AT THE OAR
I dare not lift a glance to you, yet stay
Ye Gracious Ones, still save me, hovering near;
If music live upon mine inward ear,
I know ye lean bright brow to brow, and say
Your secret things; if rippling breezes play
Cool on my cheeks, it is those robes ye wear
That wave, and shadowy fragrance of your hair
Drifted, the fierce noon fervour to allay,
Fierce fervour, ceaseless stroke, small speed, and I
Find grim contentment in the servile mood;
But should I gaze in yon untrammelled sky
Once, or behold your dewy eyes, my blood
Would madden, and I should fling with one free cry
My body headlong in the whelming flood.
THE DIVINING ROD
Here some time flowed my springs and sent a cry
Of joy before them up the shining air,
While morn was new, and heaven all blue and bare;
Here dipped the swallow to a tenderer sky,
And o’er my flowers lean’d some pure mystery
Of liquid eyes and golden-glimmering hair;
For which now, drouth and death, a bright despair,
Shards, choking slag, the world’s dust small and dry.
Yet turn not hence thy faithful foot, O thou,
Diviner of my buried life; pace round,
Poising the hazel-wand; believe and wait,
Listen and lean; ah, listen! even now
Stirrings and murmurings of the underground
Prelude the flash and outbreak of my fate.
SALOME
(By Henri Regnault)
Fair sword of doom, and bright with martyr blood,
Thee Regnault saw not as mine eyes have seen;
No Judith of the Faubourg, mænad-queen,
Pale on her tumbril-throne, when the live flood
Foams through revolted Paris, unwithstood,
Is of thy kin. Blossom and bud between,
Clear-brow’d Salome, with her silk head’s sheen,
Lips where a linnet might have pecked for food,
Pure curves of neck, and dimpling hand aloft,
Moved like a wave at sunrise. Herod said—
“A boon for maiden freshness! Ask of me
What toy may please, though half my Galilee;”
And with beseeching eyes, and bird-speech soft,
She fluted: “Give me here John Baptist’s head.”