IANNOULA.
All the maidens were merry and wed
All to lovers so fair to see;
The lover I took to my bridal bed
He is not long for love and me.
I spoke to him and he noting said,
I gave him bread of the wheat so fine,
He did not eat of the bridal bread,
He did not drink of the bridal wine.
I made him a bed was soft and deep,
I made him a bed to sleep with me;
‘Look on me once before you sleep,
And look on the flower of my fair body.
‘Flowers of April, and fresh May-dew,
Dew of April and buds of May;
Two white blossoms that bud for you,
Buds that blossom before the day.’
THE TELL-TALES.
All in the mirk midnight when I was beside you,
Who has seen, who has heard, what was said, what was done?
’Twas the night and the light of the stars that espied you,
The fall of the moon, and the dawning begun.
’Tis a swift star has fallen, a star that discovers
To the sea what the green sea has told to the oars,
And the oars to the sailors, and they of us lovers
Go singing this song at their mistress’s doors.
AVE.
TWILIGHT ON TWEED.
Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The dear remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again.
Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.
Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.
A mist of memory broods and floats,
The border waters flow;
The air is full of ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago.
Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy’s day dream,
While trout below the blossom’d tree
Plashed in the golden stream.
* * * * * *
Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and thrice fair you be;
You tell me that the voice is still
That should have welcomed me.
ONE FLOWER.
“Up there shot a lily red,
With a patch of earth from the land of the dead,
For she was strong in the land of the dead.”
When autumn suns are soft, and sea winds moan,
And golden fruits make sweet the golden air,
In gardens where the apple blossoms were,
In these old springs before I walked alone;
I pass among the pathways overgrown,
Of all the former flowers that kissed your feet
Remains a poppy, pallid from the heat,
A wild poppy that the wild winds have sown.
Alas! the rose forgets your hands of rose;
The lilies slumber in the lily bed;
’Tis only poppies in the dreamy close,
The changeless, windless garden of the dead,
You tend, with buds soft as your kiss that lies
In over happy dreams, upon mine eyes.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I shall not see thee, nay, but I shall know
Perchance, thy grey eyes in another’s eyes,
Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow
On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise
Shall follow, and track, and find thee in disguise
Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,
When through the scent of heather, faint and low,
The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.
From all sweet art, and out of all ‘old rhyme,’
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;
The shadows of the beauty of all time,
Carven and sung, are only shapes of thee;
Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear
Shall life or death bring all thy being near?
LOST IN HADES.
I dreamed that somewhere in the shadowy place,
Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot
In welcome, and regret remembered not;
And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise
On lips that had been songless many days;
Hope had no more to hope for, and desire
And dread were overpast, in white attire
New born we walked among the new world’s ways.
Then from the press of shades a spirit threw
Towards me such apples as these gardens bear;
And turning, I was ‘ware of her, and knew
And followed her fleet voice and flying hair,—
Followed, and found her not, and seeking you
I found you never, dearest, anywhere.
A STAR IN THE NIGHT.
The perfect piteous beauty of thy face,
Is like a star the dawning drives away;
Mine eyes may never see in the bright day
Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace:
But in the night from forth the silent place
Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray
Star of the starry flock that in the grey
Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment’s space.
And as the earth at night turns to a star,
Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,
So in the spiritual place afar,
At night our souls are mingled and made one,
And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,
That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.
A SUNSET ON YARROW.
The wind and the day had lived together,
They died together, and far away
Spoke farewell in the sultry weather,
Out of the sunset, over the heather,
The dying wind and the dying day.
Far in the south, the summer levin
Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:
We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;
You saw within, but to me ’twas given
To see your face, as an angel’s, there.
Never again, ah surely never
Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,
The low good-night of the hill and the river,
The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.
HESPEROTHEN.
By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the Vanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe’s Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary, attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.
THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA.
There is a land in the remotest day,
Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;
The eastern shores see faint tides fade away,
That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs,
Make life,—the lands beneath the blue of common skies.
But in the west is a mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan
Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves;
Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam,
And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves,
Wherein a God may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.
The Gods are careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas;
The Gods are heedless of their painful breath,
And love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.
Yet the Phæacians well they love, who live
At the light’s limit, passing careless hours,
Most like the Gods; and they have gifts to give,
Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers,
And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.
It is a quiet midland; in the cool
Of twilight comes the God, though no man prayed,
To watch the maids and young men beautiful
Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid,
For they are near of kin to Gods, and undismayed.
Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,
And far the path and dim to where they sleep,—
The loved, the shadowy lands along the shadowy deep.
A SONG OF PHÆACIA.
The languid sunset, mother of roses,
Lingers, a light on the magic seas,
The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses,
Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze.
The red rose clouds, without law or leader,
Gather and float in the airy plain;
The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar,
The cedar scatters his scent to the main.
The strange flowers’ perfume turns to singing,
Heard afar over moonlit seas;
The Siren’s song, grown faint in winging,
Falls in scent on the cedar trees.
As waifs blown out of the sunset, flying,
Purple, and rosy, and grey, the birds
Brighten the air with their wings; their crying
Wakens a moment the weary herds.
Butterflies flit from the fairy garden,
Living blossoms of flying flowers;
Never the nights with winter harden,
Nor moons wax keen in this land of ours.
Great fruits, fragrant, green and golden,
Gleam in the green, and droop and fall;
Blossom, and bud, and flower unfolden,
Swing, and cling to the garden wall.
Deep in the woods as twilight darkens,
Glades are red with the scented fire;
Far in the dells the white maid hearkens,
Song and sigh of the heart’s desire.
Ah, and as moonlight fades in morning,
Maiden’s song in the matin grey,
Faints as the first bird’s note, a warning,
Wakes and wails to the new-born day.
The waking song and the dying measure
Meet, and the waxing and waning light
Meet, and faint with the hours of pleasure,
The rose of the sea and the sky is white.
THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA.
THE PHÆACIANS.
Why from the dreamy meadows,
More fair than any dream,
Why will you seek the shadows
Beyond the ocean stream?
Through straits of storm and peril,
Through firths unsailed before,
Why make you for the sterile,
The dark Kimmerian shore?
There no bright streams are flowing,
There day and night are one,
No harvest time, no sowing,
No sight of any sun;
No sound of song or tabor,
No dance shall greet you there;
No noise of mortal labour,
Breaks on the blind chill air.
Are ours not happy places,
Where Gods with mortals trod?
Saw not our sires the faces
Of many a present God?
THE SEEKERS.
Nay, now no God comes hither,
In shape that men may see;
They fare we know not whither,
We know not what they be.
Yea, though the sunset lingers
Far in your fairy glades,
Though yours the sweetest singers,
Though yours the kindest maids,
Yet here be the true shadows,
Here in the doubtful light;
Amid the dreamy meadows
No shadow haunts the night.
We seek a city splendid,
With light beyond the sun;
Or lands where dreams are ended,
And works and days are done.
A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE. [110]
Fair white bird, what song art thou singing
In wintry weather of lands o’er sea?
Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,
Where no grass grows, and no green tree?
I looked at the far off fields and grey,
There grew no tree but the cypress tree,
That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,
And whoso looks on it, woe is he.
And whoso eats of the fruit thereof
Has no more sorrow, and no more love;
And who sets the same in his garden stead,
In a little space he is waste and dead.
THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME.
The weary sails a moment slept,
The oars were silent for a space,
As past Hesperian shores we swept,
That were as a remembered face
Seen after lapse of hopeless years,
In Hades, when the shadows meet,
Dim through the mist of many tears,
And strange, and though a shadow, sweet.
So seemed the half-remembered shore,
That slumbered, mirrored in the blue,
With havens where we touched of yore,
And ports that over well we knew.
Then broke the calm before a breeze
That sought the secret of the west;
And listless all we swept the seas
Towards the Islands of the Blest.
Beside a golden sanded bay
We saw the Sirens, very fair
The flowery hill whereon they lay,
The flowers set upon their hair.
Their old sweet song came down the wind,
Remembered music waxing strong,
Ah now no need of cords to bind,
No need had we of Orphic song.
It once had seemed a little thing,
To lay our lives down at their feet,
That dying we might hear them sing,
And dying see their faces sweet;
But now, we glanced, and passing by,
No care had we to tarry long;
Faint hope, and rest, and memory
Were more than any Siren’s song.
CIRCE’S ISLE REVISITED.
Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;
Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied;
No voice from bowers o’ergrown and ruinous
As fallen rocks upon the mountain side.
There was no sound of singing in the air;
Failed or fled the maidens that were fair,
No more for sorrow or joy were seen of us,
No light of laughing eyes, or floating hair.
The perfume, and the music, and the flame
Had passed away; the memory of shame
Alone abode, and stings of faint desire,
And pulses of vague quiet went and came.
Ah, Circe! in thy sad changed fairy place,
Our dead Youth came and looked on us a space,
With drooping wings, and eyes of faded fire,
And wasted hair about a weary face.
Why had we ever sought the magic isle
That seemed so happy in the days erewhile?
Why did we ever leave it, where we met
A world of happy wonders in one smile?
Back to the westward and the waning light
We turned, we fled; the solitude of night
Was better than the infinite regret,
In fallen places of our dead delight.
THE LIMIT OF LANDS.
Between the circling ocean sea
And the poplars of Persephone
There lies a strip of barren sand,
Flecked with the sea’s last spray, and strown
With waste leaves of the poplars, blown
From gardens of the shadow land.
With altars of old sacrifice
The shore is set, in mournful wise
The mists upon the ocean brood;
Between the water and the air
The clouds are born that float and fare
Between the water and the wood.
Upon the grey sea never sail
Of mortals passed within our hail,
Where the last weak waves faint and flow;
We heard within the poplar pale
The murmur of a doubtful wail
Of voices loved so long ago.
We scarce had care to die or live,
We had no honey cake to give,
No wine of sacrifice to shed;
There lies no new path over sea,
And now we know how faint they be,
The feasts and voices of the Dead.
Ah, flowers and dance! ah, sun and snow!
Glad life, sad life we did forego
To dream of quietness and rest;
Ah, would the fleet sweet roses here
Poured light and perfume through the drear
Pale year, and wan land of the west.
Sad youth, that let the spring go by
Because the spring is swift to fly,
Sad youth, that feared to mourn or love,
Behold how sadder far is this,
To know that rest is nowise bliss,
And darkness is the end thereof.
VERSES ON PICTURES.
COLINETTE.
For a sketch by Mr. G. Leslie, A.R.A.
France your country, as we know;
Room enough for guessing yet,
What lips now or long ago,
Kissed and named you—Colinette.
In what fields from sea to sea,
By what stream your home was set,
Loire or Seine was glad of thee,
Marne or Rhone, O Colinette?
Did you stand with ‘maidens ten,
Fairer maids were never seen,’
When the young king and his men
Passed among the orchards green?
Nay, old ballads have a note
Mournful, we would fain forget;
No such sad old air should float
Round your young brows, Colinette.
Say, did Ronsard sing to you,
Shepherdess, to lull his pain,
When the court went wandering through
Rose pleasances of Touraine?
Ronsard and his famous Rose
Long are dust the breezes fret;
You, within the garden close,
You are blooming, Colinette.
Have I seen you proud and gay,
With a patched and perfumed beau,
Dancing through the summer day,
Misty summer of Watteau?
Nay, so sweet a maid as you
Never walked a minuet
With the splendid courtly crew;
Nay, forgive me, Colinette.
Not from Greuze’s canvasses
Do you cast a glance, a smile;
You are not as one of these,
Yours is beauty without guile.
Round your maiden brows and hair
Maidenhood and Childhood met
Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair,
New art’s blossom, Colinette.
A SUNSET OF WATTEAU.
LUI.
The silk sail fills, the soft winds wake,
Arise and tempt the seas;
Our ocean is the Palace lake,
Our waves the ripples that we make
Among the mirrored trees.
ELLE.
Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song,
And dear the languid dream;
The music mingled all day long
With paces of the dancing throng,
And murmur of the stream.
An hour ago, an hour ago,
We rested in the shade;
And now, why should we seek to know
What way the wilful waters flow?
There is no fairer glade.
LUI.
Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail,
And seek him everywhere;
Perchance in sunset’s golden pale
He listens to the nightingale,
Amid the perfumed air.
Come, he has fled; you are not you,
And I no more am I;
Delight is changeful as the hue
Of heaven, that is no longer blue
In yonder sunset sky.
Nay, if we seek we shall not find,
If we knock none openeth;
Nay, see, the sunset fades behind
The mountains, and the cold night wind
Blows from the house of Death.
A NATIVITY OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI.
‘Wrought in the troublous times of Italy
By Sandro Botticelli,’ when for fear
Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near
To end all labour and all revelry,
He worked and prayed in silence; this is she
That by the holy cradle sees the bier,
And in spice gifts the hyssop on the spear,
And out of Bethlehem, Gethsemane.
Between the gold sky and the green o’er head,
The twelve great shining angels, garlanded,
Marvel upon this face, wherein combine
The mother’s love that shone on all of us,
And maiden rapture that makes luminous
The brows of Margaret and Catherine.
SONGS AND SONNETS
TWO HOMES.
To a young English lady in the Hospital of the Wounded at Carlsruhe. Sept. 1870.
What does the dim gaze of the dying find
To waken dream or memory, seeing you?
In your sweet eyes what other eyes are blue,
And in your hair what gold hair on the wind
Floats of the days gone almost out of mind?
In deep green valleys of the Fatherland
He may remember girls with locks like thine;
May dream how, where the waiting angels stand,
Some lost love’s eyes are dim before they shine
With welcome:—so past homes, or homes to be,
He sees a moment, ere, a moment blind,
He crosses Death’s inhospitable sea,
And with brief passage of those barren lands
Comes to the home that is not made with hands.
SUMMER’S ENDING.
The flags below the shadowy fern
Shine like spears between sun and sea,
The tide and the summer begin to turn,
And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn,
For fires of autumn that catch and burn,
For love gone out between thee and me.
The wind is up, and the weather broken,
Blue seas, blue eyes, are grieved and grey,
Listen, the word that the wind has spoken,
Listen, the sound of the sea,—a token
That summer’s over, and troths are broken,—
That loves depart as the hours decay.
A love has passed to the loves passed over,
A month has fled to the months gone by;
And none may follow, and none recover
July and June, and never a lover
May stay the wings of the Loves that hover,
As fleet as the light in a sunset sky.
NIGHTINGALE WEATHER.
‘Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?
Serai-je nonnette? je crois que non.
Derrière chez mon père
Il est un bois taillis,
Le rossignol y chante
Et le jour et le nuit.
Il chaste pour les filles
Qui n’ont pas d’ami;
Il ne chante pas pour moi,
J’en ai un, Dieu merci.’—Old French.
I’ll never be a nun, I trow,
While apple bloom is white as snow,
But far more fair to see;
I’ll never wear nun’s black and white
While nightingales make sweet the night
Within the apple tree.
Ah, listen! ’tis the nightingale,
And in the wood he makes his wail,
Within the apple tree;
He singeth of the sore distress
Of many ladies loverless;
Thank God, no song for me.
For when the broad May moon is low,
A gold fruit seen where blossoms blow
In the boughs of the apple tree,
A step I know is at the gate;
Ah love, but it is long to wait
Until night’s noon bring thee!
Between lark’s song and nightingale’s
A silent space, while dawning pales,
The birds leave still and free
For words and kisses musical,
For silence and for sighs that fall
In the dawn, ’twixt him and me.
LOVE AND WISDOM.
‘When last we gathered roses in the garden
I found my wits, but truly you lost yours.’
The Broken Heart.
July, and June brought flowers and love
To you, but I would none thereof,
Whose heart kept all through summer time
A flower of frost and winter rime.
Yours was true wisdom—was it not?—
Even love; but I had clean forgot,
Till seasons of the falling leaf,
All loves, but one that turned to grief.
At length at touch of autumn tide,
When roses fell, and summer died,
All in a dawning deep with dew,
Love flew to me, love fled from you.
The roses drooped their weary heads,
I spoke among the garden beds;
You would not hear, you could not know,
Summer and love seemed long ago,
As far, as faint, as dim a dream,
As to the dead this world may seem.
Ah sweet, in winter’s miseries,
Perchance you may remember this,
How wisdom was not justified
In summer time or autumn-tide,
Though for this once below the sun,
Wisdom and love were made at one;
But love was bitter-bought enough,
And wisdom light of wing as love.
GOOD-BYE.
Kiss me, and say good-bye;
Good-bye, there is no word to say but this,
Nor any lips left for my lips to kiss,
Nor any tears to shed, when these tears dry;
Kiss me, and say, good-bye.
Farewell, be glad, forget;
There is no need to say ‘forget,’ I know,
For youth is youth, and time will have it so,
And though your lips are pale, and your eyes wet,
Farewell, you must forget.
You shall bring home your sheaves,
Many, and heavy, and with blossoms twined
Of memories that go not out of mind;
Let this one sheaf be twined with poppy leaves
When you bring home your sheaves.
In garnered loves of thine,
The ripe good fruit of many hearts and years,
Somewhere let this lie, grey and salt with tears;
It grew too near the sea wind, and the brine
Of life, this love of mine.
This sheaf was spoiled in spring,
And over-long was green, and early sere,
And never gathered gold in the late year
From autumn suns, and moons of harvesting,
But failed in frosts of spring.
Yet was it thine my sweet,
This love, though weak as young corn witheréd,
Whereof no man may gather and make bread;
Thine, though it never knew the summer heat;
Forget not quite, my sweet.
AN OLD PRAYER.
Χαιρέ μοι, ῶ Βασίλεια, διαμπερὲς εἰς ὅ κε γῆρας
Ἔλθῃ καὶ θάνατος,τὰ τ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται.Odyssey, xiii. 59.
My prayer an old prayer borroweth,
Of ancient love and memory—
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
Gently as winter’s early breath,
Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee,
To lands whereof no man knoweth
Of summer, over land and sea;
So with thy soul may summer be,
Even as the ancient singer saith,
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
LOVE’S MIRACLE.
With other helpless folk about the gate,
The gate called Beautiful, with weary eyes
That take no pleasure in the summer skies,
Nor all things that are fairest, does she wait;
So bleak a time, so sad a changeless fate
Makes her with dull experience early wise,
And in the dawning and the sunset, sighs
That all hath been, and shall be, desolate.
Ah, if Love come not soon, and bid her live,
And know herself the fairest of fair things,
Ah, if he have no healing gift to give,
Warm from his breast, and holy from his wings,
Or if at least Love’s shadow in passing by
Touch not and heal her, surely she must die.
DREAMS.
He spake not truth, however wise, who said
That happy, and that hapless men in sleep
Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep
As countless, careless, races of the dead.
Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread,
And one beholds the faces that he sighs
In vain to bring before his daylit eyes,
And waking, he remembers on his bed;
And one with fainting heart and feeble hand
Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land,
Where strength and courage were of no avail;
And one is borne on fairy breezes far
To the bright harbours of a golden star
Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.
FAIRY LAND.
In light of sunrise and sunsetting,
The long days lingered, in forgetting
That ever passion, keen to hold
What may not tarry, was of old,
In lands beyond the weary wold;
Beyond the bitter stream whose flood
Runs red waist-high with slain men’s blood.
Was beauty once a thing that died?
Was pleasure never satisfied?
Was rest still broken by the vain
Desire of action, bringing pain,
To die in languid rest again?
All this was quite forgotten there,
Where never winter chilled the year,
Nor spring brought promise unfulfilled,
Nor, with the eager summer killed,
The languid days drooped autumnwards.
So magical a season guards
The constant prime of a cool June;
So slumbrous is the river’s tune,
That knows no thunder of heavy rains,
Nor ever in the summer wanes,
Like waters of the summer time
In lands far from the Fairy clime.
Yea, there the Fairy maids are kind,
With nothing of the changeful mind
Of maidens in the days that were;
And if no laughter fills the air
With sound of silver murmurings,
And if no prayer of passion brings
A love nigh dead to life again,
Yet sighs more subtly sweet remain,
And smiles that never satiate,
And loves that fear scarce any fate.
Alas, no words can bring the bloom
Of Fairy Land; the faint perfume,
The sweet low light, the magic air,
To eyes of who has not been there:
Alas, no words, nor any spell
Can lull the eyes that know too well,
The lost fair world of Fairy Land.
Ah, would that I had never been
The lover of the Fairy Queen!
Or would that through the sleepy town,
The grey old place of Ercildoune,
And all along the little street,
The soft fall of the white deer’s feet
Came, with the mystical command
That I must back to Fairy Land!
TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS.
‘Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidelles compagnes de Proserpine, qu’elles estoient toujours ensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de leur chère compagne, et enuyées jusques au desespoir, elles s’arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par leurs chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais l’unique fin de la volupé de leur musique est la Mort.’—Pontus de Tyard. 1570.
I.
The Sirens once were maidens innocent
That through the water-meads with Proserpine
Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content
Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine,
With lilies woven and with wet woodbine;
Till once they sought the bright Ætnaean flowers,
And their bright mistress fled from summer hours
With Hades, down the irremeable decline.
And they have sought her all the wide world through
Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong
Have filled and changed their song, and o’er the blue
Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song,
And whoso hears must listen till he die
Far on the flowery shores of Sicily.
II.
So is it with this singing art of ours,
That once with maids went maidenlike, and played
With woven dances in the poplar-shade,
And all her song was but of lady’s bowers
And the returning swallows, and spring-flowers,
Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed,
A shadowy land; and now hath overweighed
Her singing chaplet with the snow and showers.
Yea, fair well-water for the bitter brine
She left, and by the margin of life’s sea
Sings, and her song is full of the sea’s moan,
And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine;
And whoso once has listened to her, he
His whole life long is slave to her alone.
A LA BELLE HÉLÈNE.
AFTER RONSARD.
More closely than the clinging vine
About the wedded tree,
Clasp thou thine arms, ah, mistress mine!
About the heart of me.
Or seem to sleep, and stoop your face
Soft on my sleeping eyes,
Breathe in your life, your heart, your grace,
Through me, in kissing wise.
Bow down, bow down your face, I pray,
To me, that swoon to death,
Breathe back the life you kissed away,
Breathe back your kissing breath.
So by your eyes I swear and say,
My mighty oath and sure,
From your kind arms no maiden may
My loving heart allure.
I’ll bear your yoke, that’s light enough,
And to the Elysian plain,
When we are dead of love, my love,
One boat shall bear us twain.
They’ll flock around you, fleet and fair,
All true loves that have been,
And you of all the shadows there,
Shall be the shadow queen.
Ah shadow-loves, and shadow-lips!
Ah, while ’tis called to-day,
Love me, my love, for summer slips,
And August ebbs away.
SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE.
IN MEMORY OF GÉRARD DE NERVAL.
Two loves there were, and one was born
Between the sunset and the rain;
Her singing voice went through the corn,
Her dance was woven ‘neath the thorn,
On grass the fallen blossoms stain;
And suns may set, and moons may wane,
But this love comes no more again.
There were two loves and one made white
Thy singing lips, and golden hair;
Born of the city’s mire and light,
The shame and splendour of the night,
She trapped and fled thee unaware;
Not through the lamplight and the rain
Shalt thou behold this love again.
Go forth and seek, by wood and hill,
Thine ancient love of dawn and dew;
There comes no voice from mere or rill,
Her dance is over, fallen still
The ballad burdens that she knew;
And thou must wait for her in vain,
Till years bring back thy youth again.
That other love, afield, afar
Fled the light love, with lighter feet.
Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are,
And flit in dreams from star to star,
That dead love shalt thou never meet,
Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain
Thy fled soul find her soul again.
A LOST PATH.
Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, had a certain proper mode of ecstasy, whereby, as Porphyry saith, his soul, becoming free from his deathly flesh, was made one with the Spirit that is in the World.
Alas, the path is lost, we cannot leave
Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away
As through strewn clouds, that stain the quiet eve,
To heights remoter of the purer day.
The soul may not, returning whence she came,
Bathe herself deep in Being, and forget
The joys that fever, and the cares that fret,
Made once more one with the eternal flame
That breathes in all things ever more the same.
She would be young again, thus drinking deep
Of her old life; and this has been, men say,
But this we know not, who have only sleep
To soothe us, sleep more terrible than day,
Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray,
To make us weary at our wakening;
And of that long-lost path to the Divine
We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing,
Half credulous, of easy Proserpine
And of the lands that lie ‘beneath the day’s decline.’
THE SHADE OF HELEN.
Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in Egypt; for the Gods, having made in her semblance a woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and Trojans slew each other.
Why from the quiet hollows of the hills,
And extreme meeting place of light and shade,
Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and became
Clouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beams
And dying glories of the sun would dwell,
Why have they whom I know not, nor may know,
Strange hands, unseen and ruthless, fashioned me,
And borne me from the silent shadowy hills,
Hither, to noise and glow of alien life,
To harsh and clamorous swords, and sound of war?
One speaks unto me words that would be sweet,
Made harsh, made keen with love that knows me not,
And some strange force, within me or around,
Makes answer, kiss for kiss, and sigh for sigh,
And somewhere there is fever in the halls,
That troubles me, for no such trouble came
To vex the cool far hollows of the hills.
The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry,
That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,
Are little to lose, if they may keep me here,
And see me flit, a pale and silent shade,
Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.
At other hours another life seems mine,
Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,
By pyramids of unremembered kings,
And homes of men obedient to the Dead.
There dark and quiet faces come and go
Around me, then again the shriek of arms,
And all the turmoil of the Ilian men.
What are they? Even shadows such as I.
What make they? Even this—the sport of Gods—
The sport of Gods, however free they seem.
Ah would the game were ended, and the light,
The blinding light, and all too mighty suns,
Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades,
Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist,
Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills.
Ah, would ‘t were the cloud’s playtime, when the sun
Clothes us in raiment of a rosy flame,
And through the sky we flit, and gather grey,
Like men that leave their golden youth behind,
And through their wind-driven ways they gather grey,
And we like them grow wan, and the chill East
Receives us, as the Earth accepts all men,—
But we await the dawn of a new day.
SONNETS TO POETS.
JACQUES TAHUREAU. 1530.
Ah thou! that, undeceived and unregretting,
Saw’st Death so near thee on the flowery way,
And with no sigh that life was near the setting,
Took’st the delight and dalliance of the day,
Happy thou wert, to live and pass away
Ere life or love had done thee any wrong;
Ere thy wreath faded, or thy locks grew grey,
Or summer came to lull thine April song,
Sweet as all shapes of sweet things unfulfilled,
Buds bloomless, and the broken violet,
The first spring days, the sounds and scents thereof;
So clear thy fire of song, so early chilled,
So brief, so bright thy life that gaily met
Death, for thy Death came hand in hand with Love.
FRANÇOIS VILLON. 1450.
List, all that love light mirth, light tears, and all
That know the heart of shameful loves, or pure;
That know delights depart, desires endure,
A fevered tribe of ghosts funereal,
Widowed of dead delights gone out of call;
List, all that deem the glory of the rose
Is brief as last year’s suns, or last year’s snows
The new suns melt from off the sundial.
All this your master Villon knew and sung;
Despised delights, and faint foredone desire;
And shame, a deathless worm, a quenchless fire;
And laughter from the heart’s last sorrow wrung,
When half-repentance but makes evil whole,
And prayer that cannot help wears out the soul.
PIERRE RONSARD. 1560.
Master, I see thee with the locks of grey,
Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath;
I see the roses hiding underneath,
Cassandra’s gift; she was less dear than they.
Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay,
The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath,
Hast sung sweet answer to the songs that breathe
Through ages, and through ages far away.
Yea, and in thee the pulse of ancient passion
Leaped, and the nymphs amid the spring-water
Made bare their lovely limbs in the old fashion,
And birds’ song in the branches was astir.
Ah, but thy songs are sad, thy roses wan,
Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.
GÉRARD DE NERVAL.
Of all that were thy prisons—ah, untamed,
Ah, light and sacred soul!—none holds thee now;
No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
Art free and happy in the lands unnamed,
About whose gates, with weary wings and maimed,
Thou most wert wont to linger, entering there
A moment, and returning rapt, with fair
Tidings that men or heeded not or blamed;
And they would smile and wonder, seeing where
Thou stood’st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,
Dreamily murmuring a ballad air,
Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou find
Old prophecies fulfilled now, old tales true
In the new world, where all things are made new?
THE DEATH OF MIRANDOLA. 1494.
‘The Queen of Heaven appeared, comforting him and promising that he should not utterly die.’—Thomas More, Life of Piens, Earl of Mirandola.
Strange lilies came with autumn; new and old
Were mingling, and the old world passed away,
And the night gathered, and the shadows grey
Dimmed the kind eyes and dimmed the locks of gold,
And face beloved of Mirandola.
The Virgin then, to comfort him and stay,
Kissed the thin cheek, and kissed the lips acold,
The lips unkissed of women many a day.
Nor she alone, for queens of the old creed,
Like rival queens that tended Arthur, there
Were gathered, Venus in her mourning weed,
Pallas and Dian; wise, and pure, and fair
Was he they mourned, who living did not wrong
One altar of its dues of wine and song.
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