- The Project Gutenberg EBook of Days and Dreams, by Madison J. Cawein
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- Title: Days and Dreams
- Poems
- Author: Madison J. Cawein
- Release Date: March 25, 2010 [EBook #31764]
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAYS AND DREAMS ***
- Produced by David Garcia, Joseph R. Hauser and the Online
- Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
- file was produced from images generously made available
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- DAYS AND DREAMS
- POEMS
- BY
- MADISON CAWEIN
- AUTHOR OF "LYRICS AND IDYLS," "THE TRIUMPH
- OF MUSIC," ETC., ETC.
- G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
- NEW YORK LONDON
- 27 West Twenty-third St. 27 King William St., Strand
- The Knickerbocker Press
- 1891
- COPYRIGHT, 1891
- BY
- MADISON CAWEIN
- The Knickerbocker Press, New York
- Printed and Bound by
- G. P. Putnam's Sons
- TO
- JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
- WITH
- ADMIRATION AND REGARD
- _O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
- The song I sought for you
- Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find,
- Lost in the dædal mind,
- The living utterance with lovely tongue!
- To say, as erst was sung
- By Ariosto of Knight-errantry,--
- Through lands of Poesy,
- Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day,
- The wizard shield you sway
- Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse,
- The skyey-builded verse:
- The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
- Our unanointed eyes.--
- Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you,
- Each line, a spark of dew,--
- As once Ferdusi shone in Persia,--
- Had strung each rosy spray
- Of the unfolding flower of each song;
- And Iran's bulbul tongue
- Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab
- In gardens of Afrasiab._
- CONTENTS.
- PAGE
- ONE DAY AND ANOTHER 1
- DAYS AND DREAMS 93
- DEITY 95
- SELF 97
- SELF AND SOUL 99
- THE DREAM OF DREAD 102
- DEATH IN LIFE 105
- THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS 110
- MATER DOLOROSA 116
- THE OLD INN 119
- LAST DAYS 121
- THE ROMANZA 123
- MY ROMANCE 125
- THE EPIC 127
- THE BLIND HARPER 129
- ELPHIN 131
- PRE-ORDINATION 134
- AT THE STILE 138
- THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER 140
- AT THE CORREGIDOR'S 142
- THE PORTRAIT 145
- ISMAEL 150
- A PRE-EXISTENCE 154
- BEHRAM AND EDDETMA 158
- THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB 166
- ONE DAY AND ANOTHER.
- PART I.
- 1.
- _He waits musing._
- Herein the dearness of her is:
- The thirty perfect days of June
- Made one, in beauty and in bliss
- Were not more white to have to kiss,
- To love not more in tune.
- And oft I think she is too true,
- Too innocent for our day;
- For in her eyes her soul looks new--
- Two crowfoot-blossoms watchet-blue
- Are not more soft than they.
- So good, so kind is she to me,
- In darling ways and happy words,
- Sometimes my heart fears she may be
- Too much with God and secretly
- Sweet sister to the birds.
- 2.
- _Becoming impatient._
- The owls are quavering, two, now three,
- And all the green is graying;
- The owls our trysting dials be--
- There is no time for staying.
- I wait you where this buckeye throws
- Its tumbled shadow over
- Wood-violet and the bramble-rose,
- Long lady-fern and clover.
- Spice-seeded sassafras weighs deep
- Rough rail and broken paling,
- Where all day long the lizards sleep
- Like lichen on the railing.
- Behind you you will feel the moon's
- Gold stealing like young laughter;
- And mists--gray ghosts of picaroons--
- Its phantom treasure after.
- And here together, youth and youth,
- Love will be doubly able;
- Each be to each as true as truth,
- And dear as fairy fable.
- The owls are calling and the maize
- With fallen dew is dripping--
- Ah, girlhood, through the dewy haze
- Come like a moonbeam slipping.
- 3.
- _He hums._
- There is a fading inward of the day,
- And all the pansy sunset hugs one star;
- To eastward dwindling all the land is gray,
- While barley meadows westward smoulder far.
- Now to your glass will you pass
- For the last time?
- Pass,
- Humming that ballad we know?--
- Here while I wait it is late
- And is past time--
- Late,
- And love's hours they go, they go.
- There is a drawing downward of the night;
- The wedded Heaven wends married to the Moon;
- Above, the heights hang golden in her light,
- Below, the woods bathe dewy in the June.
- There through the dew is it you
- Coming lawny?
- You,
- Or a moth in the vines?
- You!--at your throat I may note
- Twinkling tawny,
- Note,
- A glow-worm, your brooch that shines.
- 4.
- _She speaks._
- How many smiles in the asking?--
- Herein I can not deceive you;
- My "yes" in a "no" was a-masking,
- Nor thought, dear, once to grieve you.
- I hid. The humming-bird happiness here
- Danced up i' the blood ... but what are words
- When the speech of two souls all truth affords?
- Affirmative, negative what in love's ear?--
- I wished to say "yes" and somehow said "no";
- The woman within me knew you would know,
- For it held you six times dear.
- _He speaks._
- So many hopes in a wooing!--
- Therein you could not deceive me;
- The heart was here and the hope pursuing,
- Knew that you loved, believe me.--
- Bunched bells o' the blush pomegranate--to fix
- At your throat; three drops of fire they are;
- And the maiden moon and the maiden star
- Sink silvery over yon meadow ricks.
- Will you look?--till I hug your head back, so--
- For I know it is "yes" though you whisper "no,"--
- And my kisses, sweet, are six.
- 5.
- _She speaks._
- Could I recall every joy that befell me
- There in the past with its anguish and bliss,
- Here in my heart it has whispered to tell me,
- These were no joys to this.
- Were it not well if our love could forget them,
- Veiling the _was_ with the dawn of the _is_?
- Dead with the past we should never regret them,
- These were no joys to this.
- When they were gone and the present stood speechful,
- Ardent with word and with look and with kiss,
- What though we know that their eyes are beseechful,
- These were no joys to this.
- Is it not well to have more of the spirit,
- Living high futures this earthly must miss?
- Less of the flesh with the past pining near it?--
- Such is the joy of this.
- 6.
- _She sings._
- We will leave reason,
- Dear, for a season;
- Reason were treason
- Since yonder nether
- Foot-hills are clad now
- In nothing sad now;
- We will be glad now,
- Glad as this weather.
- Heart and heart! in the Maytime, Maytime,
- Youth and Love take playtime, playtime ...
- I in the dairy; you are the airy
- Majesty passing; Love is the fairy
- Bringing us two together.
- _He sings._
- Starlight in masses
- Of mist that passes,
- Stars in the grasses;
- Star-bud and flower
- Laughingly know us;
- Secretly show us
- Earth is below us
- And for the hour
- Soul has soul. In the Maytime, Maytime,
- Youth and Love take playtime, playtime ...
- You are a song; a singer I hear it
- Whispered in star and in flower; the spirit,
- Love, is the power.
- 7.
- _He speaks._
- And say we can not wed us now,
- Since roses and the June are here,
- Meseems, beneath the beechen bough
- 'T is just as sweet, my doubly dear,
- To swear anew each old love vow,
- And love another year.
- When breathe green woodlands through and through
- Wild scents of heliotrope and rain,
- Where deep the moss mounds cool with dew,
- Beyond the barley-blowing lane,
- More wise than wedding, is to woo--
- So we will woo again.
- All night I lie awake and mark
- The hours by no clanging clock,
- But in the dim and dewy dark
- Far crowing of some punctual cock;
- Until the lyric of the lark
- Mounts and Morn's gates unlock.
- And would you be a nun and miss
- All this delightful ache of love?
- Not have the moon for what she is?
- Love's honey-horn God holds above--
- No world, for worlds are in a kiss
- If worlds are good enough.
- So say we can not wed us now,
- Since roses and the June are here
- We 'll stroll beneath the doddered bough,
- Heaven's mated songsters singing near,
- To swear anew each old love vow,
- And love another year.
- 8.
- _He opens his heart._
- And had we lived in the days
- Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid,
- We had loved, as the story says,
- Did the Sultan's favorite one
- And the Persian Emperor's son
- Ali ben Bekkar, he
- Of the Kisra dynasty.
- Do you know the story well
- Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana?--
- When night on the palace fell,
- A slave through a secret door,
- Low-arched on the Tigris' shore,
- By a hidden winding stair
- Ben Bekkar brought to his fair?
- Then there was laughter and mirth,
- And feasting and singing together,
- In a chamber of marvellous worth;
- In a chamber vaulted high
- On columns of ivory;
- Its dome, like the irised skies,
- Mooned over with peacock eyes;
- And the curtains and furniture,
- Damask and juniper.
- Ten slave-girls--so many blooms--
- Stand sconcing tamarisk torches,
- Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
- Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
- Each like to a star in the East;
- Ten singers, their lutes a-tune,
- Each like to a bosomed moon.
- For her in the stuff of Merv
- Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled,
- No metaphor made may serve;
- Scarved deep with her own dark hair,
- The jewels like fire-flies there--
- Blossom and moon and star,
- The Lady Shemsennehar.
- The zone embracing her waist,--
- The ransom of forty princes,--
- But her form more priceless is placed;
- Carbuncles of Istakhar
- In her coronet burning are--
- Though gems of the Jamshid race,
- Far rarer the gem of her face.
- Tall-shaped like the letter I,
- With a face like an Orient morning;
- Eyes of the bronze-black sky;
- Lips, of the pomegranate split,
- With the light of her language lit;
- Cheeks, which the young blood dares
- Make blood-red anemone lairs.
- Kohled with voluptuous look,
- From opaline casting-bottles,
- Handmaidens over them shook
- Rose-water, and strewed with bloom
- Mosaics old of the room;
- Torch-rays on the walls made bars,
- Or minted down golden dinars.
- Roses of Rocknabad,
- Hyacinths of Bokhara;--
- Not a spray of cypress sad;--
- Narcissus and jessamine o'er
- Carved pillar and cedarn door;
- Pomegranates and bells of clear
- Tulips of far Kashmeer.
- And the chamber glows like a flower
- Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa;
- And the bronzen censers glower;
- And scents of ambergris pour
- With myrrh brought out of Lahore,
- And musk of Khoten, and good
- Aloes and sandal-wood.
- Rubies, a tragacanth-red,
- Angered in armlet and anklet
- Dragon-like eyes that bled:
- Bangles and necklaces dangled
- Diamonds, whose prisms were angled,
- Over veil and from coiffure, each
- Or apricot-colored or peach.
- And Ghoram now smites her lute,
- Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila,
- Or amorous ghazals may suit:--
- And the flambeaux snap and wave
- Barbaric on free and slave,
- Rich fabrics and bezels of gems,
- And roses in anadems.
- Sherbets in ewers of gold,
- Fruits in salvers carnelian;
- Flagons of grotesque mold,
- Made of a sapphire glass,
- Stained with wine of Shirâz;
- Shaddock and melon and grape
- On plate of an antique shape:
- Vases of frost and of rose,
- An alabaster graven,
- Filled with the mountain snows;
- Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
- One filigree silver-swirl;
- Vessels of gold foamed up
- With spray of spar on the cup.--
- When a slave bursts in with the cry:
- "The eunuchs! the Khalif's eunuchs!
- With scimitars bared draw nigh!
- Wesif and Afif and he,
- Chief of the hideous three,
- Mesrour! the Sultan 's seen
- 'Mid a hundred weapons' sheen!"...
- _We_, never had parted, no!
- As parted those lovers fearful;
- But kissing you so and so,
- When they came they had found us dead
- On the flowers our blood dyed red;
- Our lips together and
- The dagger in my hand.
- 9.
- _She speaks, musing._
- O cities built by music! lyres of love
- Strung to a songful sea! did I but own
- One harp chord of one broken barbiton
- What had I budded for our life thereof?
- In docile shadows under bluebell skies
- A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
- Beneath lone peaks the splendors never leave,
- In lemon orchards whence the egret flies.
- Where pitying gray the pitiless eyes of Death
- Blight no slight bud unfostered, I have thought;
- Deep, lily-deep, pearl-pale daturas, fraught
- With dewy fragrance like an angel's breath.
- Sleep in the days; the twilights tuned and tame
- Through mockbirds throating to attentive stars;
- Each morn outrivalling each in opal bars;
- Eves preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.
- O country by the undiscovered sea!
- The dream infolds thee and the way is dim--
- With head not high, what if I follow him,
- Love--with the madness and the melody?
- 10.
- _He, after a pause, lightly._
- An elf there is who stables the hot
- Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;
- An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
- Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
- An elf who saddles the hornet lean
- To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
- Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
- The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly:--
- O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
- An elf there is where the clover tips
- A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
- Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
- In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
- Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
- Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
- Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
- To the bandit elf of the Fairy way,--
- O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.
- Another ouphen the butterflies know,
- Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
- Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
- Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
- Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing--
- The evening moth is another thing:
- The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
- The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
- He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
- Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
- Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
- And lights at night the glow-worm's eye:--
- O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
- But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
- Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
- Who curls in a dimple and slips along
- The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
- Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
- And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
- Hides unhidden, where none may know,
- In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow--
- O ho, O ho!--a friend or foe?
- 11.
- _She, seriously._
- Who the loser, who the winner,
- If the Fancy fail as preacher?--
- None who loved was yet beginner
- Though another's love-beseecher;
- Love's revealment 's of the inner
- Life and deity, the teacher.
- Who may falsify the feeling
- To the lover who is loser?
- Has she felt:--the mere revealing
- Of the passion 's his accuser;
- She conceals it; the concealing
- Is her own love's self-abuser.
- One hath said, no flower knoweth
- Of the fragrance it revealeth;
- Song, its soul that overfloweth,
- Never nightingale's heart feeleth--
- Such the love the spirit groweth,
- Love unconscious if it healeth.
- 12.
- _He._
- Handsels of anemones
- The surrendered hours
- Pour about the sweet Spring's knees--
- Crowding babies of the breeze,
- Her unstudied flowers.
- When 't is dawn, bestowing Day
- Strews with coins of golden
- Every furlong of his way--
- Like a Sultan gone to pray
- At a Kaaba olden.
- Warlock Night, when dips the dark,
- Opens, tire on tire,
- Windows of an heavenly ark,
- Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark,
- Butterflies of fire.
- With the night, the day, the spring,--
- Godly chords of beauty,--
- We the instrument will string
- Of our lives and love shall sing
- Songs of truth and duty.
- 13.
- _She._
- How it was I can not tell,
- For I know not where nor why,
- And the beautiful befell
- In a land that does not lie
- East or West where mortals dwell--
- But beneath a vaguer sky.
- Was it in the golden ages,
- Or the iron, that I heard,
- In prophetic speech of sages,
- How had come a snowy bird
- 'Neath whose wing lay written pages
- Of an unknown lover's word?
- I forget; you may remember
- How the earthquake shook our ships;
- How our city, one huge ember,
- Blazed within the thick eclipse;
- When you found me--deep December
- Sealed on icy eyes and lips.
- I forget. No one may say
- Pre-existences are true:
- Here 's a flower dies to-day,
- Resurrected blooms anew:
- Death is dumb and Life is gray--
- Who shall doubt what God can do!
- 14.
- _He._
- As to this, nothing to tell,
- You being all my belief;
- Doubt may not enter or dwell
- Here where your image is chief,
- Royal, to quicken or quell,
- Swaying no sceptre of grief.
- Wise with the wisdom of Spring--
- Dew-drops, a world in each prism,
- Gems from the universe ring:--
- Free of all creed and all schism,
- Buds that are speechless but bring
- God-uttered God aphorism.
- See how the synod is met
- There of the planets to preach us--
- Freed from the frost's oubliette,
- Here how the flowers beseech us--
- Were it not well to forget
- Winter and night as they teach us?
- Dew-drop, a bud, and a star,
- These--each a separate thought
- Over man's logic how far!--
- God to a unit hath wrought--
- Love, making these what they are,
- For without love they were naught.
- Millions of stars; and they roll
- Over your path that is white,
- Here where we end the long stroll.--
- Seen of the innermost sight,
- All of the love of my soul
- Kisses your spirit. Good-night.
- PART II.
- 1.
- _She delays, meditating._
- Sad skies and a foggy rain
- Dripping from streaming eaves;
- Over and over again
- Dead drop of the trickling leaves;
- And the woodward winding lane,
- And the hill with its shocks of sheaves,
- One scarce perceives.
- Must I go in such sad weather
- By the lane or over the hill?
- Where the splitting milk-weed's feather
- Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?
- Or where, ten stars together,
- Buff ox-eyes rank the rill
- By the old corn-mill?
- The creek by this is swollen,
- And its foaming cascades sound;
- And the lilies, smeared with pollen,
- In the race look dull and drowned;--
- 'T is the path we oft have stolen
- To the bridge, that rambles round
- With willows crowned.
- Through a bottom wild with berry
- Or packed with the iron-weeds,
- With their blue combs washed and very
- Purple; the sorghum meads
- Glint green near a wilding cherry;
- Where the high wild-lettuce seeds
- The fenced path leads.
- A bird in the rain beseeches;
- And the balsams' budding balls
- Smell drenched by the way which reaches
- The wood where the water falls;
- Where the warty water-beeches
- Hang leaves one blister of galls,
- The mill-wheel drawls.
- My shawl instead of a bonnet!...
- Though the wood be soaking yet
- Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it--
- How sweet to meet in the wet!--
- Our rock with the vine upon it,
- Each flower a fiery jet-- ...
- He won't forget!
- 2.
- _He speaks, rowing._
- Deep are the lilies here that lay
- Lush, lambent leaves along our way,
- Or pollen-dusty bob and float
- White nenuphars about our boat
- This side the woodland we have reached;
- Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached.
- There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke
- Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak
- Floods from the Alleghanies bore
- To wedge here by this sycamore;
- Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white,
- Lights ghostly foxfire in the night.
- Now oar we through this willow fringe
- The bulging shore that bosks,--a tinge
- Of green mists down the marge;--where old,
- Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade
- With breezy balsam pungent; bowled
- Around vined trunks the floods have made
- Concentric hollows. On we pass.
- As we pass, we pass, we pass,
- In daisy jungles deep as grass,
- A bubbling sparrow flirts above
- In wood-words with its woodland love:
- A white-streaked woodpecker afar
- Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star,
- Three glittering jays flash over: slim
- The piping sand-snipes skip and skim
- Before us: and a finch or thrush--
- Who may discover where such sing?--
- The silence rinses with a gush
- Of mellow music gurgling.
- On we pass, and onward oar
- To yon long lip of ragged shore,
- Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore
- A ferny spring; where dodging by
- Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly;
- Mallows, rank crowded in for room,
- 'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom;
- Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods
- Last Spring encamped those ashes say
- And charcoal boughs.--'T is long till buds!--
- Here who in August misses May?
- 3.
- _He speaks, resting._
- Here the shores are irised; grasses
- Clump the water gray that glasses
- Broken wood and deepened distance:
- Far the musical persistence
- Of a field-lark lingers low
- In the west where tulips blow.
- White before us flames one pointed
- Star; and Day hath Night anointed
- King; from out her azure ewer
- Pouring starry fire, truer
- Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands
- With the starlight in his hands.
- Will the moon bleach through the ragged
- Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged
- Rock, that rises gradually?
- Pharos of our homeward valley.
- Down the dusk burns golden-red;
- Embers are the stars o'erhead.
- At my soul some Protean elf is:
- You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis;
- You are Sappho and her Phaon--
- I. We love. There lies a ray on
- All the dark Æolian seas
- 'Round the violet Lesbian leas.
- On we drift. He loves you. Nearer
- Looms our island. Rosier, clearer
- The Leucadian cliff we follow,
- Where the temple of Apollo
- Lifts a pale and pillared fire--
- Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre;
- Out of Hellas blows the breeze
- Singing to the Sapphic seas.
- 4.
- _He sings._
- Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us,
- And all the moonlight tangled in the stream:
- Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us,
- The stars above and every star a dream.
- In odorous purple, where the falling warble
- Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,
- A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble
- Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.
- _She sings._
- Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,
- And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain--
- Love, love, my love, ah bid thy heart be stiller,
- And, hark! the music of the harping main.
- What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us?
- Bow white their brows' aromas each a flame?
- Ah, child, too kind the love we know, that knew us,
- That kissed our eyes that we might see the same.
- _He._
- Night! night! good night! no dream it is to vanish,
- The temple and the nightingale are there;
- The thornless roses bruising none to banish,
- The moon and one wild poppy in thy hair.
- _She._
- Night! night! good night! and love's own star before thee,
- And love's star-image in the starry sea;
- Yes, yes, ah yes! a presence to watch o'er thee--
- Night! night! good night and good the gods to thee!
- 5.
- _Homeward through flowers: she speaks._
- O simple offerings of the common hills;
- Love's lowly names, that make you trebly sweet!
- One Johnny-jump-up, but an apron-full
- Of starry crowfoot, making mossy dells
- Dim with heaven's morning blue; dew-dripping plumes
- Of waxen "dog-mouths"; red the tippling cups
- Of gypsy-lilies all along the creek,
- Where dull the freckled silence sleeps, and dark
- The water runs when, at high noon, the cows
- Wade knee-deep and the heat hums drowsy with
- The drone of dizzy flies;--one Samson-flower
- Blue-streaked and crystal as a summer's cloud;
- White violets, milk-weed, scarlet Indian-pinks,
- All fragile-scented and familiar as
- Pink baby faces and blue infant eyes.
- O fair suggestions of a life more fair!
- Love's fragrant whispers of an untaught faith,
- High habitations 'neath a godlier blue
- Beyond the sin of Earth, in heavens prepared--
- What is it?--halcyon to utter calm,
- Faith? such as wrinkled wisdom, doubting, has
- Yearned for and sought in miser'd lore of worlds,
- And vainly?--Love?--Oh, have I learned to live?
- 6.
- _He speaks._
- Would you have known it seeing it?
- Could you have seen it being it?
- Waving me out of the budding land
- Sunbeam-jewelled a bloom-white hand,
- Wafting me life and hope and love,
- Life with the hope of the love thereof,
- Love.
- --"What is the value of knowing it?"--
- Only the worth of owing it;
- Need of the bud contents the light;
- Dew at dawn and nard at night,
- Beauty, aroma, honey at heart,
- Which is debtor, part for part,
- Heart?
- Thoughts, when the heart is heedable,
- Then to the heart are readable;
- I in the texts of your eyes have read
- Deep as the depth of the living dead,
- Measures of truth in unsaid song
- Learned from the soul to haunt me long,
- Song.
- Love perpends each laudable
- Thought of the soul made audible,
- Said in gardens of bliss or pain:
- Moonlight rays in drops of rain,
- Feels the faith in its sleep awake,
- Wish of the silent words that shake
- Sleep.
- 7.
- _She hums and muses._
- _If love I have had of thee thou hadst of me,
- No loss was in giving it over;
- Could I give aught but that I had of thee,
- Being no more than thy lover?_
- And let it cease. When what befalls befalls,
- You cannot love me less,
- Loving me much now. Neither weeks nor walls,
- With bitterest distress,
- Shall all avail. Despair will find reprieve,
- Though dark the soul be tossed,
- In past possession of that love you grieve,
- The love which you have lost.
- Ponder the morning, or the midnight moon,
- The wilding of the wold,
- The morning slitting from night's brown cocoon
- Wide wings of flaxen gold:
- The moon that, had not darkness been before,
- Had never shone to lead;
- And think that, though you are, you are not poor,
- Since you have loved indeed.
- From flower to star read upward; you shall see
- The purposes of loss,
- Deep hierograms of gracious deity,
- And comfort in your cross.
- 8.
- _She speaks._
- Sunday shall we ride together?
- Not the root-rough, rambling way
- Through the woods we went that day,
- In the sultry summer weather,
- Past the Methodist Camp-Meeting,
- Where religion helped the hymn
- Gather volume, and a slim
- Minister with textful greeting
- Welcomed us and still expounded.
- From the service on the hill
- We had rode three hills and still
- Far away the singing sounded.
- Nor that road through weed and berry
- Drowsy days led me and you
- To the old-time barbecue,
- Where the country-side made merry.
- Dusty vehicles together;
- Darkies with the horses by
- 'Neath the soft Kentucky sky,
- And a smell of bark and leather;
- When you smiled, "Our modern tourney:
- Gallantry and politics
- Dinner, dance and intermix."
- As we went the homeward journey
- 'Twixt hot chaparrals and thickets,
- Heard brisk fiddles, scraping still,
- Drone and thump the quaint quadrille,
- Like a worried band of crickets.--
- Neither road. The shady quiet
- Of that way by beech and birch,
- Winding to the ruined church
- On the Fork that sparkles by it.
- Where the silent Sundays listen
- For the preacher whom we bring,
- In our hearts to preach and sing
- Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.
- 9.
- _He, at parting._
- Yes, to-morrow; when the morn,
- Pentecost of flame, uncloses
- Portals that the stars adorn,
- Whence a golden presence throws his
- Fiery swords and burning roses
- At the wide wood's world of wall,
- Spears of sparkle at each fall;
- Then together let us ride
- Down deep-wood cathedral places,
- Where the pilgrim wild-flowers hide,
- Praying Sabbath in their faces;
- Where in truest untaught phrases,
- Worship in each rhythmic word,
- Sings no migratory bird....
- Pearl on pearl the high stars dight
- Jewels of divine devices
- 'Round the Afric throat of Night;
- Where yon misty glimmer rises
- Soon the white moon crystallizes
- Out of darkness, like a spell.--
- Late, 't is late. Till dawn, farewell.
- PART III.
- 1.
- Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
- Careless in beauty of maturity;
- The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she
- Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess:
- Now Time grants night the more and day the less;
- The gray decides; and brown
- Dim golds and reds in dulling greens express
- Themselves and broaden as the year goes down.
- Sadder the croft where, thrusting gray and high
- Their balls of seeds, the hoary onions die,
- Where, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie:
- Deeper each wilderness;
- Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
- The lonesome west; sadder the song
- Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow,
- Deeper and dreamier, aye!
- Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
- Above lone orchards where the cider-press
- Drips and the russets mellow.
- Nature grows liberal; under woodland leaves
- The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets poke,
- Plump with the copper of the nuts that choke;
- Above our bristling way the spider weaves
- A glittering web for which the Dawn designs
- Thrice twenty rows of sparkles. By the oak,
- That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,
- The acorn thimble, smoothly broke,
- Shines by its saucer. On sonorous pines
- The far wind organs; but the forest here
- To no weak breeze hath woke;
- Far off the wind, but crumbling near and near,--
- Each tingling twig expectant, and the gray
- Surmise of heaven pilots it the way,
- Rippling the leafy spines,
- Until the wildwood, one exultant sway,
- Booms, and the sunlight, arrowing through it, shines
- Visible applause you hear.
- How glows the garden! though the white mists keep
- The vagabond in flowers reminded of
- Decay that comes to slay in open love,
- When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep,
- Unheeding such their cardinal colors leap
- Gay in the crescent of the blade of death;
- Spaced innocents in swaths he weeps to reap,
- Waiting his scythe a breath,
- To gravely lay them dead with one last sweep.--
- Long, long admire
- Their splendors manifold:--
- The scarlet salvia showered with spurts of fire;
- Cascading lattices, dark vines that creep,
- Nightshade and cypress; there the marigold
- Burning--a shred of orange sunset caught
- And elfed in petals that eve's goblins brought
- From elfland; there, predominant red,
- The dahlia lifts its head
- By the white balsams' red-bruised horns of honey,
- In humming spaces sunny.
- The crickets singing dirges noon and night
- For morn-born flowers, at dusk already dead,
- For dusk-dead flowers weep;
- While tired Summer white,
- Where yonder aster whispering odor rocks,--
- The withered poppies knotted in her locks,--
- Sighs, 'mong her sleepy hollyhocks asleep.
- 2.
- The hips were reddening on the rose,
- The haws hung slips of fire;
- We went the woodland way that goes
- Up hills of branch and briar.
- The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed
- Imploring her be staying
- The sunlight of herself that beamed
- Beside it gently swaying.
- Low bent the golden saxifrage;
- Its yellow bells like bangles
- The foxglove fluttered. Like a page--
- From out the rail-fence angles--
- With crimson plume the sumach, hosed
- In Lincoln green, attended
- My lady of the elder, posed
- In blue-black jewels splendid.
- And as we mounted up the hill
- The rocky path that stumbled
- Spread smooth; and all the day was still
- And odorous with umbled
- Tops of wild-carrots drying gray;
- And there, soft-sunned before us,
- An orchard dwindling away
- With dappled boughs bent o'er us.
- An orchard where the pippin fell
- Worm-bitten, bruised, and dusty;
- And hornet-stung, each like a bell,
- The Bartlett ripened rusty;
- The smell of tawny peach and plum,
- That offered luscious yellow;
- Of wasp and bee the hidden hum,
- Made all the warm air mellow.
- And on we went where many-hued
- Hung wild the morning-glory,
- Their blue balloons in shadows, dewed
- With frost-white dew-drops hoary;
- In bush and burgrass far away
- Beneath us stretched the valley,
- Cleft by one creek that laughed with day
- And babbled musically.
- The brown, the bronze, the gray, the red
- Of weed and briar ran riot
- Flush to dark woodland walls that led
- To nooks of whispering quiet.
- Long, feathering bursts of golden-rod
- Ran golden woolly patches--
- Bloom-sunsets of the withered sod
- The dying summer catches.
- Then o'er the hills, loose-tumbling rolled--
- O'erleaping expectation--
- The sunset, flaming marigold,
- A system's conflagration:
- And homeward turning, she and I
- Went as one self in being--
- God met us in the earth and sky
- And Love had purged our seeing.
- 3.
- Say, my dear, O my dear,
- These are the eves for speaking;
- There is no wight will work us spite
- Beneath the sunset's streaking.
- Yes, my dear, O my dear,
- These are the eves for telling;
- To walk together in starry weather
- Ere springs o' the moon are welling.
- O my dear, yes, my dear,
- These are the dusks for staying;
- When twilight dreams of night who seems
- Among long-purples praying.
- "No, my dear!"--"Yes, my dear!"
- These are the nights to kiss it
- Times twice-a-twenty: they grow a-plenty
- On lips that will not miss it.
- 4.
- To dream where silence sleeps
- A sorrow's sleep that sighs;
- Where all heaven's azure peeps
- Blue from one wildflower's eyes
- Where, in reflecting deeps,--
- Of cloudier woods and skies,--
- Another gray world lies.
- Divining God from things
- Humble as weeds and bees;
- From songs the free bird sings
- Learn all are vain but these;
- In light-delighted springs,
- Wise, star-familiar trees,
- Seek love's philosophies.
- 5.
- Here where the days are dimmest,
- Each old, big-hearted tree
- Gives bounteous sympathy;
- Here where dead nights sit grimmest
- In druid company;
- Here where the days are dimmest.
- Leaves of my lone communion,
- Leaves; and the listening sigh
- Of silence wanders by;
- While on my soul the union
- Is--of the wood and sky--
- Leaves of my lone communion.
- And eyes with tears are aching,
- While life waits wistfully
- For love that may not be:
- In visions vain of waking
- Lives all it can not see.--
- And eyes with tears are aching,
- And eyes with tears are aching.
- 6.
- And here alone I sit and see it so.
- A vale of willows swelling into knobs,
- A bulwark eastward. Sloping low
- Westward the scooping waters flow
- Under a rocky culvert's arch that throbs
- With clanging wheels of transient trains that go
- Screaming to north and south.
- Here all the weary waters, stagnant stayed,
- Sleep at the culvert's mouth;
- The current's hungry hiccup still afraid,
- Haply, that I should never know
- The secret 'neath the striate scum o' the stream
- The devil and the dream,
- I, dropping gravels so the echo sob
- Mocking and thin as music of a shade
- In shades that wring from rocks a hollow woe,
- Complaining phantoms of faint whispers rob.
- There, up the valley where the lank grass leaps
- Blades each a crooked kris,
- The currents strike or miss
- Dream melodies: No wide-belled mallow sleeps
- Monandrous flowers oval as a kiss;
- No mandrake curling convolutions up
- Loops heavy blossoms, each a conical cup
- That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss;
- No tiger-lily, where the crayfish play,
- Mirrors a savage face, a copper hue
- Streaked with a crimson dew;
- No dragon-fly in endless error keeps
- Sewing the pale-gold gown of day
- With tangled stitches of a burning blue,--
- Whose brilliant body but a needle is,
- An azurn and incarnate ray:--
- But here, where haunted with the shade,
- The dull stream stales and dies,
- Are beauties none or few,
- Such sinister and new;
- And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid
- Beneath the timid skies;
- So, if you ask me why I answer this:--
- You know not; only where the kildees wade
- There in the foamy scum,
- There where the wet rocks ail,--
- Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come,
- Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,--
- Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail
- Below, an angled sparkle rayed,
- While lights and shadows aid
- From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
- Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail
- The heart; with lips that writhe and fade
- And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross,
- And flabby hair of smoky moss.
- A brimstone sunset. And at night
- The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel
- Through copse and open, all a gnomish green.
- I hear the water, and the wave is white
- There where the boulder plants a keel,
- And each taunt ripple 's sheen.--
- Where instant insects dot
- The dark with spurts of sulphur--bright,
- Beneath the hazy height,
- No bitter-almond trees make wan the night,
- Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre,
- But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster:
- Huge-seen within that twilight spot--
- As if a hill-born giant, half asleep,
- Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep
- Foldward through fallow browns
- And foxy grays,--a something crowns
- The knoll--is it the odorous peak
- Of one June-savory timothy stack?
- Now, one dead ash behind,
- A weak moon shows a withered cheek
- Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines'
- Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines:
- Beyond these, back and back,
- An oak-wood stretches black--
- And here the whining were-wolves of the wind
- Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind,
- Although their fangs are fierce;
- And though they never pierce
- Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak,
- I hear them, yes, I hear
- A padding o' footsteps near,
- A prowling pant in ear
- And can not fly!--yes!--no!--
- What horror holds me?--That uncoiling slow,
- Sure, mastering chimera there,
- Hooping firm unseen feelers 'round my neck
- A binding, bruising coil ...
- The waters burn and boil;
- The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck
- With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ...
- Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck
- I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck
- If all the writhing shadow slips,
- Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips,
- Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips.
- 7.
- What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?
- I in our freedom of love as a sun to her;
- She to our liberty goddess and slumberless
- Moon of the stars shining silver and numberless:
- Who on my life, that was thorny and showery,
- Came--and made dewyness; smiled--and made flowery;
- Mine! the affinitized one of humanity:
- Mine! the elected of soul over vanity--
- What have I done to her, what have I done!
- What can it mean for me? what have I said to her?
- I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her;
- Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her,
- Lived for her, hated and gladly had died for her!
- See; she has written me thus! she has written me--
- Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!
- Would they had shrivelled or ever they'd read of it!
- Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it--
- What have I said to her, what have I said!
- What shall I make of it, I, who am trembling
- Fearful of loss?--Oh, enamored, dissembling
- Flame!--of the candle that burning, but guttering,
- Flatters the moth that comes circling and fluttering
- Out of the summer night; trusting, importunate,
- Quitting cool flowers for this--O unfortunate!--
- Such has she been to me making me such to her,
- Slaying me, saying I never was much to her--
- What shall I make of it, what can I make!
- Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless
- Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:
- I, with no thought but the heavens that lock us in,
- Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth, moccasin
- Under wild-roses, the Cherokee, eying me:--
- In the sweet blue with the egrets that, flying me,
- Loosened like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly
- White and pale pink; where the mocking-bird tenderly
- Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,
- Wandered unheeding my steps in the odious
- Slime that was venom; I followed the fiery
- Violet curve of thy star falling wiry--
- So was I lost in night, thus am undone!...
- Have I not told to her--living alone for her--
- Purposed unfoldments of love I had sown for her
- Here in the soil of my soul? their variety
- Endless; and ever she answered with piety.--
- See! it has come to this ... all the tale's suavity
- At the ninth chapter grows stupid with gravity;
- Duller than death all our beautiful history--
- Close it!--the _finis_ is more than a mystery.--
- Yes, I will tell her this; yes, I will tell.
- 8.
- I seem to hear her speak and see
- That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes
- From lavender folds vined dreamily--
- A-blossom with brocaded blooms,--
- A stuff of Orient looms.
- Again I hear her speak and back,
- Where steals the showery sunlight, piles
- A whatnot dainty bric-a-brac
- Beside a tall clock; each glazed tile's
- Blue-patterned profile smiles.
- I hear her say, "Ah, had we known,
- Could what has been have ever been?--
- And now!"... How hurt the hard ache shone
- In eyes whose sadness seemed to lean
- On something far, unseen!
- And as in sleep my own self seems
- Outside my suffering self: I flush
- In mists of undetermined dreams;
- Behold her musing in that hush
- Of lilac light and plush.
- Smiling but tortured. Yes, I feel
- Despite that face, not seeming sad,
- In those calm temples thoughts like steel
- Remorseless bore. I had gone mad
- Had I once deemed her glad.
- Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn
- To pierce beyond the present far,
- Searching some future hope, I turn;--
- There in her garden one fierce star,
- Beyond the window's bar,--
- Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,--
- A phyllocactus?--all the life
- Of torrid middays in but one
- Rich crimson bloom--flames red as strife;
- And near it, rankly rife--
- Deep coreopsis?--heavy hues
- Of soft seal-bronze and satiny gold,
- Sway girandoles whose jets of dews
- Burn points of starlight diamond-cold,
- Warm-colored, manifold.
- She dare not speak; I can not. Yet
- An intercourse 'twixt brain and brain
- Goes feverish on.--Crushed, smelling wet,
- Through silken curtains drift again
- Verbena-scents of rain.
- I in the doorway turn and stay;
- Angry her cameo beauty mark
- Set in that smile--Oh! will she say
- No farewell? no regret? one spark
- Of hope to cheer the dark?
- That sepia-sketch--conceive it so--
- A roguish head with jaunty eyes
- Laughing beneath a rose-chapeau,
- Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies
- The full-faced flower surprise;
- Hung o'er her davenport.... We read
- The true beneath the false; perceive
- The smile that hides the ache.--Indeed!
- _Whose_ soul unmasks?... not mine!--I grieve
- Here, here, but laugh and leave....
- 9.
- Beyond the knotty apple-trees
- That fade about the old brick-barn,
- Its tattered arms and tattered knees
- A scare-crow tosses to the breeze
- Among the shocks of corn.
- All things grow gray in earth and sky;
- The cold wind sounding drearily
- Makes all the rusty branches fly;
- The rustling leaves a-rotting lie;
- The year is waning wearily.
- At night I hear the far wild geese
- Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under
- Arcturus. Though I seem to cease
- Outside myself and sleep in peace,
- I drowse awake and wonder.
- I know torn thistles by the creek
- Hang hairy with the frost; the tented
- Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
- And ghostly in the moonlight, weak
- In hollows bitter-scented.
- Dream back the ways we strolled at morn
- Through woods of summer ever singing;
- Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn,
- The tasselled meads of cane and corn
- Their restless shadows swinging....
- I stand and oar our boat among
- The dripping lilies of the river;
- I reach her hat the grape-vine long
- Struck in the stream; we sing a song,
- That song ... I wake and shiver.
- And then my feverish mind reverts
- To our sad words and sadder parting
- In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts
- Within here, for the soul asserts
- Mine the fool fault from starting.
- And I must lie awake and think
- Of her with such regrets as gladly
- No unrebuking conscience shrink;
- And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink
- Through plaintive starlight sadly.
- When all are overflown and deep
- The stoic night is left forsaken,
- For company I well would weep,
- Since all my spirit fears to sleep,
- Sleep of such visions shaken.
- Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw
- Our waking hours, ever haunting;
- Else were we, lacking love and law,
- Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw
- Undaunted and undaunting.
- 10.
- The sun a splintered splendor was
- In sober trees that broke and blurred,
- That afternoon we went together
- In droning hum and whirling buzz,
- Where hard the dinning locust whirred,
- Through fields of golden-rod a-feather.
- So sweet it was to look and lean
- To your young face and feel the light
- Of eyes that fondled mine unsaddened!
- The laugh that left lips more serene;
- The words that blossomed like the white
- Life-everlasting there and gladdened.
- Maturing Summer, you were fraught
- With wiser beauties then than now
- Parades rich Autumn's red November;
- This stuns: there dreams no subtle thought
- As then on hinting bush and bough--
- But now I am alone, remember.
- 11.
- Through iron-weeds and roses
- And bronzing beech and oak,
- Old porches it discloses,
- Above the briars and roses
- Fall's feeble sunbeams soak.
- Neglected walks that tangle
- The dodder-strangled grass;
- Its chimney shows one angle
- Heaped with dead leaves that spangle
- The paths that round it pass.
- The early mists that bury
- And hide them in its rooms,
- From spider closets--very
- Dim with old webs--will hurry
- Out in the raining glooms.
- They haunt each stair and basement;
- They stand on hearth and porch;
- Lean from each paneless casement,
- Or in the moonlight's lacement
- Fly with a phantom torch.
- There is a sense of frost here;
- And gusts that sob away
- Of something that was lost here,
- Long, long ago was lost here,
- But what, they can not say.
- There croons no owl to startle
- Despondency within;
- No raven o'er its portal
- To scare the daring mortal
- And guard its cellared sin.
- The creaking road descries it
- This side the dusty toll;
- The farmer passing eyes it;
- None stops t' philosophize it,
- This symbol of a soul.
- 12.
- Though the dog-tooth violet come
- With the shower,
- And the wild-bee haunt and hum
- Every flower,
- We shall never wend as when
- Love laughed leading us from men
- Over violet vale and glen,
- Where the red-bird sang an hour,
- And we heard the partridge drum.
- Here October shadows pray,
- Till one stills
- Joyance, where for buried May
- Sob the rills:
- So love's vision has arisen
- Of the long ago: I listen--
- Memory, tears in eyes that glisten
- Points but Indiana hills
- Fading dark-blue far away.
- PART IV.
- 1.
- When in her cloudy chiton
- Spring freed the donjoned rills,
- And trumpeting, a Triton,
- Wind-war was on the hills;
- O'er ways, hope's buds bedizen,
- Long ways the glory lies on,
- Love spread us an horizon
- Of gold beyond life's ills.
- When Summer came with sickle
- Stuck in a sheaf of gleams,
- And eves were honey-trickle
- From bee-hives of the beams;
- Scrolls of the days blue-blotted,
- Scrolls of the night star-dotted,
- To love and us allotted
- A world of woven dreams.
- When Autumn waited tired--
- A fair-faced heretic--
- _Auto-de-fés_ Frost fired
- In Winter's Bishopric;
- Our loves, a song had started,
- Grew with the song sad-hearted,
- Sweet loves long-sworn were parted,
- Though life for love was sick.
- Now is the Winter waited
- 'Neath skies of frozen gold,
- Or raining heavens hated
- Of winds that curse and scold.--
- Shall this be so: that never
- Shall sunlight snowlight sever?
- Forever and forever
- The heart wait winter-cold?
- 2.
- Soft music bring that seems to weep
- All this dull sorrow of the soul;
- Vague music soft to utter sleep,
- Sleep and undying dole:
- Forgetting not--forgotten most--
- How love is well though lost.
- So weary, oh! and yet so fain
- In silent service of the heart;
- Still feeling if it be in vain
- Love's spirit hath His part;
- And if in death God grant the rest
- Life were but kind at best.
- 3.
- Last night I slept till midnight
- Then woke, and far away
- A cock crowed; lonely and distant
- Came mournful a watch-dog's bay;
- But lonelier, slower the tedious
- Old clock ticked on towards day.
- And what a day!--remember
- The morns of a Summer and Spring,
- That bound two lives together?
- Each morn a wedding ring
- Of dew and dreams and sparkle,
- Of flowers and birds a-wing?
- Broad morns when I strolled the garden
- Awaiting one the rose
- Expected, fresh in its blushes--
- The Giant of Battle that grows
- A head of radiance and fragrance,
- The champion of the close.
- Not in vain did I wait, departed
- Summer, this morning mocks;
- 'Mid the powdery crystal and crimson
- Of your hollow hollyhocks;
- Your fairy-bells and poppies,
- And the bee that in them rocks.
- Cool-clad 'mid the pendulous purple
- Of the morning-glory vine,
- By the giant pearls pellucid
- Of the peonies a-line,
- The snapdragons' and the pansies'
- Deep-colored jewel mine.
- Shall I ever see my mealy,
- Drunk dusty-millers gay;
- My lady-slippers bashful
- Of butterfly and ray;
- My gillyflowers as spicy
- Each as a day of May?
- Oh, dear when I think of the handfuls
- Of little gold coin a-mass,
- My bachelor's-buttons scatter
- Over the garden grass;
- Of the marigold that boasts its
- One bit of burning brass;
- More bitter I feel the winter
- Tighten to spirit and heart;
- And dream of the days remembered
- As lost--of the past a part;
- Of the ways we went, all blotted,
- Tear-blotted on love's chart.
- And I see the mill and the diamonds
- Of foam tossed from its wheel;
- Red lilies tumbled together,
- The madcap wind at heel;
- And the timid veronicas' blossoms--
- Those prayers the woods conceal.
- The wild-cat gray of the meadows
- That the ox-eyed daisies dot,
- Fawn-eyed and a leopard-yellow,
- That tangle a tawny spot--
- As if some panther tired
- Lay dozing tame and hot.
- Ah! back again with the present,
- With winds that pinch and twist
- Each leaf in their peevish passion,
- And whirl wherever they list;
- With the morning hoary and nipping,
- Whose mausolean mist
- Builds white a tomb for the daylight--
- A frosty, shaggy fog,
- That fits gray wigs on the cedars,
- And furs with wool each log;
- Carpets with satin the meadow,
- And velvets white the bog.
- Alone at morn--indifferent;
- Alone at eve--I sigh;
- And wait, like the wind complaining,
- Complain and know not why;
- But ailing and longing and hating
- Because I cannot die.
- How dull are the sunsets! dreary
- Cold, hard and harsh and dead!
- Far richer were those of August,
- One stain of wine-dark red--
- The juice of a mulberry vintage--
- To the new moon overhead.
- But now I sit with the sighing
- Dead wests of a dying year!
- Like the fallen leaves and the acorns
- Am worthless and feel as sear;
- For the soul and the body sicken,
- And the heart's one scalding tear.
- And I stare from my window! The darkness,
- Like a bravo, his cloak throws on;
- The moon, like a hidden lanthorn,
- Glitters--or dagger drawn;
- All my heart cries out beseeching:
- "Strike here! strike and be gone!"
- 4.
- When friends are sighing
- Round one and one
- Nearer is lying,
- Nearer the sun,
- When one is dying
- And all is done;
- I may remember,
- You may forget
- Words, each an ember,
- Burning here yet--
- In dead December
- One will regret.
- Love we have given,
- Over and o'er,
- All, who has driven
- Us from his door,
- Is he forgiven
- When he is poor?
- What if you wept once,
- What though he knew!
- What if he slept once!
- Still he was true,
- If he but kept once
- Something of you.
- Never forgetful,
- Love may forget;
- Froward and fretful,
- Child, he will fret;
- Ever regretful,
- He will regret.
- Love would be sweeter
- If we but knew;
- Lives be completer
- To themselves true;
- Hearts more in metre,
- Truth looking through.
- Flesh never near it,
- Being impure,
- Mind must endear it
- Making it sure--
- Love in the spirit,
- That will endure.
- So when to-morrow
- Ceases and we
- Quit this we borrow,
- Mortality,
- Such chastens sorrow
- So it may see.
- There will be weeping,
- Weary and deep,--
- God's be the keeping
- Of those that weep!--
- When our loved, sleeping,
- Sleep their long sleep;
- Then they are dearer
- Than we're aware;
- Character clearer,
- Being more fair;
- Then they are nearer,
- Nearer by prayer.
- 5.
- They will not say I can not live beyond the weary night,
- But then I know that I shall die before comes morning's light.
- How frail is flesh!--but you 'll forgive me now I tell you how
- I loved you, love you; and the pain it gives to leave you now?
- This could not be on earth; the flesh, that clothes the soul of me--
- Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity--
- Denied, forbade.--Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks
- Grow hectic, as before comes night blood dyes the sunset's streaks?
- Consumption. "But I promised you my love"--'t is left forlorn
- Of life God summons unto him, and is it then forsworn?
- Oh, I was glad in love of you; but think: if I had died
- Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side?
- Had it been little then, your grief, when Heaven had made us one
- In everything that's good on earth and then the good undone?
- No! no!--and had I lived to raise a boy we saw each day
- Bud into beauty, with that blight born in him that must slay!
- Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny pride
- Sits on his curly front, he pines and dies ere I have died.
- Whose fault?--not mine! but hers or his, that ancestor who gave
- Escutcheon to our humble house--a death's-head and a grave.
- Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move;
- Nor faith, nor fame, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love.
- How could I tell you this?--not then! when all the world was spun
- Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.
- I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ,
- Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.
- And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why,
- I loved you, thinking "time enough when I have come to die."
- Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough
- Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off....
- Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this--to feel that you
- Are near me, that your healthy hand soothes mine's unhealthy dew.
- And that your heart excuses all, and that you will not fret
- Because you understand me now and never will forget.--
- Now bring me roses pale and pure and tell me death's a lie,
- --Late was it hard for me to live, now it is hard to die.
- PART V.
- 1.
- Vased in her bedroom window, white
- As her glad girlhood, never lost,
- I smelt the roses; and the night
- Outside was fog and frost.
- What though I claimed her dying there!
- God nor one angel understood
- Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair
- Had changed to mist her blood.
- Love, love had claimed us long, and long
- Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon;
- But God!--God jangles thus the song
- And makes discord of tune.
- What lily lilier than her face!
- More virgin than her lips I kissed!
- When morn like God, with gold and grace
- Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!
- 2.
- Love, to your face farewell now,
- Pillowed a flower on flowers;
- Eyes, white-weighed with a spell now;
- Lips, with nothing to tell now,
- That bade adieu to ours.
- Dear, is your soul so daggered
- There by a world that hates?
- Love--is _he_ ever laggard?
- Hope--is _her_ face so haggard?
- You, who are one with the Fates?
- Never to wait to-morrow
- Under such worldly skies!
- Never to sleep with sorrow!
- Hour by hour to borrow
- Joy that has only sighs!
- Sweet, farewell forever;
- And a burning tear or two--
- Will they reach your knowledge ever,
- And touch through the dreams that sever
- My life from the life of you?
- O Life, in my flesh so fearful
- Medicine me this pain!
- Thy eyes with a science cheerful,
- But mine, with a mystery tearful,
- Tearful and slumber-fain.
- Love, to your lips farewell now--
- Your spirit through them I kiss;
- Lips--so sealed with a spell now!
- Lips, with nothing to tell now
- But this! but this! but this!...
- 3.
- So long it seems since last I saw her face,
- So long ago it seems,
- Like some sad soul, in unconjectured space,
- Lost in the happiness of some dead grace
- Remembered--I. And, oh! a little while
- The sorrow stabs and Death conceals no smile
- From Love bowed weeping in a thorny place--
- So long ago, our love is what are dreams!
- Since she is gone no more I feel the light,
- Since she is gone beyond,
- Burst like a revelation out of night,--
- Golden convictions of far futures bright,--
- Whiles clouds around the west take marble tones;
- For Hope sits sighing in a place of stones,
- Dark locks dishevelled and face very white,--
- Since she is gone and life's an iron bond.
- Now she is dead the doubt Love dulled with awe,
- Now she is dead to me,
- Questions the wisdom of diviner law.
- Self-solved of self I search to find a flaw--
- O egotism of Earth's fools and slaves!--
- For Faith leans thoughtful in a place of graves,
- On that unseen from this seen known to draw,
- Now she is dead and it is hard to see.
- 4.
- Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken
- Twilight at the night has guessed,
- Where no star of dusk has taken
- Flame unshaken in the west.
- All the day the woodlands dying
- Moaned, and drippings as of grief
- Tossed from barren boughs with sighing
- Death of flying twig and leaf.
- Ah, to be a dream unbroken,
- Past the ironies of Fate!
- Born a tree; with branches oaken
- Dear unspoken intimate.
- Who may say that man has never
- Lived the mighty hearts of trees?
- Graduating Godward ever,
- The Forever finds through these?
- Colors, we have lived, are cherished;
- Odors, we have been, are ours;
- Entity alone has perished;
- Beauty-nourished souls were flowers.
- Music, when the fancy guesses,
- Lifts us loftier thoughts among;
- Spirit that the flesh distresses,
- But expresses self with song....
- Heaven in darkness bends upbraiding
- Without moonlight, without star;
- Darkness and the reason aiding,
- All but fading phantoms are.
- Still philosophy is saying:
- "Now that hope with life seems gone,
- Some are cursing, some are praying,
- God smiles raying in the dawn!"
- 5.
- Wild weather; the whip of the sleet
- On the shuttered casement tapping;
- A shadow from face to feet,
- Like a shroud, my spirit wrapping,
- Wild weather; and how is she
- Now the sting of the storm beats serried,
- Over the stone and the tree
- Of the grave where she is buried?
- Wild weather; I cannot weep--
- But the skies weep on and worry;
- So I sleep, and dream in my sleep
- How I hear dim garments hurry....
- Star weather and footsteps of stars;
- And I see white raiment glisten,
- Like the glow on the face of Mars
- When the stars to the angels listen.
- And with me I see how she stands
- With lips high thought has weighted;
- With testifying hands,
- And eyes with purity mated.
- Have I spoken and have I kneeled
- To the prayer I worship, I wonder?--
- What waits on her lips that are sealed?
- God-sealed and who shall sunder!
- I sob, "Oh your stay was long!
- You are come, but your feet were laggard,
- With mansuetude and song
- For a heart your death has daggered."
- And I lift wet eyes to her
- Unutterable with weeping,
- And beg for the loves that were,
- Now passed into Heaven's keeping....
- I wake and a clock tolls three--
- And the night and the storm lie serried
- On the testament that's she,
- Closed, clasped, and forever buried.
- 6.
- The night is shrewd with storm and sleet;
- Each loose-warped casement raps or groans;
- I hear the wailing woodland beat
- The tempest with long blatant moans,
- Like one who fears defeat.
- And sitting here beyond the storm,
- Alone within the lonely house,
- It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm
- Weaves incantations; even the mouse
- That scratched has come to harm.
- And in this grave light, stolen o'er
- Familiar objects, grown severe,
- I 'm strange--as, opening a door,
- One finds one's dead self standing near,
- One knew not dead before.
- The old stair rings with growling gusts;
- Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat
- That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts,
- Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat,
- Whose quiver hangs and rusts,
- Are shaken; till I feel that he,
- Who wore it in the wild war-dance,
- And died in it, fills shadowy
- Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance,
- Shakes, scowling eyes at me.
- And so the Swedenborge I toss
- Aside, contented with the dark
- That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross;
- Pass where the andirons spit and spark,
- And ponder o'er her loss.
- Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn
- Out toward the waste, where sway and dip
- Dank, dark December boughs, where burn
- Some late last leaves, that icy drip
- No matter where you turn.
- Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
- Fills oozy footprints; and the night
- So ugly that it mocks at God,
- Creating monsters which the sight
- Fancies, unseen, abroad.
- The months I count: how long it seems
- Since that bland summer when with her,
- There on her porch, in rainy gleams
- We watched the mellow lightning stir
- In rain-clouds gray as dreams!
- When all the west a torn gold sheet--
- Swift openings of some Titan's forge--
- Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat
- Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge,
- Where thunder torrents beat.
- And strong the wind was as again
- Storm lit the instant earth; and how
- The wood sprang out one virent stain;
- We read no more--lost is it now!--
- In _Romance of a Reign_;
- A tale of nowhere; then that we
- Were reading till we heard the plunge
- Of distant thunder sullenly,
- And left to mark long lightnings lunge
- Convulsions fiery.
- What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there,
- Of sorcery and necromance!
- With spirits lustrous of the air,
- A land like one great pearl, a trance
- Of floods and forests fair.
- Where white-faced flowers sang and thought;
- Where fragrant birds flew, brilliant-blown,
- In winging odors; feather-fraught
- With light, where breathing colors shone,
- On throbbing music brought.
- Or built us some snug country home
- Among the hills; with terraces
- Vine-hung and orchared o'er the foam
- Of the Ohio, far one sees
- Wind crimson in the gloam.
- And this! and this!--alone! alone!
- To hear the sweep of winter rain,
- The missiled sleet's sharp arrows blown;
- Dark shadow on the freezing pane,
- And on my heart a moan!
- DAYS AND DREAMS.
- He dreamed of hills so deep with woods
- Storm-barriers on the summer sky
- Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods
- Down rocks of sullen dye.
- Flat ways were his where sparsely grew
- Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts,
- Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue:
- Ways where the speedwell lifts
- Its shy appeal, and spreading far--
- The gold, the fallen gold of dawn
- Staining each blossom's balanced star--
- Hollows of cowslips wan.
- Where 'round the feet the lady-smock
- And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep;
- White butterflies upon them rock
- Or seal-brown suck and sleep.
- At eve the west shoots crooked fire
- Athwart a half-moon leaning low;
- While one white, arrowy star throbs higher
- In curdled honey-glow.
- Was it some elfin euphrasy
- That purged his spirit so that there
- Blue harebells, by those ways that be,
- Seemed summoning to prayer?
- For all the death within him prays;
- Not he--his higher self, whose love
- Fire-filled the flesh. Its light still stays
- Touched by the soul above.
- They found him dead his songs beside,
- Six stairs above the din and dust
- Of life: and that for which he died
- Denied him even a crust.
- DEITY.
- No personal; a God divinely crowned
- With gold and raised upon a golden throne
- Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods
- Man this or that--and little more than man!
- And shalt thou see Him individual?
- Not till the freed intelligence hath sought
- Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love,
- Piercing the singing cycles under God,--
- Their iridescent evolutions orbed
- In wild prismatic splendors,--shall it see--
- Through God-propinquity become a god--
- See, lightening out of spheric harmonies,
- Resplendencies of empyrean light,
- Prisms and facets of ten million beams
- Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays,
- And in this--eyes of burning sapphire, eyes
- Deep as the music of the beautiful;
- And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows,
- As they were lilies of seraphic fire;
- Lips underneath, of trembling ruby--lips
- Whose tongue's a chord, and every sound a song:
- Cherubic faces of intensity
- In multiplying myriads to a word
- Forming the unit--God; Supremity
- Creative and ubiquitous.
- From this
- Thy intellect, detached, expelled and breathed
- Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul,
- One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay.--
- O high development! devolvings up
- From matter to unmattered potencies,
- Up to the source and fountain of all mind,
- Beauty and truth, inviolable Love,
- And so resumed and reabsorbed in God,
- One more expression of eternity!
- SELF.
- A Sufi debauchee of dreams
- Spake this:--From Sodomite to Peri
- Earth tablets us; we live and are
- Man's own long commentary.
- Is one begat in Bassora,
- One lies in Damietta dying--
- The plausibilities of God
- All possibles o'erlying.
- But burns the lust within the flesh?--
- Hell's but a homily to Heaven,--
- Put then the individual first,
- And of thyself be shriven.
- Neither in adamant nor brass
- The scrutinizing eye records it;
- The arm is rooted in the heart,
- The heart that rules and lords it.
- Be that it is and thou art all;
- And what thou art so thou hast written
- Thee of the lutanists of Love,
- Or of the torture-smitten.
- SELF AND SOUL.
- It came to me in my sleep,
- And I rose from my sleep and went
- Out in the night to weep,
- Over the bristling bent.
- With my soul, it seemed, I stood
- Alone in a moaning wood.
- And my soul said, gazing at me,
- "Shall I show you another land
- Than other this flesh can see?"
- And took into hers my hand.--
- We passed from the wood to a heath
- As starved as the ribs of Death.
- Three skeleton trees we pass,
- Bare bones on an iron moor,
- Where every leaf and the grass
- Was a thorn and a thistle hoar.
- And my soul said, looking on me,
- "_The past of your life you see._"
- And a swine-herd passed with his swine,
- Deformed; and I heard him growl;
- Two eyes of a sottish shine
- Leered under two brows as foul.
- And my soul said, "_This is the lust_
- _That soils my limbs with the dust._"
- And a goose wife hobbled by
- On a crutch, with the devil's geese;
- A-mumbling how life is a lie,
- And cursing my soul without cease.
- And my soul said, "_This is desire;_
- _The meaning of life is higher._"
- And we came to a garden, close
- To a hollow of graves and tombs;
- A garden as red as a rose
- Hung over of obscene glooms;
- The heart of each rose was a spark
- That smouldered or splintered the dark.
- And I was aware of a girl
- With a wild-rose face, who came
- With a mouth like a shell's split pearl,
- Rose-clad in a robe of flame;
- And she plucked the roses and gave,
- And my flesh was her veriest slave.
- She vanished. My lips would have kissed
- The flowers she gave me with sighs,
- But they writhed in my hands and hissed,
- In their hearts were a serpent's eyes.
- And my soul said, "_Pleasure is she;_
- _The joys of the flesh you see_."
- And I bowed with a heart too weary,
- That longed for rest, for sleep;
- And my eyes were heavy and teary,
- And yearned for a way to weep.
- And my soul smiled, "_This may be!_
- _Will you know me and follow me?_"
- THE DREAM OF DREAD.
- I have lain for an hour or twain
- Awake, and the tempest is beating
- On the roof, and the sleet on the pane,
- And the winds are three enemies meeting;
- And I listen and hear it again,
- My name, in the silence, repeating.
- Then dumbness of death that must slay,
- Till the midnight is burst like a bubble;
- And out of the darkness a ray--
- 'T is she! the all beautiful double;
- With a face like the breaking of day,
- Eyes dark with the magic of trouble.
- I move not; she lies with her lips
- At mine; and I feel she is drawing
- My life from my heart to their tips,
- My heart where the horror is gnawing;
- My life in a thousand slow sips,
- My flesh with her sorcery awing.
- She binds me with merciless eyes;
- She drinks of my blood, and I hear it
- Drain up with a shudder and rise
- To the lips, like the serpent's, that steer it
- And she lies and she laughs as she lies,
- Saying, "Lo, thy affinitized spirit!"
- Then I hear--as if torturing swords
- Had shivered and torments had grated
- Hoarse iron deep under; and words
- As of sins that howled out and awaited
- A fiend who lashed into their hords,
- And a demon who lacerated.
- And I shriek and lie clammy and stark,
- As the curse of a devil mounts higher,
- Up--out of damnation and dark,
- Up--a hobble of hoofs that is dire;
- I feel that his mouth is a spark,
- His features, of filth and of fire.
- "To thy body's corruption, thy grave!
- Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!"
- And a blackness rolls down like a wave
- With a clamor of tongues that are swollen--
- And I feel that my flesh is the slave
- Of a--vampire, diakka, eidolon?
- DEATH IN LIFE.
- Within my veins it beats
- And burns within my brain;
- For when the year is sad and sear
- I dream the dream again.
- Ah! over young am I
- God knows! yet in this sleep
- More pain and woe than women know
- I know, and doubly deep!...
- Seven towers of shaggy rock
- Rise red to ragged skies,
- Built in a marsh that, black and harsh,
- To dead horizons lies.
- Eternal sunset pours,
- Around its warlock towers,
- A glowing urn where garnets burn
- With fire-dripping flowers.
- O'er bat-like turrets high,
- Stretched in a scarlet line,
- The crimson cranes through rosy rains
- Drop like a ruby wine.
- Once in the banquet-hall
- These scarlet storks are heard:--
- I sit at board with men o' th' sword
- And knights of noble word;
- Cased all in silver mail;
- But he, I love and fear,
- In glittering gold beside me bold
- Sits like a lover near.
- Wild music echoes in
- The hollow towers there;
- Behind bright bars o' his visor, stars
- Beam in his eyes and glare.
- Wild music oozes from
- Arched ceilings, caked with white
- Groined pearl; and floors like mythic shores
- That sing to seas of light.
- Wild music and a feast,
- And one's belovèd near
- In burning mail--why am I pale,
- So pale with grief and fear?
- Red heavens and slaughter-red
- The marsh to west and east;
- Seven slits of sky, seven casements high,
- Flare on the blood-red feast.
- Our torches tall are these,
- Our revel torches seven,
- That spill from gold soft splendors old--
- The hour of night--eleven.
- No word. The sparkle aches
- In cups of diamond-spar,
- That prism the light of ruddy white
- In royal wines of war.
- No word. Rich plate that rays,
- Splashes of splitting fires,
- Off beryl brims; while sobs and swims
- Enchantment of lost lyres.
- I lean to him I love,
- And in the silence say:
- "Would thy dear grace reveal thy face,
- If love should crave and pray?"
- Grave Silence, like a king,
- At that strange feast is set;
- Grave Silence still as the soul's will,
- That rules the reason yet.
- But when I speak, behold!
- The charm is snapped, for low
- Speaks out the mask o' his golden casque,
- "At midnight be it so!"
- And Silence waits severe,
- Till one sonorous tower,
- Owl-swarmed, that looms in glaring glooms,
- Sounds slow the midnight hour.
- Three strokes; the knights arise,
- The palsy from them flung,
- To meward mock like some hoarse rock
- When wrecking waves give tongue.
- Six strokes; and wailing out
- The music hoots away;
- The fiery glimmer of eve dies dimmer,
- The red grows ghostly gray.
- Nine strokes; and dropping mould
- The crumbling hall is lead;
- The plate is rust, the feast is dust,
- The banqueters are dead.
- Twelve strokes pound out and roll;
- The huge walls writhe and shake
- O'er hissing things with taloned wings--
- Christ Jesus, let me wake!
- Then rattling in the night
- _His_ iron visor slips--
- In rotting mail a death's-head pale
- Kisses my loathing lips.
- Two hell-fierce lusts its eyes,
- Sharp-pointed like a knife,
- That flaming seem to say, "_No dream!_
- _No dream! the truth of Life!_"
- THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS.
- 1.
- This is the tale they tell,
- Of an Hallowe'en;
- This is the thing that befell
- Me and the village Belle,
- Beautiful Aimee Dean.
- 2.
- Did I love her?--God and she,
- They know and I!
- And love was the life of me--
- Whatever else may be,
- Would God that I could die!
- 3.
- That All-Saints' eve was dim;
- The frost lay white
- Under strange stars and a slim
- Moon in the graveyard grim,
- An Autumn ghost of light.
- 4.
- They told her: "Go alone,
- With never a word,
- To the burial plot's unknown
- Grave with the grayest stone,
- When the clock on twelve is heard;
- 5.
- "Three times around it pass,
- With never a sound;
- Each time a wisp of grass
- And myrtle pluck, and pass
- Out of the ghostly ground;
- 6.
- "And the bridegroom that's to be
- At smiling wait,
- With a face like mist to see,
- With graceful gallantry
- Will bow you to the gate."
- 7.
- She laughed at this, and so
- Bespoke us how
- To the burial place she'd go:--
- And I was glad to know,
- For I'd be there to bow.
- 8.
- An acre from the farm
- The homestead graves
- Lay walled from sun and storm;
- Old cedars of priestly form
- Around like sentinel slaves.
- 9.
- I loved, but never could say
- Such words to her,
- And waited from day to day,
- Nursing the hope that lay
- Under the doubts that were.--
- 10.
- She passed 'neath the iron arch
- Of the legended ground,
- And the moon like a twisted torch
- Burned over one lonesome larch;
- She passed with never a sound.
- 11.
- Three times had the circle traced,
- Three times had bent
- To the grave that the myrtle graced;
- Three times, then softly faced
- Homeward, and slowly went.
- 12.
- Had the moonlight changed me so?
- Or fear undone
- Her stepping strange and slow?
- Did she see and did not know?
- Or loved she another one?
- 13.
- Who knows?--She turned to flee
- With a face so white
- That it haunts and will haunt me;
- The wind blew gustily,
- The graveyard gate clanged tight.
- 14.
- Did she think it me or--what,
- Clutching her dress?
- Her face so pinched that not
- A star in a stormy spot
- Shows half as much distress.
- 15.
- Did I speak? did she answer aught?
- O God! had I said
- "Aimee, 't is I!" but naught!--
- And the mist and the moon distraught
- Stared with me on her--dead....
- 16.
- This is the tale they tell
- Of the Hallowe'en;
- This is the thing that befell
- Me and the village Belle,
- Beautiful Aimee Dean.
- MATER DOLOROSA.
- The nuns sing, "_ora pro nobis_,"
- The lancets glitter above;
- And the beautiful Virgin whose robe is
- Woven of infinite love,
- Infinite love and sorrow,
- Prays for them there on high;--
- Who has most need of her prayers,--to-morrow
- Shall tell them,--they or I?
- Up in the hills together
- We loved, where the world seemed true;
- Our world of the whin and heather,
- Our skies of a nearer blue,
- A blue from which one borrows
- A faith that helps one die--
- O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows,
- None needs such more than I!
- We lived, we loved unwedded--
- Love's sin and its shame that slays!--
- No ill of the year we dreaded,
- No day of its coming days;
- Its coming days, their many
- Trials by morn and night,
- And I know no land, not any,
- Where love's lilies grow so white!
- Was he false to me, my Mother!
- Or I to him, my God!--
- Who gave thee right, O brother!
- To take God's right and rod!
- God's rod of avenging morrows,
- And the life here in my side!
- O Mother, God's Mother of Sorrows,
- For both I would have died!
- By the wall of the Chantry kneeling,
- I pray and the organ rings,
- "_Gloria! gloria!_" pealing,
- "_Sancta Maria_" sings!
- They will find us dead to-morrow
- By the wall of their nunnery,
- O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrow!
- His unborn babe and me.
- THE OLD INN.
- 1.
- Red-winding from the sleepy town,
- One takes the lone, forgotten lane
- Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
- Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain;
- Light shivers sink the gleaming grain;
- The cautious drip of higher leaves
- The lower dips that drip again.--
- Above the tangled tops it heaves
- Its gables and its haunted eaves.
- 2.
- One creeper, gnarled to bloomlessness,
- O'er-forests all its eastern wall;
- The sighing cedars rake and press
- Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
- While, where the sun beats, breaks a drawl
- Of hiving wasps; one bushy bee,
- Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
- To hum into a crack.--To me
- The shadows seem too scared to flee.
- 3.
- Of ragged chimneys martins make
- Huge pipes of music; twittering here
- Build, breed, and roost.--My footfalls wake
- Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
- I'll meet my pale self coming near;
- My phantom face as in a glass;
- Or one men murdered, buried--where?
- Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
- With lips that seem to moan "Alas."
- LAST DAYS.
- Aye! heartbreak of the tattered hills,
- And mourning of the raining sky!
- Heartbreak and mourning, since God wills,
- Are mine, and God knows why!
- The brutal wind that herds the storm
- In hail-big clouds that freeze along,
- As this gray heart are doubly warm
- With thrice the joy of song.
- I held one dearer than each day
- Of life God sets in limpid gold--
- What thief hath stole that gem away
- To leave me poor and old!
- The heartbreak of the hills be mine,
- Of trampled twig and mired leaf,
- Of rain that sobs through thorn and pine
- An unavailing grief!
- The sorrow of the childless skies'
- _Good-nights_, long said, yet never said,
- As when I kissed my child's blue eyes
- And lips ice-dumb and dead.
- THE ROMANZA.
- In a kingdom of mist and moonlight,
- Or ever the world was known,
- Past leagues of unsailed water,
- There reigned a king with a daughter
- That shone like a starry stone.
- The day grew out o' the moonlight;
- But never a day was there.
- The king was wise as hoary,
- And his daughter, like the glory
- Of seven kingdoms, fair.
- And the night dimmed over the moonlight,--
- And ever the mist was gray,--
- With slips of dull stars, bluer
- Where the princess met her wooer,
- A page like the month o' May.
- In her eyes the mist, and the moonlight
- In hair of a crumpled gold;
- By day they wooed a-hawking,
- A-hawking laughed, a-mocking
- The good, white king and old.
- On the sea the mist, and the moonlight
- Poured pale to the lilies' tips;--
- At eve, when the hawks were feeding,
- In courts to the kennels leading,
- He kissed her mouth and lips.
- On towers the mist, and the moonlight
- On a dead face staring up;--
- His kingly couch was ready,
- But and her hand was steady
- Giving the poisoned cup.
- MY ROMANCE.
- If it so befalls that the midnight hovers
- In mist no moonlight breaks,
- The leagues of years my spirit covers,
- And myself myself forsakes.
- And I live in a land of stars and flowers,
- White cliffs by a silver sea;
- And the pearly points of her opal towers
- From the mountains beckon me.
- And I think that I know that I hear her calling
- From a casement bathed with light--
- The music of waters in waters falling
- To palms from a rocky height.
- And I feel that I think my love's awaited
- By the romance of her charms;
- That her feet are early and mine belated
- In a world that chains my arms.
- But I break my chains and the rest is easy--
- In the shadow of the rose
- Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy,
- We meet and no one knows.
- To dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses;
- The world--it may live or die;
- The world that forgets, the soul that misses
- The life that has long gone by.
- We speak old vows that have long been spoken,
- And weep a long-gone woe,--
- For you must know our hearts were broken
- Hundreds of years ago.
- THE EPIC.
- "To arms!" the battle bugles blew.
- The daughter of their Earl was she,
- Lord of a thousand swords and true;
- He but a squire of low degree.
- The horns of war blew up to horse:
- He kissed her mouth; her face was white;
- "God grant they bear thee back no corse!"--
- "God give I win my spurs to-night!"
- Each watch-tower's blazing beacon scarred
- A blood-blot in the wounded dark:
- She heard knights gallop battleward,
- And from the turret leaned to mark.
- "My God, deliver me and mine!
- My child! my God!" all night she prayed:
- She saw the battle beacons shine;
- She saw the battle beacons fade.
- They brought him on a bier of spears.--
- For him--the death-won spurs and name;
- For her--the sting of secret tears,
- And convent walls to hide her shame.
- THE BLIND HARPER.
- And thus it came my feet were led
- To wizard walls that hairy hung
- Old as their rock the moss made dead;
- And, like a ditch of fire flung
- Around it, uncouth flowers red
- Thrust spur and fang and tongue.
- And here I harped. Did dead men list?
- Or was it hollow hinges gnarred
- Huge, iron scorn in donjon-twist?
- And when I thought a face sword-scarred
- Would curse me, lo! a woman kissed
- At me hands ringed and starred.
- And so I sang; for she had leaned
- Rare beauty to me, dark and tall;
- I sang of Love, whose Court is queened
- Of Aliénor the virginal,
- Nor saw how rolled on me a fiend
- Wolf-eyeballs from the wall.
- Oh, how I sang! until she laughed
- Red lips that made lute harmony;
- I sang of knights who fought and quaffed
- To Love's own paragon, Marie--
- Nor saw the suzerain whose shaft
- Was bowed and bent on me.
- And I had harped until she wept;
- But when I sang of Ermengarde
- Of Anjou,--where her Court is kept
- By brave, by beauty, and by bard,--
- She turned a raven there and swept
- Me, like a fury, 'ward.
- A bleeding beak had pierced my sight;
- A crimson claw each cheek had lined;
- One glimpse: wild walls of threatening night
- Heaped raven battlements behind
- A moat of blazing serpents bright--
- And then I wandered blind.
- ELPHIN.
- The eve was a burning copper,
- The night was a boundless black
- Where wells of the lightning crumbled
- And boiled with blazing rack,
- When I came to the coal-black castle
- With the wild rain on my back.
- Thrice under its goblin towers,
- Where the causey of rock was laid,
- Thrice, there at its spider portal,
- My scornful bugle brayed,
- But never a warder questioned,--
- An owl's was the answer made.
- When the heaven above was blistered
- One scald of blinding storm,
- And the blackness clanged like a cavern
- Of iron where demons swarm,
- I rode in the court of the castle
- With the shield upon my arm.
- My sword unsheathed and certain
- Of the visor of my casque,
- My steel steps challenged the donjon
- My gauntlet should unmask;
- But never a knight or varlet
- To stay or slay or ask.
- My heels on the stone ground iron,
- My fists on the bolts clashed steel;--
- In the hall, the roar of the torrent,
- In the turret, the thunder's peal;--
- And I found her there in the turret
- Alone by her spinning-wheel.
- She spun the flax of a spindle,
- And I wondered on her face;
- She spun the flax of a spindle,
- And I marvelled on her grace;
- She spun the flax of a spindle,
- And I watched a little space.
- But nerves of my manhood weakened;
- The heart in my breast was wax;
- Myself but the hide of an image
- Out-stuffed with the hards of flax:--
- She spun and she smiled a-spinning
- A spindle of blood-red flax.
- She spun and she laughed a-spinning
- The blood of my veins in a skein;
- But I knew how the charm was mastered,
- And snapped in the hissing vein;
- So she wove but a fiery scorpion
- That writhed from her hands again....
- Fleeing in rain and in tempest,
- Saw by the cataract's bed,--
- Cancers of ulcerous fire,
- Wounds of a bloody red,--
- Its windows glare in the darkness
- Eyes of a dragon's head.
- PRE-ORDINATION.
- She bewitched me in my childhood,
- And the witch's charm is hidden--
- Far beyond the wicked wildwood
- I shall find it, I am bidden.
- She commands me, she who bound me
- With soft sorcery to follow;
- In a golden snare who wound me
- To her bosom's snowy hollow....
- Comes a night-dark stallion sired
- Of the wind; a mare his mother
- Whom Thessalian madness fired,
- And the hurricane his brother.
- Then my soul delays no longer:
- Though the night around is scowling,
- Keenly mount him blacker, stronger
- Than the tempest that is howling.
- At our ears wild shadows whistle;
- Brazen forks the lightning o'er us
- Flames; and huge the thunder's missile
- Bursts behind us, drags before us.
- Over fire-scorched fields of stubble;
- Iron forests dark with wonder;
- Evil marshes black with trouble;
- Nightmare torrents thundering under:
- In the thorn that past us races,
- Harelipped hags like crows are rocking;
- Stunted oaks have dwarf-like faces
- Gnarled that leer an impish mocking:
- Rocks, in which the storm is hooting,
- Thrust a humpbacked murder over;
- Bristling heaths, dead thistles shooting,
- Raven-haunted gibbets cover:
- Each and all are passed, like water
- Under-rolled into a cavern,
- Till we see the Devil's daughter
- Waiting at the Devil's tavern.
- And we stay; I drain the beaker
- In her hand; the draught is fire;
- World-remembrances grow weaker,
- And my spirit, one desire.
- Course it! course it! Darkness passes
- Like an uprolled banner tattered;
- Walled before us mountain masses
- Rise like centuries unscattered.
- And the storm flies ragged. Slowly
- Comes a moon of copper-color,
- And the evil night grows holy,
- Mists the wild ride growing duller.
- In the round moon's angry scanning,
- Demon-swift cross spider arches
- Of the web-thick bridges spanning
- Chasms of her kingdom's marches.
- We have reached her kingdom, olden
- As the sea that sighs its sadness;
- Rocks and trees and sands are golden,
- And the air a golden gladness.
- Shapely ingots are the flowers,
- And the waters, amber brightness;
- Gold-bright, song-birds in the bowers
- Sing with eyes of diamond whiteness.
- And she meets me with a chalice
- Like the Giamschid ruby burning,
- And I drain it without malice,
- To her towers of topaz turning.
- Many hundred years forgetting
- All that's earth: within her power
- I possess her: naught regretting
- Since each year is as an hour.
- AT THE STILE.
- Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
- Over the stile the stars a-winking;
- He thought it was Mary--'t was Mary's sister--
- And love hath a way of thinking.
- "Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry."--
- Over the stile the stars hang yellow.--
- "Just to the spring, my sweetheart Harry."--
- And love is a heartless fellow.
- "Thou saidst me _yea_ when the frost did shower
- Over the stile from stars a-shiver."--
- "I say thee _nay_ now the cherry-trees flower,
- And love is taker and giver."
- "O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!"--
- Over the stile the stars a-glister.
- "To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart,
- I never was aught save Mary's sister.
- "Sweet Mary's sister and thou my Harry,
- Her Harry and mine, but mine the weeping:
- In a month or twain you two will marry--
- And I in my grave be sleeping."
- Alone among the meadows of millet,
- Over the stile the stars pursuing,
- Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it--
- And love hath a way of doing.
- THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER.
- The times they had kissed and parted
- That night were over a score;
- Each time that the cavalier started,
- Each time she would swear him o'er,
- "Thou art going to Barcelona!--
- To make Naxera thy bride!
- Seduce the Lady Yöna!--
- And thy lips have lied! have lied!
- "I love thee! I love thee, thou knowest!
- And thou shalt not give away
- The love to my life thou owest;
- And my heart commands thee stay!--
- "I say thou hast lied and liest!--
- For where is there war in the state?--
- Thou goest, by Heaven the highest!
- To choose thee a fairer mate.
- "Wilt thou go to Barcelona
- When thy queen in Toledo is?
- To wait on the haughty Yöna,
- When thou hast these lips to kiss?"
- And they stood in the balcony over
- The old Toledo square:
- And weeping she took for her lover
- A red rose out of her hair.
- And they kissed farewell; and higher
- The moon made amber the air:
- And she drew for the traitor and liar
- A stiletto out of her hair....
- When the night-watch lounged through the quiet
- With the stir of halberds and swords,
- Not a bravo was there to defy it,
- Not a gallant to brave with words.
- One man, at the corner's turning,
- Quite dead. And they stoop or stand--
- In his heart a dagger burning,
- And a red rose crushed in his hand.
- AT THE CORREGIDOR'S.
- To Don Odora says Donna De Vine:
- "I yield to thy long endeavor!--
- At my balcony be on the stroke of nine,
- And, Signor, am thine forever!"
- This beauty but once had the Don descried
- As she quit the confessional; followed;
- "What a foot for silk! a face for a bride--
- Hem--!" the rest Odora swallowed.
- And with vows as soft as his oaths were sweet
- Her heart he barricaded;
- And pressed this point with a present meet,
- And that point serenaded.
- What else could the enemy do but yield
- To a handsome importuning!
- A gallant blade with a lute for shield
- All night at her lattice mooning!
- "_Que es estrella!_ O lily of girls!
- Here's that for thy fierce duenna:
- A purse of pistoles and a rosary o' pearls
- And gold as yellow as henna.
- "She will drop from thy balcony's rail, my sweet!
- My seraph! this silken ladder;
- And then--sweet then!--my soul at thy feet
- No lover of lovers gladder!"
- And the end of it was!--But I will not say
- How he won to the room of the lady:--
- Ah! to love is life and to live is gay,
- For the rest--a maravedi!
- Now comes her betrothed from the wars, and he,
- A Count of the Court Castilian,
- A Don Diabolus, sword at knee,
- And moustaches--uncivilian.
- And his is a jealous love; and--for
- He marks that this marriage makes sadder--
- He watches, and sees a robber to her,
- Or gallant, ascend a ladder.
- So he pushes inquiry unto her room,
- With his naked sword demanding--
- An Alquazil with the face of Doom,
- Sure of a stout withstanding.
- And weapon to weapon they foined and fought;
- Diabolus' thrusts were vicious;
- Three thrusts to the floor Odora had brought,
- A fourth was more malicious,
- Through the offered bosom of Donna De Vine--
- And this is the Count's condition ...
- Was he right, was he wrong? the question is mine,
- To judge--for the Inquisition.
- THE PORTRAIT.
- In some quaint Nürnberg _maler-atelier_
- Uprummaged. When and where was never clear,
- Nor yet how he obtained it. When, by whom
- 'T was painted--who shall say? itself a gloom
- Resisting inquisition. I opine
- It is a Dürer. Humph?--that touch, this line
- Are not deniable; distinguished grace
- In the pure oval of the noble face;
- The color badly tarnished. Half in light
- Extend it, so; incline; the exquisite
- Expression leaps abruptly: piercing scorn,
- Imperial beauty; icy, each a thorn
- Of light--disdainful eyes and ... well! no use!
- Effaced and but beheld, a sad abuse
- Of patience. Often, vaguely visible,
- The portrait fills each feature, making swell
- The soul with hope: avoiding face and hair
- Alive with lively warmth; astonished there
- "Occult substantial!" you exult, when, ho!
- You hold a blur; an undetermined glow
- Dislimns a daub.--Restore?--ah, I have tried
- Our best restorers, all! it has defied ...
- Storied, mysterious, say, mayhap a ghost
- Lives in the canvas; hers, some artist lost,
- A duchess', haply. Her he worshipped; dared
- Not tell he worshipped; from his window stared
- Of Nuremburg one sunny morn when she
- Passed paged to court. Her cold nobility
- Loved, lived for like a purpose; seized and plied
- A feverish brush--her face! despaired and died.
- The narrow Judengasse; gables frown
- Around a skinny usurer's, where brown
- And dirty in a corner long it lay,
- Heaped in a pile of riff-raff, such as--say,
- Retables done in tempora and old
- Panels by Wohlgemuth; stiff paintings cold
- Of martyrs and apostles, names forgot;
- Holbeins and Dürers, say, a haloed lot
- Of praying saints, madonnas: such, perchance,
- Mid wine-stained purples mothed; a whole romance
- Of crucifixes, rosaries; inlaid
- Arms Saracen-elaborate; a strayed
- Niello of Byzantium; rich work
- In bronze, of Florence; here a delicate dirk,
- There holy patens.
- So, my ancestor,
- The first De Herancour, esteemed by far
- This piece most precious, most desirable;
- Purchased and brought to Paris. It looked well
- In the dark panelling above the old
- Hearth of his room. The head's religious gold,
- The soft severity of the nun face,
- Made of the room an apostolic place
- Revered and feared.--
- Like some lived scene I see
- That Gothic room; its Flemish tapestry:
- Embossed above the aged lintel, shield--
- Deep Or-enthistled, in an Argent field
- Three Sable mallets--arms De Herancour,
- Carved with the torso of the crest that bore,
- Outstretched, two mallets. Lozenge-paned, embayed,
- Its slender casements; on a lectern laid,
- A vellum volume of black-lettered text;
- Near by a blinking taper--as if vexed
- With silken gusts a nervous curtain sends,
- Behind which, maybe, daggered Murder bends;--
- Waxed floors of rosy oak, whereon the red
- Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed,
- Down knightly corridors; a carven couch
- Sword-slashed; dark velvets of the chairs that crouch,
- It seems, with fright; clear-clashing near, more near,
- The stir of searching steel.
- What find they here?--
- 'T is St. Bartholomew's--a Huguenot
- Dead in his chair?--dead! violently shot
- With horror, eyes glued on a portrait there,
- Coiling his neck one blood line, like a hair
- Of finest fire; the portrait, like a fiend,--
- Looking exalted visitation,--leaned
- From its black panel; in its eyes a hate
- Demonic; hair--a glowing auburn, late
- A dim, enduring golden.
- "Just one thread
- Of the fierce hair around his throat," they said,
- "Twisting a burning ray, he--staring-dead."
- ISMAEL.
- Ismael, the Sultan, in the Ramazan,
- Girdled with guards and many a yataghan,
- Pachas and amins, viziers wisdom-gray,
- And holy marabouts, betook his way
- Through Mekinez.--Written the angel's word,
- Of Eden's Kauther, reads, "Slay! praying the Lord!
- Pray! slaying the victims!" so the Sultan went,
- The Cruel Sultan, with this good intent,
- In white bournouse and sea-green caftan clad
- First to the mosque. Long each muezzin had
- Summoned the faithful unto prayer and let
- The "Allah Akbar!" from each minaret,
- Call to their thousand lamps of blazing gold.
- Prostrated prayed the Sultan. On the old
- Mosaics of the mosque--whose hollow steamed
- With aloes-incense--lean ecstatics dreamed
- On Allah and his Prophet, and how great
- Is God, and how unstable man's estate.
- Conviction on him, in this chanting low
- Of Koran texts, the Caliph's passion so
- Exalted rose,--lamps of religious awe,
- Loud smitings of the everlasting law
- On unbelievers,--trebly manifest
- The Faith's anointed sword he feels confessed.
- So from the mosque, whose arabesques above--
- The marvellous work of Oriental love--
- Seen with new splendors of Heaven's blue and gold,
- Applauding all, he, as the gates are rolled
- Ogival back to let the many forth,
- Cries war to all the unbelieving North.
- Soon have they passed the tight bazaar; along
- Close, crooked streets, too narrow for the throng;
- The place of owls and tombs; the merloned wall,
- Camel and steed and ass. Projecting all
- Its towering battlements, his palace gray,
- Seraglios and courts, against the day
- Lifts, vanishes. And now, soul-set on hate,
- From Mekinez they pass the scolloped gate.
- Two dozing beggars, baking each a sore,
- Sprawl in the sun the city gate before;
- A leprous cripple and a thief, whose eyes--
- Burnt out with burning iron,--as supplies
- The law for thieves,--two fly-thick wounds blood-raw,
- Lifted shrill voices as they heard or saw;
- Praised God, and flung into the dust each face
- With words of "victory and Allah's grace
- Attend our Caliph, Mouley-Ismael!
- Even at the cost of ours his days be well!"
- And grimly smiling as he grimly passed,
- "While God most merciful, who is, shall last,--
- Now by Es Sirat!--will a liar's word
- And thief's prevail or prosper?--Pray the Lord!--
- What! at your lives' cost?--my devout intent!
- Even as 't is bidden let their necks be bent!
- Though words be pious, evil at the soul
- Naught is the prayer!--So let their prayer be whole.
- Nay! give them gold; but when the sequins cease
- From the slaves' hands, by these my Soudanese
- They die!" he said; and even as he said
- Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head.
- And frowning westward, as the day grew late,
- Four bleeding heads stared from the city gate
- 'Neath this inscription, for the passer-by,
- "There is no virtue but in God the High."
- A PRE-EXISTENCE.
- An intimation of some previous life,
- Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,
- Of some uncertain sleep--or lived or dreamed
- In some dead life--between a dusk and dawn;
- From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,
- Far off defined, his corselet and camail,
- Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's
- Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one
- Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught
- A cry before him and a wail behind,
- Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings;
- Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves.
- And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
- Housed near the Tagus--squalid and alone
- Save for his slave, held dear--to beat and starve--
- Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
- A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones
- A visible hunger; famished with the fear,
- Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him--I, who held
- Him soul and self, more hated than his God,
- Stood silent; fools had laughed; I saw my way.
- War-time crops weapons; and the blade I bought
- Was subtly pointed. For, I knew his ways:
- The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems
- And bags of doublas--oh, I knew his ways.
- A shadow, woven in the hangings, hid
- Till time said _now_; gaunt from the hangings stole
- Behind him; humped and stooping so, his heart
- Clove through the faded tunic, murrey-dyed;
- Grinned exultation while the grim, slow blood
- Drenched black and darkened round the oblong wound,
- And his old face thinned grayer than morn's moon.
- Rubies from Badakhshân in rose lights dripped
- Slim tears of poppy-purple crystal; dull,
- Red, ember-pregnant, carbuncles wherein
- Fevered a captive crimson; bugles wan
- Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds
- With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains
- Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;
- Fire-opals savage and mesmeric with
- Voluptuous flame, long, sweet, and sensuous as
- Soft eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed
- With talismanic violet, from tombs,
- Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans;
- Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of
- Golconda--This, a sandaled dervise bare
- Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,
- Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,
- Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held
- Of some wild tribe.... Bleached in the perishing waste
- A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,
- A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull
- One blazing eye--the diamond. At Aleppo
- Bartered--a bauble for his desert love.--
- Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem jolting gem,
- Flashed, rutilating in the irised light,
- A rain of splintered fire; and his head,
- Long-haired, white-sunk among them.
- Yet I took
- All--though his eyes burned in them; though, meseemed,
- Each several jewel glared a separate curse....
- Well! dead men work us mischief from the grave.
- Richer than all Castile and yet not dare
- Drink but from cups of Roman murra, spar
- Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold! spar sensitive
- Of poison! I, no slave, yet all a slave
- To fear a dead fool's malice!--Still, how else!
- Feasting within the music of my halls,
- While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,
- Diaphanous, more silken than those famed
- Of loomed Amorgos or of classic Kos,
- Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,
- Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolfsbane-slain!
- BEHRAM AND EDDETMA.
- Against each prince now she had held her own,
- An easy victor for the seven years
- O'er kings and sons of kings; Eddetma, she
- Who, when much sought in marriage, hating men,
- Espoused their ways to win beyond their worth
- Through martial exercise and hero deeds:
- She, who accomplished in all warlike arts,
- Let cry through every kingdom of the kings:--
- "Eddetma weds with none but him who proves
- Himself her master in the push of arms,
- Her suitor's foeman she. And he who fails,
- So overcome of woman, woman-scorned,
- Disarmed, dishonored, yet shall he depart,
- Brow-bearing, forehead-stigmatized with fire,
- 'Behold, a freedman of Eddetma this.'
- Let cry, and many princes put to shame,
- Pretentious courtiers small in thew and thigh,
- Proud-palanquined from principalities
- Of Irak and of Hind and farther Sind.
- Though she was queenly as that Empress of
- The proud Amalekites, Tedmureh, and
- More beautiful, yet she had held her own.
- To Behram of the Territories, one
- Son of a Persian monarch swaying kings,
- Came bruit of her and her noised victories,
- Her maiden beauty and her warrior strength;
- Eastward he journeyed from his father's court,
- With men and steeds and store of wealth and arms,
- To the rich city where her father reigned,
- Its seven citadels by Seven Seas.
- And messengered the monarch with a gift
- Of savage vessels wroughten out of gold,
- Of foreign fabrics stiff with gems and gold.
- Vizier-ambassadored the old king gave
- His answer to the suitor:--"I, my son,
- What grace have I above the grace of God?
- What power is mine but a material?
- What rule have I unto the substanceless?
- Me, than the shadow of the Prophet's shade
- Less, God invests with power but of man;
- Man! and the right beyond man's right is God's;
- His the dominion of the secret soul--
- And His her soul! Now hath my daughter sworn,
- By all her vestal soul, that none shall know
- Her but her better in the listed field,
- Determining spear and sword.--Grant Fate thy trust;
- She hangs her hand upon to-morrow's joust,
- A prize to win.--My greeting and farewell."
- Informed Eddetma and the lists arose.
- Armored and keen with a Chorasmian mace,
- Davidean hauberk came she. Her the prince,
- Harnessed in scaly gold Arabian, met;
- So clanged the prologue of the battle. As
- Closer it waxed, Prince Behram, who a while
- Withheld his valor,--in that she he loved
- Opposed him and beset him, woman whom
- He had not scathed for the Chosroës' wealth,--
- Beheld his madness; how he were undone
- With shining shame unless he strove withal,
- Whirled fiery sword and smote; the bassinet
- Rushed from the haughty face that long had scorned
- The wide world's vanquished royalty, and so
- Rushed on his own defeat. For like unto
- A moon gray clouds have caverned all the eve,
- The thunder splits and, virgin triumph, there
- She sails a silver aspect, vanquished so
- Was Behram by his blow. A wavering strength
- Swerved in its purpose; with no final stroke
- Stunned stood he and surrendered; stared and stared,
- All his strong life absorbed into her face,
- All the wild warrior, arrowed by her eyes,
- Tamed, and obedient to lip and look.
- Then she on him, as condor on a kite,
- Plunged pitiless and beautiful and fierce,
- One trophy more to added victories;
- Haled off his arms, amazement dazing him;
- Seized steed and garb, confusion filling him;
- And scoffed him forth brow-branded with his shame.
- Dazzled, six days he sat, a staring trance;
- But on the seventh, casting stupor off,
- Rose, and the straitness of the case that held
- Him as with manacles of knitted fire,
- Considered, and decided on a way....
- Once when Eddetma with a houri band
- Of high-born damsels, under eunuch guard,
- In the walled palace pleasaunce took her ease,
- Under a myrrh-bush by a fountain side,
- Where Afrits' nostrils snorted diamond rain
- In scooped cornelian, one, a dim, hoar head,--
- A patriarch mid gardener underlings,--
- Bent spreading gems and priceless ornaments
- Of jewelled amulets of hollow gold
- Sweet with imprisoned ambergris and musk;
- Symbolic stones in sorcerous carcanets,
- Gem-talismans in cabalistic gold.
- Whereon the princess marvelled and bade ask,
- What did the elder with his riches there?
- Who, questioned, mumbled in his bushy beard,
- "To buy a wife withal"; whereat they laughed
- As oafs when wisdom stumbles. Quoth a maid,
- With orient midnight in her starry eyes,
- And tropic music on her languid tongue,
- "And what if I should wed with thee, O beard
- Grayer than my great-grandfather's, what then?"
- "One kiss, no more, and, child, thou wert divorced,"
- He; and the humor took them till the birds,
- That listened in the spice-tree and the plane,
- Sang gayly of the gray-beard and his kiss.
- Then quoth the princess, "Thou wilt wed with him
- Ansada?" mirth in her two eyes' gazelles,
- And gravity bird-nestled in her speech;
- And took Ansada's hand and laid it in
- The old man's staggering hand, and he unbent
- Thin, wrinkled brows and on his staff arose,
- Weighed with the weight of many heavy years,
- And kissed her leaning on his shaking staff,
- And heaped her bosom with an Amir's wealth,
- And left them laughing at his foolish beard.
- Now on the next day, as she took her ease
- With her glad troop of girlhood,--maidens who
- So many royal tulips seemed,--behold,
- Bowed with white years, upon a flowery sward
- The ancient with new jewelry and gems,
- Wherefrom the sun coaxed wizard fires and lit
- Glimmers in glowing green and pendent pearl,
- Ultramarine and beaded, vivid rose;
- And so they stood to wonder, and one asked
- As yesternoon wherefore the father there
- Displayed his Sheikh locks and the genie gems?
- --"Another marriage and another kiss?--
- What! doth the tomb-ripe court his youth again?
- O aged, libertine in wish not deed!
- O prodigal of wives as well as wealth!
- Here stands thy damsel"; trilled the Peri-tall
- Diarra with the raven in her hair,
- Two lemon-flowers blowing in her cheeks,
- And took the dotard's jewels with the kiss
- In merry mockery.
- Ere the morrow's dawn,
- Bethought Eddetma: "Shall my handmaidens,
- Teasing a gray-beard's whim to wrinkled smiles,
- For withered kisses still divide his wealth?
- While I stand idle, lose the caravan
- Whose least is notable?--My right and mine--
- Betide me what betides."...
- And with the morn
- Before the man,--for privily she came,
- Stood habited as of her tire-maids
- In humble raiment. Now the ancient saw
- And knew her for the princess that she was,
- And kindling gladness of the knowledge made
- Two sparkling forges of his deep dark eyes
- Beneath the ashes of his priestly brows.
- Not timidly she came; but coy approach
- Became the maiden of Eddetma's suite;
- And humbly answered he, "All my old heart!"--
- Responsive to her quavering request--
- "The daughter of the king did give thee leave?
- And thou wouldst well?--Then wed with me forth-right.
- Thy hand, thy lips." So he arose and gave
- Her of barbaric jewelry and gems,
- And seized her hand and from her lips the kiss,
- When from his age, behold, the dotage fell,
- And from the man all palsied hoariness;
- Victorious-eyed and amorous with youth,
- A god in ardent capabilities
- Resistless held her; and she, swooning, saw
- Gloating the branded brow of Prince Behram.
- THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB.
- _A Transcript._
- Among the tales, wherein it hath been told,
- In golden letters in a book of gold,
- Of Hatim Taï's hospitality,
- Who, substanceless in death and shadowy,
- Made men his guests upon that mountain top
- Whereon his tomb grayed from a thistle crop;--
- A tomb of rock where women hewn of stone,
- Rude figures, spread dishevelled hair; whose moan
- From dark to daybreak made the silence cry;
- The camel drivers, being tented nigh,
- "Ghouls or hyenas," shuddering would say
- But only girls of granite find at day:--
- And of that city, Sheddad son of Aad
- Built mid the Sebaa sands.--A king who had
- Dominion of the world and many kings.--
- Builded in pride and power out of things
- Unstable of the earth. For he had read
- Of Paradise, and to his soul had said,
- "Now in this life the like of Paradise
- I 'll build me and the Prophet's may despise,
- Knowing no need of that he promises."
- So for this city taxed the lands and seas,
- And Columned Irem, on a blinding height,
- Blazed in the desert like a chrysolite;
- The manner of its building, it is told,
- Alternate bricks of silver and of gold:
- How Sheddad with his women and his slaves,
- His thousand viziers, armored troops as waves
- Of ocean countless, God with awful flame--
- Shot sheer in thunder on him--God, his shame
- Confounded and abolished, ere his eyes
- Had glimpsed bright follies of that Paradise;
- Lay blotted to a wilderness the land
- Accurséd, and the city lost in sand:
- Among such tales--who questions of their sooth?--
- One is recorded of an Arab youth:
- The Khalif Hisham ben Abdulmelik
- Hunting one day, by some unwonted freak
- Rode parted from his retinue and gave
- Chase to an antelope. Without or slave,
- Amir or vizier to a pasture place
- Of sheep he came, where dark, in tattered grace,
- Watched one, an Arab youth. And as it came
- The antelope drew off, with mouth of flame
- And tongue of fire to the youth he turned
- Shouting, "Ho! fellow! in what school hast learned!
- Seest not the buck escapes me? worthless one!
- O desert dullard!"
- Rising in the sun,
- "O ignorant," he said, "of that just worth
- Of those the worthy of our Muslim earth!
- In that thou look'st upon me--what thou art!--
- As one fit for contempt, thou lack'st no part
- Of my disdain?--Allah! I would not own
- A dog of thine for friend no other known--
- Of speech a tyrant, manners of an ass!"
- And flung him, rags and rage, into the grass.
- Provoked, astonished, wrinkled angrily,
- Hissed Hisham, "Slave! thou know'st me not I see!"
- Calmly the youth, "Aye, verily I know,
- O mannerless! thy tongue hath told me so,
- Thy tongue commanding ere it spake me _peace_--
- Soon art thou known, nor late may knowledge cease."
- "O dog! I am thy Khalif! by a hair
- Thy life hangs rav'ling."
- "May it dangle there
- Till thou art rotted!--Whiles, upon thy head
- Misfortunes shower!--Of his dwelling place,
- Allah, be thou forgetful!--What! his grace
- Hisham ben Merwan, king of many words--
- Few generosities!"...
- A flash of swords
- In drifts of dust and lo! the Khalif's troops
- Surrounding ride. As when a merlin stoops
- Some stranger quarry, prey that swims the wind,
- Heron or eagle; kenning not its kind
- There whence 'tis cast until it, towering, feels
- An eagle's tearing talons, falling reels
- In broken circles downward--so the youth,
- An Arab fearless as the face of Truth
- Of all that made him instant of his death,
- Waited with eyes indifferent, equal breath.
- The palace reached, "Bring in the prisoner
- Before the Khalif," and he came as were
- He in no wise concerned: unquestioning went
- Chin bowed on breast, and on his feet a bent
- Dark gaze of scornful freedom unafraid,
- Till at the Khalif's throne his steps were staid;
- And unsaluting, standing head held down,
- An armed attendant blazed him with a frown,
- "Dog of the Bedouins! thy eyes rot out!
- Insulter! must the whole big world needs shout
- 'Commander of the Faithful,' so thou see?"
- To him the Arab sneering, "Verily,
- Packsaddle of an ass."
- The Khalif's rage
- Exceeded now, and, "By my realm and rage!
- Arab, thy hour is come, thy very last;
- Thy hope is vanished and thy life is past."
- The shepherd answered, "Aye?--by Allah, then,
- O Hisham, if my time be stretched again,
- Unscissored of what Destiny ordain,
- Little or great, thy words give little pain."
- Then the chief Chamberlain, "O vilest one
- Of all the Arabs! wilt thou not be done
- Bandying thy baseness with the Ruler of
- The Faithful?" spat upon his face. A scoff
- Fiery made answer:
- "There be some have heard
- The nonsense of our God, the text absurd,
- 'One day each soul whatever shall be prompt
- To bow before me and to give accompt.'"
- Then wroth indeed was Hisham; hotly said,
- "He braves us!--headsman, ho! his peevish head!
- See; canst thou medicine its speech anew,
- Doctor its multiplying words to few;
- Divorce them well." So, where the Arab stood,
- Bound him; made kneel upon the cloth of blood:
- With curving sword the headsman leaned at pause,
- And, even as 'tis custom made of laws,
- To the descendant of the Prophet quoth,
- "O Khalif, shall I strike?"
- "By Iblis' oath!
- Strike!" answered Hisham; but again the slave
- Questioned; and yet again the Khalif gave
- His nodded "yea"; and for the third time then
- He asked--and knowing neither men nor Jinn
- Might save him if the Khalif spake assent,
- Signalled the sword, the youth with body bent
- Laughed--till the wang-teeth of each jaw appeared,
- Laughed--as with scorn the King of kings he 'd beard,
- Insulting death. So, with redoubled spleen
- Roared Hisham rising, "It is truly seen
- That thou art mad who mockest Azrael!"
- The Arab answered: "Listen!--Once befell,
- Commander of the Faithful, that a hawk,
- A hungry hawk, pounced on a sparrow-cock;
- And winging nestward with his meal in claw,
- To him the sparrow, for the creature saw
- The hawk's conceit, addressed this slyly, 'Oh,
- Most great, most royal, there is not, I know,
- That in me which will stay thy stomach's stress,
- I am too paltry for thy mightiness';
- With which the hawk was pleased, and flattered so
- In his self-praise, he let the sparrow go."
- Then smiled the Khalif Hisham; and a sign
- Staying the scimitar, that hung malign
- A threatening crescent, said, "God bless, preserve
- The Prophet whom all true believers serve!--
- Now by my kinship to the Prophet, and
- Had he at first but spake us thus this hand
- Had ne'er been reckless, and instead of hate
- He had had all--except the Khalifate."
- Bade stuff his mouth with jewels and entreat
- Him courteously, then from the palace beat.
- THE END.
- End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Days and Dreams, by Madison J. Cawein
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