—like the sound of foam,
Heard 'mid familiar flowers far from home,—

383

When hope lies dead; in dreams, in dreams I keep
Feeling thy lips' sweet touch,—
And, oh! it is too much!

When love delays, when love delays and sorrow
Drinks her own tears that add but to her thirst;
When song and sleep and love itself seem curst,
And hope lies dead; still, still I dream to-morrow
Will bring some word of cheer
From thee who art not here.

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! ...

384

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;

385

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.

386

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?

387

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?

388

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.

389

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.

390

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.

391

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!”

392

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.

393

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!

394

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.

395

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.

396

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.

397

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.—

398

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!

399

“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.

400

Loved lips and eyes and hair!
Look, this is she!
She, who sits smiling there,
Throned in my heart's despair,
Never for me!

401

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.

402

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.

403

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.

404

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.

405

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.

406

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.

407

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

408

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,

409

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

410

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

411

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.

412

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

413

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.

414

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.

415

'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

416

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.

417

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.

418

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.

419

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,—

420

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.

421

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.

422

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!

423

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,—

424

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!

425

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,—

426

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.

427

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:

428

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

429

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

430

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!

431

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,

432

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

433

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:

434

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

435

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

436

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

437

Hands seemed drawing him away,
Downward: where a rocking ray
Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted
Shadows wandered ghostly gray.

[OMITTED]

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.

438

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!

439

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

440

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.

441

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,

442

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

443

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—

444

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

445

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

446

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.

447

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.

448

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

449

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.

450

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!

451

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

452

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

453

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!”

454

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.

455

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,

456

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:

457

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:

458

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.

459

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

460

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.

461

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

462

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

463

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.

464

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,

465

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

466

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

467

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:

468

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.

469

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

470

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:

471

“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

472

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.

473

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

474

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.

475

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.

476

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

477

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.

478

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.

479

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.

480

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.

481

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.

482

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.

483

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,

484

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.

485

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.

486

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.”

487

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!”

[OMITTED]

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.

488

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 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!”

489

“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.

490

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:

491

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.

492

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

493

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.

494

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.

495

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.

496

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.

497

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.

498

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.

499

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.

500

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.

501

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.

502

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?

503

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.

504

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.

505

“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 eye; and morning
To paint your skin—the rosy air
Which is your limbs' adorning.

506

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.

507

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.

508

THE RIDE

“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.”

509

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?

510

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.

511

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.

512

“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.

513

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 answers 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?

514

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.

515

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.

516

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.

517

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.

518

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!

519

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.

520

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.

521

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.

522

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:

523

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.

524

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.

525

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,

526

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?

527

FINALE

So let it be. Thou dare not say 'twas 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.

528

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.

529

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.