POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918
CONFESSION.
I think, by God! It is no lie;
I shall go dreaming till I die!
There is no love so real to me
As the cold passion of the sea.
There is no little, wind-swept town
By harbors where the roads go down,
Or headland gray that sits and sips
The cup of ocean at its lips,
And gazes at the far-off ships—
Or tree or house or friend so real
As visions and the dreams I feel.
No—not the windy, vaultless arch
Where all the white stars flame and march,
Nor water at the river fords
Like horses mad among the swords,
Or oaks that lean from winter storms;
These only give my vision forms.
Away! White hands, I will not take!
And kissing mouths that cry, "Awake!"
For you I have no gramercy;
So leave me by my lotus tree,
To dream and gaze into the sky
Where red suns wither up and die,
I know! I know! I do not lie!
I shall go dreaming till I die!
DESPAIR.
You who made me
With first ecstasy
When I was sown,
And lovely things at night
I will not write
And burdened moan,
While veiny labyrinths with mystery ran
Till time and blood were life
And I began—
By holier things than God,
Or any other shibboleth of man,
Dead woman wan,
By the thin, silver scream that winter morn
In the dim, shuttered room where I was born,
Be gone!
Haunt me no more, Shroud Trailer,
Go to bed.
For the swift, golden wings I owe to you
Flap in the dust like some loose, common shoe;
Stay dead, stay dead!
I fear your glimmering bust in utter air,
The transparent eyes with shadowy stare,
The sleepy, sleepy scent of flowers
And the long hands—
They fill me with despair.
Touch me no more at night.
Borrow no form for me
Of sound or sight;
For all my days are spent by cluttered streams,
Distracted by a thousand things and faces,
And all unuttered die great dreams
Among the stagnant places.
I am not what you gave your life to buy,
And God knows what I shall be by and by!
The motes of habit sift down grain by grain,
Till I am what I am in heart and brain,
So young—so old—
Death keep you, darling,
Deaf and blind and cold.
VALE.
I love the little vale between your breasts,
But yet, farewell, for that is never still;
My garden far from you will be at rest
With lakes asleep beside a brooding hill
And cedar swales in hollow valley lands
With S-like streams between the O-shaped ponds,
Where grow frail ferns with upturned Gothic hands
And prayerful fronds.
In gray half-lights 'twill be a lovely thing
By Gypsy paths to wander at hearts-ease
Near campaniles where the bell folk sing
Down terraces of rustling linden trees,
And two hills like your breasts will be in death,
When lamps will cast their shadows silently,
Will rise still blue above the yellow corn
That ripples with a sleepy mystery.
AFTERMATH.
Under the placid surface of the days
So seeming clear,
Back of the habits of old ways,
A quiet fear;
The locked-up memories of war,
Our Bluebeard's room,
Where the blood creeps underneath the door.
Never will come
In streams of days that ring
Like clean coins down the merry grooves of change,
One without grief's alloy,
Struck from pure gold of joy,
Undimmed by unshed tears,
Nor is it strange.
For in the wraith-thronged brain
Are private ghosts of pain,
Aloof, like patient sick men in a crowd
With half-veiled faces and old sorrow bowed—
Ah! The free days can never come again!
They passed with the far, rolling drums,
Died to the moan and thunder of the guns,
And the mad, glad, clear, lyric birdsong never comes.
HYLAS.
Theocritus, Idyll XIII.
Where art thou, Hylas,
Of the golden locks?
Where art thou, Argive lad,
That fed thy flocks
In wind-swept Thessaly,
Beside the sea?
Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!
I.
When the Pleiads rose no more
Rowed the heroes to the shore,
Much in fear of winter gales,
And they furled the wing-like sails,
Carrying up the corded bales
From the hollow, oaken Argo
Till they lightened her of cargo.
Then they beached her for the winter
Where nor rocks nor waves could splinter
There the heroes made their camp
By the whispering seashore damp,
But the mighty Heracles,
Tired of looking at the seas,
Rose and left those sounding beaches
For the upland's wind-swept reaches.
In a little beechwood gray
Hylas fed his flock that day,
Playing all alone but gayly
Where he fed his lambkins daily,
Singing to a five-stringed psalter
By a little woodland altar,
Where a shepherd's fire of oak
Made a ribbon scarf of smoke,
Curling highly, thinly, bluely,
From the faggots cut but newly.
Moving with a god-like ease,
Through the gray boles of the trees,
Hylas first spied Heracles,
Looming vast as huge Orion,
Tawny in his skin of lion;
While through interspace of leaves,
Through the network autumn weaves,
Fell bronze sunshine and bronze leaves
On the lion skin with its paws,
Dangling, fringed with crescent claws.
Softly all the flock were bleating
As he gave the lad good greeting,
Rubbing down with leaves his club,
Mighty as a chariot hub—
Hylas stood with golden locks,
Glowing mid the lichened rocks,
Laughing in the silver beeches,
White as milk and tanned like peaches.
Then the hero loved the lad,
For his beauty made him glad,
And he took him on his knees;
Tender was huge Heracles,
Telling him of strange journeys
To the far Hesperides,
Crossing oceans in a bowl,
Till he won him heart and soul.
So these two were friends forever,
Never seen apart, together
Were they all that winter weather.
And the hero taught the youth
How to shoot and tell the truth,
How to drive a furrow straight,
Plowing, plowing, very early
When the frosty grass was curly—
Taught him how to play the lyre,
Till each wire, and wire, and wire
Sang together like a choir;
And at night young Hylas crept
In the lion skin where he slept
Where the lowing oxen team
Stood beneath the smoke-browned beam,
Slept beside the hero clypt
By the giant, downy lipped.
Centuries have fled away
Since the hero came that day
To the little beechwood gray
Where young Hylas was at play;
But I shall, as poets may,
Wreathe these roses for his head,
For his beauty is not dead.
And a voice has sung to me
Like a memory of the sea,
Sung this ancient threnody,
Like an autumn melody:
"Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!"
II.
When the springtime came again
And the shepherd to his spen
Led his cloudy flock again,
When the awkward lambkins bounded
While the twin pipes whistling sounded,
And old Charon from his glen
Saw below the smoke of men
Curling thinly from the trees,
Then the heroes sought the seas.
Then the Argo left the shore,
For each eager warrior thought,
When the Pleiads rose once more,
Of the golden fleece he sought.
Hylas went with Heracles,
Dancing to the dancing seas,
And he stood high in the bow,
Golden by the carven prow,
Or he lay within the furls
With the sea damp on his curls.
But at home his mother wept
With her hair upon the floor,
By the hearth where he had slept,
For her woman's heart was sore,
Saying, "He is gone from me!
Gone across the sounding sea!
Ai! Ai! Woe is me!
Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!"
With the soft, south wind to follow
All the day the sail was hollow,
While the marvelous Orpheus sang,
Till the water furrows rang—
Never man sang as he sang—
Never man has sung the same—
And the ship flew till they came
Where the olive trees are gaunt
By the winding Hellespont,
And the Cian oxen wear
Water-bright the bronze plowshare.
On a fallow meadow hollow,
Where the Cian cattle wallow,
There they landed two by two;
They the grass and rushes strew
For their bed,
Leaves and pointed flag stocks callow,
Foot and head.
And the evening coming on,
Heracles and Telamon
Set the supper fires upleaping
And the shadows swooping, sweeping
Overhead.
Meanwhile, Hylas with a vase
Wandered inland through the haze,
Hoping there to fill his bronze,
Girt about with goat-foot fauns,
Polished.
And around and twice around it,
Where an inwrought girdle bound it,
Fled the rout of chaste Diana,
Goddess led.
Inland in a cup-shaped vale
Willow swart and galingale
Grew with swallowwort and sparsely
Maidenhair and blooming parsley,
And the shallow's level glass
Mirrored back the yellow grass
Where the swallow dipped his wings,
Making rings on rings in rings.
There a nymph dance was afoot
Where the country people put
Cloth and oaten cakes and bread
For the water spirits dread—
Two and two and in and out,
Three and two, around about,
Hands around and then they vanished,
Leaving Hylas there astonished.
But at last he stooped to dip
And the eager water slipped,
Stuttering past the metal lip,
Choking like a sunk bell rung—
Suddenly white nymph hands clung
Cold as iron around his arm
Till he cried out in alarm.
Gave a little silver cry
And the swallow skimming nigh
Darted higher in the sky,
And the echo when he spoke—
Awoke.
Now the white hands tighter cling,
Now the funneled water ring
Fills and flows till in its glass
Nods again the nodding grass.
Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!
Then it was that Heracles
For sweet Hylas ill at ease,
Left the heroes by the fire,
Strung his bowstring taut as wire,
Went to look for Hylas inland
Past a little rocky headland,
Rising higher ever higher
Till he found the cup-shaped dale,
Where he called without avail,
Shouting loudly, "Hylas, Hylas,"
Echo answered back, "Alas,"
Echo answered very slowly,
Speaking sorrowfully and lowly,
When he called the lad, "Hy-las,"
Hollow echo said, "Alas."
And he never found him more
On the hill or by the shore,
On the upland, on the downland,
Never found him where he lay
Down among the boulders gray,
Limp among the watery rocks,
Where the lily raised its chalice
And the dread nymphs combed his locks,
Pale Nycheia, April-eyed,
And white Eunice and Malis.
For his voice came down to these
Vague as April in the trees,
Filtered through the water clear
Far and faint yet strangely near,
Very thin—
And no echo could they hear
Only ripples' silver din
And the dull splash of an otter;
Echo cannot live in water.
But that echo comes to me
Down through half eternity
Crying out, "Alas—Alas!"
For all beauty that must pass
Like a picture from a glass—
When time breathes it is not there—
Bony hands and coffined hair!
Alas! Alas! Alas!
BACCHUS IS GONE.
Bacchus is gone!
I saw him leave the shore
Upon a moonless time,
And he is gone—is gone—
Forevermore.
I saw the satyrs and the bacchanals—
Bacchus is gone—is gone—
With smoking torches as at funerals
Light him across the sea at dawn.
I saw the whimpering pards
Where he had passed—
Bacchus is gone—is gone—
Sniff to the water's edge,
Where purple stained, his footprints led—
I heard the Goat-foot whisper in the hedge,
"Bacchus is dead—is dead,"
And go aghast,
Snapping the myrtle branches as he fled.
Bacchus is gone!
And with him dancing Folly—
Bacchus is dead—is dead—
Oh, Melancholy!
No! No! He is not dead; he has but fled
To kindlier lands he knew in days before
Men snatched the purple roses from his head.
He does but wanton by some liberal shore—
Sun kissed—
And wreathed with vine leaves as of old,
With spotted beasts and maidens by his car,
And sound of timbrels like a story told
Of youth and love and blood and wine and war.
TIGER LILIES.
They make me think of battlefields I saw
Where butterflies with wings of sulphurous gold
Crawled on gray faces death had made obscene
That stared with stolid dolls' eyes from the mold.
They make me think of pools of wimpled slime,
Where lizards bask upon the quaking crust,
And crumbling walls where hairy spiders weave
And snakes lie coupling in the summer dust.
I think it must have been along the Nile
That first these speckled membranes burst the pod,
Before the boy-flat breasts of some half-cat
Half-man and beryl-eyed Egyptian god.
Or first they grew about forgotten tombs
The apes inherit in hot jungles where
Like xanthic suns through aquid shade of leaves
A spotted leopard's dilate pupils stare.
These were the mottled blossoms of Gomorrah,
Wreathed on beast-gods by priestly Sodomites,
By Baal fires when the talking timbrel's sound
Fell from Astarte's groves on full moon nights.
They suck a yellow venom from the sun
And mid their reedy stocks there comes and goes
The forked, black lightning of a serpent's tongue
That hisses as his slippery body flows.
Such lilies bloom beside the gates of hell
And poison honey festers in their pods,
Olid as tales of lust told long ago
About the wanton mother of the gods.
And I would plant them by the lichened tomb
Of that veiled queen who died of leprosy
With two red princes smothered in her womb;
Their roots would feed on her in secrecy.