WALTER.
On balcony, all summer roofed with vines,
A lady half-reclined amid the light,
Golden and green, soft-showering through the leaves,
Silent she sat one-half the silent noon;
At last she sank luxurious in her couch,
Purple and golden-fringèd, like the sun's,
And stretched her white arms on the warmèd air,
As if to take some object wherewithal
To ease the empty aching of her heart.
"Oh, what a weariness of life is mine!"
The lady said, "soothing myself to sleep
With my own lute, floating about the lake
To feed my swans; with nought to stir my blood,
Unless I scold my women thrice a-day.
Unwrought yet in the tapestry of my life
Are princely suitors kneeling evermore.
I, in my beauty, standing in the midst,
Touching them, careless, with most stately eyes.
Oh, I could love, methinks, with all my soul!
But I see nought to love; nought save some score
Of lisping, curl'd gallants, with words i' their mouths
Soft as their mothers' milk. Oh, empty heart!
Oh, palace, rich and purple-chambered!
When will thy lord come home?
"When the grey morn was groping 'bout the east
The Earl went trooping forth to chase the stag;
I trust he hath not, to the sport he loves
Better than ale-bouts, ta'en my cub of Ind.
My sweetest plaything. He is bright and wild
As is a gleaming panther of the hills,—
Lovely as lightning, beautiful as wild!
His sports and laughters are with fierceness edged;
There's something in his beauty all untamed,
As I were toying with a naked sword,
Which starts within my veins the blood of earls.
I fain would have the service of his voice
To kill with music this most languid noon."
She rang a silver bell: with downcast eyes
The tawny nursling of the Indian sun
Stood at her feet. "I pr'ythee, Leopard, sing;
Give me some stormy song of sword and lance,
Which, rushing upward from a hero's heart,
Straight rose upon a hundred leaguered hills,
Ragged and wild as pyramid of flame.
Or, better, sing some hungry lay of love
Like that you sang me on the eve you told
How poor our English to your Indian darks;
Shaken from od'rous hills, what tender smells
Pass like fine pulses through the mellow nights;
The purple ether that embathes the moon,—
Your large round moon, more beautiful than ours;
Your showers of stars, each hanging luminous,
Like golden dewdrops in the Indian air."
"I know a song, born in the heart of love,
Its sweetest sweet, steeped ere the close in tears.
'Twas sung into the cold ears of the stars
Beside the murmured margent of the sea.
'Tis of two lovers, matched like cymbals fine,
Who, in a moment of luxurious blood,
Their pale lips trembling in the kiss of gods,
Made their lives wine-cups, and then drank them off,
And died with beings full-blown like a rose;
A mighty heart-pant bore them like a wave,
And flung them, flowers, upon the next world's strand.
Night the solemn, night the starry,
'Mong the oak-trees old and gnarry;
By the sea-shore and the ships,
'Neath the stars I sat with Clari;
Her silken bodice was unlaced,
My arm was trembling round her waist,
I plucked the joys upon her lips;
Joys that plucked still grow again!
Canst thou say the same, old Night?
Ha! thy life is vain.
Oh, that death would let me tarry
Like a dewdrop on a flower,
Ever on those lips of Clari!
Our beings mellow, then they fall,
Like o'er-ripe peaches from the wall;
We ripen, drop, and all is o'er;
On the cold grave weeps the rain;
I weep it should be so, old Night.
Ah! my tears are vain.
Night the solemn, night the starry,
Say, alas! that years should harry
Gloss from life and joy from lips,
Love-lustre from the eyes of Clari!
Moon! that walkest the blue deep,
Like naked maiden in her sleep;
Star! whose pallid splendour dips
In the ghost-waves of the main.
Oh, ye hear me not! old Night,
My tears and cries are vain."
He ceased to sing; queenly the lady lay,
One white hand hidden in a golden shoal
Of ringlets, reeling down upon her couch,
And heaving on the heavings of her breast,
The while the thoughts rose in her eyes like stars,
Rising and setting in the blue of night.
"I had a cousin once," the lady said,
"Who brooding sat, a melancholy owl,
Among the twilight-branches of his thoughts.
He was a rhymer, and great knights he spoiled,
And damsels saved, and giants slew—in verse.
He died in youth; his heart held a dead hope,
As holds the wretched west the sunset's corpse:
He went to his grave, nor told what man he was.
He was unlanguaged, like the earnest sea,
Which strives to gain an utterance on the shore,
But ne'er can shape unto the listening hills
The lore it gathered in its awful age;
The crime for which 'tis lashed by cruel winds;
The thought, pain, grief, within its labouring breast.
To fledge with music, wings of heavy noon,
I'll sing some verses that he sent to me:—
Where the west has sunset-bloomed,
Where a hero's heart is tombed,
Where a thunder-cloud has gloomed,
Seen, becomes a part of me.
Flowers and rills live sunnily
In gardens of my memory.
Through its walks and leafy lanes,
Float fair shapes 'mong sunlight rains;
Blood is running in their veins.