His Lady of the Sonnets

by Robert Winkworth Norwood

Behold the chaff is beaten from the wheat:
Dost thou not hear the flails upon the floor?
Within the presses purple-stainéd feet
Bruise joy from out the grape, and o'er and o'er
The tale of Bacchus and the vine is told.
Laughter and dance and song are everywhere.
Shall we who live and love be then denied
The harvest? Nay; the fields are not all bare;
Still have they fragrant autumn gourds of gold;
The trees have yet their majesty and pride.

IX

Listen and hear Rome roaring from afar!
Oh, hearken to the tumult of the hordes
Of Cæsar, drunk with the red wine of war!
Blow trumpets! Clang, O brazen shields and swords,
Your thunder to the steady march of men!
And sing, O purple pennons that unfold
Beneath the bronze-tipped menace of the spears!
The gods! The gods are gleaming on the gold,
Wide-winged, great eagles of the Tiber, when
The standard of the Emperor appears!

X

Come, Cleopatra, from thy prison break,
And I will gather now my waiting band—
My cohorts; yea, I will rise up and shake
Over Octavius a mighty hand;
Yea, I— What sayest thou? The Queen is dead?
O Joy of gods and men! thou couldst not die—
Never to Cleopatra could come death!
There, lad! hold thou my sword, and let me fly
On wings of love to realms unvisited
Where Cleopatra, waiting, wandereth!

PAUL TO TIMOTHY

The long day ends at last, O Timothy,
And I, Paul, prisoner of Jesus Christ,
Wait for the dark.

Upon my window-ledge
A sparrow twitters, pecks at the iron bars
As though to set me free this night of Rome.
A lad is singing somewhere in the street;
His voice, careless and free, recalls Cilicia—
Tarsus, my city, where the Cydnus flows—
Recalls those first, far days when in my heart
No pain had found a place, and I was Saul—
Named for the Son of Kish—A Benjamite.

How swiftly Age turns back the gate of Time,
And with what eager pace pursues the path
Trod by the feet of Childhood! I can see
The scarlet-prowed Phenician ships, triremes
Down from the Tiber, and Egyptian barges,
Abundant fruitage of the date and palm,
Tall, Bacchic amphora, and perfumed bales
Of Tyrian purple, stand along the quay;
And I can hear the sailors and their songs,
The strange, brown mariners of many seas,
With arms like anchor-cables in their strength:
Oh, then was I a wanderer of earth,
And dreamed of brave adventure in far lands!