I watched him to the door,
catching his robe
as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor,
spilling a few wet lees,
(ah, his purple hyacinth!)
I saw him out of the door,
I thought:
there will never be a poet
in all the centuries after this,
who will dare write,
after my friend’s verse,
“a girl’s mouth
is a lily kissed.”
Helen
ALL Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
Nossis
I THOUGHT to hear him speak
the girl might rise
and make the garden silver,
as the white moon breaks,
“Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.”
I said:
“a girl that’s dead
some hundred years;
a poet—what of that?
for in the islands,
in the haunts of Greek Ionia,
Rhodes and Cyprus,
girls are cheap.”
I said, to test his mood,
to make him rage or laugh or sing or weep,
“in Greek Ionia and in Cyprus,
many girls are found
with wreaths and apple-branches.”
“Only a hundred years or two or three,
has she lain dead
yet men forget;”
he said,
“I want a garden,”
and I thought
he wished to make a terrace on the hill,
bend the stream to it,
set out daffodils,
plant Phrygian violets,
such was his will and whim,
I thought,
to name and watch each flower.