The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

She.—
“Why do you love me?”

He.—
“For your coal-black hair
That brings before my eyes the passionate South:
Because, although my lips in song despair,
Hope thrills them at the touching of your mouth.
Because, when life was weary and at an end,
Like the bright soul of very Spring you came,
Sister and love, a sweetheart in a friend,
And fanned with girlish breath joy's flickering flame
And so I love you.”

She.—
“Will your love abide
Stedfast and faithful, since we cannot be
Sweetheart and lover, husband and fair bride,
But have to move apart eternally?”

He.—
“Lady! the night when first you came to meet
A weary poet, placing trust in him,
Will fill my soul with memories starry-sweet
Till on night's purple robe each star grows dim.”

258

She.—
“But think, how long is life, how dull and cold!
Can such a love as this content you well?
To love, but never to possess and hold,
Men teach that this, to man, is worse then hell.”

He.—
“Worse than a hell it is! Yet you are fair:
God made me love you, and such love is gain.
If love at times seems shadowed by despair,
Still will I love,—if not in joy, in pain.
Perhaps, if early in life our eyes had met,
The strength for perfect love had not been ours:
But now upon the hills our feet are set,
And we can gather noble mountain-flowers.”

She.—
“But if you die, and if I marry then?”

He.—
“Sweetheart, if God who made me love you so
Can take your lips, your heart, from me again,
There is no medicine for that mastering woe.”

She.—
“Stay—”

He.—
“Never! Did not God himself declare
As down the starry heights his great voice rang
That you were destined for the one thing fair
For me? So I took up my harp and sang.
Did God not let me kiss the coal-black hair?
Yes, God and you—allowing bliss and pang?”

259

She.—
“But ought you thus to have acted? Was it wise,
Knowing the barriers Fate has placed between?”

He.—
“Lady, I met the splendour of your eyes,
And barriers vanished at that glance, I ween!”

She.—
“What is the gain? Ephemeral surely and small,
When weighed with what man's heart counts gain and bliss?”

He.—
“Not half your soul I ask. I ask for all.
I ask for years of marriage in one kiss.
To feel your soul grow to me day by day
With lovely trust and confidence serene:
To know that doubts and fears have fled away:
To feel your girlish heart completely lean
On mine: this is the high reward I pray
Your sovereign grace to gift me with, my queen!”

She.—
“And is that marriage?”

He.—
“That is the deep soul
Of marriage, not the phantom and the form:
The marriage-love that, though wild thunders roll,
Can breast the cloud-waves and defy the storm.
Yes, this is marriage.”

She.—
“Is not marriage, then,
The orange-blossomed daily thing we see?”

260

He.—
“Will lace and orange-blossoms help you when,
Loveless, you have to face eternity?
Will silk and silver and gold and praise of men
Assist, when you at last—look round for me?”

She.—
“Nay, not so fast!”

He.—
“Nay, faster—for I know,
As man knows deep by intuition's law,
I, having worshipped, having loved you so,
With such sweet homage and such rapturous awe,
That every other love, though it sound fair
And whatsoever gifts its right hand bring,
Would in its left hand bring you black despair
And sorrow past our mortal reckoning.
No woman ever is loved as I love you
Twice on the earth, twice in eternity:
You'd miss my old grey eyes, and find the new
Brown eyes a trifle tedious, it may be!”

She.—
“Brown eyes are pretty.”

He.—
“Yes, your brown eyes have
The Pyrenean magic in their gaze:
Most stately, queenly, thoughtful, noble, grave,
They make me dream of Southern hills and bays.”

She.—
“But I,—I was not talking of my own”—

He.—
“And I—I never talk except of yours”—

261

She.—
“To argue with a poet”—

He.—
“Ah, your tone
So silver-sweet, ineffably allures!”

She.—
“But, just to say the same old thing once more,
We are debarred and shut off, each from each.”

He.—
“Can wave thrill wave along the shadowy shore,
Can moonbeams mix above the glimmering beach,
Can star reach star across the tremulous night,
Can sun touch sun across wan leagues of air,
And cannot we blend sorrow and delight
And peace unchangeably, my one thing fair?”

She.—
“A poet's thought and diction!”

He.—
“Nay, the truth
To-day as ever is in a poet's dream:
True visions, as of everlasting youth
And endless summer, through your glances gleam.”

She.—
“And if I trust you utterly?”

He.—
“Your trust
Will not be misplaced. Set your lips on mine.
When heaven's stars vanish, worn to golden dust,
Unwrecked, undaunted, shall our love-star shine.”

262

II.

He.—
“Marriage is friendship,—but it adds a higher
And nobler sweetness to the friendly phase;
Touches emotion with diviner fire,
And wreathes pale crowns with crimson blossom-sprays.
Something supremely sweet and pure it brings,
Yet all the sacred gifts that friendship brought
Are still included.”

She.—
“Necklaces and rings
And bracelets seem to me the gifts most sought
By average brides; and by the average man”—

He.—
“Yes, that is just the sorrow and curse—
The misery, the grief, the bitter ban,
Too sea-deep to be sounded in a verse.

263

Most bitter indeed it is that love should be
Degraded (as it is) far, far, below
The level of friendship even.”

She.—
“Yes, I see
Daily how marriage ends in strife and woe.
That makes a woman cautious.”

He.—
“Well may she
Be cautious, for she, giving, gives her all.
She gives the wonder of her purity.
Her gift is infinite: man's gift is small.
And yet not always. When a man bestows
His noblest purest manhood, then the gift
Has its own godlike fragrance, though the rose
Of womanhood be sweeter.”

She.—
“Thus to sift,
Divide and analyse, dissect and part
Love (poor old sweet love!) makes one half despair.”

He.—
“Yes, but the lesson is—Find one true heart;
Hold it God's choicest gift, his dower most rare.
And for much-blundering man the lesson is—
Raise woman; help her; learn, if she be pure,
She wholly gives her being in her kiss:
She loves with love most sacred and most sure.”

264

She.—
“How did you learn this? True it is indeed,
But as a rule men hear it with surprise.”

He.—
“I learnt it where I learnt my whole love-creed,
Through watching the pure woman in your eyes.
One woman can reveal all purity,
All love, all womanhood, deep things past speech,
To her one lover, so that lover be
Willing to let her, quite unconscious, teach.”

She.—
“Unconscious—yes!”

He.—
“That is the very chief
Of all things. As our love and friendship grew
From spring to summer, from slow bud to leaf,
From autumn skies to heights of summer blue,
I watched you daily and within your eyes
I read deep lessons, as I marked the change
From fair bright girl to woman fair and wise,
As your thoughts ripened, took a wider range.
But if you had not been unconscious—quite—
All had been spoilt. So tender is the flower
Of womanhood the least fleck mars the white,
Sullies its petals, and discounts its power.
In fact the insane whole effort of the world
Is to destroy the thing it values most;

265

To force from blossom-folds not half unfurled
A fragrance which, if scattered, soon is lost.
If only all women were as pure as you”—

She.—
“Or all men sound of heart, my true old friend”—

He.—
“Love would be fresh and sweet as morning dew,
And half the sorrows of the world would end.”

266

III.

She.—
“Have you no faith in God?”

He.—
“At times I have:
At other times my very soul despairs.
The world seems one enormous loveless grave,—
Dark, but for fiery blasts of hell's hot airs.
Yes, my queen-sweetheart, were it not for you,
I think I'd hardly care to struggle on:
Still on me beamed a glimpse of sunlit blue
And God's eyes seemed to smile, when your eyes shone.
I know it. Yet a horror grips me hard,
A horror lest the Lord, in bringing you
Into my life thus, played his last trump card
And now has nothing further good to do.
Such eyes as yours he wisely kept in store:
He could not twice produce a thing so sweet.
Now, having played you, what can he do more,
Save acquiesce in sorrow and defeat?”

267

She.—
“Another inference is just and wise,
Juster and wiser: that the God who put
Beauty and hope (you say) within my eyes
Can bring life's bud to flower, life's flower to fruit.”

He.—
“And yet he seems to me a Janus-god
Often,—two-faced, deceiving, wanton, hard.
Why did he open out so sweet a road,
And then leave every gate at the ending barred?
In one word, why did God so fill my heart
With overflowing love and sweet desire,
Desire of you, if at the end we part?
Can God make holiest hope, profoundest liar?”

She.—
“We have not parted yet.”

He.—
“The very thought
Is like a storm-wind whirling all the stars
Across black space. God made this world for nought,
The golden sun, soft Venus, fiery Mars,
The universe in fine, when thus he brought
My strong love face to face with mocking bars!”

She.—
“Perhaps, where love is, iron bars only seem:
One day yourself may own that God is true,
True past your wildest most poetic dream.”

He.—
“On one condition—that he gives me you.”