O thou who comest to our wintry shade
Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring,
Before whose shining feet the cherries fling
Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed
With light, and all things musical are made:
O thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring
Blossom, or song of bird, or anything
To match the youth in which you stand arrayed?
Not that rich garland Meleager twined
In his sun-guarded glade above the blue
That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas:
No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind
That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you
These wind-blown blossoms of anemones.
HER VARIETY
Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine
I saw thee flutter to the shadowy call
That beckons from the strings of Carneval,
O frail and fragrant image of Columbine:
So, when the spectre of the rose was thine,
A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall
In Cleopatra's stormy bacchanal
Flown with the red insurgence of the vine.
O moth, O flower, O mænad, which art thou?
Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild
As stormlight over savage Tartar skies?
Such were my ancient questionings; but now
I know that you are nothing but a child
With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes.
HER SWIFTNESS
You are too swift for poetry, too fleet
For any musèd numbers to ensnare:
Swifter than music dying on the air
Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet
Vanishing magic of your flying feet,
Your poisèd finger, and your shining hair:
Words cannot tell how wonderful you were,
Or how one gesture made a joy complete.
And since you know my pen may never capture
The transient swift loveliness of you,
Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss
Remembering, with a melancholy rapture,
How many dancing-girls ... and poets too...
Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos.
GHOSTLY LOVES
'Oh why,' my darling prayeth me, 'must you sing
For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion?
Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion
And the love I gave was not a phantom thing,
But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding
The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder,
All fluent grace of which you were the moulder:
And I.... Oh, I was happy for your holding.'
'Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen
The shadow that broodeth over things that perish:
How age may mock sweet moments that have been
And death defile the beauty that we cherish?
Wherefore, sweet spirit, I thank thee for thy giving:
'Tis my spirit that embraceth thee dead or living.'
FEBRUARY
The robin on my lawn,
He was the first to tell
How, in the frozen dawn,
This miracle befell,
Waking the meadows white
With hoar, the iron road
Agleam with splintered light,
And ice where water flowed:
Till, when the low sun drank
Those milky mists that cloak
Hanger and hollied bank,
The winter world awoke
To hear the feeble bleat
Of lambs on downland farms:
A blackbird whistled sweet;
Old beeches moved their arms
Into a mellow haze
Aerial, newly-born:
And I, alone, agaze,
Stood waiting for the thorn
To break in blossom white
Or burst in a green flame...
So, in a single night,
Fair February came,
Bidding my lips to sing
Or whisper their surprise,
With all the joy of spring
And morning in her eyes.
SONG OF THE DARK AGES