Sonnets and Songs

Helen Hay Whitney

Sonnets and Songs

SONNETS

IAve atque ValeAs a blown leaf across the face of TimeYour name falls emptily upon my heart.In this new symmetry you have no part,No lot in my fair life. The stars still chimeAutumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime.I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art,Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses startTo hear your soul remembered in a rhyme.You may not vex me any more. The starkTerror of life has passed, and all the stress.Winds had their will of me, and now caress,Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I,As on a mirror, see the days go byIn nonchalant procession to the dark.II“Chaque baiser vaut un roman.”I, living love and laughter, have forgotThe way the heart has uttered melody.As sobbing, plaintive cadence of the seaA poet’s soul should rest, remembering notThe inland paths of green, the flowers, the spotWhere fairies ring. In hermit ecstasyMusic is born, and gay or wofullyLovers of Poesy share her lonely lot.For you and me, Beloved, crowned with Spring,Catching Love’s flowers from off the lap of Time,What are the songs my voice has scorned to sing?Ghostly they hover round my heart-wise lips;Into a kiss I fold my rose of Rhyme,Laid like a martyr on your finger-tips.IIIAs a Pale ChildAs a pale child, hemmed in by windy rain,Patiently turns to touch his well-known toys,Playing as children play who make no noise,Yet happy in a way; then sighs again,To watch the world across the storm-dim pane,And sees with wistful eyes glad girls and boysWho romp beneath the rain’s unlicensed joys,And feels wild longings sweep his gentle brain.So I, contented with my flowers for stars,Stroll in my fair, walled garden happily,Knowing no gladder game till, shrill and sweet,I hear life’s cry ring down the silent street,And press my face against the sunlit barsTo watch the joyous spirits who are free.IVFlower of the CloveAh, Love, have pity!—I am but a child;I ask but light and laughter, and the tearsDarken the sunlight of my fairest years.By love made desolate, by love beguiled,I waste the Spring. Love’s harvest wains are piledWith poppies and gold grain—I glean but fearsOf empty hands, grim hunger, and the jeersOf happy wives whose loves are reconciled.But mine! Ah, mine is like a tattered leafUpon a turbid stream. I have no pride,No life, but love, which is a bitter grief.As a lost star I wander down your sky.Give me your heart. Open it wide—so wide!I must have love and laughter, or I die.VToo LateUpon your stone the wine of my desireIs spilled. Your poppy lips have grown too paleFrom fasting. Your white hands will not availThe cold eyes of your heart to light the fire.I did not think my prayers could ever tire.Now, like doomed ships, they flutter without sail.Lost in a calm which held no rock, no gale—Now, when your chilly smile bids me aspire!So, without history, my soul is slain—Woman of barren love; the wine was red—Beautiful for your spending. Not againWill the bud blossom where the frost has sped.Timid, you dared not hark when angels sang.All, all is lost, without one saving pang.VIThe Supreme SacrificeBetter than life, better than sea and morn,And all the sun-stained fragments of the day—Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that strayAcross dim twilights—I, the tempest-torn,Fighting the stars for glory, who must scornHeart-drops bespread along love’s cruel wayLike scattered petals on the breast of May—Better than life I love you, I forlorn.Better than death—the sleeping and the peaceWhen warm within the breast of brooding EarthMy weary heart should give its woes release,The pitiful dark remembering not my loss,The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth—Better than death, my love, my burning cross.VIIMaluaOut of the purple treasuries of nightCame the dark wind of evening silver-starred—Stirred on his cheek. The forest keeping wardBreathed with a tremulous silence, and the bright,Bare moon crowned his adoring brow with light.The exquisite dream of beauty held him hardIn a great love, a forest love, unmarred—Still unprofaned—by human nature’s sight.Guarding the temple gates of peace he stood,Statue of bronze with pagan heart of stone.Sudden, a dazzling glory lit the wood—Moon in his soul that dimmed the moon above.Life was revealed, a Spring-sweet maid, alone—Beauty was woman, and the woman—Love.VIIILove’s LegacyAs one who looks too long upon the sunWhen he must turn to earth from flame-shot skiesSees all else dark through his bereaved eyes,And yet may watch the rainbow ribbons runAthwart the gravity of gray and dun,He holds the darkness dearer for the prizeWherein his only pledge of radiance liesWhen he the vast magnificence must shun.So we who play with rainbows, having seenThe sun’s own face. We may not hold the west,Which burns against the bosom of the night,But in the after-glow, with eyes serene,We still may find, dear heart, the sun’s bequest,An echoed glory of our passionate light.IXHow we would Live!How we would live! We’d drink the years like wine,With all to-morrows hid behind the veil,Which is your hair; between two lilies pale—Your slender hands—my heart should lie and shine,A crimson rose. We’d catch the wind and twineThe evening stars—a chaplet musical—To crown our folly, lure the nightingaleTo sing the bliss your lips should teach to mine.And if the sage, declaring life is vain,Should frown upon the flower of all our daysAnd chide the sun that knows no tears of rain,He should not tease our heart with cynic eye—The soul’s vast altar stands beyond his gazeWhen two have lived—then shall they fear to die?XIn ExtremisNay, touch me not, nor even with your eyesHold mine, for I would speak you, thus afar,Aloof and chill and lonely as a star.The hands that urge, the hungry heart that cries,Have wrapped my love with love’s elusive lies;The lips that burn have laid a ruddy scarAgainst the truth that stands without the bar,And blinded faith with passion’s mysteries.Night holds a single moon, day one desire—Her golden sun; and life a love supreme,Wherein one moment poises, crowned with fire,White with the naked truth. Beyond control,’Tis here, my Sun, in love’s last hour extreme,I hold aloft my bare, adoring soul.XIThe ForgivenessIf I might see you dead, Beloved—dead—Your false eyes closed forever to the light,Your false smile stilled upon my aching sight;If I might know that nevermore your head,Cruelly fair, could lie upon the bedOf my torn heart; if I beheld the nightFree from your living thought—ah! if I might,Then could my desolate soul be comforted.For this is worst of all the woes you gave—My heart may not forgive. The tired years goAnd leave the great love weeping for a grave,Scorned and unburied, ’neath the open sky.I could not love you less, to see you so.Loving you more, I might forgive—and die.XIIWith MusicDear, did we meet in some dim yesterday?I half remember how the birds were muteAmong green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit,And on the grass, beside a stream, we layIn early twilight; faintly, far away,Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute,With answered echoes of an airy flute,While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery.You looked in mine, the music rose and fellLike little, lisping laughter of the sea;Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore—Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell?Soft—music ceases—I recall no more.XIIIAlpha and OmegaI died to-day, and yet upon my eyesA glamour of the gorgeous summer greenStill wavers, and my brain has kept a keen,Sweet bird-song. Glad with light, the summer skiesAre sapphire, and a purple shadow liesAcross the hills—no change is on the sceneSince happy yesterday. Ah! can it meanThe body lives when stricken spirit dies?The blow has fallen, yet I can recallThe first of days when this dead heart drew breath—A wondrous moon-flower waking of a heart.Strange—then as now the moment seemed to partBody from soul, so like are birth and death;So did I gain, and so I lost my all.XIVFlowers of IceThe lights within the ice-floes are our flowers,Lily and daffodil and violet.Beneath these monstrous suns that never setTremble soft rainbows, young as Earth’s first hours,Ancient as Time. No balm of gentle showersMake for their growth; for them, gigantic, metThe immemorial ice and sun, to getSuch blossoms—pledge of Beauty’s bravest powers.Violet and pale grass-green, the Spring-time diesIn the soft South. To us, in this grim world,Daring with frozen heart and tearless eyesThe North’s white sanctity, Fate idly throwsThese alms—a deathless Spring of ice enfurled,And over all, far flung, the sunset rose.XVLove and DeathI can believe that my Beloved dies,That all her virtue, all her youth shall fail,And life, her rosy life, grow cold and pale,To bloom again in braver Paradise.I must believe that death shall close her eyes,And hold her heart beyond a heavy veil,Where silences surround her spirit frailAnd waste the form where all my loving lies.Ah, God! but no. And is my love so weak?Her heart may pause, may falter and grow still,But not her laugh, the color in her cheek—That may not fade; the catch that lifts her breath,Sobbing against my heart. Essay your will—These are too dear to fill your grave, O Death!XVIThe MessageWhen one has heard the message of the Rose,For what faint other calling shall he care?Dark broodings turn to find their lonely lair;The vain world keeps her posturing and pose.He, with his crimson secret, which bestowsHeaven on his heart, to Heaven lifts his prayer,And knows all glory trembling through the airAs on triumphal journeying he goes.So through green woodlands in the twilight dim,Led by the faint, pale argent of a star,What though to others it is weary night,Nature holds out her wide, sweet heart to him;And, leaning o’er the world’s mysterious bar,His soul is great with everlasting light.XVIITempest and CalmFirst came the tempest, and the world was tornUpon its mighty passion—all the deepTrembled before it. From the haggard steepTo the sweet valley with its brooding corn,Its foaming lips in expletives of scornLashed into life the world’s eternal sleep;Then, caught with madness, in gigantic leapExpired upon the heights where it was born.And then a hush—the dripping, tender rainFalls in warm tears. The thunder could not wakeThe grief that silence in her soul has furled.Soft sighs the wind, the sea is gray with pain—The fulness of a heart too tense to break—And deep, unuttered sadness in the world.XVIIIAfter RainThe country road at lonely close of dayRests for a while from the long stress of rain;Dripping and bowed, the green walls of the laneReflect no glistening light, no colors gayHas dying Summer left. The sky is gray,As though the weeping had not eased the pain.The Autumn is not yet, and all in vainSeems Summer’s life—a blossom cast away.The air is hushed, save in the emerald shadeThe rain still drips and stirs each fretting leafTo soft insistence of its little grief.The hopeless calm all thought of life denies—But hark! out through the silence, unafraid,A robin ripples to the chilly skies.XIXNot through this DoorNot through this door of elemental calm,Patient, wet woodland, resting after rain,Brooding brown fields that wait the sleeping grain—Not through this door may the wrecked spirit’s balm—Come in and take possession. There’s a psalmNature has crooned to weariness and pain,Easing the tumult of the world-worn brain,Sweet, wholesome mother of the open palm.But the disastrous heart cries out for men,Strife where the fight is reddest. VerilyPeace comes with fighting with the strength of ten,Here where the world is young, with naught to see.But day blow out across the long, low sky—Peace means an emptiness, which rests to die.XXPot-PourriAll my dead roses! Now I lay them here,Shrined in a beryl cup. The mysteriesOf their sweet hauntings and their witcheriesAre not more subtle than this jewel clear,Are not more cold and dead. The winter’s spearHas fallen on their heart, a heart so wiseWith lore of love. Dead roses. Beauty liesHid in a perfume still supremely dear.Roses of love, time killed you one by one,Laughed at my pains as sad I gathered upAll the fair petals banished from the sun.Witness my triumph—how the dead loves blessLife—from my heart, which is their beryl cup,Crowning the winter of my loneliness.XXIEadem SemperHow shall I hold you? By a scimitarOf flashing wit suspended o’er your head,Oh, my Beloved? Or with lips rose-redLure you to Lethe? Shall I stand afar,Pale and remote and distant as a star,Challenging love? Or by a scarlet threadJealousy’s wiles, beguile by scorn and dread?Wounding the heart I love with hateful scar.Nay, I can take no action, play no play;All my wit falters when I hear you speak,All my wise guile with which your wooing stroveVanishes as the sun of yesterday.I can but lay my cheek against your cheek—Love me or leave me, I can only love.XXIITo a WomanTake all of me, pour out my life as wine,To dye your soul’s sweet shallows. Violent sinBlazed me a path, and I have walked therein,Strong, unashamed. Your timorous hands need mine,As the white stars their sky, your lips’ pale lineShall blush to roses where my lips have been.I ask no more. I do not hope to win—Only to add myself to your design.Take all of me. I know your little lies,Your light dishonor, gentle treacheries.I know, I lie in torment at your feet,Shadow to all your sun. Take me and go,Use my adoring to your honor, sweet,Strength for your weakness—it is better so.XXIIIAspirationIThe pale and misty particles of TimeHover about us; scarce our eyes can seeYouth’s far-off dream of what we were to be.Life’s truth, which once we would redeem with rhyme,Has proved instead a world-worn pantomime.The running river of expediencyHas drowned the hopes that Fortune held in fee—Why fall upon the track so many climb?Why strive to speak what all the earth has heard?Why labor at a work the ages plan?—Life has been lived so oft—an outworn thing!Then hark! the time-sweet carol of a bird,New as a flower; and see—ah, shame to man!The endless aspiration of the Spring.XXIVAspirationIIThe full throat of the world is charged with song,Morning and twilight melt with ecstasyIn the high heat of noon. Simply to be,Palpitant where the green spring forces throng,Eager for life, life unashamed and strong—This is desire fulfilled. Exalted, free,The spirit gains her ether, scornfullyDenies existence that is dark or wrong.This is enough, to see the song begunWhich 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 faceGladly and gratefully toward the sun.XXVThe Gypsy BloodHe gives me happiness, as flowers dependOn loyal sun and shower. I look to loveTo give me life. Why is it not enough?Divine contentment, stretching without endO’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.XXVINot Dead but SleepingAnd 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 disdainTo 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 moreMy 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 coreAnd flame against your touch in buds of fire.XXVIIThe Last GiftWhat shall I give to her who will not careIf I give soul or roses, will not knowHow that, for sweets she’ll spend, light smiles she’ll sow,I will reap bitter tears? If she could wearThose tears as stars to sparkle in her hair!What shall I give? I have not fall’n so lowI may not lay one gift before I goUpon 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.XXVIIIAmor MysticusNot you, nor all the gauds that Fate bestows,Can make me swerve so little from my dream.Across my veil of mystery you seemPerhaps a little dearer than the rose,Perhaps more fair than the long light that flowsBetween the lids of twilight. But the gleamOf iris on the breast of wisdom’s streamIs of a radiance that no rival knows.My heart is not my heart, or it might chanceTo sorrow for the sorrow in your tears;My soul is locked against all circumstanceOf 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.XXIXThe Pattern of the EarthThe pattern of the earth, so wonderful,Is, more than myrtle, very dear to me.Across the avenue of limes I seeA little mist by ghosts made magical,Tossing across the hills, more beautifulThan the deep eyes of amber women, freeOf shame and of disdain, on some far seaSwept by trade-winds the sun makes lyrical.There is no air the mind may not recall,Blown from the violet-beds of Greece; and allThe moons who drop their shattered petals hereLive from the days which hid Semiramis.Breezes upon my lips are subtly dear,Because they bear the burden of her kiss.XXXDisguisedThe beggar thoughts pass down the lanes of day,And on the thorns that are the hours I findTheir tatters and their rags. Infirm and blind,They faded in the void, and all the wayMouthed senseless jeers at me. I dared not prayFor wisdom from these fools who throng the mindAnd leave no gifts but bitterness behind.Chin upon hand, I watched, nor bade them stay.Then wearily and indolently glancedWhere the thorns fluttered with their flags, and, lo,Fragments of cloth of silver gleamed and dancedIn the late sun, and linen white as snowAmong the beggar thoughts, with lowered eyes,Princes and kings had wandered in disguise.

SONGS

IOn the White RoadThere’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.IIThe WandererHave 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 trackWhere 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?IIIFalseThe 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 awaySwiftly 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 lainScornful, aloof, the sun reviews her pain.IVA Song of the Oregon TrailHow long the trail! How far the goal!Last year the moons might come and goLike 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 dreadWhite 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!VThe Apple-TreeThe apple-tree is white with snow,My heart is empty as the day;The white hours indolently goGraveward, 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.VISilver and RosePale as a petulant star,She held up her face to his love;Her spirit from his dwelt afarAs 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.VIITo-MorrowTo-morrow and to-morrow—shall there bePerchance a morrow when I may not seeYour 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.VIIIThe Greater JoyNot that young Joy who looked with laughing eyes,That jocund sprite with open, idle fingersStretched to the dawn, the dawn whose gold light lingersAcross the far blue hills of Paradise.Not that young Joy, but one courageous, calm,Who—passed beyond the quiet morning meadowsBeyond the dawn of life’s delicious shadows—Holds the great sun and moon in either palm.In her wise heart she takes that little Joy,Kisses to sleep tired eyes with laughter over,Pointing to greater joys in heights above her—This shall be ours whom fate would fain destroy.IXThe Rose-Colored Camelia-TreeStained by the ardent silver of the stars,Glitter the leaves, a challenge to the day—The bright, fierce flame of naked scimitarsHolds still the argent night, folded away.Challenging day, yet, lovelier than light,Blushing with dawn the flick’ring leaves between,Burn the rose blossoms, traitors to the night—Color of joy upon the tranquil green.Brave to the amorous sun, who, fearing, grieves,At last the tree’s whole heart with love is crowned—The rose-red flowers warm against the leaves,The rose-red petals sweet against the ground.XGood-Bye SorrowDay that began with a tear,Will you end with a sigh?Stay! See the blossoming year,Laugh up to the sky.Nay, here’s a hope for your fear,Sweet sorrow—good-bye!XIIn HarborMy little boat is in a bay,It swings with gentle motion,And there I lie and watch all dayThe far-off, noisy ocean.The ships go up, the ships go down,And never see me spying.They are the pride and fear of town—Sails wide and colors flying.They are so strong, they are so tall,They fear no storm, no sorrow;With brave eyes to the sun, they allSet sail for some to-morrow.Sometimes I long to range and roam,My harbor life bewailing,But little boats must bide at home,To gayly speed the sailing.XIIRosa MundiO life that flowered at the very top of the tree,Redder than all the roses out of the South,This was the blossom colored and wrought for me,Sweeter than scarlet bloom of a maiden’s mouth.Fain would I climb, and fain would I reach the flower.Ah, but the tree was tall as the flower was fair!Weary I grew and slept through the noonday hour;Winds caught my fate and strewed it over the air.XIIIThe RibbonAh, dearest, dearest, not aloneI face the day’s white monotone.The fair, bright ribbon of the hours—A mountain brook bestead through flowers—Runs, a dear line, from you to you.There is no smallest deed I doThrough which the ribbon does not run,A silver string to pearls of sun.So glad I watch the moments flyAcross the high-hung summer sky,Till in a radiant flame they burn,To mark the hour of your return.XIVThe AsterThe little vagrant gypsy flowerHas blossomed forth again—Your face against the autumn sky,Your face against the rain.The fevered youth of summer daysHas passed away in tears.The aged winter totters downThe pathway of the years.Yet, nodding, luring, laughing o’erThe tired world’s pain and scars,Joyous I find between my handsYour face—in aster stars.XVHeart and HandSinging, he smote his heart—The woman smiled,And Love leaped, flaming,Into being—wild.Singing, he smote his hands—The woman sighed,And Love grew weary,Turned his face, and died.XVIThe Golden FruitI lacked not Love, I lacked not lovely Love,But, ah, the apples of Hesperides!The golden apples and the emerald trees,The flower-sweet maidens, dancing in the breeze—Holds Love a blossom with such fruits as these?I gave up Love, I gave up lovely Love,And sought the island of enchanted skies,With little rainbow rifts of seraphs’ eyes,Round which the flaming sword forever pliesAgainst the darkened world of rue and sighs.Alas for Love! alas for lovely Love!In dreams I heard the beating of his wing;His soft voice, beautiful as sea in spring,Mourned through the empty songs the seraphs sing;Life seemed in sleep more dear than everything.Take me back, Love; take me back, lovely Love.Dark winds may drive me o’er thy tyrannous seas—Life is a world that breaks the thing it frees.I would be bound in all thy masteries—Yet, ah, the apples of Hesperides!XVIITo a MothSpirit of evil, heavily flying, turning,Dropping to earth,Caught to the light, with brown wings torn and burning,Whence was your birth?Was there a cause that, ceaselessly turning, flying,Drew you from night?All that we know is this—the aimless dying,Killed by the light.Evil the star that led you, spirit of evil,Out of your dark,Breeding desire that conquers us, man and devil—Passion’s red spark.XVIIIWinter SongOh, it’s winter, winter, when you’re here,And summer when you’re gone.What need of birds when hearts sing clear,From dusk of day to dawn?The noble wind, the silver snow,High stars, and, best of all,The red-rose hearth—a golden glowWhen twilight curtains fall.Who’d cry the heat of summer skies,The bare, despairing sun,The languid flowers, with closing eyes,The earth’s fair wooing done?The possibilities of spring,The reticence of bliss,Love with the winter’s argent wing,We’ll scorn the sun for this.XIXYouthYouth and its pensive agonies! How soonThe restless heart forgets to crave the moon!Age is too weary for the butterflies—Spring’s rainbow radiance fluttering through sweet skies,Hope merrily deferred. We see the morn,We who are old, in shattered fragments. ScornFor laughter and for singing clouds our breast.Youth, take your fill of pleasure, for the restOf Age is endless. Sing, nor grudge the song—Youth is so short, and Age, quiet Age, so long!XXPersephonePersephone, Persephone—her sweet face wanders up to me,Through this bewildering maze of spring.At length she daunts the tyrannous year,Her little laugh usurps the tear,Her little song she dares to flingAgainst the black stars, merrily.Persephone, Persephone—her hands lean through the spring to me.Sweet, could I show you in what wiseYour song has blossomed—how the airIs mad with gold because your hair,Tossed golden ’neath your sea-blue eyes,And earth goes laughing with your glee?Persephone, Persephone, this hour sends out your heart to me.Child of the Dark, with soul sun-bright,Ah, give me largesse, give me May,So shall I charm the saddest day,And life—one amber dawn’s delight—Shall bear your song eternally.XXIÉtoiles d’EnferThe four wide winds of evening have their stars,Fashioned in fire, in purity of snow,Tossed to their height by endless avatars—These all the righteous know.What of the stars of Hades? On the gloomThe outcast see them shine like angels’ eyes,And in the living night that is their tombThey dream of Paradise.They know the stars of Hades. They are deeds,Wickedly born, which came to good at last—Fair blossoms spring from villany of weeds,Rest—and redeem the past.XXIIEnough of SingingEnough of singing; since your heart is tired,We’ll leave the lute, so long, so long desired,And in the silence speak one quiet word,Simple as earth, forgetting song and bird.No more of singing; mating-time has sped,In the broad fields the poppy-lips are red.Crush them, Beloved, drink the lethe deep;Song being dead, what else is left but sleep?XXIIITruthUp from the soul, as a blade of grass from the sod,Springs the intent of the prayer as a cry to God.Blossoms may veil it or visions with ways uncouth,He sees the ultimate grass-blade, the heart of Truth.XXIVThe PhilosopherThe grim immensities are mine,The sunlight on the brook is theirs;I drink the lees of bitter wine,Fate grants a gift to all their prayers.I stammer, all afire to tellThe thoughts that urge for life like pain;For them words brim the shallow wellLike easy drops of summer rain.And which, ah, Heaven, which is best—The little lute for every mood,Or, shrinking coldly from life’s test,The heights and depths of solitude?XXVPrayersPrayers that were birds winging wide,Daring the flame of the sun,How have you faltered and died,Now the day’s done!Prayers must be brave for the dark,Strong for the chill of the star,Fearing no fate to embarkOver the bar.Prayers of the sun and the moon,Prayers for the sky and the nest,All must reach haven so soon—Which shall reach rest?XXVIA South-Sea Lover ScornedWhen the red coral of your lip is paleAs the bleached sea-sand, ah, wearily, wearily,Will you behold your face, your fingers frail,Gnarled like a wind-blown tree; your star-bright eyesBlind as a cloudy midnight without moon.No more fair necklaces nor scarlet dyesCan make you cruel to men, for soon, so soon,Your heart will bear the years—ah, wearily, wearily.Then I, your scorn, shall still be man and chief;Turning to free your hands so carelessly, carelessly,You will be dead to love past all belief.Still round the slender columns of the palmThe moon shall lie in shivering, silver pools,Still shall the trades lash through the summer calmWhile twilight with her smile the island coolsAnd Time forgets your presence, carelessly, carelessly.XXVIIIn MayBlithe Nature leaned to kiss her favorite child,Her sunshine hair about her bosom swirled;Gay Baby Spring held out his hands, he smiled,And Apple-Blossoms dimpled on the world.XXVIIIFor Your SakeBid me for your sake,Not for self or right—You alone can wakePower to gain the fight.In your name I’d dareAught in earth’s great bounds;Forth my sins should fare,Leashed like cringing hounds.When you touch my hand,Through your holy eyesI can see the landWhere is Paradise.Yet I may not go,Leaving cold and night,Till your soul of snowSees that mine is white.Let my heart not breakTill I kill my sin;Bid me for your sakeFight the world—and win!XXIXLyric LoveThe world deserves its wisdom. You and I,Serene within the shadow, crowned with hours,Cinctured with solitude, the bended skyFolds us in hues of tulip twilight flowers.Knowledge is chill; your hair is warm with gold,A lock lies heavily across your cheek.I somewhere heard of darkness, pain, and cold—Keep your own, world. Ah, Love, stir not nor speak.XXXBe StillBe still, be still, vex not the night with sound,The moon has laid her finger on the lake,And in the shadows of the wood profoundThere lies a peace we would profane to break.Upon the lonely avenue of trees,As pearls upon an airy silver string,Are caught the threaded echoes of the breezeThat sets the ruffled leaves a-murmuring.Be still, dear heart, as though ’twere death to speak.Love waits you, lily-like, with leaves unfurled,While on the breast of day night lays her cheek,The silence speaks the secret of the world.XXXIButterfly WordsButterfly words from the sun in my brain,Flitting and darting and flitting again,Gleaming of golden and violet and rose,What is the rainbow you spring from, and where?Butterflies daintily poise and disclose,Whence is this secret of color you bear?Sun that is ruddy and fragrant with flowers,Garnered and hid from these desolate hours,Misty with beauty, the silver of spring—Ah, for the ways that are lost to my feet!Only the dip of the butterfly wing,Poised for a moment, revives me the sweet.XXXIIMusicMusic has opened her hands,Through fingers her jewels are falling,Fingers so delicate slender,Pale as the ghost of a flower.Jewels of crimson, the lifeEbbing from hearts that are broken,Roses and wine and red sunsets,Flames of undying desire.Jewels of azure, the seaDreaming of stars, and the morningDancing with life, then the silenceBlue of mysterious caves.Jewels of green, and the grassLifts up its hands to the summer,Hiding insidious serpents,Fair as the sweets that are sin.Jewels more bright than the sunMusic lets fall from her fingers.We who have stood in the shadow—How may we die for her sake?XXXIIIThe GhostYou came and you went, and I swept you aside, not a traceDoes my wisdom endure of your words and your beautiful faceAnd the curls of your hair;Yet your presence, a song, murmurs ever in hopeless refrain,And I wake in the night with my empty hands yearning in vainFor the touch of your hair.You went, and I triumphed—I crushed out my heart with a kissOn the lips that are ashen, forgetting spring’s wonderful blissAnd your tremulous lips;Yet the kisses were ghostly with jasmine, dear jasmine of May—The new has the soul of the old, is aflame with the wayAnd the touch of your lips.You came and you went, and the world wearies on with its game.My heart never falters or fears at the sound of your nameOr the sight of your face;Yet the ghost of our passion stands white in the midst of my heart,With your hands and your hair, and I know it will never departPassion’s ghost with your face!XXXIVFight!Fight, though the bulwarks of your faith may fall,Life become gray and full of weariness,Love prove a lie and wisdom bitterness—Fight, for the strife alone avails for all.Fight and fight on, exulting in the light,Standing alert and upright gleefully,Seizing life’s joys and woes courageously,Man to the end, and master—laugh and fight.XXXVIn TongaThe windy rain beats, beats about my door—Alas for love when love goes wandering!The dawn mist rises on the forest floor—Alas for life when love goes wandering!With wet, green leaves the palm-trees lash the night,The pitiless trades drive wild gods in their flight.And, ah, my lover! Moons have come and gone,The fighting ended, still he lingers on.Sleepless I hear the demon wind above—Alas for love when love goes wandering!And I must wed with one I do not love—Alas for life when love goes wandering!XXXVIThis was the SongWe have forgotten. This the rowers knew,Straining within the galleys’ reeling night.Life bent to breaking, while their great souls grewStrong in the ancient purposes of Time.This was the song whereby they made their fight,Laughed as they swung. Gods! how the cord bit through!This was the song the pagan lovers heard,Wakened by flowers in a rose-red dawn.Through the bright dew they fled, like ocean stirredWith morning. Bare and beautiful they ran,Holding each other’s hand. Through leaves they’re gone,Cleaving the silver pool with flash of bird.Carven in stone, Abydos holds it fast—The little Eastern dancer with her lute,Wild Erin’s faeries crying for the past.They keep the deathless secret of the wordHid behind Nature’s lips, who, grave, remote,Guard this from profanation till the last.Not unto us who bide the ebb and flow,The senseless order of the tide of law.We have forgotten to be free; we knowOnly the iteration of the day.The priceless moon, white pearl without a flaw,Drowns in the muddy stream of worldly woe.We take the petty part and leave the whole.Lost to our ken the song of Nature’s youth—The great barbaric winds that sweep the soulAnd leave it emptied of all else but truth.XXXVIITo E. DShe wrought her songs in secret ways,Yet cared not where they fell;Her soul distilled itself like dewsIn rue and asphodel.They fell in countless happy hearts,Made wise by sun and showers,Like pollen blown about the earth,Conceiving royal flowers.XXXVIIIThe DanceLike little, eager childrenThe tiptoe tulips stand,Row upon row of dancing headsIn joyous saraband.With lithe, long emerald petticoats,And happy hands tossed up,The sunshine is the laughterThat brims their golden cup.XXXIXVanquishedHeart, here are roses burning with the South—(“Fairer was her false mouth”)—Close your tired eyes, the twilight gives you rest—(“Cool was her snowy breast”).Take of the sunshine, nor remember rain—(“Love is a cruel pain”)—Hush! you shall sleep forgetting love’s alarms—(“Sleep died in her false arms”).XLTranquillityDo you respect the heavy-lidded flowersThat nod so drowsily upon their bed?Can you endure the slow-stepped, dreamy hoursThat fall, indifferent, to gold and red?Have you the key that opens to green archesWhere trees repeat their prayers in monotone?Then take my hand down life’s mysterious marches,And let us walk in silence and alone.