VALE.
I love the little vale between your breasts,
But yet, farewell, for that is never still;
My garden far from you will be at rest
With lakes asleep beside a brooding hill
And cedar swales in hollow valley lands
With S-like streams between the O-shaped ponds,
Where grow frail ferns with upturned Gothic hands
And prayerful fronds.
In gray half-lights 'twill be a lovely thing
By Gypsy paths to wander at hearts-ease
Near campaniles where the bell folk sing
Down terraces of rustling linden trees,
And two hills like your breasts will be in death,
When lamps will cast their shadows silently,
Will rise still blue above the yellow corn
That ripples with a sleepy mystery.
AFTERMATH.
Under the placid surface of the days
So seeming clear,
Back of the habits of old ways,
A quiet fear;
The locked-up memories of war,
Our Bluebeard's room,
Where the blood creeps underneath the door.
Never will come
In streams of days that ring
Like clean coins down the merry grooves of change,
One without grief's alloy,
Struck from pure gold of joy,
Undimmed by unshed tears,
Nor is it strange.
For in the wraith-thronged brain
Are private ghosts of pain,
Aloof, like patient sick men in a crowd
With half-veiled faces and old sorrow bowed—
Ah! The free days can never come again!
They passed with the far, rolling drums,
Died to the moan and thunder of the guns,
And the mad, glad, clear, lyric birdsong never comes.
HYLAS.
Theocritus, Idyll XIII.
Where art thou, Hylas,
Of the golden locks?
Where art thou, Argive lad,
That fed thy flocks
In wind-swept Thessaly,
Beside the sea?
Alas! Alas! for thee,
Hylas, Alas!