The silence fell on my Love’s lips;
Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad
With pondering some maze of dream,
Though all the splendid year was glad.
Restless and vague as a gray wind
Her heart had grown, she knew not why.
But hurrying to the open door,
Against the verge of western sky
I saw retreating on the hills,
Looming and sinister and black,
The stealthy figure swift and huge
Of One who strode and looked not back.
Bliss Carman.
THE IMPOSSIBLE SHE.
FAR away hangs an apple that ripens on high
The latest-born child of old sun-blind July,
Till the summer’s warm kiss as he wooes overhead
Turns its sour heart to sweetness, its wan cheek to red.
But it is not for you, and it is not for me,
Nay, it is not for any who here may be;
For its dawning red sweetness,
That rounds to completeness
Grows moist for the lips that we never may see.
There’s a white rose leaf-cloistered in heavy noon-hush,
And no eyes but the stars tempt its pale face to blush,
In that wilderness garden where, shut from day’s beam,
Fall its fragrant white leaves, light as steps of a dream.
But it is not for you, and it is not for me,
Nay, it is not for any who here may be;
For it sleeps and then wakes
In dew-scented snow-flakes,
As a star for the dusk hair we never may see.
In a green golden valley there grows an elf-girl,
And her lip is red-ripe; and her soul, one rich pearl,
Yields once to one diver a treasure unpriced
As the wine of the Gods or the wine-blood of Christ.
But she is not for you, and she is not for me,
Nay she is not for any who here may be;
For her breast like a moon
Through the rosed air of June
Grows round for his hand whom we never may see.
Henry Bernard Carpenter.
A DREAM SHAPE.
WITH moon-white hearts that held a gleam
I gathered wild flowers in a dream,
And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood
Was odour of the wildwood bud.
From dew, the starlight arrowed through,
I wrought a woman’s eyes of blue;
The lids, that on her eyeballs lay,
Were rose-pale petals of the May.