University of Virginia Library

THE WOMAN WITH THE DEAD SOUL

Allured by the disastrous tavern-light
Unhappy things flew in out of the night;
And ever the sad human swarm returned,
Some crazy-fluttering, and some half-burned.
Among the labourers, gnarled, and splashed with mire,
The disillusioned women sipping fire,
Slow tasting bargainers amid the flare,
And lurid ruminators,—I was 'ware
Of that cold face from which I may not run,
Which even now doth stab me in the sun.
That face was of a woman that alone
Sat sewing; a white liquor by her shone;
From which at moments warily and slow
She sipped; then bent above her sewing low.
A sober dress of decent serge she wore
Uplifted nicely from the smirching floor;
And with a bunch of grapes her hat was crowned,
Which trembled together if she glanced around.
Speckless, arranged; and with no braid awry,
All smoothed and combed she sewed incessantly.
She turned her eyes on me; they had no ray;
But stared like windows in the peer of day.
So cold her gaze that I bowed down my head
Trembling; it seemed to me that she was dead;
And that those hands mechanically went,
As though the original force not yet was spent.
You that have wailed above the quiet clay,
That on the pillow without stirring lay;
Yet think how I stood mourning by the side
Of her who sat, but seemed as she had died;
Cold, yet so busy; though so nimble, dead;
Whose fingers ever at the sewing sped.
I spoke with her, and in slow terror guessed
How she, so ready for perpetual rest,
So smoothly combed and for the ground prepared,
Whose eyes already fixed beyond me stared,
Could sidle unobserved and safely glide
Amid the crowd that wist not she had died.
Gently she spoke; not once her cheek grew pale
And I translate the dreadful placid tale.
She with a soul was born: she felt it leap
Within her: it could wonder, laugh, and weep.
But dismally as rain on ocean blear,
The days upon that human spirit dear
Fell; and existence lean, in sky dead-grey,
Withholding steadily, starved it away:
London ignored it with deliberate stare,
Until the delicate thing began to wear.
She felt it ailing for she knew not what;
Feebly she wept; but she could aid it not.
Ah, not the stirring child within the womb
Hath such an urgent need of light and room!
Then hungry grew her soul: she looked around,
But nothing to allay that famine found;
She felt it die a little every day,
Flutter less wildly, and more feebly pray.
Stiller it grew; at times she felt it pull
Imploring thinly something beautiful,
And in the night was painfully awake,
And struggled in the darkness till day-break.
For not at once; not without any strife,
It died; at times it started back to life,
Now at some angel evening after rain,
Builded like early Paradise again,
Now at some flower, or human face, or sky
With silent tremble of infinity,
Or at some waft of fields in midnight sweet,
Or soul of summer dawn in the dark street.
Slowly she was aware her soul had died
Within her body: for no more it cried,
Vexed her no more; and now monotonous life
Easily passed; she was exempt from strife;
And from her soul was willing to be freed,
She could not keep what she could never feed;
And she was well; above or bliss or care;
Hunger and thirst were her emotions bare.
For the great stars consented, and withdrew,
And music, and the moon, greenness and dew.
Yet for a time more heavily and slow
She walked, and indolently worked, as though
About with her she could not help but bring
Within her busy body the dead thing.
When I had heard her tell without one tear
What now I have translated, in great fear
Toward her I leaned, and “O my sister!” cried,
“My sister!” but my hand she put aside,
Lest I her decent dress might disarray,
And so smiled on me that I might not stay.
And I remembered that to one long dead
I spoke: “No sound shall rouse her now,” I said,
“Not Orpheus touching in that gloom his chord,
Nor even the special whisper that restored
Pale Lazarus; yet will she seem to run,
And hurry eager in the noonday sun,
Industrious, timed, and kempt; till she at last,
Run down, inaccurate, aside is cast.”
While thus I whispered and in wonder wild
Could not unfix my gaze from her, a child
Plucked at her dress, and the dead woman rose;
On to the mirror silently she goes,
Lightly a loose tress touches at her ear;
She gazes in her own eyes without fear.
Deliberately then with fingers light
She smoothed her dress, and stole into the night.

MARPESSA

Wounded with beauty in the summer night
Young Idas tossed upon his couch, and cried
“Marpessa, O Marpessa!” From the dark
The floating smell of flowers invisible,
The mystic yearning of the garden wet,
The moonless-passing night—into his brain
Wandered, until he rose and outward leaned
In the dim summer: 'twas the moment deep
When we are conscious of the secret dawn,
Amid the darkness that we feel is green.
To Idas had Marpessa been revealed,
Roaming with morning thoughts amid the dew,
All fresh from sleeping; and upon her cheek
The bloom of pure repose; like perfect fruit
Even at the moment was her beauty ripe.
The god Apollo from the heaven of heavens
Her mortal sweetness through the air allured;
And on this very noon she shall decide
'Twixt Idas and the god, take to herself
A brief or an eternal lover. So
When the long day that glideth without cloud,
The summer day, was at her blue deep hour
Of lilies musical with busy bliss,
When very light trembled as with excess,
And heat was frail, and every bush and flower
Was drooping in the glory overcome;
They three together met; on the one side,
Fresh from diffusing light on all the world
Apollo; on the other without sleep
Idas, and in the midst Marpessa stood.
Just as a flower after drenching rain,
So from the falling of felicity
Her human beauty glowed, and it was new;
The bee too near her bosom drowsed and dropped.
But as the god sprang to embrace her, they
Heard thunder, and a little afterward
The far Paternal voice, “Let her decide.”
And as a flame blown backward by a gust,
Burned to and fro in fury beautiful
The murmuring god; but at the last he spoke,
And smiled as on his favourite western isle.
“Marpessa, though no trouble, nor any pain,
So is it willed, can touch me; but I live
For ever in a deep deliberate bliss,
A spirit sliding through transquillity;
Yet when I saw thee I imagined woe,
That thou who art so fair, shouldst ever taste
Of the earth-sorrow: for thy life has been
The history of a flower in the air,
Liable but to breezes and to time,
As rich and purposeless as is the rose:
Thy simple doom is to be beautiful.
Thee God created but to grow, not strive,
And not to suffer, merely to be sweet,
The favourite of his rains; and thou indeed
Lately upon the summer wast disclosed.
Child, wilt thou taste of grief? On thee the hours
Shall feed, and bring thy soul into the dusk:
Even now thy face is hasting to the dark!
For slowly shalt thou cool to all things great,
And wisely smile at love; and thou shalt see
Beautiful Faith surrendering to Time,
The fierce ingratitude of children loved,
Ah, sting of stings! A mourner shalt thou stand
At Passion's funeral in decent garb.
The greenly silent and cool-growing night
Shall be the time when most thou art awake,
With dreary eyes of all illusion cured,
Beside that stranger that thy husband is.
But if thou'lt live with me, then shalt thou bide
In mere felicity above the world,
In peace alive and moving, where to stir
Is ecstacy, and thrilling is repose.
What is the love of men that women seek it?
In its beginning pale with cruelty,
But having sipped of beauty, negligent,
And full of languor and distaste: for they
Seeking that perfect face beyond the world
Approach in vision earthly semblances,
And touch, and at the shadows flee away.
Then wilt thou die? Part with eternal thoughts,
Lie without any hope beneath the grass,
All thy imaginations in the dust?
And all that tint and melody and breath,
Which in their lovely unison are thou,
To be dispersed upon the whirling sands!
Thy soul blown seaward on nocturnal blast!
O brief and breathing creature, wilt thou cease
Once having been? Thy doom doth make thee rich,
And the low grave doth make thee exquisite.
But if thou'lt live with me, then will I kiss
Warm immortality into thy lips;
And I will carry thee above the world,
To share my ecstacy of flinging beams,
And scattering without intermission joy.
And thou shalt know that first leap of the sea
Toward me; the grateful upward look of earth,
Emerging roseate from her bath of dew,—
We two in heaven dancing,—Babylon
Shall flash and murmur, and cry from under us,
And Nineveh catch fire, and at our feet
Be hurled with her inhabitants, and all
Adoring Asia kindle and hugely bloom;—
We two in heaven running,—continents
Shall lighten, ocean unto ocean flash,
And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm.
Or since thou art a woman, thou shalt have
More tender tasks; to steal upon the sea,
A long expected bliss to tossing men.
Or build upon the evening sky some wished
And glorious metropolis of cloud.
Thou shalt persuade the harvest and bring on
The deeper green; or silently attend
The fiery funeral of foliage old,
Connive with Time serene and the good hours.
Or,— for I know thy heart, — a dearer toil,—
To lure into the air a face long sick,
To gild the brow that from its dead looks up,
To shine on the unforgiven of this world;
With slow sweet surgery restore the brain,
And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear.”
When he had spoken, humbly Idas said:
“After such argument what can I plead?
Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is
In women to pity rather than to aspire,
A little I will speak. I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
Nor for that face that might indeed provoke
Invasion of old cities; no, nor all
Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.
Not for this only do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods;
And thou art full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearnéd up the cliffs to tell;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.
It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far-back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world! Thou art
My woe, my early light, my music dying.”
As he was speaking, she with lips apart
Breathed, and with dimmer eyes leaned through the air
As one in dream, and now his human hand
Took in her own; and to Apollo spoke:
“O gradual rose of the dim universe!
Whose warmth steals through the grave unto the dead,
Soul of the early sky, the priest of bloom!
Who beautifully goest in the West,
Attracting as to an eternal home
The yearning soul. Male of the female earth!
O eager bridegroom springing in this world
As in thy bed prepared! Fain would I know
Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide,
And the large view of the subjected seas,
And famous cities, and the various toil
Of men: all Asia at my feet spread out
In indolent magnificence of bloom!
Africa in her matted hair obscured,
And India in meditation plunged!
Then the delight of flinging the sunbeams,
Diffusing silent bliss; and yet more sweet,—
To cherish fruit on the warm wall; to raise
Out of the tomb to glory the pale wheat,
Serene ascension by the rain prepared;
To work with the benignly falling hours,
And beautiful slow Time. But dearest, this,
To gild the face that from its dead looks up,
To shine on the rejected, and arrive
To women that remember in the night;
Or mend with sweetest surgery the mind.
And yet, forgive me if I can but speak
Most human words. Of immortality
Thou singest: thou would'st hold me from the ground,
And this just opening beauty from the grave.
As yet I have known no sorrow; all my days
Like perfect lilies under water stir,
And God has sheltered me from his own wind;
The darling of his breezes have I been.
Yet as to one inland, that dreameth lone,
Sea-faring men with their sea-weary eyes,
Round the inn-fire tell of some foreign land;
So agéd men, much tossed about in life,
Have told me of that country, Sorrow far.
How many goodly ships at anchor lie
Within her ports; even to me indeed
Hath a sea-rumour through the night been borne.
And I myself remember, and have heard,
Of men that did believe, women that loved
That were unhappy long and now are dead,
With wounds that no eternity can close,
Life had so marked them: or of others who
Panted toward their end, and fell on death
Even as sobbing runners breast the rope.
And most I remember of all human things
My mother; often as a child I pressed
My face against her cheek, and felt her tears;
Even as she smiled on me, her eyes would fill,
Until my own grew ignorantly wet;
And I in silence wondered at sorrow.
When I remember this, how shall I know
That I myself may not, by sorrow taught,
Accept the perfect stillness of the ground?
Where, though I lie still, and stir not at all,
Yet shall I irresistibly be kind,
Helplessly sweet, a wandering garden bliss.
My ashes shall console and make for peace;
This mind that injured, be an aimless balm.
Or if there be some other world, with no
Bloom, neither rippling sound, nor early smell,
Nor leaves, nor pleasant exchange of human speech;
Only a dreadful pacing to and fro
Of spirits meditating on the sun;
A land of baréd boughs and grieving wind;
Yet would I not forego the doom, the place,
Whither my poets and my heroes went
Before me; warriors that with deeds forlorn
Saddened my youth, yet made it great to live;
Lonely antagonists of Destiny,
That went down scornful before many spears,
Who soon as we are born, are straight our friends;
And live in simple music, country songs,
And mournful ballads by the winter fire.
Since they have died; their death is ever mine;
I would not lose it. Then, thou speak'st of joy,
Of immortality without one sigh,
Existence without tears for evermore.
Thou would'st preserve me from the anguish, lest
This holy face into the dark return.
Yet I being human, human sorrow miss.
The half of music, I have heard men say,
Is to have grieved; when comes the lonely wail
Over the mind; old men have told it me
Subdued after long life by simple sounds.
The mourner is the favourite of the moon,
And the departing sun his glory owes
To the eternal thoughts of creatures brief,
Who think the thing that they shall never see.
Since we must die, how bright the starry track!
How wonderful in a bereavéd ear
The Northern wind; how strange the summer night,
The exhaling earth to those who vainly love.
Out of our sadness have we made this world
So beautiful; the sea sighs in our brain,
And in our heart that yearning of the moon.
To all this sorrow was I born, and since
Out of a human womb I came, I am
Not eager to forego it; I would scorn
To elude the heaviness and take the joy,
For pain came with the sap, pangs with the bloom:
This is the sting, the wonder. Yet should I
Linger beside thee in felicity,
Sliding with open eyes through liquid bliss
For ever; still I must grow old. Ah I
Should ail beside thee Apollo, and should note
With eyes that would not be, but yet are dim,
Ever so slight a change from day to day
In thee my husband; watch thee nudge thyself
To little offices that once were sweet:
Slow where thou once wert swift, remembering
To kiss those lips which once thou couldst not leave.
I should expect thee by the Western bay,
Faded, not sure of thee, with desperate smiles,
And pitiful devices of my dress
Or fashion of my hair: thou wouldst grow kind;
Most bitter to a woman that was loved.
I must ensnare thee to my arms, and touch
Thy pity, to but hold thee to my heart.
But if I live with Idas, then we two
On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand
In odours of the open field, and live
In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.
And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err.
And I shall sleep beside him in the night,
And fearful from some dream shall touch his hand
Secure; or at some festival we two
Will wander through the lighted city streets;
And in the crowd I'll take his arm and feel
Him closer for the press. So shall we live.
And though the first sweet sting of love be past,
The sweet that almost venom is; though youth,
With tender and extravagant delight,
The first and secret kiss by twilight hedge,
The insane farewell repeated o'er and o'er,
Pass off; there shall succeed a faithful peace;
Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
Durable from the daily dust of life.
And though with sadder, still with kinder eyes,
We shall behold all frailties, we shall haste
To pardon, and with mellowing minds to bless.
Then though we must grow old, we shall grow old
Together, and he shall not greatly miss
My bloom faded, and waning light of eyes,
Too deeply gazed in ever to seem dim;
Nor shall we murmur at, nor much regret
The years that gently bend us to the ground,
And gradually incline our face; that we
Leisurely stooping, and with each slow step,
May curiously inspect our lasting home.
But we shall sit with luminous holy smiles,
Endeared by many griefs, by many a jest,
And custom sweet of living side by side;
And full of memories not unkindly glance
Upon each other. Last, we shall descend
Into the natural ground—not without tears—
One must go first, ah god! one must go first;
After so long one blow for both were good;
Still like old friends, glad to have met, and leave
Behind a wholesome memory on the earth.
And thou, beautiful god, in that far time,
When in thy setting sweet thou gazest down
On this grey head, wilt thou remember then
That once I pleased thee, that I once was young?”
When she had spoken, Idas with one cry
Held her, and there was silence; while the god
In anger disappeared. Then slowly they,
He looking downward, and she gazing up,
Into the evening green wandered away.

THE WIFE

A true story done into verse

FACES AT A FIRE

Dazzled with watching how the swift fire fled
Along the dribbling roof, I turned my head;
When lo, upraised beneath the lighted cloud
The illumed unconscious faces of the crowd!
An old grey face in lovely bloom upturned,
The ancient rapture and the dream returned!
A crafty face wondering simply up!
That dying face near the communion cup!
The experienced face, now venturous and rash,
The scheming eyes hither and thither flash!
That common trivial face made up of needs,
Now pale and recent from triumphal deeds!
The hungry tramp with indolent gloating stare,
The beggar in glory and released from care.
A mother slowly burning with bare breast,
Yet her consuming child close to her prest!
That prosperous citizen in anguish dire,
Beseeching heaven from purgatorial fire!
Wonderful souls by sudden flame betrayed,
I saw; then through the darkness went afraid.

THE LILY

I dreamed that after wandering long I came
To a dark garden with frail souls for flowers;
And saw the gentle lady we call Death
Pace to and fro; above each bloom she bent,
Then passed: a slumbrous sky above her rolled
Cloud upon cloud: and from those human flowers
A tragic odour like emotion rose.
I followed in her steps, and now she touched
Some poppy that had been a dreamer frail,
Or rose that was a passionate Eastern queen.
But on a sudden I implored her hand,
And should have fallen: from a lily near
What sweet and paining odour to my brain
Darted, with delicate, unhappy smell
Of trouble old and gladness far away!
I knew more surely than from any face,
More certainly remembered than at words,
And slowly swooning said, “'Tis she! 'tis she!”
Then looking to that lady cold, whose face
No sternness and no pity had, I said,
“Lady, this flower but a little while,
O! but a little while, has risen here:
Have a deep care of it! a small neglect,
A brief oblivion overburdens it.
For she, that is this flower, and merely blows
So strangely silent and so white, was used
To be much loved, and guarded wistfully.
O! from this flower be never far away!”
But she to whom I spoke moved slowly on,
And as I walked beside her, I awoke.

TO MILTON, — BLIND

He who said suddenly, “Let there be light!”
To thee the dark deliberately gave;
That those full eyes might undistracted be
By this beguiling show of sky and field,
This brilliance, that so lures us from the Truth.
He gave thee back original night, His own
Tremendous canvas, large and blank and free,
Where at each thought a star flashed out and sang.
O blinded with a special lightning, thou
Hadst once again the virgin Dark! and when
The pleasant flowery sight, which had deterred
Thine eyes from seeing, when this recent world
Was quite withdrawn; then burst upon thy view
The elder glory; space again in pangs,
And Eden odorous in the early mist,
That heaving watery plain that was the world;
Then the burned earth, and Christ coming in clouds.
Or rather a special leave to thee was given
By the high power, and thou with bandaged eyes
Wast guided through the glimmering camp of God.
Thy hand was taken by angels who patrol
The evening, or are sentries to the dawn,
Or pace the wide air everlastingly.
Thou wast admitted to the presence, and deep
Argument heardest, and the large design
That brings this world out of the woe to bliss.

LAZARUS

“The light which I have followed all this way
Out of the darkness grows into a face;
Thy face, dear friend, whom I so long have known.
Have we not wandered with twined arms, and walked
Through evening fields together? And those lips,
That I have kissed so oft, did they pronounce
That dreadful whisper, ‘Lazarus arise’?
For as it came in darkness I was 'ware
Of countenances terrible, that gazed
Each on the other in drear impotence,
As I with sighs arose eluding them.
O face that seemest made to weep and smile
With us, and hands all rough with common tasks!
Is this indeed Thy sun to which thou hast
Recalled me, and are these Thy fields, which grow
Slowly from grey to green before my eyes?
I felt Thee irresistible in the grave.
Forgive me that I talked so lightly, and went
So unconcerned beside thee in old days.
How is it thou canst care to come and go
With such as me, and walk and work with us,
Thou at whose whisper Death idled and grieved,
And knew the voice at which creation shone
Suddenly? Yet was I so near to peace;
And I came back to life remorsefully,
When the sea murmured again, and fields appeared.
But how should I complain? Unto what end
I am recalled I know not; but if thou
Art here content to be, then why not I?”

FAITH

Thou Power, that beyond the wind
Rulest, to thee I am resigned.
My child from me is snatched away;
She vanished at the peer of day.
Yet I discern with clearer brow
A high indulgence in the blow,
Light in the storm that o'er me broke,
A special kindness in the stroke,
A gentleness behind the Law,
A sweetness following on the awe.
Shall I forget that noonday hour,
When as upon some favourite flower
A deep and tingling bliss was shed,
A thrilling peace from overhead?
I had not known it since my birth,
I shall not know it more on earth.
But now I may not sin, nor err,
For fear of ever losing her.
Though reeling from Thy thunder-blow,
Though blinded with Thy lightning low,
I stagger back to dismal life,
And mix myself with mortal strife,
Thy judgment still to me is sweet;
I feel, I feel, that we shall meet.

BY THE SEA

Remember, ah remember, how we walked
Together on the sea-cliff! You were come
From bathing in the ocean, and the sea
Was not yet dry upon your hair: together
We walked in the wet wind till we were far
From voices, even from the thoughts of men.
Remember how on the warm beach we sat
By the old barque, and in the smell of tar;
While the full ocean on the pebbles dropped,
And in our ears the intimate low wind
Of noon, that breathing from some ancient place,
Blew on us merest sleep and pungent youth.
So deeply glad we grew that in pure joy
Closer we came; your wild and wet dark hair
Slashed in my eyes your essence and your sting.
We had no thought; we troubled not to speak;
Slowly your head fell down upon my breast,
In the soft breeze the acquiescing sun;
And the sea-bloom, the colour of calm wind,
Was on your cheek; like children then we kissed,
Innocent with the sea and pure with air;
My spirit fled into thee. The moon climbed,
The sea foamed nearer, and we two arose;
But ah, how tranquil from that deep embrace!
And with no sadness from that natural kiss:
Beautiful indolence was on our brains,
And on our limbs, as we together swayed
Between the luminous ocean and dark fields.
We two in vivid slumber without haste,
Returned; while veil on veil the heaven was bared;
And a new glory was on land and sea,
And the moist evening fallow, richly dark,
Sent up to us the odour cold of sleep,
The infinite sweet of death: so we returned,
Delaying ever, calm companions,
Peacefully slow beside the moody heave
Of the moon-brilliant billow to the town.

A. S. P.

Frail was she born; petal by petal fell
Her life: till it was strown upon the herb;
Like petals all her fancies lay about.
And the dread Powers kept her face toward grief,
Although she swerved; and still with many a lash
Guided her to the anguish carefully.
So bare her soul that Beauty like a lance
Pierced her, and odour full of arrows was.
She drugged her brain against realities,
And lived in dreams, and was with music fed,
Imploring to be spared e'en sweetest things.
She suffered, and resorted to the ground,
Glad to be blind, and eager to be deaf;
Soliciting eternal apathy.
And she was swift to steep her brain in moss,
And with the heart that so had loved, to blow
Merely, and to be idle in the wind.
She craved no Paradise but only peace.

THE QUESTION

BEAUTIFUL DEATH

Why dreadest thou the calm process of death?
To miss thy wife's illuminating smile?
No more to proudly touch thy child's bright hair?
To leave this glorying green, this flashing sun?
Yet Death is full of leisure, and of light;
Of compensations and of huge amends.
Since all the dead do for the living toil,
Assisting, bathing, in the air, the earth;
A shower their sympathy draws from the ground,
Delicious kindness from the soil exhaled.
Then thou, spendthrift of time, shalt busy be;
Thou shalt begin to foster and prepare.
O thou that within glaze and blinds didst live,
In blackness within windows bright absorbed,
Face to the surface swimming with drowned eyes!
Thou as a breeze shalt wander thro' the ward,
Balm to the sick, a cool and vagrant bliss:
To thee the tired faces shall incline,
Incline with closing eyes and open mouths.
Thou, dangerous to men, in prisons shut,
With life made irretrievable and dark.
Thou on the thirsty place shalt drop like dew,
Or like a cloud haste to the yearning land.
Thou maiden with the silent speckless ways,
On plant or creature squandering thy heart;
Thou in caresses large shalt spend thy life.
Conspiring with the summer plans of lovers, scent
From evening hedge the walk of boy and girl.
Thou merchant, or thou, clerk, hard driven, urged
For ever on bright iron, timed by bells,
Shalt mellow fruit in the serene noon air,
With rivulets of birds through fields of light,
Causing to fall the indolent misty peach.
Then thou, disturbed so oft, shalt make for peace;
Thou who didst injure, heal, and sew, and bless;
Thou who didst mar, shalt make for perfect health;
Thou, so unlucky, fall with fortunate rain.
And I to whom sweet life is dangerous edged,
With tenderness to madness near, with need
Even of a little dew, a drop of hope;
Disguised and starved, who dare not show my soul,
Who walk with bitten lip and clenchéd hands,
For me divine relief! To dare to trust
Each impulse, and to drive free and secure;
All my intention bland and prosperous!
The rose is at my silent coming rich;
I on my enemy's eyes like sleep shall drop,
And he at dawn shall bless me and shall drowse.
Blind shall I be and good, dumb and serene:
I shall not blame, nor question; I shall shine
Diffused and tolerant, luminous and large.
No longer shall I vex, but live my life
In solaces, caresses, and in balms,
Nocturnal soothings and nutritious sighs.
The unhappy mind an odour shall be breathed;
I shall be sagely blown, flung with design,
Assist this bland and universal scheme,
Industrious, happy, sweet, delicious, dead!

THE PRISONER

THE WOUND

I dreamed that, having died, my soul was brought
Into the Presence. Many angels stood
Around, and with delight upon me gazed;
And higher I discerned the face of God
Diffusing silent universal bliss.
Then moved an angel toward me, and with joy
Addressed me, saying: “Come and rest at last,
And having rested, then thou shalt rejoice.”
The heavenly company smiled on me sweet;
But I unbared my soul, and showed to them
That wound which never human word, or hope,
Or pity hath ever 'suaged; and at the sight
A strange disturbance on the spirits came,
And even a dimness on the face of God.
Then rose from God's right hand a gentle Form,
With silent eyes that said, “Hast thou forgot?”
And He disclosed His branded brow and hands.
But I toward Him turning softly said,
“Thy wounds are many, but Thou hadst no child.”

THE NEW “DE PROFUNDIS”

THE APPARITION

LYRICS

CHRIST IN HADES

A PHANTASY