DAY after day of this azure May,
The blood of the spring has swelled in my veins;
Night after night of broad moonlight,
A mystical dream has dazzled my brains.
A seething might, a fierce delight,
The blood of the spring is the wine of the world;
My veins run fire and thrill desire,
Every leaf of my heart’s red rose uncurled.
A sad, sweet calm, a tearful balm,
The light of the moon is the trance of the world;
My brain is fraught with yearning thought,
And the rose is pale, and its leaves are furled.
Oh, speed the day then, dear, dear May,
And hasten the night, I charge thee, O June!
When the trance divine shall burn with the wine,
And the red rose unfurl all its fire to the moon.
James Thomson.
THE SONG OF TRISTRAM.
THE star of love is trembling in the west,
Night hears the desolate sea with moan on moan
Sigh for the storm, who on his mountain lone
Smites his wild harp, and dreams of her wild breast.
I am thy storm, Isolt, and thou my sea!
Isolt!
My passionate sea!
The storm to her wild breast, the passionate sea
To his fierce arms: we to the rapturous leap
Of mated spirits mingling in love’s deep,
Flame to flame, I to thee and thou to me!
Thou to mine arms, Isolt, I to thy breast!
Isolt!
I to thy breast!
John Todhunter.
AUBADE.
THE lights are out in the street, and a cool wind swings
Loose poplar plumes on the sky;
Deep in the gloom of the garden the first bird sings:
Curt, hurried steps go by,
Loud in the hush of the dawn past the linden screen,
Lost in a jar and a rattle of wheels unseen,
Beyond on the wide highway:
Night lingers dusky and dim in the pear-tree boughs,
Hangs in the hollows of leaves, though the thrushes rouse,
And the glimmering lawn grows gray.
Yours, my heart knoweth, yours only the jewelled gloom,
Splendours of opal and amber, the scent, the bloom,
Yours all, and your own demesne—
Scent of the dark, of the dawning, of leaves and dew;
Nothing that was but hath changed—’tis a world made new—
A lost world risen again.