ENVOY.
SO time shall be swift till thou mate with me,
For love is mightiest next to fate,
And none shall be happier, Love, than we,
In the year yet, Lady, to dream and wait.
Archibald Lampman.
A FORECAST.
WHAT days await this woman whose strange feet
Breathe spells, whose presence makes men dream like wine,
Tall, free and slender as the forest pine,
Whose form is moulded music, through whose sweet
Frank eyes I feel the very heart’s least beat,
Keen, passionate, full of dreams and fire:
How in the end, and to what man’s desire
Shall all this yield, whose lips shall these lips meet?
One thing I know: if he be great and pure,
This love, this fire, this beauty shall endure;
Triumph and hope shall lead him by the palm:
But if not this, some differing thing he be,
That dream shall break in terror; he shall see
The whirlwind ripen, where he sowed the calm.
Archibald Lampman.
AN OLD TUNE.
From the French of Gérard de Nerval.
THERE is an air for which I would disown
Mozart’s, Rossini’s, Weber’s melodies,—
A sweet sad air that languishes and sighs,
And keeps its secret charm for me alone.
Whene’er I hear that music vague and old,
Two hundred years are mist that rolls away;
The thirteenth Louis reigns, and I behold
A green land golden in the dying day.
An old red castle, strong with stony towers,
The windows gay with many-coloured glass,
Wide plains, and rivers flowing among flowers,
That bathe the castle basement as they pass.
In antique weed, with dark eyes and gold hair,
A lady looks forth from her window high;
It may be that I knew and found her fair,
In some forgotten life, long time gone by.
Andrew Lang.
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, gray 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 sear,
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 withered,
Whereof no man may gather and make bread;
Thine, though it never knew the summer heat;—
Forget not quite, my sweet.
Andrew Lang.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I SHALL not see thee, nay, but I shall know
Perchance, thy gray 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?
Andrew Lang.
A BALLADE OF OLD SWEETHEARTS.
WHO is it that weeps for the last year’s flowers
When the wood is aflame with the fires of spring,
And we hear her voice in the lilac bowers
As she croons the runes of the blossoming?
For the same old blooms do the new years bring,
But not to our lives do the years come so,
New lips must kiss and new bosoms cling.—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
Ah me! for a breath of those morning hours
When Alice and I went a-wandering
Through the shining fields, and it still was ours
To kiss and to feel we were shuddering—
Ah me! when a kiss was a holy thing.—
How sweet were a smile from Maud, and oh!
With Phyllis once more to be whispering.—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
But it cannot be that old Time devours
Such loves as was Annie’s and mine we sing,
And surely beneficent heavenly powers
Save Muriel’s beauty from perishing;
And if in some golden evening
To a quaint old garden I chance to go,
Shall Marion no more by the wicket sing?—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
In these lives of ours do the new years bring
Old loves as old flowers again to blow?
Or do new lips kiss and new bosoms cling?—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
Richard Le Gallienne.
IN THE MILE-END ROAD.
HOW like her! But ’tis she herself
Comes up the crowded street;
How little did I think, the morn,
My only love to meet!
Whose else that motion and that mien?
Whose else that airy tread?
For one strange moment I forgot
My only love was dead.
Amy Levy.
LOVE AFRAID.
I DARED not lead my arm around
Her dainty waist;
I dared not seek her lips, that mine
Hunger’d to taste:
I dared not, for such awe I found,
O Love divine!
I trembled as my eager hand
Her light touch graced;
And when her fond look answer’d mine,
I dared not haste,
But waited, holding my demand
For farther sign.
Sweet mouth, that with so sweet a sound
My dread hath chased,
And to my lips the holy wine,
Love’s vintage, placed!
Dear heart, that ever now will bound
Or rest with mine!
W. J. Linton.
TO MY MISTRESS.
COUNTESS, I see the flying year,
And feel how Time is wasting here:
Ay, more, he soon his worst will do,
And garner all your roses too.
It pleases Time to fold his wings
Around our best and fairest things;
He’ll mar your blooming cheek, as now
He stamps his mark upon my brow.
The same mute planets rise and shine
To rule your days and nights as mine:
Once I was young and gay, and see—
What I am now you soon will be.
And yet I boast a certain charm
That shields me from your worst alarm;
And bids me gaze, with front sublime,
On all these ravages of Time.
You boast a gift to charm the eyes,
I boast a gift that Time defies:
For mine will still be mine, and last
When all your pride of beauty’s past.
My gift may long embalm the lures
Of eyes—ah, sweet to me as yours!
For ages hence the great and good
Will judge you as I choose they should.
In days to come the peer or clown,
With whom I still shall win renown,
Will only know that you were fair
Because I chanced to say you were.
Proud Lady! Scornful beauty mocks
At aged heads and silver locks;
But think awhile before you fly,
Or spurn a poet such as I.
Frederick Locker.
IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY.
THE sun is bright,—the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing,
And from the stately elms I hear
The bluebird prophesying spring.
So blue yon winding river flows,
It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where waiting till the west-wind blows,
The freighted clouds at anchor lie.
All things are new,—the buds, the leaves,
That gild the elm-tree’s nodding crest,
And even the nest beneath the eaves;—
There are no birds in last year’s nest!
All things rejoice in youth and love,
The fulness of their first delight!
And learn from the soft heavens above
The melting tenderness of night.
Maiden, that read’st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For O, it is not always May!
Enjoy the spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
ET MELLE ET FELLE.
WHAT hast thou done to me,
Girl, with the dream in thine eyes?
Brightened the sun to me,
Lightened the skies;
Made there be one to me,
One only sun to me
Not in the skies.
What hast thou done to me,
Girl, with the dream in thine eyes?
Darkened the sun to me,
Blackened the skies;
Made there be none to me,
Nor star nor sun to me,
Only black skies.
Love in a Mist.
A SONG OF LOVE.
IF in thine eyes
I saw that softer light
That in the skies
Doth herald spring’s delight,
Ah, love, how loud my heart should sing,
Ev’n as the blackbird to the spring!
If on thy cheek
I saw that warm hue play
That doth bespeak
The dawn of a new day,
Ah, love, how like the lark should rise
My soul in rapture to the skies!
If from thy mouth
I heard such whisper low
As from the South
Doth through the pine-woods blow,
How should my whole soul murmur through
With music, as the pine-woods do!
Love Lies Bleeding.
THE LONELY LANDSCAPE.
THE place again—
The wooded heights—the widening plain—
The whispering pines—the dry-leaved oaks, too young
To cast their dead dreams ere the new be sprung!
What profits it
Alone on this prone slope to sit
Where thou didst press the heath,—and see how dun
The landscape seems, lit only by the sun?
Yet, ah! not vain
To visit thy fair haunts again—
To trace thy footsteps by the upturned stone,
And conjure back thy looks, thy words, thy tone!
Like music fine
That simple seeming speech of thine
Hath in it soft harmonics, only heard
When from the memory fades the uttered word.
And to mine eyes
Undazzled by thyself, doth rise
An image lovelier and more like to thee
Than even thy bodily self which sight can see.
Ah! The wind shakes
The withered leaves, and Love awakes,
And to the vacant landscape cries in vain:
“Ah, heaven! to have her at my side again!”
Love Lies Bleeding.
THE OUTCAST.
THOU wilt come back again, but not for me,
Fair little face!
Thou wilt come back, but, ah! I may not see
That day of grace.
No sword is at the Eden’s gate I leave;
But viewless hands
Have thrust me into endless night, to grieve
In loveless lands.
Thou wilt come back: thy footsteps make the spring,
And birds sing round;
But I, in wilderness wandering,
Shall hear no sound;
Save as far off the traveller athirst
In desert lands,
Hears waters that he may not reach, accursed
In endless sands.
Love Lies Bleeding.