1875—.
THE THISTLE.
Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect
And prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb,
Hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect,
The Gothic thistle, while the insects' hum
Sounds far off, rears above the rock it scorns
Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
The towering boulders guard it. And the bee
Makes honey from the blossoms on its thorns.
MUSHROOMS.
Whether with hues of corpses or of blood,—
Phallus obscene or volva as of glue—
In the rank rotting of the underwood,
And those that out of dead beasts' bodies grew,
Fed by the effervescence
Of poisonous putrescence,
Flourish the saprophytes in mould and must.
Plants without roots and with no leaves of green,
Souls without faith or hope—they thrust
Protuberances rank with lust,
Inert, venene.
And if there is not death in all of them,
It is because some sect among them breeds
From less putrescent wood fallen from the stem
Of the Living Tree whose severed bough still feeds.
In the autumnal thicket, thinned
Along its mournful arches by the wind,
No longer to dead twigs but sapwood quick,
Corrupting trunks that time left whole,
The reeking parasites in millions stick,
Like to the carnal ill that gnaws the soul
Of those who at the feet of women fawn.
And Hell has blessed their countless spawn.
And though they cannot reach the surging tops
Of the unshaken columns of the Church,
In spreading crops
The parasites with poison smirch
And mottle with strange stains the fruits
The Monstrance ripens in the groves of Rome.
Trusting that ancient orchard's sainted roots,
Whoever of the leprous apples eats
Shall feel his faith grow darkened with a gloam
That filters heresy's corroding sweets.
More hideous than saprophytes,
And therefore for the sacrilege more fit,
Upon the Corn and Vinestock sit
Minute and miserable parasites;
And o'er the Eucharist their tiny bellies,
To cat and crimson it, have crept.
Their occult plague has for three hundred years
Eaten the very hope of mystic ears,
Wherever the Christian Harvester has slept.
And while, in the land of heavy, yellow beers,
In the brewing-vat of barren exegeses
Some new-found yeast for ever effervesces,
The saints whose blood turns sick and rots,
Waiting till a second Nero shall
For their cremation light a golden carnival,
Behold their bodies decked with livid spots.
GEORGES RENCY.
1875—.
WHAT USE IS SPEECH?
What use is speech, what use is it to say
Words that without an echo die away,
And only leave vain sadness after?
All a forest of shadow rings with laughter,
If thou but move thy hand to grasp at life!
My love, the path on which we laugh with life
Pales in a doubt befogged with roads that leads not thorough;
The night is triumphing with stars, towards to-morrow!
In the night, thou sayest, shadowy terrors fall.
Be undeceived, there is no night:
There is only multiform, enormous light,
And the stars are there, for thee to be drunk withal!
THE SOURCE.
Our feet kiss where the source is glistening
In the glad gloaming softening the trees.
Its waters murmur mysteries to the breeze,
And we in ravishment are listening.
The leaves are paling in the twilight chill:
A mystic something in the air is swimming;
Our eyes with happy tears are over-brimming;
And now the source grows timid, and is still.
The shadow makes the world so fair and frail;
Wouldst thou not, like a banner on the gale,
Be fain to shake thy heart out tenderly?—
But no, say nothing: silence is a veil
For fervent thoughts that utterance only mars.
Let us sit hand in hand, and converse be
Without a word under the peace of stars.
THE FLESH.
O carnal love, life's laughter! Under these
Free Eden skies and on these blossomed leas,
Thy kiss is on these budding lips of ours.
The high grass is all gold, the drunken flowers
Voluptuously languish, every one,
Feverish as the earth is with the sun.
My heart leaps like a beast of light, and rears
And madly o'er the royal road careers,
Where my desires' processional altars are.
Your flesh is quivering and to mine replies,
Dearest, and glassed within your great pale eyes
Is Heaven immensely blue and deep and far.
Kiss me! The hour is sweet, and pure our kiss.
The deathless boon of living sings in us.
Let us with ravishment delirious
Possess each other, and in infinite bliss
Be born again, knowing life's mysteries!
Fold me and fill me with your hot caress,
O human goddess naked, exquisite!
I am drunken with your dazzling loveliness,
O queen of grace and beauty dowered with your
Young budding flesh so marvellously pure!
FERNAND SÉVERIN.
1867—.
THE CHAPLET.
Fiumina amem sylvasque inglorius.—VIRGIL.
My forest, winter's captive, I have seen
Softly awakening under warmer breezes:
In bluer air my forest shimmering green
Wafts down the wind the scent that in its trees is.
An olden happiness, and yet unknown:
Trembles my simple heart, these things beholding
With pearls of dew the burgeoned boughs are strown
Trembling, this morning hour, my woods unfolding,
O Muses! if so passionate a love
Survive these leaves in songs of mine that please ye,
Seek not to soften to the wrinkles of
My brow the oak's or laurel's bough uneasy.
The leaves were quivering open, frail as flowers!
O! let the light bough of this foliage, shining
With the cold tears of Night's imprisoned hours,
For ever be mine idle brows entwining!
Re manlier brows by prouder fillets swathed!
But I would live renownless, lonely-hearted,
And to those virgin haunts return unscathed
Whence my child's soul hath never yet departed.
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.
I feel my heart for ever dying, bruised
By all the love it never will have used,
Dying in silence, and with angels by,
As simply as in cradles infants die,
Infants that have no speech.
O God-given heart,
Guarded by vigilant seraphim thou art!
No thing shall soil thy natal raiment! Thou,
Rest thee content with no kiss on thy brow,
Save of maternal summer eves, and die
In thy desire and thy virginity.
Thy sacrifice hath made thee shy and proud;
Thy life with very emptiness is bowed.
Made to be loved, loved thou shalt never be,
Though many maids would stretch their arms to thee,
As to the Prince who through their fancies rides.
Alas! and thou hast never known these brides;
To thee they come not when calm evening falls,
The pensive maids to whom thy longing calls;
And thou art dying of thy love unused,
Poor sterile heart, my heart for ever bruised!
SOVRAN STATE.
In nights impure moans one with fever stricken:
"Lord! let a maiden bring me, for I sicken,
Water and grapes, and quench my thirst with them.
Spring water! Fruits of a virgin vine! And let
Her fresh and virgin hands lie on the fret
Of my King's brow burnt by its diadem."
O pitiful crown upon a head so lowly!
Does the unquiet night allegiance show thee?
Thou King of beautiful lands that never were.
"O stars among the trees! O waters pale!
Comes the expected dawn in opal veil?
Pity the tired and lonely sufferer:
And grant me, Lord, after the night out-drawn,
The sleep and boon of Thy forgiving dawn;
And let Thy chosen heart no longer bleed!"
But answer makes the Lord in stern denial:
"Leave thou, for nobler verse, to pain and trial
Thy heart, the open book the angels read."
THE KISS OF SOULS.
You who have died to me, you think you live!
Living, your squandered gems and lilies shed!
But since the dream you were is fugitive,
Love, calm and sad, whispers that you are dead.
She that you were survives in dreams: I press
Her virgin hands, I hear the vows she swears.
Hath not this evening that old loveliness?
I seem to breathe the blossoms that she wears.
Hearts had been beating long before they spoke,
But eyes had speech, and tender voices ringing,
Docile to love like perfect lyres, awoke
The forest's wondering echo with their singing.
A lovelier and a lonelier evening came;
The sun behind the breathless forest set.
Who was it hushed our voices? For in shame
We bent our eyes down that by chance had met.
The treasure of our hearts this one deep look
Delivered up! Our secrets were in this
One look exchanged that our two spirits took,
And wedded in their first and only kiss.
HER SWEET VOICE.
Her sweet voice was a music in mine ear;
And in the perfume of the atmosphere
Which, in that eve, her shadowy presence shed,
"Sister of mystery," trembling I said,
"Too like an angel to be what you seem,
Go not away too soon, beloved dream!"
Then, smiling as a mother will, she seized
My brow, and with soft hands my fever eased.
"Still, thou poor child, this childish fear of me?
Thy forehead furrowed by sad memory,
Are these a shadow's hands that on it rest?
A bright May morn is dawning in thy breast:
Is it a phantom's voice that soothes thy grief?
But if my beauty be beyond belief,
Breathe its terrestrial odour! Part my hair,
And take my veil away and make me bare!
Thou canst not soil my wings, nor stain the snow
Of these frail flowers that in my garden blow;
Come, in so fair an evening, spend the treasure
Of my veiled loveliness in thy heart's pleasure."
Thus sang the tender voice that needs must fade!
And in her kiss the soul was of a maid.
But night came from the rim of autumn skies,
Came from the forest's shallow, evil eyes.
THE REFUGE.
This is mine hour. Night falls upon my life.
I must forego my part in men's keen strife.
With conquered step resigned I reach the door,
Beloved too late, where none awaits me more.
An autumn shudder through the clear, cold sky
Runs, interrupting the monotonous cry
Shed by a horn astray and desolate,
Making me, languidly, smile at my fate....
But all is said. Naught moves me, in the gloam,
Save the uneasy hope of this dear home.
She lives; my heart, and not mine eye, foresees.
The sweetness of the moon, spread on the trees,
Veils more and more this happy nook with peace
And mystery that bids foreboding cease;
A counsel of forgetfulness is cast
Around me, something pensive, good, and vast.
And every step I take the more it thrills
My soul which yet that ancient quarrel fills.
But what shall summer storms betoken, when
She breathes the autumn calm she longed for then,
And only trembles feeling memories stir
Of hearts that loved her well and wounded her.
NATURE.
Slow falls the eve; the hour is grave, profound.
The sweet, sad cuckoo makes the air resound
With his two notes with springtide languor filled;
And the tall pines, by eddying breezes thrilled,
Tremble, as ocean echoes in a shell.
Else all is hushed.
I walk with heart unwell.
Slowly the shadow on my path descends.
I loiter o'er familiar forest bends,
Whose calm grows deeper with the darkening west,
O such a calm I feel my own unrest
Melt in the peace of landscapes unforeseen;
And in the east eve clothes with azure sheen
The slender uplands with their billowing chain,
Whose silhouettes shut in the distant plain;
And on their tops their cloak of forests gleams
Through the thin veil of mist that o'er them streams.
And all is vague, the ideal form of things
Shimmers divine in deep imaginings,
Gladdening the eye with grace ineffable;
Seeing them, in the enchanted world we dwell
Of soulless, happy beings who possess
The calm we cry for of forgetfulness,
We who desire in desolate hearts that pine,
This sovereign gift of peace that makes divine;
And most at eve, when quiet nights of spring
Enchant the sky, the forest, and the ling.
The forest's darkness sways me at its will;
And with a holy and unfathomed thrill
I feel a dizzy longing grow in me:
O not to think! nor wish! O not to be!...
THE HUMBLE HOPE.
Time goes, poor soul, and sterile are thy vows.
After our outwatched nights and feverish brows,
What do we know, save that we nothing know?
Even as a child a butterfly will chase,
Far have I strayed in many a flowering place,
And here I tremble in the afterglow.
Yet not despairing in my feebleness,
But hoping that the Master still will bless
The will to do good that my efforts show.
ELEONORA D'ESTE.
Does thy heart, Tasso, burn for thy Princess?
Strive to refine this obscure tenderness,
Of which she can accept the flower alone.
Save it make nobler, I no love can own.
Certes, among the gifts that fate bestows,
And the least lovely, as a poet knows,
Some are an offered prey that passions take.
But there are others which, if seized, do break;
And of these supreme gifts love is the best.
If thou indeed dost love me, 'ware thee lest
Thy heart forget the reverence it owes,
Then may it love, and in love find repose.
THE THINKER.
O thinker! Thou whose heart hath not withstood,
For the first time, Spring's beauty in the wood,
And who thyself wilt therefore not forgive,
Thy days have passed in pondering o'er the great
Enigma man proposes to his fate,
And books from life have made thee fugitive.
What boots? Leave to the gods their secret yet,
And, while thou livest, taste without regret
The sweetness of this simple word: To live.
A SAGE.
He knows dreams never kept their promise yet.
Henceforth without desire, without regret,
He cons the page of sober tenderness
In which some poet, skilled in life's distress,
Breathed into olden, golden verse his sighs.
Sometimes he lifts his head, and feeds his eyes,
With all the wonderment that wise men know,
On fields, and clouds that over forests go,
And with their calmness sated is his thought.
He knows how dearly fair renown is bought:
He too, in earlier days of stinging strength,
Sought that vain victory to find at length
Sadness at his desire's precipitous brink....
Of what avail, he thought, to act and think,
When human joy holds all in one rapt look?
His mind at peace reads Nature like a book.
He smiles, remembering his youth's unrest,
And, though none know it, he is wholly blest.
THEY WHO ARE WORN WITH LOVE.
When, worn with unregenerate delights,
The kisses of fair youths grow dull and sicken,
They seek, fatigued with hope and outwatched nights,
A bed of love that shall the senses quicken.
White bed of love with pillows rich with lace,
Caressing curtains sheltering dreamless blisses,
And, to grow better from the bought embrace,
Upon their wasted brows long trembling kisses.
Calmer than autumn heavens the eyes they crave,
In which the bitterness of theirs shall vanish,
Lips of a speech impassionate, suave,
Which their sick sorrows shall assuage and banish.
Love should be night, and hushed forgetfulness,
Never with follies of the past upbraided,
Hope still renewed consoling the distress
Of dreams come true and in fulfilment faded.
Nor light, nor noise; but in the happy room,
With tapestry the walls to sleep beguiling,
To kiss the long hands of the mistress whom
A plain gown clothes, and who is faintly smiling!
Once they have seen her, and to hear her speak
They hoped for her and Heaven, and knelt before her;
But love's old burden makes their soul so weak
That save with sighs they never dare implore her.
THE CENTAUR.
Oft on my rural youth I dwell in fancy.
Ye gods who for our deepest feelings care,
If fields and forests evermore entrance me,
It is because you set my birthplace there.
With what a love up-welling sweet and tender
Upon the august face of earth mine eyes
Lingered, and drank her solitary splendour,
Bathed in the radiance of calm summer skies!
All was excitement! Valleys richly rounded;
The undulating, broadly breasted hills;
The vast plains which the veiled horizon bounded,
Lit by the silver flash of restless rills.
But you, ye forests, filled me most with craving!
The pang I felt still to my memory cleaves,
When I beheld your endless tree-tops waving,
As underneath the wind the ocean heaves!
And at your wafted murmuring, I, to capture
Your reachless vast, my arms would open dart,
Crying in sudden, overpowering rapture:
"The world is less immense than my own heart!..."
Do not accuse of pride, O Nature! Mother!
My fleeting youth. Not vain was my unrest:
Of all thy mortal sons there is no other
Hath strained himself more fondly to thy breast.
The summer sun has scorched my skin, and daring
Has chiselled on my face its stubborn force;
In foaming floods I bathed, my body baring;
And on the mountains braved the tempests hoarse.
All manly pleasures that our being fashion
In the rough shock of elements uncouth,
All of them I have known with headlong passion;
With lust of struggle pulsed my arduous youth.
Intoxicating was the zest that thrilled me.
What matter if I let the fervour seize
My quivering soul? The bitter joy that filled me
Whipped and exalted me, and left no lees.
For I had dreamt all phases of existence!
All that was frail and pent in me with scorn
I cast aside, and looked towards the distance
Where dawned the fate for which my mind was born.
Was it a vain dream? O you centaurs smiting
With roving hoofs your rocks and herbless sods,
O you whose shape, a man's and beast's uniting,
Shelters a secret fire that makes you gods!
You who quaffed life with its abundance drunken!
Your transports I have known in olden days,
In evenings when, like you in silence sunken,
I drove along the darkened forest ways!
In me, ye savage gods, your strength was seething;
And, when a sacred madness through me ran,
In the pent breath the foliage was breathing
I deemed me one of you, I mortal man.