Feda with Other Poems Chiefly Lyrical. By Rennell Rodd ... With an Etching by Harper Pennington |
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| I. |
| II. | II.—AVIGNON. |
| III. |
 | Feda with Other Poems |  |
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II.—AVIGNON.
Still winds the Rhone between the level fields,
And all so changed yet changeless,—the white rocks
Far off the towers of Avignon, and last
The line of broken hill; these many days
I wandered in a dream, until last night
I seemed to stand on some great mountain ridge
High in the twilight glimmering to dawn,
With the mist rolling under and the chasm,
Blue depths unfathomable, and overhead
Pale stars and silence and the infinite.
Then seemed one star to waft down from its place,
Taking a form that floated in the dawn,—
The vision waited for that was to come.
But in her eyes was that eternal calm
Of those that gaze on angels, and her hair
Was rays of moonlight wandering on her brow,
And all so pale and ghostly,—and I stood
Over the slumbering earth, there was no sound,
Only she pointed upwards, and I knew
The sense of something speaking in my soul
Telling of joys transcending human thought,
Foretasting the eternity of Love.
Then right into the dawn she passed and left
The burning of her kiss upon my brow.
And all so changed yet changeless,—the white rocks
Far off the towers of Avignon, and last
The line of broken hill; these many days
I wandered in a dream, until last night
I seemed to stand on some great mountain ridge
High in the twilight glimmering to dawn,
With the mist rolling under and the chasm,
Blue depths unfathomable, and overhead
Pale stars and silence and the infinite.
Then seemed one star to waft down from its place,
Taking a form that floated in the dawn,—
The vision waited for that was to come.
But in her eyes was that eternal calm
Of those that gaze on angels, and her hair
Was rays of moonlight wandering on her brow,
And all so pale and ghostly,—and I stood
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Only she pointed upwards, and I knew
The sense of something speaking in my soul
Telling of joys transcending human thought,
Foretasting the eternity of Love.
Then right into the dawn she passed and left
The burning of her kiss upon my brow.
Then all the day grew round me where I stood,
And far across the sundering vales it broke
On peaks of morning very near the sky,
Still dark between us lay the sundering deep
With twilight heavy on the town of towers,
The sleeping and the watchers in the world.
And then it seemed from yonder hills her voice
Mixed with innumerable harmonies
Wafted toward me on the wave of dawn,
Leading a quire of voices in the height
That died in music with the waning star,
Saying, “go down, though it be twilight yet,
“For where is life is ever need of love,
“Go down and work a little while, and wait,
“The suns are measured and the days are told,
“But time is shoreless, after life is life,
“And after travail rest, and surely light
“Better than sun and moon and all the stars,
“And finding after seeking, and for love
“One home to which the many ways converge.”
And far across the sundering vales it broke
On peaks of morning very near the sky,
Still dark between us lay the sundering deep
With twilight heavy on the town of towers,
The sleeping and the watchers in the world.
And then it seemed from yonder hills her voice
Mixed with innumerable harmonies
Wafted toward me on the wave of dawn,
Leading a quire of voices in the height
That died in music with the waning star,
Saying, “go down, though it be twilight yet,
“For where is life is ever need of love,
“Go down and work a little while, and wait,
“The suns are measured and the days are told,
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“And after travail rest, and surely light
“Better than sun and moon and all the stars,
“And finding after seeking, and for love
“One home to which the many ways converge.”
| Feda with Other Poems | |