The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou wilt not hearken, though I weep
Hot tears against thy folded hands;
Though Love, this exile bird we keep,
Sits pining for his radiant lands;
Sick of some tiny fleck or mote,
He never sings us now a single note.

He hangs his head, his eyelids close,
The gloss is faded on his wing;
So broken down he seems with woes,
He may not pipe us anything.
I call; his pale lips quiver loth;
Is then his song all over for us both?

Thy captive, his were early chains,
The noose was laid of woven hairs;
Thy tame bird, he would count the grains
Thy pity gave him unawares.
He was bound in with golden bars,
Till he forgot the weather and the stars.

328

All day he saw thee near his cage;
To watch thee, moving or in rest,
Became the poor bird's only wage;
When thy hand fed him he was best.
He gave thee every note and trill,
And piped his little welcome with a will.

And so he sang till yesterday,—
Came to the bars with many a bend;
His music made the old soft way,
Till sleep fell on him, and the end.
Laid in his sand now, cold and grey,
Interpret me his latest honey-lay.

I think he sang, “I am only thine,
I am broken if thou leavest me;
I faint if thou art gone, divine,
This is no prison if near thee.
My heart floods out to thee in song,
And in thy smile my melody is strong.”

“Take freedom, God's own gift on all,—
Remove Heaven's joy and leave me none;
Take Light, Life's highest festival,
And leave me blind beneath the sun
To do thy bidding, sweet, all day:
Take all except thy dearest self away.”

We kept him caged, and he is dead.
We did unwisely doing so:
Between his prison wires was shed
A meadow breath, which laid him low.
He loved thee much but pined unseen,
And brake his heart when woods grew tender green.

Love is thy cage-bird, like to die;
He mopes, is weary, must begone;
He finds no favour in thine eye,
Or answer in thine altered tone.
Thy god will pine as pined the bird,—
Each gave free heaven away for thy sweet word.

329

O changeful queen of many wiles,
Why lure and tend me for a whim,
And waste thy hundred pretty smiles
A season, till the love grows dim
Between thy rose lips unawares?
Fickle, they change. Unaltered I am theirs.

Doth all love end in weariness?
The music falters in his string;
The arms grow faint in their caress,
Which bound me like a marriage ring.
What have I failed in then, my sweet,
That I must weep for pity at thy feet?

At light offence Love opens wing,
For sorry reason he will go;
At straws, which casual breezes fling
Against his feet, his angers glow.
In all my thought I cannot touch
One crime, save loving thee, my love, too much.

Bid me begone, but tell me why,
That I may mend what is amiss.
Love, I am patient; earnestly
I will search out and alter this.
Reprove, and I will earn new praise,
Increasing due observance of Love's ways.

Thy frown is like a winter house,
Laid eastward in a bitter land;
Whose roads are full of broken boughs,
And rough in ruts of snow and sand:
In white chains hangs the spider's woof,
Where keen winds freeze in ice-teeth at my roof.

There heaven is stayed from dew, and dry
The ice-sheet saws upon the reeds.
The wind is up with a wailing cry,
The deep has wrought and flung its weeds.
The blotted sun went long ago,
And the stained cliffs are keen in furrowed snow.

330

I have been weary with such days;
Let this grey change to rose again.
Indeed, but it shall dim thy praise
To leave me out in sweeping rain.
My spring waits only thy command,
The seasons of my soul are in thy hand.

The iron day declines. The flower
Returns in seams of mountain grey;
Fresh leaves adorn the faded bower;
And Spring, who gave his lute away,
Above blue bands of wintry night
Arises in a fan of blinding light!