I
This hour has shut us like a tent
From all but night; we two, alone,
So close, so poignantly alert, have grown,
That trivial speech, from silence rent,
Breaks off—a useless instrument.
For all the opening world is ours,
And you, tho scarce a woman yet,
Your eyes with feasts of lights and vintage set,
Hold all the dewy wealth of flowers,
And gold of Babylonian towers.
Our lives will alter if we move—
It were so easy now to rise
And tell my unimpassioned soul it lies—
And claim youth’s heritage of love,
Let bald life prove what it may prove!
It were so easy to conceive
Your lack my lack would compensate—
And by one stroke undo the knot of fate;
It were so easy to believe
The lies that such a thing could weave!
Or shall I stumble through the night
Biting my lips to hold the tears
Because your incommunicable years
Must spend their summer of delight
Without my reach—beyond my sight?
The house is still; the midnight seems
Inscrutable—no answer there.
Oh God!—to break this tension of despair.
Between us the calm lamplight streams—
“Good night!” and “Pleasant dreams!”—yes—dreams.
II
I would I had lain with my love to-night;
Her eyes trembled for her body said,
“I have smoothed a pillow and made a bed”—
But I smiled against it
And turned away my head
To come into the cold starlight.
I would I had lain with my love to-night,
For I know how flowers are shed,
And the cynical scintillant stars are dead—
Dead, dead utterly!
Yet I turned away my head
To come into the cold starlight.
I would I had lain with my love to-night!
Oh, indolent Gods, we too can tread
On the silent spirits, the uncomforted!
She did not reproach me,
Tho I turned away my head
And came into the starlight.
III
Love (as a cloud on the sea
Hung between poles of blue)
Hangs in the heart of me
Between the eyes of you.
Love, as a cloud on the sea,
Claims the tears of two.
Love (as a wind in a tree
Shaking its tower of green)
Shakes all the heart of me
And leaves no peace between.
Love, as the wind the tree
Tears with hands unseen.
Love (as a storm on the sea
Shatters the sleep of the wave)
Shatters the heart of me
With desires that grope and crave.
Love, as the storm the sea,
Boasts not me his slave.
IV
You, flower-named, and as a flower arrayed,
Open to all the wandering airs that pass,
Opened to me—yet I drew back afraid,
Craven to the blood that would have preyed
And the sly viper coiling in the grass.