Šrift:Väiksem АаSuurem Aa
AT HER GRAVE
I
With your eyes of April blue,
And your mouth
Like a May-rose, fresh with dew,
Of the South,
With your hair as golden sweet
As the ripples of ripe wheat,
How you make my old heart beat!—
Who are you?
II
There is something that I knew,
Long ago,
In your voice that thrills me through
With the glow
Of remembered happiness;
And your look—I can not guess
What it is there, nor express.—
Who are you?
III
You are like her! even the hue
Of her eyes!—
It is strange you stop here, too,
Where she lies!—
Where she lies who was, you see,
All to me a girl could be—
But no wife.—You stare at me.—
Who are you?
IV
Well, I left her. That ’s not new—
God above!
Men, who live so, often do.
’T is n’t love.
So I broke her heart, they say,—
And been wretched since that day:
And our child—don’t turn away!—
Who are you?
A CONFESSION
These are the facts:—I was to blame.
I brought her here and wrought her shame.
She came with me all trustingly.
Lovely and innocent her face:
And in her perfect form, the grace
Of purity and modesty.
I think I loved her then: would dote
On her ambrosial breast and throat,
Young as a wildflower’s tenderness:
Her eyes, that were both glad and sad:
Her cheeks and chin, that dimples had:
Her mouth, red-ripe to kiss and kiss.
Three months passed by; three moons of fire;
When in me sickened all desire:
And in its place a devil,—who
Filled all my soul with deep disgust,
And on the victim of my lust
Turned eyes of loathing,—swiftly grew.
One night, when by my side she slept,
I rose: and leaning, while I kept
The dagger hid, I kissed her hair
And mouth: and, when she smiled asleep,
Into her heart I drove it deep—
And left her dead, still smiling there.
LAST DAYS
Ah! heartbreak of the tattered hills,
And heartache of the autumn sky!
Heartbreak and heartache, since God wills,
Are mine, and God knows why!
I held one dearer than each day
Of life God sets in sunny gold—
But Death hath ta’en that gem away,
And left me poor and old.
The heartbreak of the hills is mine,
Of trampled twig and rain-beat leaf,
Of wind that sobs through thorn and pine
An unavailing grief.
The sorrow of the loveless skies’
“Farewells” are wild as those I said
When last I kissed my child’s blue eyes
And lips, ice-dumb and dead.
AT TWILIGHT
Once more she holds me with her pensive eyes;
Once more I feel her voice’s witchery
Within my heart unfountain tears and sighs,
And fill the soul of me.
Once more she bends a silent face above;
Once more I feel her hands’ soft touches shake
My life, unbinding long-imprisoned love,
Bidding my lost dreams wake.
Once more I see her serious smile; and touch
Once more the lips of her whose kisses say—
“The night was long, and thou hast suffered much:
At last, dear heart, ’t is day!”
DAY AND NIGHT
They said to me, “The days are not so far off
When she will come, who gave her heart to thee;”
And still I wait, while twilight’s lonely star, off
Her long-loved hills, dips dewy to the sea.
And I recall that night, which gave its soul of
Calm beauty to the earth, when she did give
Her love’s white starlight to the rugged whole of
My barren life and bade me see and live.
The days go by, and my sick soul recalls but
The revelation of that evening sky:
The days! whose hours are as narrow walls,—but
Of whiter shadow,—where hearts break and die.
The day is error’s: it can but deceive us
With shows of Earth, blind with the primal curse.
The night is truth’s: its myriad fires weave us
The thoughts of God, the visible universe.
THREE BIRDS
A red bird sang upon the bough
When wind-flowers nodded in the dew:
My spring of bird and flower wast thou,
O tried and true!
A brown bird warbled on the wing
When poppy buds were hearts of heat:
I wooed thee with a golden ring,
O sad and sweet!
A black-bird twittered in the mist
When nightshade blooms were filled with frost:
The leaves upon thy grave are whist,
O loved and lost!
UNREQUITED
Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes:
One hand among the deep curls of her brow,
I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs:
She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow.
So have I seen a clear October pool,
Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere
Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool,
Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year.
Sweetheart? not she! whose voice was music-sweet;
Whose face was sweeter than melodious prayer.
Sweetheart I called her.—When did she repeat
Sweet to one hope, or heart to one despair!
So have I seen a wildflower’s fragrant head
Sung to and sung to by a longing bird,
And at the last, albeit the bird lay dead,
No blossom wilted, for it had not heard.
THE HEART’S DESIRE
God made her body out of foam and flowers,
And for her hair the dawn and darkness blent;
Then called two planets from their heavenly towers,
And in her face, divinely eloquent,
Gave them a firmament.
God made her heart of rosy ice and fire,
Of snow and flame, that freezes while it burns;
And of a starbeam and a moth’s desire
He made her soul, to’ards which my longing turns,
And all my being yearns.
So is my life a prisoner unto passion,
Enslaved of her who gives nor sign nor word;
So in the cage her loveliness doth fashion
Is love endungeoned, like a golden bird
That sings but is not heard.
Could it but once convince her with beseeching!
But once compel her as the sun the south!
Could it but once, fond arms around her reaching,
Upon the red carnation of her mouth
Dew its eternal drouth!
Then might I rise victorious over sadness,
O’er fate and change, and, with but little care,
Torched by the glory of that moment’s gladness,
Breast the black mountain of my life’s despair,
And die, or do and dare.
OUT OF THE DEPTHS
I
Let me forget her face!
So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place
Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;
Of dreams and moods that moved my soul’s dim deeps,
As strong winds stir
Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.—
In every lineament the mind can trace,
Let me forget her face!
II
Let me forget her form!
Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,
Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;
And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,
That makes men’s eyes
Bondsmen of beauty, eager still to serve.—
In every part that memory can warm,
Let me forget her form!
III
Let me forget her, God!
Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod
To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;
To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!—
Oh, hear my prayer!
Out of the hell of love’s unquenchable fire
I cry to thee, with face against the sod,
Let me forget her, God!
“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER”
This is the face of her
I’ve dreamed of long
That in my heart I bear:
This is the face of her
Pictured in song.
Look on the lily lids,
The eyes of dawn,—
Deep as a Nereid’s,
Swimming with dewy lids
In waters wan.
Look on the brows of snow,
The locks of night:
Only the gods can show
Such brows of placid snow,
Such locks of light.
The cheeks, like rosy moons;
The lips of fire:
Love sighs no sweeter tunes
Under romantic moons
Than these suspire.
Loved lips and eyes and hair!
Look, this is she!
She, who sits smiling there,
Throned in my heart’s despair,
Never for me!
INDIFFERENCE
She is so dear the wildflowers near
Each path she passes by,
Are over fain to kiss again
Her feet and then to die.
She is so fair the wild birds there
That sing upon the bough,
Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,
And sing no other now.
Alas! that she should never see,
Should never care to know,
The wildflower’s love, the bird’s above,
And his, who loves her so.
GHOST WEATHER
Wild gusts of drizzle hoot and hiss
Through writhing lindens torn in two—
The dead’s own days are days like this!
Yea; let me sit and be with you.
Here in your willow chair, whose seat
Spreads purple plush.—Hark! how the gusts
Seem moaning voices that repeat
Some grief here; in this room, where dusts
Make dim each ornament and chair;
This locked-in memory where you died:
Since angels stood here, saintly fear
Guards each dark corner, mournful-eyed.
Through this dim light bend your dim face;
Or, like a rain-mist, gray of gleam,
A soft, dim cloudiness of lace,
Stand near me while I dream, I dream.
THE FOREST POOL
One memory persuades me when
Dusk’s lonely star burns overhead,
To take the gray path through the glen—
That finds the forest pool, made red
With sunset—and forget again,
Forget that she is dead.
Once more I look into the spring,
That on one rock a finger white
Of foam that beckons still doth bring—
Some moon-wan spirit of the night,
Who dwells within its murmuring,
Her life the sad moonlight.
I see the red dusk touch it here
With fire like a blade of blood;
One star reflected, white and clear,
Like a wood-blossom’s drowning bud;
While all my grief stands very near,
Pale in the solitude.
And then, behold, while yet the moon
Hangs—silver as a twisted horn
Blown out of Elfland—sweet with June,
White in white clusters of the thorn,
Slow, in the water as a tune,
An image pale is born:
That has her throat of frost; her lips—
Her mouth where God’s anointment lies;
Her eyes, wherefrom love’s arrow-tips
Break, like the starlight from dark skies;
Her hair, a hazel heap that slips;
Her throat and hair and eyes.
And then I stoop; the water kissed,
The face fades from me into air;
And in the pool’s dark amethyst
My own pale face returns my stare:
Then night and mist—and in the mist
One dead leaf drifting there.
AT SUNSET
Into the sunset’s turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas,
To fairyland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed dusk comes slowly down;
Her apron filled with stars she stands.
And one or two slip from her hands
Over the hills and away.
Above the wood’s black caldron bends
The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us go
Beyond the sunset lying low,
Beyond the twilight and the night,
Into Love’s kingdom of long light,
Over the hills and away.
DEAD AND GONE
Can you tell me how he rests,
Flowers, growing o’er him there?
His a right warm heart, my sweets,—
So, cover it with care.
Can you tell me how he lies
Such nights out in the cold,
O cricket, with your plaintive call,
O glow-worm, with your gold?
If my eyes are sorrowful,
Well may they weep, I trow,—
Since his dead eyes gazed into them,
They have been sad enow.
If my heart make moan and ache,
Well may it break, I’m sure—
For his dead love is more, ah me!
More than it can endure.
ONE NIGHT
I
A night of rain. The wind is out.
And I had wished it otherwise:
A calm, still night; no scudding skies;
Or, in the scud, above the rout,
The moon; by whose pale light my eyes
Might meet her eyes; the smile that tries
To come but will not; lips, that pout
With seeming anger, all surmise,
When I have said “I love your lies”—
Lips I shall kiss before she dies.
II
What force this wind has! As it runs
Around each unprotecting tree
It seems some beast; and now I see
Its form, its eyes; a woman’s once:—
Dark eyes! that blaze as lionly
As some bayed beast’s, that will not flee
The pine-knots and derides the guns.—
Or is it but the thought in me!
The thought of that which is to be,
The deed, that rises shadowy?
III
And now the trees and whipping rain
Confuse them.... I must drive it hence,
The memory of her eyes! the tense
Wild look within them of hard pain!…
Yet she must die—with every sense
Strung to beholding knowledge, whence
My heart shall be made whole again.—
Here I will wait where night is dense.
Soon she will come, like Innocence,
Thinking her youth is her defense.
IV
And when she leaves,—and none perceives,—
The old gray manor, where the eight
Old locusts, (twisted shadows), freight
With mossy murmurings its eaves,
One moment at the iron gate
She ’ll tarry. Then, with breath abate,
Come rustling through the autumn leaves.
And I will take both hands and sate
My mouth on hers and say, “You ’re late”;
She ’ll laugh to hear I had to wait....
V
O passion of past vows, revive
Imagination, and renew
The ardor of love’s language you
For love’s rose-altar kept alive!
Repeat the oaths that rang with dew
And starlight!—Tell her she is true
As beautiful.—I will contrive
To make her think I have no clue
To all her falseness. I will woo
As once I wooed before I knew.
VI
And we will walk against the wind;
The shuffling leaves about our feet;
Our ruin, as the wood’s, complete,
Because one woman so hath sinned
And never suffered. She shall meet
No murder in my eyes; no heat
Of fate in holding hand that ’s pinned
To hers. To make her trust to beat,
I ’ll kiss her hand, her hair,—like wheat
Of affluent summer,—saying “Sweet.”
VII
And should I bungle in this thing,
This purpose that must see her dead
To cure this fever in my head?—
What other thing is there to bring
Soul satisfaction? when is shed
No real blood, save what makes red
The baulked intention?—I will fling
The mask aside!—But hate hath led
Desire too far now to be fed
With failure. I have naught to dread.
VIII
When we have reached the precipice
That thwarts the battling of the sea,
And wallows out great rocks, that knee
The giant foam with roar and hiss,
I will not cease to coax and be
The anxious lover. Trusting she
Will not suspect my farewell kiss
Until it turns a curse, and we
Sway for an instant totteringly,
And she has shrieked some prayer at me.
IX
O let me see wild terror there
Upon her face! the wilder frown
Of crime’s apprisal, and renown
Of my life’s injury, that bare
This horror with its bloody crown!—
No pity, God! For, if her gown,
Suspending looseness of her hair,
Delay the plunge … the night is brown …
My heel must crush her white face down,
And Hell and Heaven see her drown.
THE PARTING
She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed
Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze,
Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost,
And mouthed and mumbled in the sickly trees,
Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.
Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore.
Some stars made misty blotches in the sky.
And all the wretched willows on the shore
Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye.
She felt deep sorrow yet could only sigh.
She heard his skiff grind on the river rocks
Whistling he came into the shadow made
By the great tree. He kissed her on her locks;
And round her form his eager arms were laid.
Passive she stood her purpose unbetrayed.
And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss
Stung in her hair. She did not dare to lift
Her face to his; her anguished eyes to his
While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift
Of weakness humored might set all adrift.
Anger and shame were his. She meekly heard.
And then the oar-locks sounded, and her brain
Remembered he had said no farewell word;
And swift emotion swept her; and again
Left her as silent as a carven pain....
She, in the old sad farm-house, wearily
Resumed the drudgery of her common lot,
Regret remembering.—’Midst old vices, he,
Who would have trod on, and somehow did not,
The wildflower, that had brushed his feet, forgot.
THE DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW
Though the panther’s footprints show,
And the wild-cat’s, in the snow,
You will never find a trace
Of the footsteps of a certain
Maiden with a paler face
Than the drifts that fill and curtain
Hillside, valley, and the wood,
Where the hunter’s wigwam stood
In the winter solitude.
What white beast hath grown the fur
For the whiter limbs of her?—
Raiment of the frost and ice
To her supple beauty fitting;
Wampum strouds, as white as rice,
Of the frost’s fantastic knitting,
Wrap her form and face complete;
Glove her hands with ice; her feet
Moccasin with beaded sleet.
’Though he knew she made a haunt
Of the dell, it did not daunt:
Where the hoar-frost mailed each tree
In soft, phantom alabaster,
And hung ghosts of bud and bee
On each autumn-withered aster;
By the frozen waterfall,
There she stood, beneath its wall,
In the ice-sheathed chaparral.
Where the beech-tree and the larch
Built a white triumphal arch
For the Winter, marching down
With his icy-armored leaders;
Where each hemlock had a crown,
And pale diadems the cedars;
Where the long icicle shone,
There he saw her, standing lone,
Like a mist-wraith turned to stone.
And she led him many a mile
With her hand-wave and her smile,
And the printless swiftness of
Feet of frost, and snowy flutter
Of her raiment; now above,
Now below, the boughs of utter
Winter whiteness. Led him on
Till the dawn and day were gone,
And the evening star hung wan....
Hunters found him dead, they tell,
In the winter-wasted dell,
With his quiver and his bow,
Where the cascade ran a rafter,
White, of crystal and of snow;
Where he listened to her laughter,
Promises, that were as far
As the secrets of a star,
And her love that naught could mar.
And her countenance is this
Stamped on his: and this her kiss,
Haunting still his mouth and eyes,
Colder than the cold December:
This her passion, that defies
All control, the stars remember
Filled him, killed him: this is she
Clinging to him, neck and knee,
Where his limbs sank wearily.
THE SPIRIT OF THE STAR
(Love Spiritual)
“This union of the human soul with the divine æthereal substance of the universe, is the ancient doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato.”—Divine Legation.
There is love for love: the heaven
Teems with possibilities:
And, when love is purely given,
Love returns from where none sees:
And such love becomes a ladder
Reaching heavenward, from the sadder
Night of Earth; from out the driven
Darkness of its miseries.
There is love for love: and Beauty,
From her star above the Earth,
Smiles, and straight each cloud of sooty
Night takes on celestial worth:
And, like some white flower unfolding,
Love is born; and softly holding
Up its face, as if in duty,
Grows to that which gave it birth.
Earth and Heaven are prolific
Of love’s wonders: and the sky
Teems with spirits, fair, terrific,
Who, if loved, shall never die:
Dæmons, haggard as their mountains;
Naiads, sparkling as their fountains;
Sylphids of the winds, pacific
As the stars they tremble by....
Such was I; who long had waited
For the everlasting sleep:
Where, around me, worlds dilated,
Waned or waxed within the deep:
Where, beneath my star, a planet
Whirled and shone, like glowing granite,
While around it ne’er abated
One white satellite its sweep.
I was sad: my beauty wearied,
Useless as a scentless bud
Fading ere it blooms. The serried
Mists of worlds, as red as blood,
Streamed beneath me. And the starry
Firmament above bent, barry
With the wild auroras, ferried
Of the meteors’ sisterhood.
Something drew me, unreturning,
Filled me with a finer flame
The Spirit of the Star
I was loveless with a yearning
After love that never came;
All my astral being burning
Towards that world without a name,
World I knew not: till, with splendor
Of compulsion that was tender,
Something drew me, unreturning,
Filled me with a finer flame.
So I left my star, whose lances
Pierced with arrowy gold the heat
Of heaven’s hyacinth; its glances
Saddened me. No more to meet,
Then I left my star; and, beating
Downward, heard it still repeating
Far farewells; and through the trances
Of dark space its face looked sweet.
Passed your moon: a melancholy
Disc at first; then, vast and sharp,
Lo, a world, all white and holy!
Where, upon the crystal scarp
Of a mountain,—like a story
Of high Heaven revealed in glory,—
Gradual, as if music slowly
Built it, rolling from a harp,—
Rose a city: cloudy nacre
Were its walls, that towered round
Acre upon arch-piled acre
Of a marble-terraced ground:
Caryatids alternated
With Atlantes, sculpture-weighted:
And its gates—some god the maker—
Rhombs of symboled diamond.
In the white light glittered swimming
Domes of dazzle: swirl on swirl,
Temples lifted columns, brimming
Crystal flame, that seemed to whirl:
Battlemented moonstone darkled;
Palaces, pale-pillared, sparkled,
Cloudy opal: and, far dimming,
Aqueducts of ghostly pearl.
Streaming steeples shone, of dædal
Emblem; each an obelisk:
Minarets, each one a needle,
Balancing a bubble-disc;
Some of diamond, like a blister
Frozen; some of topaz-glister,
Vinous; in whose blinding middle
Blazed an orb of burning bisque.
And I saw where, silvery slanted,
A vast pyramidic heap
Rose of spar; whereon was planted
The acropolis of Sleep,—
God of these:—that, looming higher,
Wrought of seeming ice and fire,
Where pale rainbow-colors panted,
Gleamed above the lunar deep.
Robed in white simarre and chiton,
Visions filled its every square,
Moving like a finer light on
Light: and in the glory there
Music rang and golden laughter;
And before each shape, and after,
Radiance went, that shadowed white, on
Temple and on palace stair.
Though they called me, I descended
Earthward. For great longing drew
Me and, drawing me, was blended
With your world. I never knew
It was Earth, until,—forsaking
Heaven,—I beheld it taking,—
A great azure sphere,—its splendid
Way along the singing blue.
And when night came, here, above you,—
Sleeping by your folded sheep
On the hills,—I stooped: whereof you
Dreamed: I kissed you in your sleep:
I, your destiny, who wrought it
So you knew me: you, who thought it
Not so strange that I should love you,
I a spirit of the deep.
’Twas your love that sought and found me,
Drew me from that star-life sad;
Won my soul to yours and bound me
With such love as none hath had:
I am she, you may remember,
That fair star that seemed an ember
O’er you, that you loved.—Around me
Wrap your arms now and be glad.
Look above: what seems a petal,
Burning, of a rose; that far
Point of radiance, bright as metal,
Fiery silver, is your star!
Look above you: rise unto it.
Let it lead you now who drew it
Down to Earth, where shadows settle!—
On that star no shadows are!