Gypsy Verses

SIN, THE SWORD

Sin was a terrible and ruddy sword,My hands were only lilies, only madeTo lay against his lips, and so I prayedAnother weapon. Willingly I pouredOn his strong heart the gifts that could accordWith my life’s fact, but Ah! the gifts were weighedAnd all found wanting—and I was afraidOf love which was so dreadfully my lord.He showed me the magnificence, the heightTo be attained for those who dare to seek,For those who dare the wonder and delight.I might attain—I might—but if I should!—I was afraid, my fainting heart was weak,And so, Love help me, I was only—good!

FANTASTIC SPRING

Wear a lure fantastical,Farthingales of Spring,Till the out-worn city heartsDance for you and sing.Lime us with grotesque desires,Warm with green and gold;Apathetic we have grown,Tired and hard and old.Draw us gently to your truth,Calm our hopes and fears;Till at last the grass blades speakTo attentive ears.

SONG

We only ask for sunshine,We did not want the rain;But see the flowers that spring from showersAll up and down the plain.We beg the gods for laughter,We shrink, we dread the tears;But grief’s redress is happiness,Alternate through the years.

CONTRAST

Steady stand the ilex trees,All the leaves are still,Motionless the opal hazeDrowses on the hill.There a marble statue waitsPatient of the hours,Ringed about with silent sunOver dreamy flowers.Nature mirrors perfect peace,Round me everywhere,Only in my heart is foundTorment and despair.

THE PRICE

We are so tired of merely being human,Loving or loved, the sweet imperfect woman.Masters, you know not what your lips have missed,On the rose mouths you keep but to be kissed.We are Astarte, we are Lilith, weKnow the blue veils which you have named the seaCover the eyes of Isis; that the skyIs the white body of Neith, arched so on high.Ours is a secret language, when we smile,Dreams are denied at birth, all to beguileYour earthy substance. Ah, at what fell costWe pay you, so our heritage is lost.

THE KING’S DAUGHTER

She was the fairest of the King’s fair daughters,Gold and rubies glittered on her hands;Her voice was the lilting of a rain of silver waters,And her lovers were as endless as her lands.Down thro’ the birch wood with her maidens all about her,So virginal she came with dainty tread,At my eyes she was silent,—could a gypsy turn and flout her:Love I looked and love I spoke, till white grew red.Free she was as fair, she forgot her father’s palace,Left her lands to wander at my side;She is crowned with forest leaves, with my two curved hands for chalice:Spring and love must bring a gypsy to his bride.

LAIS

You are white as the moths of Twilight,You are secret as mist and dew,And your down-dropped eyesAre eternally wise,Strange sins have wrought their hue.Mother of men and women,They are ghosts, not men you have bred;In infinite scornTheir bodies were bornWhile their souls were worse than dead.We are what your lips have made us,Empty, and bitterly old;Our faith has lied,Oh, barren bride,And the fires of the world are cold.

THE HERITAGE

How shall the present verify the past?Like flames we strove, still onward, upward rising,Spurning the singing continents—at last,Wrecked on this fatal day of our devising.Nurtured by lunar rainbows, chill and sweet,Our fancy was a gossamer of beauty;Now like a web it drags about our feet,Named with the symbols drear of fact and duty.We who were heirs to Egypt, India’s child,Suckled by Greece, and cradled by Cathay,How tacitly we waive this breeding wild,Deny our parents in our deeds to-day.Let us awake—obedient to our dreams,Let us embrace huge issues, comprehendingThe scheme entire—Great Beauty’s birth, which seemsThe glorious urge for life, unchecked, unending.

THE MONK IN HIS GARDEN

The air is heavy with a mist of spice,Vervain and agrimony, clove and rue,Have I not paid, have I not paid the price?How shall these tempters torture me anew?I close my eyes and dream the incense driftsOver the monstrance, and the acolyteSwings the gold censer. Then the vision lifts:I know the poisonous joys I have to fight.Day with its flowers and yellow butterflies,Holds for my heart no pain, the wind is freeThat blows upon my garden from far skies,Yet may I hold it in white chastity.But night!—and the still air!—Ah, God above,Have I the strength to wage thy war anew?Blot out my senses or I die for love,—Vervain and agrimony, clove and rue!

BIANCA

The orchard apples hung above,Golden and red and green.Her face beneath was ripe for love,Cat-eyed with sparks between.Simples she came to gather thereWith hands of ivory;Gold fillets bound her golden hair;Her gown was cramosie.She plucked the herbs with subtle grace,Derisive in her deed.Was there no Prince to read her face,No Prince with Beauty’s need?Her hands with cassia buds were sweet:“Come, love,” her young heart cried,The Prince with delicate swift feet,Was even at her side!Her tamed white leopard leaped in fear,Love beckons love so soon.They gathered no more simples there,The long late afternoon.

FREE

Beyond the hill the hearth fires burn,A hundred flags in air,But one which tossed but yesterdayIs dead, one hearth is bare.The wife whose fingers fed the fireGrew weary of the play,A lad laughed thro’ the open doorAnd stole my dear away.And now alone I face the road;No hearth, no home for me.And yet—Ah Life!—come sun, come rain,My beggar soul is free.

BLACK AND GOLD

Round her knees her lovers yearned,She who sat in black and gold,What recked she who begged or burned,Sister to the gods of old.Darkness was her pedigree,Light her ever living flame,Lovers die for such as she,Paying for her smiles with shame.Round her head the music floats,Black by night and gold by day;These are Time’s inchoate notes,Calling, “Sister, come away.”Bride of eager-blooded gods,Wife to man’s primeval age,What to her shall serve these clodsSave to irk her pilgrimage?

THE ANSWER

The themes of women! Mounting up the sky,Beating the air with tremulous weak wings,How shall so small a matter win so high,The vain sweet goal of their imaginings?Striving for Beauty, dark philosophy,Or the obscure and purple deeps of truth,How shall they know their one great verity,The answer to their queries and their youth?Simple vain themes of women! Only thisOne theme may lift their wings to goals above,—To spill their hearts out blindly in a kiss,An infinite surrendering to love.

PEACE

Night thundered down the valleyFrom off the rocky steeps,Like wind it broke the silencesThat light divinely keeps.As low dark clouds concealingThe things one dare not see,So grimly dark and ominousHung low each shadowy tree.Night, the dread terror-master,What wordless woe he weaves!Suddenly peace, and all the airIs scented with green leaves.

BARNABAS

They all are dead but Barnabas; he’ll wait,With his old groping hands and haggard eyes,Which nothing in the world can now surprise,Till the last leaf whirls thro’ the clanging gateOf the last sunrise. Did he learn too late?Maybe, that one may hear the moans and criesThat ring by night, and yet be calm and wise.And teach the women how a man can hate!I did not think a soul could live so long,And be so little. He remembers youthWith a wry smile of disbelief; the wrongWas this, he squeezed the fruit so drySo long ago; and now must live, forsoothBecause a woman will not let him die.

LOST DREAMS

Coming thro’ the porch of dreamsTo the portal of the day,Vacant all the ether seemsWith a grief that leaves her grey.In a threnody of sighs,With the cloud wreaths ’round her face,Morning veils her heavy eyes,Weeping for her vanished grace.Ah! in gaining lusty Dawn,Life, and pleasant facts of light,Why must we, the darkness gone,Lose the dreams that haunt the night?

LADY OF LIGHT

Light of the World, what are violets but eyes of you,Perfume, your hair blowing back on the breeze,Ah, but the fugitive dainty surprise of you,Pricking in green on the blossomy trees.Give me the sun of your smile to be fire to me,Give me the moon when the passion is gone,Give me the light to be dream and desire to meDown the dark alleys that lead to the dawn.

SONG

You are the dawning of dreams.You are the end of desire.You are the gladness and glory that seemsDauntless, to urge and aspire.Cradle my soul on your wings,Cradle my head on your breast.Teach me the ardour that conquers and sings.Grant me your infinite rest.

THE GYPSY BLOOD

Because the lover cares for daffodilsMust we be stranger to the passion flower,Or slight the iris, dewy from a shower?The gypsy heather bloom upon the hillStrikes fiercely on a gypsy heart, and thrillsNew argosies of dreams to sail the hours.No rosy perfume blown from garden bowersMay bear the subtle perfume this distills.Must we forego the dreamy twilight starsBecause the true-love lives for morning sun?Love dare not hold the sense behind such bars.The moon drips scented petals on our hair,And gypsy hearts to gypsy flowers must runWhile life is everything, tho’ love be fair.

AND YET

Inadequate and void, the daysAre not more tired than tears;And yet, how long, how long the ways,Down the bare lane of years.The bird that flutters from the nestIs fused of fire and spring,And yet how soon the throbbing breastWill lose the life to sing.How long the lane, how soon ’tis past,Rough road, dark sky above,And yet, dear heart, there’s home at last,With light, and life, and love!

THRO’ THE PLEACHED ALLEYS

Thro’ the pleached alley in my garden of the SpringMerry leaves tossed over me with elfish whispering.I was not alone, alone, for Love with blowing hairTouched my hands and touched my heart, dancing everywhere.Darting round about my steps, as a swallow slips,How she laughed and laughed at me, with little rosy lips,Ghostly wise she kissed my eyes, her mouth was chill as snow,For she had died, my Love had died, so very long ago.