A LIFE-TOMB.
THE house is haunted and rife
With Her touch behind panel and door
And her footfalls under the floor;
O the house is filled with gloom:
—Is She here dead in my life?
Am I here alive in her tomb?—
Ah fain am I still to track
And to walk along the ways
Sown with flowers by her feet;
And to gather, following back,
All the purple nights and days
She slew passing; or, half sweet,
To sit with dull eyes cast
On slowly dying embers
Of things the heart remembers
Right fair in the heart’s past,
—Till tones, that seem to start
From the shadows in the room,
Move round about the heart,
And a love-glow fills the gloom;
And her soul seems to look out
As from dim and distant eyes,
And a shade of lips to pout
With some remnant of her sighs.
And often too, in the night,
The flame in famished eyes
Re-kindles an old delight
At some dream-sight of her;
The heart with tremulous stir
Lives a moment and then dies.
THE SLAVE OF APOLLO.
“HOW shall I rid myself from thee,
Apollo? Give me leave to be
No more than flower, or wind, or thought,
—Only a fragrant memory, nought,
Or anything that’s free:
“Give me—O pitying—some power
To cease; make me a gentle shower;
A hidden fount that murmureth
In some sweet glimmer all apart
From sounds of living: give me death!
Or loose me for your love of me;
My bosom faileth and my heart
No more a prisoner will be
—Will be free!
Shall I not cry to ye aloud
O clouds! My spirit was a cloud
Like one of you,—was free, I say,
To loiter o’er the tremulous lakes
Loving, to cling upon the wane
Of every fair thing that forsakes
The light and luxury of day;
To bear me over hill and plain
Upon the winds’ unfooted way:
Ah, I was fearless then and pure;
And my sight touched all things obscure
Beneath dim masks of change or sleep:
And read the tender meanings writ
For full new heavens down in deep
Horizons, over which stood knit
The storms’ dark brows; I saw what cleaves
In the far corners of sun-smiles,
And I could send my breath for miles
Among the flowers and the leaves.
O bosom of my mother Heaven,
Was not I purer than the dew?
Was not my spirit of the leaven
Of your own high eternal blue
Unspotted by one part of earth?
O, wherefore this dull flesh that wraps
My sense in shame,—O, why this birth
Among hard human sights and mirth!
Hear now, and draw me back to you.
Call to me through the silent gaps
In some great tempest cloud above,
Steal me when, gasping in the laps
Of these that sicken me of love,
I lie and think of my lost bliss:
O can you not in one long kiss
Absorb my spirit back to you?