Sonnets and Songs

 
 
 
This is enough, to see the song begun
Which shall be finished in some field afar.
Laugh that the night may still contain a star,
Nor idly moan your impotence of grace.
Life is a song, lift up your care-free face
Gladly and gratefully toward the sun.
 

XXV

The Gypsy Blood

 
He gives me happiness, as flowers depend
On loyal sun and shower. I look to love
To give me life. Why is it not enough?
Divine contentment, stretching without end
O’er happy meadows. He’s my love, my friend,
And peace is in the word. You—heart’s despair—
Sweep like a tempest through my sunsweet air,
Wail like a lost soul through my blossomed grove.
 
 
Tempest and calm, with him my heart might rest,
Lulled by eternal spring. The dream is blest,
Yet the wild grapes you crush make life divine.
Out in the pathless dark, all yours, I go,
Brave with the purple promise of the wine.
You, you I love, because you bring me woe.
 

XXVI

Not Dead but Sleeping

 
And if I came, ah, if I came again,
And laid my hand on your forgetful heart,
Where once it lay so warm, could the pulse start,
Remembering Spring? Now, at the sound of rain,
I do but turn a little in disdain
To see the flowers renew their lovely part,
Blooming afresh. For memory holds no smart,
Love aches no more to know how it was slain.
 
 
Yet if I came to you who heed no more
My name upon the wind? Love’s ghost, lean near,
I have a word that only you may hear.
If you should come to me with dear desire,
My soul’s dry staff should tremble to its core
And flame against your touch in buds of fire.
 

XXVII

The Last Gift

 
What shall I give to her who will not care
If I give soul or roses, will not know
How that, for sweets she’ll spend, light smiles she’ll sow,
I will reap bitter tears? If she could wear
Those tears as stars to sparkle in her hair!
What shall I give? I have not fall’n so low
I may not lay one gift before I go
Upon the altar of my heart’s despair.
 
 
She will not know; yet, in my love a king,
I must be worthy of my crown and throne,
And so can sacrifice no little thing.
My life, my soul are worthless since her scorn.
Slay we then love on love’s red altar-stone—
Beggared of all, I face the world forlorn.
 

XXVIII

Amor Mysticus

 
Not you, nor all the gauds that Fate bestows,
Can make me swerve so little from my dream.
Across my veil of mystery you seem
Perhaps a little dearer than the rose,
Perhaps more fair than the long light that flows
Between the lids of twilight. But the gleam
Of iris on the breast of wisdom’s stream
Is of a radiance that no rival knows.
 
 
My heart is not my heart, or it might chance
To sorrow for the sorrow in your tears;
My soul is locked against all circumstance
Of life or love or death or heaven or hell;
I have no place for laughter in my years,
No room where little, little love might dwell.
 

XXIX

The Pattern of the Earth

 
The pattern of the earth, so wonderful,
Is, more than myrtle, very dear to me.
Across the avenue of limes I see
A little mist by ghosts made magical,
Tossing across the hills, more beautiful
Than the deep eyes of amber women, free
Of shame and of disdain, on some far sea
Swept by trade-winds the sun makes lyrical.
 
 
There is no air the mind may not recall,
Blown from the violet-beds of Greece; and all
The moons who drop their shattered petals here
Live from the days which hid Semiramis.
Breezes upon my lips are subtly dear,
Because they bear the burden of her kiss.
 

XXX

Disguised

 
The beggar thoughts pass down the lanes of day,
And on the thorns that are the hours I find
Their tatters and their rags. Infirm and blind,
They faded in the void, and all the way
Mouthed senseless jeers at me. I dared not pray
For wisdom from these fools who throng the mind
And leave no gifts but bitterness behind.
Chin upon hand, I watched, nor bade them stay.
 
 
Then wearily and indolently glanced
Where the thorns fluttered with their flags, and, lo,
Fragments of cloth of silver gleamed and danced
In the late sun, and linen white as snow
Among the beggar thoughts, with lowered eyes,
Princes and kings had wandered in disguise.
 

SONGS

I

On the White Road

 
There’s a white, white road lies under the swinging moon,
Stretched from the black of the deep to the black of the deep,
And midway the graveyard lies, with its leaves a-croon,
The only sound of the world, like a dream in sleep.
 
 
There’s a white, white grave lies under the graveyard trees,
Hung on the road as a single pearl on a thread,
And silence waits, beast crouched, on the rim of the breeze,
That moans where the only man in the world lies dead.
 

II

The Wanderer

 
Have I finished my life, am I done?
Is my heart-blood thin and cold,
That I gnaw the bones of the town?
Am I empty and old?
 
 
My flags are the chimneys’ grime,
Tossed on a languid breeze.
Have I dreamed of the roaring rhyme,
A storm through the trees?
 
 
The snow in the streets is black,
Profaned with the city’s sin;
I know of a star-lit track
Where God’s hand has been.
 
 
Have I finished with snow and sun,
With the wind on the open plain,
That I starve in the barren town—
Is my life in vain?
 

III

False

 
The black sky stretches to the pallid sea,
As a false love and a dismantled heart.
Empty of faith and eager to depart.
He takes her yet once more, submissively,
Against his lips, then, laughing, drifts away
Swiftly within the dawning of the day.
 
 
Blindly she tosses up her foam-white hands,
Crying for mercy, and the wind—her hair—
Lashes the wide-sailed ships and leaves them bare.
Blindly she hurls her rage against the sands.
There, in the cold sky where her love had lain
Scornful, aloof, the sun reviews her pain.
 

IV

A Song of the Oregon Trail

 
How long the trail! How far the goal!
Last year the moons might come and go
Like dancing shadows on the snow.
My heart was light, my heart was strong;
I cared not though the way be long;
But now—the end is you—my soul!—
 
 
I fear the dark, I fear the dread
White frost that hovers round my heart,
The cold, high sun, and, wide apart,
The frozen, pitiless stars above.
So far, so far from my true love,
And, oh! I fear, I fear the dead!
 
 
I fear their fingers, grasping and pale.
I did not fear the dead last year—
But now, the kisses of my dear!
The breast of her, so kind and warm,
Ah, heart! I must not come to harm—
How far the goal! How long the trail!
 

V

The Apple-Tree

 
The apple-tree is white with snow,
My heart is empty as the day;
The white hours indolently go
Graveward, because my love’s away.
 
 
Months lag, then spring and love’s return—
Yet once again I seem to see,
Flushed with delight, as kisses burn,
White snow upon the apple-tree.
 

VI

Silver and Rose

 
Pale as a petulant star,
She held up her face to his love;
Her spirit from his dwelt afar
As the sky from the sea is above.
 
 
Yet he gazed till her whiteness was rose,
Dawn bright with the morning above—
As the sea from the sky wakes and glows,
So his image was mirrored in love.
 

VII

To-Morrow

 
To-morrow and to-morrow—shall there be
Perchance a morrow when I may not see
Your face beside me any more? Ah, no!
My love, my love, I cannot let you go.
Like sun in Egypt, ever kind and fair,
My heart must wake at dawn and know you there—
No dread of day which holds a weeping rain,
No dread of chilly love and bitter pain,
But ever present, ever wise and true,
To-morrow and to-morrow holding you.
 

VIII

The Greater Joy

 
Not that young Joy who looked with laughing eyes,
That jocund sprite with open, idle fingers
Stretched to the dawn, the dawn whose gold light lingers
Across the far blue hills of Paradise.