Contemporary Belgian Poetry / Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell

by Unknown

1862—.

OF EVENING.
All at the heart of a far domain,
With those to whom our hearts do strain,
My Truelove weeps for me, distraught
By my death the week has wrought.
My heart's Belovèd grieveth sore,
And plunges her two hands like flowers
Into her eyes whose sorrow showers,
My heart's Belovèd grieveth sore.
All at the heart of a far domain,
Unto her feet her skates she ties,
Feeling that in her heart is ice,
Far unto me her tired feet strain;
My Truelove hangs to the Chapel pane,
That gazes over all the plain,
With rings, and salt, and dry bread, my
Wretched soul that will not die.
All at the heart of a far domain,
My Truelove never will weep again
The festivals the seasons bring,
With family rings on fingers twain;
My Love has seen me promising,
Like a saint, to spirits pure
A Sunday that shall aye endure,
And all at the heart of a far domain.

FULL OF GRACE.
And Jesus all rosy,
And the earth all blue,
Mary of grace, in your round hands upcurled,
As might two fruits be: Jesus and the world,
And Jesus all rosy,
And the earth all blue.
And Jesus, and Mary,
And Joseph the spouse,
For all my life I place my trust in you,
As they in Brittany and childhood do,
And Joseph the spouse,
And Jesus and Mary.
Then Egypt too,
The flight and Herod,
My old soul and my feet that tremble, seeing
Towards the distant places ambling, fleeing,
And the ass and Herod,
And Egypt too.
Now, Jesus all golden,
Like statues of Christ,
O Mary, in your hands that hold the sword,
Over my town whereon your tears are poured,
Jesus more golden
In your arms and Christ.

FULL OF GRACE.
Now more and more, fain were my lips
Your inexhaustible Grace to say,
O Mary, at the sailing-day
Of bowsprits and of all my ships
Unto the islands of the sea,
Where went my merchandize of old,
By winds on other oceans rolled
From isle to island of the sea.
But I have donned the broken shoes
Of those who dwell on land, and sprent
My tongue with ash of discontent
Because my memory seems to lose
The sounding Psalm that sang You Hail,
Who decked my prows in gold attire,
When in Your hands the sheets were fire,
The sun a spreading peacock's tail.
Now be it so, since in me stays
Salvation that the sails possess
Under the wind the stars caress
Of far beyond and other days,
And let it be Your self-same Grace
In this to-day of broken shoon,
The same sky, and the same round moon
As when I sailed, O Rich in Grace.

COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED.
Ineffable souls are known to me,
In houses of poor bodies pent,
And sick to death with discontent,
Ineffable souls are known to me;
Known to me are poor Christmas eyes,
Shining out their little lights
As prayers go glimmering through the nights
Known to me are poor Christmas eyes
Weeping with coveting the sky
Into their hands with misery meek;
And feet that stumble as they seek
In pilgrimage the radiant sky.
And then poor hungers too I know,
Poor hungers of poor teeth upon
Loaves baked an hundred years agone;
And then poor thirsts I also know;
And women sweet ineffably,
Who in poor, piteous bodies dwell,
And very handsome men as well,
But who are sick as women be.
COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED.
Now Winter gives me his hand to hold,
I hold his hand, his hand is cold;
And in my head, afar off, blaze
Old summers in their sick dog-days;
And in slow whiteness there arise
Pale shimmering tents deep in my eyes
And Sicilies are in them, rows
Of islands, archipelagos.
It is a voyage round about,
Too swift to drive my fever out,
To all the countries where you die,
Sailing the seas as years go by,
And all the while the tempest beats
Upon the ships of my white sheets,
That surge with starlight on them shed,
And all their swelling sails outspread.
I taste upon my lips the salt
Of ocean, like the bitter malt
Drunk in the land's last orgy, when
From the taverns reel the men;
And now I see that land I know:
It is a land of endless snow...;
Make thou the snow less hard to bear,
O Mary of good coverings, there,
And less like hares my fingers run
O'er my white sheets that fever spun.

COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED.
I pray too much for ills of mine,
O Mary, others suffer keen,
Witness the little trees of green
Laid where Your altar candles shine;
For all the joys of kermesse days,
And all the roads that thither wend
Are full of cripples without end,
By night are all the kermesse ways.
And then the season grows too chill
For these consumptive steeds of wood,
Although the drunken organ should,
Alone, keep its illusions still.
Poorer than I have more endured;
Despairing of their hands and feet,
Poor folks that cough and nothing eat,
People too agèd to be cured,
With ulcers wherein winter smarts,
O Virgin, meekly, turn by turn,
They come to You and candles burn,
All in a nook of silvered hearts.
COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED.
Now is the legend revealed,
And my cities also are healed,
Consoled till they love each other,
Like a child that has wept, by its mother,
In the things mysterious all
Of altars processional,
And now all my country is dight
With dahlias and lilies white,
Your candles to glorify
Mary, ere May passes by.
Lo! endless the pleasure is,
May returned, and maladies
Borne to horizons blue,
On vessels simple and true,
Far away, on the sea so far
Hardly seen, or like dots they are.
Now, under trees, the time glides
In the street where my life abides;
Mary of meek workers, steep
In the May-wood my head in the sleep
And the rest that my good tools have earned;
Sound mind in a sound body urned,
In a Mary-month more splendid,
Because all my task is ended.

TO THE EYES.
Now, sky of azure
On houses rosy,
Like a child of Flanders preach
The simple religion I teach,
Like a sky of azure
On houses rosy;
Lo, to the vexed
I bring these roses,
When their memory to the islands reaches,
The voices that my gospel preaches,
Like the gladsome text
A child's talk glozes.
You people happy
With very little:
You women and men of my city,
And of all my moments of pity,
Be happy
With very little;
For letters blue
On pages rosy,
This is all the book that I read you,
Unto your pleasaunce to lead you,
In a country blue
Houses rosy.

TO THE MOUTH.
For, you my brothers and sisters,
With me in my bark you shall go,
And my cousins, the fishers, shall show
Where the fin of the shoaled fishes glisters,
Whose tides the bow-nets heap,
Till the baskets cry out, days and days,
Darkening the blue ocean's face,
As in a path crowded sheep.
You shall see my nets all swell,
And St. Peter helping the fishes
Which for the Fridays he wishes,
Sole, flounder, mackerel.
And St. John the Evangelist
Lending a hand with the sheets,
At the low ebb of autumn heats,
When haddocks come, says the mist.
And our women with tucked-up sleeves,
Like banquets on your tables;
And miracles, and fables
To tell in the holy eves.
FOR THE EAR.
Then nearer and nearer yet
To the sea in a golden fret,
On the dikes where the houses end,
The trees to the sea-breeze that bend;
With their baptismal names anchored here,
In the rivers to which they are dear,
The vessels my harbour loves best,
Clustered, a choir, at their rest.
Now in their festivity,
I salute you, Anna-Marie,
Who seem in your white sails to bear
Cherubs that flit through the air;
And with joy that I scarcely can speak
I see you again, Angélique,
You with no shrouds on your mast,
Safe returned from Iceland at last.
But now, like Gabrielle, sing
Your new sails smooth as a wing,
And weep no more, Madeleine,
For your nets you have lost on the main,
Since all are pardoned, even
The wind, for kisses given,
So that in kisses and glee
These visiting billows may be
Content with the homage they pay,
High the sea, to sing the May.

TO-DAY IS THE DAY OF REST, THE SABBATH.
To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath,
A morning of sunshine, and of bees,
And of birds in the garden trees,
To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath;
The children are in their white dresses,
Towns are gleaming through the azure haze,
This is Flanders with poplar-shaded ways,
And the sea the yellow dunes caresses.
To-day is the day of all the angels:
Michael with his swallows twittering,
Gabriel with his wings all glittering,
To-day is the day of all the angels;
Then, people here with happy faces,
All the people of my country, who
Departed one by one, two by two,
To look at life in blue distant places;
To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath—
The miller is sleeping in the mill—
To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath,
And my song shall now be still.
MARY, SHED YOUR HAIR.
Mary, shed Your hair, for lo!
Here the azure cherubs blow,
And Jesus wakes upon Your breast;
Where His rosy fingers rest;
And golden angels lay their chins
Upon their breathing violins.
Now morning in the meads is green,
And, Mary, look at Life's demesne:
How infinitely sweet it seems,
From the forests and the streams
To roofs that cluster like an isle;
And, Mary, see Your cities smile
Happy as any child at play,
While from spires and steeples they
Proclaim the simple Gospel peace
With their showering melodies
From the gold dawn to the sunset sky,
Greeted, Mary of Houses, by
The men of Flanders loving still
The brown, centennial earth they till.
And sing now, all ye merry men
Who plough the glebe, sing once again
Your Flanders sweet to larks that sing
With gladsome voices concerting,
And sail afar, ye ships that glass
Your flags in billows green as grass,
For Jesus holds His hands above,
Mary, this festival of love
Made by the sky for summer's birth,
With silk and velvet covering earth.
AND MARY READS A GOSPEL-PAGE.
And Mary reads a Gospel-page,
With folded hands in the silent hours,
And Mary reads a Gospel-page,
Where the meadow sings with flowers,
And all the flowers that star the ground
In the far emerald of the grass,
Tell her how sweet a life they pass,
With simple words of dulcet sound.
And now the angels in the cloud,
And the birds too in chorus sing,
While the beasts graze, with foreheads bowed,
The plants of scented blossoming;
And Mary reads a Gospel-page,
The pealing hours she overhears,
Forgets the time, and all the years,
For Mary reads a Gospel-page;
And masons building cities go
Homeward in the evening hours,
And, cocks of gold on belfry towers,
Clouds and breezes pass and blow.

AND WHETHER IN GRAY OR IN BLACK COPE.
And whether in gray or in black cope,—
Spider of the eve, good hope,—
Smoke ye roofs, and tables swell
With meats to mouths delectable;
And while the kitchen smoke upcurls,
Kiss and kiss, you boys and girls!
Night, the women, where they sit,
Can no longer see to knit;
Now, like loving fingers linking,
Work is done and sleep is blinking,
As balm on pious spirits drips,
All tearful eyes, all praying lips,
And straw to beasts, to mankind beds
Of solace for their weary heads.
Good-night! and men and women cross
Arms on your souls, or hearts that toss.
And in your dreams of white or blue,
Servants near the children you;
And peace now all your life, you trees,
Mills, and roofs, and brooks, and leas,
And rest you toilers all, between
The woollen soft, the linen clean,
And Christs forgotten in the cold,
And Magdalenes within the fold,
And Heaven far as sees the eye,
At the four corners of the sky.

---

ANDRÉ FONTAINAS.

1865—.

HER VOICE.
O voice vibrating like the song of birds,
O frail, sonorous voice wherein upwells
Laughter more bright than ring of wedding bells,
I listen to her voice more than her words.
Soul of old rebecs, spirit of harpsichords,
Within her voice your soft inflection dwells;
Blisses of love some ancient viol tells,
Kiss snatched by lips that swift lips turn towards.
Her voice is sweetness of chaste dreams, the scent
Of iris, cinnamon, and incense blent,
A music drunk, a folded mountain's calm;
It is within me made of living sun,
Of luminous pride and rhythms vermilion;
It is the purest, the most dazzling psalm.

COPHETUA.
With right arm on the open casement rim,
The negro King Cophetua, with sad mien,
And eyes that do not see, looks at the green
Autumnal ocean rolling under him.
His listless dream goes wandering without goal;
He is not one who would be passion's slave;
And no remorse, nor memory from its grave
May haunt the leisure of his empty soul.
He does not hear the melancholy chaunt
Of girls who beg before him, hollow, gaunt
With fasting, coughing in the mellow sun,
And unawares, he knows not how it came,
he feels within his hardened heart a flame,
And burns his eyes at the eyes of the youngest one.
DESIRES.
What does she dream, lost in her hair's cascade,
The lonely child with flowering hands as wan
As garlands pale?—Of the plains of days agone
With pools of water lilies, where she strayed
On paths of chance her hands with flowers arrayed,
And where alms welcomed her?—And never shone
As now her eyes her jewels braided on
Her gowns of gold and purple and brocade.
But she sees nothing round her. In the room
Amber and aromatics melt the gloom,
The dusk's hot odour through the window streams;
As heavy as an opal's changing fires,
Sigh in the evening mist and die desires,
While naked at her glass the maiden dreams.
ADVENTURE.
Under the diadem of rustling pearls
And sapphires in their grasp of gold,
In yellow hair that undulatingly unfurls
Over her shoulders slow and cold,
And purple cloak exulting with brocade,
The Princess of the Manor's Games and Joys.
And in the jubilant noise
Rivers of lightning flame unrolled,
And the rich purple torch sheds its delight,
And twists its rustling tresses in the night.
The Princess of the Manor's Joys
Lifts in a dawn of amethysts
Her tender visage that more sadly aches
Than gloamings on the lunar face of lakes,
With lingering smile upon her lip she lists,
And casts a call into the evening mists.
In spite of omens tragical,
All they who wait upon her come
To lawns where sistrum, fife, and drum
To revelry and dancing call.
O King! like mourning is our merry-making!
Out of our arms thou hast thyself exiled,
And by our kisses art no more beguiled!
Our hearts for thee are aching!
Thou hast fled, thou hast fled,
And in the night I raise my head,
And call for thee with sobs, and bosom sore!
But still our festivals shall be forsaken,
The mourning from our hearts shall not be taken,
My fingers nevermore
Shall o'er thy golden velvet tresses glide;
My heavy arms shall nevermore thy neck enlace
In passionate embrace
Rich with the jewels of the bracelets of my pride!
Farandola and roundelay,
And the mad songs of pride,
In sudden waves over the threshold glide,
And through the chambers sway.
Thou never shalt return from unknown lands,
O King! The sceptre is fallen from thy hands,
The lassitude that lulled thee in its lap
Has stolen from thy proud, young years their sap,
Now art thou crossing thresholds far forlorn
Of mysteries and adventures luring thee
Where monsters crouch beneath the twisted tree;
Chimeras and the pitiless unicorn
Shall belch their fire where thou thy way wouldst grope
And thou shalt nevermore have my caress
To soothe thee into happy heedlessness
Of life, and perils of inimical hope.
O come back, ere it be too late!
At evening come unto the Joys that wait,
Come to the dancing and to thy Princess,
Who cradled thee with kisses and with tenderness,
And sweet refrains of songs.
Come to thy crown and sceptre, and the throngs
Of them that love thee, and the memory
Of thine ancestors shall bring back to thee
Forgetfulness of mad adventures in the kiss
Of her who thy Princess and Sister is.
LUXURY.
How vain are songs! Can they be worth the hymn
To your ecstatic eyes of mine that swim?
The noblest song of man no bosom stirs,
Weak are sonorous words, but conquerors
Are ye, glances of amber and of fire,
Lips you, and clinging kisses slow to tire
That in my soul are scorching! You that dare
Leap out of longing, kisses! And you hair
Of virgin gold that glints like noonday suns!
And marble whiteness where, like lava, runs
Your wild blood, snow and brazier!—
Here I lie
Your slave for ever, at your feet I die
In sleepful spasms that the senses cloy,
And the slow languor of the tasted joy;
Mad with your velvety and waxen flesh
That holds my soul and body in its mesh;
I love you, I am poured out at your feet,
Your hands are with lascivious jasmine sweet,
Your beauty blooms for me! In my embrace
I feel your life blowing upon my face,
And entering into me! Your blinding eyes
Thrill me with raptures of that Paradise
Whose rubies bleed, whose yellow topazes
Sleep in the sloth of sensualities,
And where the limitless horizons hide
Our Hell of luxuries grated round with pride.
I love thee, though the kisses of thy teeth,
Cunning to bite in their red vulva sheath,
Have the allure of Lamias that enslave
With luxury swift and cruelty suave.
Through tortures from your native Orient swim
Ineffably pure o'er peaceful lakes the slim
Swans of your voice white in their wildering
And subtle scents of snow, and on their wing
Bear me towards the hope your bright eyes beam.
Now let me lie upon your breasts and dream.
Say nothing! Let us sleep in our blue bower
Under the tufted pleasures of the hour,
By the night's tranquil torpor lulled and kissed ...
Already yon far dawn of amethyst
Dyes the deep heavens, and the moon at rest
Upon her soft cloud cushions hath caressed
With argent light the forest's idle trance,
And starred the stream with eyes that gleam and glance!
And now the dawn is on our pillow—hide
Your eyes—I shiver—they are haggard, wide!
SEA-SCAPE.
Under basaltic porticoes of calm sea-caves,
Heavy with alga and the moss of fucus gold,
In the occult, slow shaking of sea-waves,
Among the alga in proud blooms unfold
The cups of pride of silent, slender gladioles....
The mystery wherein dies the rhythm of the waves
In gleams of kisses long and calm unrolls,
And the red coral whereon writhes the alga cold
Stretches out arms that bleed with calm flowers, and beholds
Its gleams reflected in the rest of waves.
Now here you stand in gardens flowered with alga, cold
In the nocturnal, distant song of waves,
Queen whose calm, pensive looks are glaucous gladioles,
Raising above the waves their light-filled bowls,
Among the alga on the coral where the ocean rolls.
A PROPITIOUS MEETING.
Propitious dawn smiles on him wandering
And fretful in the evil forest deeps;
The heavy night's long, bitter rumour sleeps;
The sun's clear song makes the horizon ring.
The scent of sage and thyme is as a sting
Unto his jaded sense, the wind that sweeps
The blue sea round the promontory steeps
Freshens with hope his fate's proud blossoming.
The glory of Joy into his soul returns,
And his heroic dream leaps up and burns,
Even as this dawn's far-flung vermilion,
And lo! at the horizon, very calm,
Pacing their steeds, and holding out their palm,
The Kings he deemed dead marching in the sun.

THE HOURS.
The tiring hour that weeps,
And the young hour gay with sun,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.
This is an hour of dawn that vapour cloaks.
Yonder a thread, so it would seem,
Stretches a bridge across the stream.
Shadow follows shadow, the mist chokes
The water sleepy as a moat's,
A tug smokes,
And drags its heavy, grating chain,
And drags its train
Of ghostlike boats,
Walls of black
Along a hidden track
Towards the arches blear
Where now they disappear.
Like sudden palms of gold,
Three sunbeams glide
To where the waters hide,
And all along the river in the cold
Life is again begun,
With all its joys
Of toil and noise
Awakening in the quivering, crimson sun.
The hour is rising radiant with mirth,
Beaming smiles down on the earth,
O festival of light!
Here is life that smiles upon its toil,
And with high forehead makes the night recoil
Towards the sun in heavens bright
With strength and with delight.
Life quickens on faces
Mad and fervent zest.
To live! is when the hot blood races
And swells the breast,
And makes the words leap out in ready throng!
Life is to be alone and strong,
And master of one's fate!
Ye floods of purple pour in state,
Ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along!
The wise
Have never lived and do not know what joys
Are in mad battle, carnage and great noise,
When courage with courage vies.
The wise
Are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night
Exile themselves from the festival of light
Weeping its tears of proud gold on the river,
O'er the lamp-lit book to shiver.
To live
Is better, and to ring one's heel
On the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel,
Or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread
The grass of roads down-trodden by the fugitive
Foe who has dyed them red.
But the young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.
Now cooler are noon's beams,
O dreams reposed with languor and with ease,
The waters creep,
O calm dreams!
Upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees
The peaceful fishers sleep;
A long thread swims upon the dying stream.
In the foliage never a shiver,
The sun darts never a beam,
All is dumb.
The earth around, the meadows and the river,
And the air with sunshine numb,
And the forest with its leafy houses,
Everywhere all action drowses,
And the earth hesitates with indecision,
A smoker's vague vision.
The only wisdom is to live
The hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes.
Why should we madly follow fugitive
Inclement pride and crumbling hopes
Along the precipices of the heavy night,
That swallows up all ruined light?
No! to live
Is to follow all the river's turnings,
Sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings,
With prow set to the Orient of oblivion,
To conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile,
That no discoverer will ever set foot on
Save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while,
O dream!
The young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run,
Along the river banks.
AWAKE
Awake!
It is a joy among hibernal hours
To plunge into the pane the hoar-frost flowers;
Behold: the petals glittering on the pane
Open their wings that dream would follow fain.
Awake, and revel in the dawn's pure joys,
And smile upon the time the sun becalms:
In the bright garden, save in dream, no noise
But a long imagined shivering, O palms!
Come, and behold my love, as ever of old,
Make the vast silence flower lit by thy glance,
Glad with its peaceful pinions to enfold
Our passion soothed with rich remembrance.
LIFE IS CALM.
Life is calm,
Even as this evening of sweet summer, now
The bird is silent on the bough,
That bends above the river,
Whose reeds no longer quiver;
And the pacific night and wise
Sleeps without a shudder under cloudless skies.
Life is calm!
It is your face, O sister dear,
At happiness scarce smiling here,
Life is your face, dear sister,
So calm;
As life is and your happiness,
Your face is cloudless, calm, and passionless.
Even the river hushes
Between its banks, among its rushes;
One by one fall flowers;
Silent, gentle eventide,
Life is calm where waters glide;
By waters where the happiness that lies
Smiling, sister, in the tender flashing of your eyes,
Is wondering at the waters, and the evenings, and the hours.
FRONTISPIECE.
The gems that ivories clip,
And chrysoberyls puerile,
Mingling their gleams, beguile
The dole of the black tulip;
The fountain weeps in the old
Garden o'er flowers sad,
Which by the dawn are clad
In amethyst and in gold:
In the boxwood shadow lingers,
In sentimental fêtes,
The chevalier, and awaits
The princess whose pale fingers
Are flowers that bring relief
Unto her languorous grief.
INVITATION.
The ruby my vow desires
For your beauty smiling kind
Is surely incarnadined
By a limpid mirror's fires.
Ice with the flame interchanges,
And your eyes hard with dignity
Bruise the sobbed longing to be
A bauble your hand arranges.
But remember the waters yonder
Cradle the vessels that wander
To the isle in the bright future hidden,
And come while the winter is dark,
To sail our adventurous bark
Madly o'er oceans forbidden.
TO THE POLE.
Through fogs impassible that freeze the soul,
And under torpor-laden skies of gray,
If none can ever open out a way
To the icy horror of the reachless Pole,
Yet those who died or shall die striving thither,
In faith of victory and glory of dream,
Have known the rapturous pride of conquest gleam,
Brief flower of hope that never grief shall wither.
But thou, long cheated by the immutable thirst
Of being loved, hast too, too well rehearsed
The vanity of combats sterile all,
And dost with bitter, pitiless irony see
Those who go following ghosts that ever flee
Sink in the chasm where thyself didst fall.

---

PAUL GÉRARDY.

1870—.

SHE.
She whom my heart in dream already loves
Will under childlike curls have great blue eyes;
Her voice will be as sweet as that of doves,
Her skin a faint rose like a dream that dies.
So slender she will be among earth's daughters,
That you would think of lilies under glass,
Of a fountain weeping to the sky its waters,
Or the moon's beam quivering on dewy grass.
And, from her deep heart to her lips arising,
Guessing what seeds of songs are in me sown,
She will be ever humming them, disguising
My soul with the golden gamut of her own.
And never a bitter word will come from her;
Her eyes will always call to my caress,
Chaste as the eyes of my own mother were,
Melting with my own mother's tenderness.
EVIL LOVE.
I have yearned for the wicked child
With her sensual mouth's red glow,
And her restless eyes that show
How sateless her soul is and wild.
The lustful virgin, the child
With her sick flesh fainting above
The sweat of novels of love,
By which her soul is defiled.
She sins in her sleep; and in
Her evil smile there gleams,
Implacable as her dreams,
The lust of perversion and sin.
I have dreamt of the virgin impure;
The fire of her hair has profaned
My chastity with its lure—
And my eyes with tears are stained.
THE OWL.
There is a haggard flitting through the night,
And stupid wings are writhing through the wind,
And then, afar, a screeching of dark fright,
Like cries of a frail conscience that has sinned.
It is the shy owl of long moonless nights,
It is the inconsolable owl who peers
With blear eyes through drear darkness, and who blights
The peace of sleep with stark foreboding fears.
The inconsolable night-bird weeping through
The gloam, the spectral bird who fears the day,
Whose panic flitting chills the dark, and who
Fills space with cries that quiver with dismay.
But thou, poor owl, an ivied steeple seëst,
Where thou canst hide from dawning's garish hour—
My heart, who from the kiss of woman fleëst,
Where shalt thou find the peace of some old tower?
OF SAD JOY.
I am angry with you, little girl,
Because of your gracious smiles,
And your restful lips, and teeth of pearl,
And the black glitter of your great eyes.
I am angry with you, but on my knees,
For when I went away, in happy wise,
Far from you, far as goes the breeze,
I could think of nothing but of your eyes.
I was timid, I never dared look back,
And I went singing as madmen do,
To forget your eyes, alack!
But my song was all about you.

SOME SONG OR OTHER.
The song of moonlight all
That trembles as aspens shake,
The thrush sang it at the evenfall
To the listening swan on the blue lake.
It is all of love and distress,
And of joy and of love, and then
There are sobs of gold and weariness,
And ever comes joy back again.
Far, far away flew the thrush,
And the swan went pondering
All the new words, by lily and rush,
With his head underneath his wing.
OF AUTUMN.
While the moon through the heavens glides,
With music enchanting our way,
Come in the gladness to stray
Of the gorgeous autumn-tides.
Now comes the wind, and lifts
The gold of glad forests along;
And many a mystical song
Along the breeze with it drifts.
This life is most gracious and dear,
Enchanting our way as we go
With the laughter and golden glow
Of autumns singing clear.

ON THE SEA.
Blow, blow, thou boisterous tempest,
Blow, bitter winds and stark;
The fisher, he cannot hear you,
A-sailing in his dream-bark.
He sails to what pale daughters,
To what horizons dim?
Rage, rage ye winds and climb ye waters,
But we are waiting for him.
We are the lovelorn maidens,
Alone in the wearisome dark;
You winds and you waters that love us,
Overturn him in his dream-bark.