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

Lanterns of silk down the lagoons are vanished,
Brilliance, uproar, and sweep of masquerade;
Their eddies swell—the firefly world is banish'd,
All your canal is shade.

Magnolia-bloom is here my only candle,
White petals wash, and break, along the wall;
That clumsy lute, the lute with the scorched handle,
Is here to tell you all.

Do you remember—yes, you will remember—
The ballad of a lute of curious tone,
Wrought—a charr'd log—out of a great hearth's ember?
The great hearth was your own.

Firelight was all our light. Your endless gazes—
Contemptuous of all living—forth would float,
Half-terrible in beauty, down those mazes
As in a flame-winged boat.

147

Urania's locks, with horror in their starkness,
Enlapt you, pale as an Aegean gem,
Enwound your ears with silence, and of darkness
Made you a diadem.

What eyes were yours that made the witless falter,
The beating of the heart forget to beat,
Some Arab prisoner's on a desert altar,
And sleepless with defeat.

Yet with that smile that seemed no smile of woman
Frowningly once—floating on light—you cried
As in a vision: Friend, not like your Roman
Cynthia, by the roadside

Would I be tomb'd—close to the dust and rumbling—
But childless, by some playground; that at hours
Oft I may hear the wicked children tumbling
Forth, like a tide of flowers! . . .

By God! to the chords wherewith you then endowed us
(Something in you gave frame and strings a voice)
Now you must listen, in the hours allowed us,
Listen, you have no choice! . . .

148

(He sings)

THE SONG

O heart thrice-noble, to the quick bereavèd,
In beauty wasted, and in weakness dire
Maintaining 'gainst the Gods that have deceivèd
Such cold unwavering ire!

The very stars grow dread with tense forefeeling
Of dawn; the bell-towers darken in the sky
As they would groan before they strike, revealing
New day to such as I.

There comes a day too merciless in clearness,
Worn to the bone the stubborn must give o'er;
There comes a day when to endure in nearness
Can be endured no more.

A man can take the buffets of the tourney,
But there's a hurt, lady, beyond belief;
A grief the Sun finds not upon his journey
Marked on the map of grief.

Fate smote you young. Death young would now frustrate you.
I have but lived—as alchemists for gold—
In my mad pity's flame to re-create you,
Heavenly one, waning, cold!

149

Planet dark! Strange and hostile desolation
Whereto no ray serene hath ever gone
Nor touched with the one kiss of evocation—
You might have loved and shone!

Was I not bred of the same clay and vapour
And lightning of the universe as you?
Had I the self-same God to be my shaper,
Or cracks the world in two?

It cannot be, though I have nought of merit,
That man may hold so dear, and with such pain
Enfold with all the tendrils of the spirit,
Yet not be loved again;

It cannot be that such intensest yearning,
Such fierce and incommunicable care
Starred on your face, as through a crystal burning,
Is wasted on the air;

It cannot be I gave my soul, unfolding
To you its very inmost, like a child
Utterly giving faith—no jot withholding—
By you to be beguiled;

It cannot be to look on us, despising,
That yonder great-puls'd Sun englobes the wave
With crocus fire—releasing and arising—
To break upon the slave;

150

No. In rich Venice, riotous and human,
That shrinks for me to sandbanks and a sky,
You hold the love I bear you a thing common.
Enough. So let it die,

Die from your waves away—O, pale, pale wonder!
The gaunt ships out—toss'd petals—to the main
Be suck'd—the iron bands be snapt asunder!
But Night, Death, you—remain.

(He ceases to sing; and speaks, touching the chords)

In the outer flood, and plunging at his tether,
One sullen hulk complains against the quays;
Rusty, and timbered ill for such fine weather,
He thinks on the high seas.

My hand forgets the strings. May be for travel
It trembles to be gone, to steer the fleet!
There's the secret of the Indies to unravel,
And then the Turks to beat!