THE GIRL.
Slender, and so virginal, but why not somewhat languid?—her casque of golden hair is starred sometimes with mellow sparks, and mellow is her mauve silk dress soft in its folds.
She is all music, in the music of her movements bathed, they also soft with pensive grace, and very slow with suppleness that undulatingly unrolls.
An evening party. She has danced, she dances still. Men dark and fair have come and led her off, under the chandeliers in this insipid music,—insipid, and amusing her. Much has she danced (O all this light!) and feels a little weary, weary. Yes, several waltzes; of her partners one could talk, or nearly could;—but he is ugly, and his fish eyes middle-class. The other, on her programme next, is far more handsome, surely: his keeneyes have metallic glints, his hair is glossy black; he is Italian, is he not, or else from Hungary?
Ah! here he comes.
Two heads incline, she takes an arm: they waltz.
This waltz, it rolls with a voluptuous rhythm, in harmony with the rhythm of the Girl, like convoluted masses, musically vaporous and very heavy, volutas without end and curve on curve. They dance, their curves leave traces of caresses in the air, their undulations are a most lascivious music. She? she is very tired, she has no strength as on her cavalier she leans! her thought is vague, so vague along the twining curves, vague in volutas without end, and with the contours of their curves. These curves are turning round lasciviously; she thinks no more, she turns, she turns, she undulates in air and in the music's kisses, tickled by something drunken, by this air which brushes her, this ball:—she shivers.
Now nothing more, her eyes see nothing; things that turn, vague things, volutas vague without an end, and curves that drag her on in velvet rhythms. But all the things around her turn too vaguely, too vaguely cycles turn barbaric, mad; all of it turning, turning; and if she look again she will be sure to fall!...
The waltz continues and lasciviously rolls, rolls in the dizziness of turning things, mad cycles, and all this softness, curves that languish fit to swoon! Feverishly and to flee the crazy dizziness of all these vague and circumambient things, as if to save her life she keeps her look on him.—He plunges his deep down into the great vague eyes before him, until he sets them shuddering ... This man, his eyes are shining; strangely beautiful, they shine with gleams fantastic, and from their fluid comes perverted charm, burning and dominating, almost animal, and with a glaucous glint that troubles her ...
This well-nigh bestial look upon a somewhat pensive, handsome face.... And it is she, she ... Ashamed, in spite of all her dizziness, she takes away her eyes from him who seeks to conquer her. But all is turning, all these things, these vague things turning, turning O too much! she shuts her eyes to see them not, she could not open them again, the rhythms bear her onward crossing one another, brushing some lascivious curve again, the vagueness, O such vagueness of the crazy cycles and lascivious curves that ravish her. Delicate titillation like a feather's sudden touch electrifies her, half-fainting and surrendering she floats like flotsam on his arm; this arm, that like a very soft and powerful billow bears and cradles her; sweetly, irresistibly caresses her, bearing her onward, circling her with a voluptuous embrace, and ... no, no! his eyes through her closed lids she feels them, and their glaucous flame that pierces, conquers her. This glaucous look, this virile and determined look, it weighs upon her, haunting the soft eddyings of the waltz,—and is not this a breath that brushes her, the stifled warmth of a desiring breath, man's breath on her neck....
But the waltz bears her on in whirling, vague, voluptuousness.
THE SONG OF RUNNING WATER."The light that my embanking meadow lavesOver me like a purer billow glides.Naked in its limpid and transparent waves,It is the magnifying image wherein IAm the diaphanous shadow of the sky.O beam!... O dream of fire that fills me ...He, my heroic vow that with emotion thrills me,Comes!... but when his flame has lapped me wholly,From over me he rises, fleeing slowly,And in my being I can hear a being die.Beautiful is the forest, whoseO'er-leaning leaves temper my languid heat,Stripped by the wind of gold he strews,And myriad leaves are from each other singled,Dancing to fall upon their glancing selves,And playfully to emulate the frivolous deceitOf a bird's pinion with my waters mingled.Breezes, trills of songbirds warbling with a breast that wells,All that lives and makes the forest ring retellsThe melody I murmur to my tall reed-grasses,Aery music that its spirit glasses.O forest! O sweet forest, thou invitest me to restAnd linger in thy shade with moss and shavegrass dressed,Imprisoning me in swoon of soft caressesThat o'er me droop thy dense and leafy tresses.But on I glide, I go, and, fretful,Pass under thee, gliding away my life forgetful.The evanescent soul, the soul where thou wert glassed,Fades, and leaves my sealed eyes nothing of the past.Far away from me are goneAll the glimpses that upon me shone.To other forests and to other lights,Shaking my hair from fall to fall, from spate to spate,I glide with hands untied, and empty-eyed,With endless hours that fetter and control my fate.Wandering shadow of a reverie banked and pent,Sister of all those whom my waves entrap,Intangible as a soul, and, like a soul,Unfit to seize, I rollGarlands of scattered memories, whose scentDies in a bitter sap.And neither who I am nor whence I am I know ...Under my fleeting images lives but one being,That winds with all my windings whither they are fleeing ...O thou whose tired feet I have bathed, and heavy brow,And the caress of avid hands,—O passer-by, my brother listening to me now!—Hast thou not seen, from the waste mountains' thresholdto my far sea-sands,Born and reborn in me, strong as the whipped flood-tidesof love's emotion,The broad, unbroken current rolling me to the ocean?Hast thou not seen, force without end, immortal rhythm and rhyme,Desire impelling me beyond the bounds of Time?"THE GOBLET.Every hand that touches me I greetWith kisses welcoming, caresses sweet.Thus in my crystal's naked beauty, I—With nothing save a little gold as on my lips a dye—Give myself wholly to the mouth unknownThat seeks the burning of my own.Queen of joy,—queen and slave,—Mistress that taken passes on again,Mocking the love she throws to stillDesire, I have blown madness at my pleasure's willTo the four winds that rave.Say you that I am vain?List!I am feeble, scarcely I exist ...Yet listen: for I can be everything.This mouth, that never any kiss could close,Capriciously in subtle fires it blows,The jewelled garlands of a shadowy blossoming.Tulip of gold or ruby, denseCorolla of dark purple opulence,Stem of a lilial diamondFlowered upon a limpid pondThat nothing save the beak of wood-doves troubles,I am sparkling, I am singing,—and I laugh to see,Ascending in this colourless soul of me,As might a dream, a thousand iridescent bubbles.For the lover drunken on my lips that burn,Whether he pour in turnThe wines of gold and flame or love's wave to my rim,Drinks from my soul for ever strange to himA queenly splendour or the radiance of the skies,Or fury scorching where the harmful ruby liesIn the bitter counsel of my jealous topazes.And, tears or joy, delirium, daring drunkenness,From all this passion that to his is marriedNothing of me will gush unto his aridLips, save the simple and the limpid lightWhose gleam is wedded to my empty chalice.What matter? I have given Desire his cloudland palace,And on my courtesan's bare breastLove lets the hope of his diaphanous flightLanguish, and softly rest ...And I laugh, the fragile, frivolous sister of Eve!For me in nights of madness drunken hands upheaveHigher than all foreheads to the constellated skies,And then I am the sudden star of lies,That into troubled joys darts deep its radiant gleam—The sweet, perfidious happiness of Dream.THE CHANDELIER.Jewels, ribbons, naked necks,And the living bouquet that the corsage decks;Women, undulating the soft melodyOf gestures languishing, surrendering ...And the vain, scattered patter of swift words ...Silken vestures floating, faces bright,Furtive converse, gliding glances, futile kissOf eyes that flitting round alight like birds,And flee, and come again coquettishly;Laughter, and lying ... and all flying awayTo the strains that spin the frivolous swarm around.Lo, here the burning beauty of a roseHas fallen ...And feeble in its wasted grace it lies,Exhaling its bruised loveliness, the while,Like Love among the smiles,It dies.Eddying skirts, gay giddiness ... the festival is closed.While somewhat of uneasiness still palpitates,No void subsists of vanished voices;And nothing on the stained boards has remainedExcept a stem, a chalice,—once a rose.But the forgotten chandelier, whose grandiose soulUnto the eyes of beauty dedicatesIts glorious sheaf of fires without a goal,In halls deserted charms the solitudeThat nascent morning sheds his pure breeze o'er-And the dawn weaves afar its threads of light.* * * * * * * * *Know you that in the Orient, simple, earnest, bright,She whose burning soul immortal showsArises... O light!Down yonder, in the deeper solitude,She who is born, and dies, and is renewed.Life passionately rises under the sky!The fleeing wave has mirrored in its sheenThe young smile of the golden morn,That comes across the plain where wheat and ryeGrow green, and with the blonde dawn intertwine ...Behold: consumed under the ruby shineIn which its glory's arid flame exhausts itself,The chandelier is paling at the breath of Death,And burns its throes out in the face of the Sun.THE ANGEL.Some one here has gone to sleep.While yet the sun is at the Heaven's rim,Under the shadows of domed ilex crests,Innocent, tired, upon the happy grass he rests,And the shadow, scarcely moving over him,Prolongs around his sleep the hem of night.Who is this child thus dawning on our sight?Is it to any one among you knownWhence comes this adolescent, whiteTraveller, who has halted with us in the night?Comes he from seas afar,Where islands are?Or from unkemptForests, or from sterile plains,Whose vastness never any man has dreamt?Naked and white is he. The stones that clotThe road, his feet and knees have wounded not;There is upon his brow something we dread ...Whence comes he, with his beauty dight,He who has halted with us in the night?His hair is spreadLike a wave of light;His closed hand holds a flower unknown;And all his white of an enchanted thingIs like a cloud-scape doubly shownIn waters mirroring.O brothers, takeCare that his sleep ye do not break!But what a snow is this that trembling gleamsFrail on his flank, and buries him in our sight?And these strange beams,That like a white and scintillant raiment drapeHis limbs in folds of light?O brothers! I have seen ... It is a wing ...Look ye: this is, immortal shape,An angel slumbering.In the light morn, where the holm its shadow flings,The wanderer adown Heaven's azure steepHas closed his mystic wings:An angel here has gone to sleep!Never a movement quiversTo trouble the transparent, limpid air:Not a leaf shivers ...It is an angel sleeping there.What silence! O what calm without an end!Whence did the stranger unto us descend?Did he, a weak, frail enemy advanceBefore the One who strikes, and wills us prone?Or were there monsters to be overthrown,Some day of courage blind, pierced with his lance,And then his wing grazed Death?But no, for with a smile his mouth uncloses;And in the silence he reposes.O let us whisper! Let the shadow's domeLengthen the hour of sleep with its fresh gloam.Perchance his soul loved space, but tenderAnd human still, grew weary of the bareAnd arid splendour of unvaulted air,And all this sun-swept ether limitless ...Sad was his heart one day, feebler his soul,His brow too heavy; and, without a goal,Wandering through deathless radiance loathing it,He closed his eyes aboveThe dizzy vast of love,And, keeping at his flank his shamed wings,Down floating, on the earth alit.But when, awakening, to his feet he springs,Angered, his resistless wings will soar and fly,Resounding through the Azure they devour;And, virgin, with a supernatural, clear cry,He in the dawn will fade, in the infinite hour,Like the keen dream that darts through cosmos deeps,When a flaming meteor leaps,And lights the worlds between.THE MAN WITH THE LYRE.No man knows whence, from very far,Came a man who bore a lyre,And his eyes were as bright as a madman's are,And he sang a song of fireTo the short strings of his lyre,The love of women, and vain, languishing desire,Upon his lyre.His lyre was frail, and flowered with roses pale;And so sweet rose the voice of his breath,That as far as a man's eye wandereth,From the mountain to the vale,From the valley to the forest, from the forest to the plain,Ran the young men, and the lasses sprangTo hear the dulcet strain of pain he sang."He's a proud man," said all the men."Like a soul speaking is this voice of his,So sad and tender, fit to make you swoon,His voice is like a woman's kiss!"—"Ho!" they said—said all the lasses then—"He is a lover, with his lyre!Sweetly he speaks, so sweetly with his lyre,We fain would weep, and would be dying soon...."But now the singer's voice has changed, he singsUpon the long chords of his lyreThe deeds of men, and dukes, and kings,Warring afar from Ophir to Cathay,And over all the earth in great array,And weapons shocked by which the soul is rocked,—And golden oriflammes spread to the breeze's breathTo celebrate the joy of life in death."O!" the men, "Alas!" the lasses said,"We understand no longer what you say.Your voice that soared, like any wingFreed but now from the great paradise,Has gone,—perhaps more proudly hovering,—We know not in what country now it flies.""O!" the men, "Alas!" the lasses said.And children, string by string,Cried under dazzled skies.Now for his grave man's voice the singer triesThe greatest chord of all the lyre.And to the gravest chord of all he saithHope that for very youth soars in a breath,And stretching like a wakened beast desire....And lo! already, by the willows of the river,Beautiful Joy who passes binding crowns turns her aside.And suddenly tempestuous grief rings far and wide,Its strength awakening from the mystery of the chordsDream-voices that deliver....And lo! our fists are clenched and leaping towardsDeath's iron gates, and bruised recoiling thence."Holla!" the men said; and the lasses laughed."Holla!" the men said, "surely he is daft!He sings, he comes we know not whence;What would he have from us? We have no pence."(And the lasses laughed.)"Follow," the lasses said, "the werwolf we havestarted."And men and maids stoned him with pebbles of the way,And, twining arms and waists, so glad and gay,Singing and laughing, all departed,Laughing and singing, laughing all the way.* * * * * * * * *But now the solitude is mouldingA long music folding and unfolding.Is it an unseen angel's touch? As in the greySilence might a phantom shape's,That comes, unrolls its raiment, and escapes,A voice flees, when the breeze has touched and passed,And glides within the singing chords....As a light wind sings at a vessel's mast,The sweet breath mounting from the river towardsThe singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords.It is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it glassed:It is the vague word moving Nature through and through,And which the human lip shall never speak....And now it bears a soul into the blue;And of a sudden all the melodyRings out with such a grave accord towardsThe skies, that in the radiant deeps of space the chords,Magnified, no man can fathom how,Have brushed God's viewless brow!SONG OF TEARS AND LAUGHTER.Two women on the hill-side stood,Where the long road winds through the wood,At dusk of day.One of them laughs, a-laughing glad and gay,One of them sings, mocking all grisly care;The other moans, and sighs in her despair,The other sobs, crying her heart away."Ho!" (says the one) "sweet glides the breeze,My drunken heart upon it flees...."The other moans, "The wind blows chill,My heart is O! so sad and ill."One told her story to the grass-green hill:"Years and years gone my husband went from me,(Upon the breeze my laughter bounds and blows!)He went to sail upon the doleful sea,And God knows he has slain his thousand foes.But let the drunken breeze be blowing strong,He will come back with April's sun ere long,And we shall laugh at troubles o'er and done,Counting the golden booty he has won."So glad and gay, she laughs and sings her song.And the other moans in sorrow broken-hearted;The words are broken in her voice that grieves."The wind groans; my soul with sorrow heaves;My lord, my lover he is far departed!His flesh with mine was one,His soul and mine were blent.And yet one day from me he went,And on my lips held out in vain,Like a drop hung on the rimOf passion's cup filled full for him,Is trembling still a kiss I gave not back again.Far, far away, upon the bloody plain,(O! in the wind the wailing wild of pain!)Perchance he fell and now he dies,—or someWoman has with her love his heart o'ercome,Some woman's eyes have robbed my happiness ...With pain and love my heart is all forlorn;I hear my sorrow and the wind's distressBlent in the baleful bluster of the corn.I know! Another woman's kisses severHis heart from mine! But what is this disgraceTo me, the flesh of his flesh now and ever?Let him come back! I languish for his face.Let him come back to where his truelove lies,And every day my tears for him shall raceDown on my pale hands from my withered eyes.""Ho!" says the one, (a-singing glad and gay),"Thy tears are at the wind's will borne away.See, in the valley greens the gracious spring;The warbling bird is gladdening the leaves!O let the breeze blow far thy voice that grieves,For the breeze is come, with perfumes on his wingAnd the meadows bloom under the April rain.Laughter! I know no more of tears and pain.""Ah!" says the other, "woe and lackaday!""O!" says the one,—and laughing wends her way.Two women on the hill-side stood.And now, from the far fields and near the wood,Two wounded men come trailing up the way.No standard waves its joy before their face,No sturdy mule is bearing their array.Alone, and slowly, up the path they pace,And, drop by drop, blood marks their every trace.And of a sudden crying from the brant,The blended voices of two women pant;—And the wind may moan, and laugh the breeze,For grief and joy mingle their ecstasies."It is my husband! God, scarce liveth he ...(My laugh is stifled dying in the breeze!)Alas! it is my husband, fainting, bruised,Drop by drop his blood has oozed ...Curst be the hour my husband went from me!Curst, curst be God who hears and sees!"Two cries of women, fury and caress,Cry without hope and cry of happiness ..."It is my lord, alive, my lover dear ...(My tears are dried, and on the breeze they flee!)O it is he indeed! My lord is here,Bruised, wounded, pitiful, with panting breath,But loyal to my heart that quivereth ...Blest be the day gives my true love to me!"And the wind may moan, and sing the breeze ...For joy and grief have blent their ecstasies.For mirrored in the evasive wave appearsA double brow; an angel sleeps besideThe waking angel; from the plaint that diedThanksgiving soars; and, mingling smiles with tears,Days with black jewels gem a diademFor glittering Night whence Death comes unto them.THE ETERNAL BRIDE.I have dreamt thee kind, and dreamt thy careful eyes,Sister unknown, eternal bride of mine.Wife of my thought, I have bent my mouth to thine,And slowly thou hast spoken,—in this wise:"I flash, I glitter, I fade.Enjoy my love ere it flees,But seek not where I have strayed,My trace is like sand on the breeze.My kiss falls on thy face....But I am unseen, a shadeThat passes ... my kisses fadeLike a wing that flits through space.Listen, and think! I am sheWho opens thine eyes in dream.I am the wonderful beamOf a mystery unveiled to thee.I am hot as the sun at heaven's steep,And more than smoke I am light;And I glide through the odours of nightTo visit thee in thy sleep."THE BRIDE OF BRIDES.O thou who hauntest my nights, Spectre of Time, immense,Voiceless, eternal shadow, Monster for whose feet we hark,And peer for thy marrowless bones in vain through the darkness dense,I know thou art near me ... I tremble, and wait for thee in the dark.O shame! Am I stricken with terror? Absolve with the calm of thy scornMy soul that is dizzily whirling under thy piercing eyes!Yet once my forehead fancied, in its tender and radiant morn,That folded into thy bosom every sorrow dies.I have hated thee in my terror, O Priestess of Time, O Death.Thy fathomless anger swells and rolls a mournful sea,And the flesh in the shock of thy billows writhes, and with stifled breathCries through the din of thy laughter, crying unto thee....But come! ... O Bride of embraces twined like an octopus!I give to thy greedy heart a valiant and quiet heart,—Since it is true that Love soars out of Death as doesA lily out of a coil of encircling serpents dart.
THE THISTLE.Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erectAnd prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb,Hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect,The Gothic thistle, while the insects' humSounds far off, rears above the rock it scornsIts rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.The towering boulders guard it. And the beeMakes honey from the blossoms on its thorns.MUSHROOMS.Whether with hues of corpses or of blood,—Phallus obscene or volva as of glue—In the rank rotting of the underwood,And those that out of dead beasts' bodies grew,Fed by the effervescenceOf poisonous putrescence,Flourish the saprophytes in mould and must.Plants without roots and with no leaves of green,Souls without faith or hope—they thrustProtuberances rank with lust,Inert, venene.And if there is not death in all of them,It is because some sect among them breedsFrom less putrescent wood fallen from the stemOf the Living Tree whose severed bough still feeds.In the autumnal thicket, thinnedAlong its mournful arches by the wind,No longer to dead twigs but sapwood quick,Corrupting trunks that time left whole,The reeking parasites in millions stick,Like to the carnal ill that gnaws the soulOf those who at the feet of women fawn.And Hell has blessed their countless spawn.And though they cannot reach the surging topsOf the unshaken columns of the Church,In spreading cropsThe parasites with poison smirchAnd mottle with strange stains the fruitsThe Monstrance ripens in the groves of Rome.Trusting that ancient orchard's sainted roots,Whoever of the leprous apples eatsShall feel his faith grow darkened with a gloamThat filters heresy's corroding sweets.More hideous than saprophytes,And therefore for the sacrilege more fit,Upon the Corn and Vinestock sitMinute and miserable parasites;And o'er the Eucharist their tiny bellies,To cat and crimson it, have crept.Their occult plague has for three hundred yearsEaten the very hope of mystic ears,Wherever the Christian Harvester has slept.And while, in the land of heavy, yellow beers,In the brewing-vat of barren exegesesSome new-found yeast for ever effervesces,The saints whose blood turns sick and rots,Waiting till a second Nero shallFor their cremation light a golden carnival,Behold their bodies decked with livid spots.
WHAT USE IS SPEECH?What use is speech, what use is it to sayWords that without an echo die away,And only leave vain sadness after?All a forest of shadow rings with laughter,If thou but move thy hand to grasp at life!My love, the path on which we laugh with lifePales in a doubt befogged with roads that leads not thorough;The night is triumphing with stars, towards to-morrow!In the night, thou sayest, shadowy terrors fall.Be undeceived, there is no night:There is only multiform, enormous light,And the stars are there, for thee to be drunk withal!THE SOURCE.Our feet kiss where the source is glisteningIn the glad gloaming softening the trees.Its waters murmur mysteries to the breeze,And we in ravishment are listening.The leaves are paling in the twilight chill:A mystic something in the air is swimming;Our eyes with happy tears are over-brimming;And now the source grows timid, and is still.The shadow makes the world so fair and frail;Wouldst thou not, like a banner on the gale,Be fain to shake thy heart out tenderly?—But no, say nothing: silence is a veilFor fervent thoughts that utterance only mars.Let us sit hand in hand, and converse beWithout a word under the peace of stars.THE FLESH.O carnal love, life's laughter! Under theseFree Eden skies and on these blossomed leas,Thy kiss is on these budding lips of ours.The high grass is all gold, the drunken flowersVoluptuously languish, every one,Feverish as the earth is with the sun.My heart leaps like a beast of light, and rearsAnd madly o'er the royal road careers,Where my desires' processional altars are.Your flesh is quivering and to mine replies,Dearest, and glassed within your great pale eyesIs Heaven immensely blue and deep and far.Kiss me! The hour is sweet, and pure our kiss.The deathless boon of living sings in us.Let us with ravishment deliriousPossess each other, and in infinite blissBe born again, knowing life's mysteries!Fold me and fill me with your hot caress,O human goddess naked, exquisite!I am drunken with your dazzling loveliness,O queen of grace and beauty dowered with yourYoung budding flesh so marvellously pure!
THE CHAPLET.Fiumina amem sylvasque inglorius.—VIRGIL.My forest, winter's captive, I have seenSoftly awakening under warmer breezes:In bluer air my forest shimmering greenWafts down the wind the scent that in its trees is.An olden happiness, and yet unknown:Trembles my simple heart, these things beholdingWith pearls of dew the burgeoned boughs are strownTrembling, this morning hour, my woods unfolding,O Muses! if so passionate a loveSurvive these leaves in songs of mine that please ye,Seek not to soften to the wrinkles ofMy brow the oak's or laurel's bough uneasy.The leaves were quivering open, frail as flowers!O! let the light bough of this foliage, shiningWith the cold tears of Night's imprisoned hours,For ever be mine idle brows entwining!Re manlier brows by prouder fillets swathed!But I would live renownless, lonely-hearted,And to those virgin haunts return unscathedWhence my child's soul hath never yet departed.THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.I feel my heart for ever dying, bruisedBy all the love it never will have used,Dying in silence, and with angels by,As simply as in cradles infants die,Infants that have no speech.O God-given heart,Guarded by vigilant seraphim thou art!No thing shall soil thy natal raiment! Thou,Rest thee content with no kiss on thy brow,Save of maternal summer eves, and dieIn thy desire and thy virginity.Thy sacrifice hath made thee shy and proud;Thy life with very emptiness is bowed.Made to be loved, loved thou shalt never be,Though many maids would stretch their arms to thee,As to the Prince who through their fancies rides.Alas! and thou hast never known these brides;To thee they come not when calm evening falls,The pensive maids to whom thy longing calls;And thou art dying of thy love unused,Poor sterile heart, my heart for ever bruised!SOVRAN STATE.In nights impure moans one with fever stricken:"Lord! let a maiden bring me, for I sicken,Water and grapes, and quench my thirst with them.Spring water! Fruits of a virgin vine! And letHer fresh and virgin hands lie on the fretOf my King's brow burnt by its diadem."O pitiful crown upon a head so lowly!Does the unquiet night allegiance show thee?Thou King of beautiful lands that never were."O stars among the trees! O waters pale!Comes the expected dawn in opal veil?Pity the tired and lonely sufferer:And grant me, Lord, after the night out-drawn,The sleep and boon of Thy forgiving dawn;And let Thy chosen heart no longer bleed!"But answer makes the Lord in stern denial:"Leave thou, for nobler verse, to pain and trialThy heart, the open book the angels read."THE KISS OF SOULS.You who have died to me, you think you live!Living, your squandered gems and lilies shed!But since the dream you were is fugitive,Love, calm and sad, whispers that you are dead.She that you were survives in dreams: I pressHer virgin hands, I hear the vows she swears.Hath not this evening that old loveliness?I seem to breathe the blossoms that she wears.Hearts had been beating long before they spoke,But eyes had speech, and tender voices ringing,Docile to love like perfect lyres, awokeThe forest's wondering echo with their singing.A lovelier and a lonelier evening came;The sun behind the breathless forest set.Who was it hushed our voices? For in shameWe bent our eyes down that by chance had met.The treasure of our hearts this one deep lookDelivered up! Our secrets were in thisOne look exchanged that our two spirits took,And wedded in their first and only kiss.HER SWEET VOICE.Her sweet voice was a music in mine ear;And in the perfume of the atmosphereWhich, in that eve, her shadowy presence shed,"Sister of mystery," trembling I said,"Too like an angel to be what you seem,Go not away too soon, beloved dream!"Then, smiling as a mother will, she seizedMy brow, and with soft hands my fever eased."Still, thou poor child, this childish fear of me?Thy forehead furrowed by sad memory,Are these a shadow's hands that on it rest?A bright May morn is dawning in thy breast:Is it a phantom's voice that soothes thy grief?But if my beauty be beyond belief,Breathe its terrestrial odour! Part my hair,And take my veil away and make me bare!Thou canst not soil my wings, nor stain the snowOf these frail flowers that in my garden blow;Come, in so fair an evening, spend the treasureOf my veiled loveliness in thy heart's pleasure."Thus sang the tender voice that needs must fade!And in her kiss the soul was of a maid.But night came from the rim of autumn skies,Came from the forest's shallow, evil eyes.THE REFUGE.This is mine hour. Night falls upon my life.I must forego my part in men's keen strife.With conquered step resigned I reach the door,Beloved too late, where none awaits me more.An autumn shudder through the clear, cold skyRuns, interrupting the monotonous cryShed by a horn astray and desolate,Making me, languidly, smile at my fate....But all is said. Naught moves me, in the gloam,Save the uneasy hope of this dear home.She lives; my heart, and not mine eye, foresees.The sweetness of the moon, spread on the trees,Veils more and more this happy nook with peaceAnd mystery that bids foreboding cease;A counsel of forgetfulness is castAround me, something pensive, good, and vast.And every step I take the more it thrillsMy soul which yet that ancient quarrel fills.But what shall summer storms betoken, whenShe breathes the autumn calm she longed for then,And only trembles feeling memories stirOf hearts that loved her well and wounded her.NATURE.Slow falls the eve; the hour is grave, profound.The sweet, sad cuckoo makes the air resoundWith his two notes with springtide languor filled;And the tall pines, by eddying breezes thrilled,Tremble, as ocean echoes in a shell.Else all is hushed.I walk with heart unwell.Slowly the shadow on my path descends.I loiter o'er familiar forest bends,Whose calm grows deeper with the darkening west,O such a calm I feel my own unrestMelt in the peace of landscapes unforeseen;And in the east eve clothes with azure sheenThe slender uplands with their billowing chain,Whose silhouettes shut in the distant plain;And on their tops their cloak of forests gleamsThrough the thin veil of mist that o'er them streams.And all is vague, the ideal form of thingsShimmers divine in deep imaginings,Gladdening the eye with grace ineffable;Seeing them, in the enchanted world we dwellOf soulless, happy beings who possessThe calm we cry for of forgetfulness,We who desire in desolate hearts that pine,This sovereign gift of peace that makes divine;And most at eve, when quiet nights of springEnchant the sky, the forest, and the ling.The forest's darkness sways me at its will;And with a holy and unfathomed thrillI feel a dizzy longing grow in me:O not to think! nor wish! O not to be!...THE HUMBLE HOPE.Time goes, poor soul, and sterile are thy vows.After our outwatched nights and feverish brows,What do we know, save that we nothing know?Even as a child a butterfly will chase,Far have I strayed in many a flowering place,And here I tremble in the afterglow.Yet not despairing in my feebleness,But hoping that the Master still will blessThe will to do good that my efforts show.ELEONORA D'ESTE.Does thy heart, Tasso, burn for thy Princess?Strive to refine this obscure tenderness,Of which she can accept the flower alone.Save it make nobler, I no love can own.Certes, among the gifts that fate bestows,And the least lovely, as a poet knows,Some are an offered prey that passions take.But there are others which, if seized, do break;And of these supreme gifts love is the best.If thou indeed dost love me, 'ware thee lestThy heart forget the reverence it owes,Then may it love, and in love find repose.THE THINKER.O thinker! Thou whose heart hath not withstood,For the first time, Spring's beauty in the wood,And who thyself wilt therefore not forgive,Thy days have passed in pondering o'er the greatEnigma man proposes to his fate,And books from life have made thee fugitive.What boots? Leave to the gods their secret yet,And, while thou livest, taste without regretThe sweetness of this simple word: To live.A SAGE.He knows dreams never kept their promise yet.Henceforth without desire, without regret,He cons the page of sober tendernessIn which some poet, skilled in life's distress,Breathed into olden, golden verse his sighs.Sometimes he lifts his head, and feeds his eyes,With all the wonderment that wise men know,On fields, and clouds that over forests go,And with their calmness sated is his thought.He knows how dearly fair renown is bought:He too, in earlier days of stinging strength,Sought that vain victory to find at lengthSadness at his desire's precipitous brink....Of what avail, he thought, to act and think,When human joy holds all in one rapt look?His mind at peace reads Nature like a book.He smiles, remembering his youth's unrest,And, though none know it, he is wholly blest.THEY WHO ARE WORN WITH LOVE.When, worn with unregenerate delights,The kisses of fair youths grow dull and sicken,They seek, fatigued with hope and outwatched nights,A bed of love that shall the senses quicken.White bed of love with pillows rich with lace,Caressing curtains sheltering dreamless blisses,And, to grow better from the bought embrace,Upon their wasted brows long trembling kisses.Calmer than autumn heavens the eyes they crave,In which the bitterness of theirs shall vanish,Lips of a speech impassionate, suave,Which their sick sorrows shall assuage and banish.Love should be night, and hushed forgetfulness,Never with follies of the past upbraided,Hope still renewed consoling the distressOf dreams come true and in fulfilment faded.Nor light, nor noise; but in the happy room,With tapestry the walls to sleep beguiling,To kiss the long hands of the mistress whomA plain gown clothes, and who is faintly smiling!Once they have seen her, and to hear her speakThey hoped for her and Heaven, and knelt before her;But love's old burden makes their soul so weakThat save with sighs they never dare implore her.THE CENTAUR.Oft on my rural youth I dwell in fancy.Ye gods who for our deepest feelings care,If fields and forests evermore entrance me,It is because you set my birthplace there.With what a love up-welling sweet and tenderUpon the august face of earth mine eyesLingered, and drank her solitary splendour,Bathed in the radiance of calm summer skies!All was excitement! Valleys richly rounded;The undulating, broadly breasted hills;The vast plains which the veiled horizon bounded,Lit by the silver flash of restless rills.But you, ye forests, filled me most with craving!The pang I felt still to my memory cleaves,When I beheld your endless tree-tops waving,As underneath the wind the ocean heaves!And at your wafted murmuring, I, to captureYour reachless vast, my arms would open dart,Crying in sudden, overpowering rapture:"The world is less immense than my own heart!..."Do not accuse of pride, O Nature! Mother!My fleeting youth. Not vain was my unrest:Of all thy mortal sons there is no otherHath strained himself more fondly to thy breast.The summer sun has scorched my skin, and daringHas chiselled on my face its stubborn force;In foaming floods I bathed, my body baring;And on the mountains braved the tempests hoarse.All manly pleasures that our being fashionIn the rough shock of elements uncouth,All of them I have known with headlong passion;With lust of struggle pulsed my arduous youth.Intoxicating was the zest that thrilled me.What matter if I let the fervour seizeMy quivering soul? The bitter joy that filled meWhipped and exalted me, and left no lees.For I had dreamt all phases of existence!All that was frail and pent in me with scornI cast aside, and looked towards the distanceWhere dawned the fate for which my mind was born.Was it a vain dream? O you centaurs smitingWith roving hoofs your rocks and herbless sods,O you whose shape, a man's and beast's uniting,Shelters a secret fire that makes you gods!You who quaffed life with its abundance drunken!Your transports I have known in olden days,In evenings when, like you in silence sunken,I drove along the darkened forest ways!In me, ye savage gods, your strength was seething;And, when a sacred madness through me ran,In the pent breath the foliage was breathingI deemed me one of you, I mortal man.
THE OLD MASTERS.In smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders,And with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocksOf hanging hams, black-puddings, onions, bladders,Rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and cocksAround a groaning table sit the gluttonsBefore the bleeding viands stuck with forks,Already loosening their waistcoat buttons,With wet mouths when from flagons leap the corkTeniers, and Brackenburgh, and Brauwer, shakenWith listening to Jan Steen's uproarious wit,Holding their bellies dithering with bacon,Wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit.Their heavy-bodied Hebes, with their curvingBosoms in linen white without a stain,Are going round, and in long jets are servingWine that a sunbeam filters through the pane,Before it sets on fire the kettles' paunchesThe Queens of Tippling are these women, whomTheir swearing lovers, greedy of their haunches,Belabour as befits their youth in bloom,With sweating temples, blazing eyes, and lollingTongue that keeps singing songs obscenely gay,With brandished fists, bodies together rolling,Blows fit to bruise their carcases, while they,With mouth for songs aye ready, throat for bumpers,And blood for ever level with their skins,Dance fit to split the floor, they are such jumpers,And butt their dancer as around he spins,And lick his face in kisses endless seeming,Then fall with ransacked corsage, wet with heat.A smell of bacon fat is richly steamingFrom the huge platters charged with juicy meat;The roasts are passed around, in gravy swimming,Under the noses of the guests, and passedAround again, with fresh relays of trimming.And in the kitchen drudges wash up fastThe platters to be sent back to the table;The dressers bulge, crowded with crockery;The cellars hold as much as they are able;And round the estrade where this agapeIn glowing red, from pegs hang baskets, ladles,Strainers, and saucepans, candlesticks, and flasks.Two monkeys in a corner show their navels,Throning, with glass in hand, on two twin casks;A mellow light on every angle glimmers,Shines on the door-knob, through the great keyhole,Clings to a pestle, filters through the skimmers,Is jewelled on the monster gala bowl,And slanting on the heated hearthstone sickens,Where, o'er the embers, turns to brown the fleshOf rosy sucking-pigs and fat cock-chickens,That whet the edge of appetite afresh.From dawn to eve, from eve to dawn, and after,The masters with their women revel hold—Women who play a farce of opulent laughter:Farce cynical, obscene, with sleeves uprolled,In corsage ript a flowering gorge not hiding,Belly that shakes with jollity, bright eyes.Noises of orgy and of rut are gliding,Rumbling, and hissing, till they end in cries;A noise of jammed iron and of vessels banging;Brauwer and Steen tilt baskets on their crowns;Brackenburgh is two lids together clanging;Others with pokers fiddle gridirons, clownsAre all of them, eager to show their mettle;They dance round those who lie with feet in air;They scrape the frying-pan, they scrape the kettle;And the eldest are the steadiest gluttons there,Keenest in kisses, and the last to tumble;With greasy nose they lick the casseroles;One of them makes a rusty fiddle grumble,Whose bow exhausts itself in cabrioles;Some are in corners vomiting, and othersAre snoring with their arms hung round their seatsBabies are bawling for their sweating mothersTo stuff their little mouths with monster teats.Men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting;Appetites ravening, and instincts rife,Furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting,Debauchery, explosion of rich life,In which these master gluttons, never sated,Too genuine for insipidities,Pitching their easels lustily, createdBetween two drinking-bouts a masterpiece.THE COWHERD.In neckerchief and slackened apron goesThe girl to graze the cows at dawn's first peep;Under the willow shade herself she throwsTo finish out her sleep.Soon as she sinks she snores; around her browAnd naked toes the seeded grasses rise;Her bulging arms are folded anyhow,And round them buzz the flies.The insects that all heated places loveCome flitting o'er the grass to bask in swarmsUpon the mossy patch she lies above,And by her sprawling warms.Sometimes her arm, with awkward empty sweep,Startles around her limbs the gratifiedMurmur of bees; but, greedy still of sleep,She turns to the other side.The heavy, fleshy flowers the cattle browseFrame in the sleeping woman as she dreams;She has the heavy slowness of her cows,Her eye with their peace gleams.Strength, that the trunk of oaks with knots embosses,Shines, as the sap does, in her; and her hairIs browner than barley in the fields that tosses,Or the sand in the pathways there.Her hands are raw, and red, and chapped; the bloodThat through her tanned limbs rolls its waves of heat,Lashes her throat, and lifts her breasts, as wouldThe wind lift bending wheat.Noon with a kiss of gold her rest surprises,Low willow branches o'er her shoulders lean,And blend, while heavier slumber in her eyes is,With her brown hair their green.THE ART OF THE FLEMINGS.I.Art of the Flemings, thou didst know them, thou,Who well didst love them, wenches big of bone,With ruddy teats, and bodies like flowers blown;Thy proudest masterpieces tell us how.Whether a goddess glimmers from thy painting,Or nymphs with dripping hair a shepherd seesRising among the lonely irides,Or sailors to the sirens' kisses fainting,Or females with full contours symbolizingThe seasons beautiful, O glorious Art,These are the Masteries love-born in thy heart,The wenches of thy colours' gormandizing.And to create their bodies' carnal splendour,Naked, and fat, and unashamed, thy brushUnder their clear and glossy skin made blushA fire of unimagined colours tender.They were a focussed light that flashed and glinted;Their eyes were kindled at the stars, and onThy canvases their bosoms rose and shone,Like great bouquets of flesh all rosy-tinted.Sweating with love they rolled about a clearing'Mid in the wood, or bathed their feet in springs,While in the thickets full of noise of wings,Satyrs were prowling and through branches leering,And hid their legs, salacious, shagged, distorted;Their eyes, like sparks holing the darkness, litSome leafy corner, their long mouths were slitWith greasy smiles, their lustful nostrils snorted,Till, dogs in rut, they leapt to their bitches; theseFeign flight, and shiver coldly, blushing roses,Pushing the satyr off the part that closes,Squeezing their thighs together under his knees.And some, by madness more than his ignited,Rounding their naked haunches, and rich fleshOf glorious croups beneath a showering meshOf golden hair, to wild assaults invited.II.You with the life with which yourselves aboundedConceived them, masters dear to fame, with redBrutalities of blood upon them shed,The bodies of your beauties richly rounded.No pallid women sunk in listless posesMorosely on your canvases are seen,As the moon's face shimmers in waters green,Mirroring their phthisis and chlorosis,With foreheads sad as is the day's declining,Sad as a dolorous music faints and dies,With heavy-lidded, sick and glassy eyes,In which consumption and despair are pining,And false, affected grace of bodies fadedUpon the sofas where their time they pass,In scented dressing-gowns of taffetas,And in chemises with a dear lace braided.Nothing your brushes knew of painted faces,Nor of indecency, nor of the niceHints of a cunning and perverted viceWhich with its winking eye our art debases,Nor of the pedlar Venuses whose drapingOf curtains of the cushioned chamber hints,Nor corners of a venal flesh that glintsIn nests out of the low-necked dress escaping,Pricking, suggestive themes you knew not, faintingsOf shepherdesses in false pastorals,No, nor voluptuous beds in hollow walls—The pulsing women, masters, of your paintings,In landscapes bright, or waited on by pagesCrimsonly clad in panelled halls with gold,Or in the purple sumptuousness unrolledOf the god-guarded, mellow classic ages,Your women sweated health; they were serenelyCrimson with blood, and white with corpulence;Ruts they did hold in leashed obedience,And led them at their heels with gesture queenly.PEASANTS.Not Greuze's ploughmen made insipid inThe melting colours of his pastorals,So neatly dressed, so rosy, that one laughsTo see the sugared idyll chasteningThe pastels of a Louis Quinze salon,But dirty, gross, and bestial—as they are.Penned round some market town in villages,They know not them who traffic in the next,But hold them enemies to cheat and rogue.Their fatherland? Not one believes in it,Except that it makes soldiers of their sons,To steal their labour for a span of years.What is the fatherland to yokels? TheySee only, in a corner of their brains,Vaguely, the king, magnificent man of gold,In the braided velvet of his purple robes,A sceptre, and gemmed crowns escutcheoningThe panelled walls of gilded palaces,Guarded by sentinels with tasselled swords.This do they know of power. It is enough.And for the rest their heavy feet would marchIn clogs through duty, liberty, and law.In everything by instinct ankylosed,A dirty almanac is all they read;And though they hear the distant cities roaring,So terrified are they by revolutions,That they are riveted to serfdom's chains,Fearing, if they should rear, the iron heel.Along the black roads hollowed out with ruts,Dung-heaps in front and cinder-heaps behind,Stretch with low roofs and naked walls their hutsUnder the buffeting wind and lashing rain.These are their farms. And yonder soars the church,Stained, to the north, with ooze of verdigris,And farther, squared with ditches, lie their fields,Fertile in patches, thanks to fat manure,And to the harrow's unrelenting teeth.There they keep tilling with their obstinate handsThe black glebe mined by moles, and rotten withDetritus, pregnant with the autumn's sperm.With dripping brow they drive the spade in deep,Doubled above the furrows they must sow,Under the hail of March that whips their back.And in the summer, when the ripe rye rocksWith golden glints under the pouring sun,Here, in the fire of long and torrid days,Their restless sickle shaves the vast wheat-field,While from their wrinkled foreheads runs the sweat,Opening their skin from shoulders down to hips;Noon darts its brazier rays upon their heads;So raw the heat is that in meslin fieldsThe too dry ears burst open, and the beasts,Their necks with gadflies riddled, pant in the sun.And let November slow to die arrive,Rolling his hectic rattle through deaf woods,Howling his sobs and ending not his moans,Until his death-knell sounds—still runs their sweat.Always anew preparing future crops,Under a sky spouting from swollen clouds,While the north wind tears big holes in the woods,And sweeps the broken stubble from the fields,So that their bodies soon in ruin fall:Let them be young and comely, broadly built,Winter that chills, summer that calcines them,Makes their limbs loathsome and their lungs short-breathed;Or old, and bearing the down-weighing years,With blear eyes, broken backs, and useless arms,And horror stamped upon their hedgehog face,They stagger under the ruin-loving wind.And when Death opens unto them its doors;Their coffin sliding into the soft earthSeems only to contain a thing twice dead.II.On evenings when through eddying skies the windIs whirling the swarming snow across the fields,Grey-headed farmers sit in reckonings lost,Near lamps from which a thread of smoke ascends.The kitchen is unkempt and slatternly:A string of dirty children by the stoveGorge the spilt remnants of the evening meal;Mangy and bony cats lick dishes clean;Cocks make their beaks ring upon pewter plates;Damp soaks the leprous walls; and on the hearthFour flickering logs are twisting meagre shanksDying with listless tongues of pale red ray;The old men's heads are full of bitter thoughts."For all the seasons unremitting toil,With all hands at the plough a hundred years,The farm has passed from father on to son,And, with good years and bad, remains the same,Jogging along upon the brink of ruin."This is what gnaws and bites them with slow tooth.So like an ulcer hate is in their hearts,Patient and cunning hate with smiling face.Their frank and loud good nature hatches rage;Wickedness glimmers in their icy looks;They stink of the rancorous gall that, age by age,Their sufferings have collected in their souls.Keen are they on the slightest gain, and mean;Since they can not enrich themselves by work,Stinginess makes their hearts hard, their hearts fetid;And black their mind is, set on petty things,And stupid and confounded before great;As they had never raised their eyes untoThe sun, and seen magnificent sunsetsSpread on the evening, like a crimson lake.III.But kermesse is for them a festival,Even for the dirtiest, the stingiest,There go the lads to keep the wenches warm.A huge meal, greased with bacon and hot sauces,Makes their throats salty and enflames their thirst.They roll in the inns, with rounded guts, and heartsAflame, and break the jaws and necks of thoseCome from the neighbouring town, who try, by God!To lick the village girls too greedily,And gorge a plate of beef that is not theirs.Savings are squandered—for the girls must dance,And every chap must treat his mate, untilThe bottles strew the floor in ugly heaps.The proudest of their strength drain huge beer-mugs,Their faces fire-plated, darting fright,Horrid with bloodshot eyes and clammy mouth,In the dark rumbling revels kindle suns.The orgy grows. A stinking urine foamsIn a white froth along the causey chinks.Like slaughtered beasts are reeling topers floored.Some are with short steps steadying their gait;While others solo bawl a song's refrain,Hindered by hiccoughing and vomiting.In brawling groups they ramble through the town,Calling the wenches, catching hold of them,Hugging them, shoving at them,Letting them go, and pulling them back in rut,Throwing them down with flying skirts and legs.In the taverns—where the smoke curls like grey fogAnd climbs to the ceiling, where the gluing sweatOf heated, unwashed bodies, and their smellsDull window-panes and pewter-pots with steam—To see battalions of couples crowdIn growing numbers round the painted tables,It looks as if their crush would smash the walls.More furiously still they go on swilling,Stamping and blustering and raging throughThe cries of the heavy piston and shrill flute.Yokels in blue smocks, old hags in white bonnets,And livid urchins smoking pipes picked up,All of them jostle, jump, and grunt like pigs.And sometimes sudden wedges of new-comersCrush in a corner the quadrille that looks,So unrestrained it is, like a mixed fight.Then try they who can bawl the loudest, whoCan push the tidal wave back to the wall,Though with a knife's thrust he should stab his man.But the band now redoubles its loud din,Covers the quarrelling voices of the lads,And mingles all in leaping lunacy.They calm down, joke, touch glasses, drunk as lords.The women in their turn get hot and drunk,Lust's carnal acid in their blood corrodes,And in these billowing bodies, surging backs,Freed instinct grows to such a heat of rut,That to see lads and lasses wriggling and writhing,With jostling bodies, screams, and blows of fists,Crushing embraces, biting kisses, to see themRolling dead drunk into the corners, wallowingUpon the floor, knocking themselves againstThe panels, sweating, and frothing at the lips,Their two hands, their ten fingers ransackingAnd emptying torn corsages, it seems—Lust is being lit at the black fire of rape.Before the sun burns with red flames, beforeThe white mists fall in swaths, the reeking innsTurn the unsteady revellers out of doors.The kermesse in exhaustion ends, the crowdWend their way homewards to their sleeping farms,Screaming their oaths of parting as they go.The aged farmers too, with hanging arms,Their faces daubed with dregs of wine and beer,Stagger with zigzag feet towards their farmsIslanded in the billowing seas of wheat.FOGS.You melancholy fogs of winter rollYour pestilential sorrow o'er my soul,And swathe my heart with your long winding-sheet,And drench the livid leaves beneath my feet,While far away upon the heaven's bounds,Under the sleeping plain's wet wadding, soundsA tired, lamenting angelus that diesWith faint, frail echoes in the empty skies,So lonely, poor, and timid that a rook,Hid in a hollow archstone's dripping nook,Hearing it sob, awakens and replies,Sickening the woeful hush with ghastly cries,Then suddenly grows silent, in the dreadThat in the belfry tower the bell is dead.ON THE COAST.A blustering wind the scattered vapour crowdsAnd shakes the horizon, where the dawn bursts, byA charge that fills the ashen azure skyWith rearing, galloping, mad, milky clouds.The whole, clear day, day without mist or rain,With leaping manes, gilt flanks, and fiery croups,In a flight of pallid silver and foam, their troopsCareer across the ether's azure plain.And still their ardour grows, until the eve'sBlack gesture cuts the vast of space, and heavesTheir masses towards the squall that landward blares,While the ample sun of June, fallen from Heaven's vault,Writhes, bleeding, in their vehement assault,Like a red stallion in a rut of mares.HOMAGE.I.To heap in them your heavinesses fair,By double, frugal, savoury breasts embossed,The rosy skin by which your arms are glossed,Your belly's curly fleece of reddish hair,My verses I will weave as, at their doorsSeated, old basket-makers curb and twineWhite and brown osiers in a clear design,Copying enamelled tesselated floors,Until your body's gold within them teems;And like a garland I will wear them, spunIn massive blonde heaps on my head, in the sun,Haughtily proud, as a strong man beseems.II.Your rich flesh minds me of the centauresses,Whose arms Paul Rubens rounded in his dyesOf fire beneath a weight of sun-washed tresses,Pointing their breasts to lion-cubs' green eyes.Your blood was theirs, when in the mazy gloaming,Under some star that bit the brazen sky,They heard a stranger in the sea-fog roaming,And hailed some Hercules astray and shy;And when with quivering senses hot for kisses,And belly for the unknown gaping, theirArms they were twisting, calling to mad blissesHuge, swarthy eaters of rut on a body bare.CANTICLES.I.Like lissom lizards drinking the sun's firesOf gold, with great wide eyes and bronze-nailed feet,Crawl towards your body my long, green desires.In the full torrid noon of summer heatI have bedded you in a nook at a field's edge,Where the tanned meslin shoots a shivering wedge.Heat is suspended o'er us like a daïs;The sky prolongs the vast expanse, gold-plated;Afar the Scheldt a dwindling, silver way is;Lascivious, huge, you lie there yet unsated;Like lissom lizards drinking the sun's firesOf gold, crawl back to you my spent desires.II.My love shall be the gorgeous sun that robesWith torrid summer and with idlenessesYour body's naked slopes and hilly globes,Showering its light upon you in caresses,And this new brazier's contact shall be inTongues of an ambient gold that lick your skin.The tragic, rolling red of dawn and eve,And the day's beauty you shall be; with huesOf splendour you a billowy robe shall weave;Your flesh shall be like fabulous statues,Which in the desert sang, and shone like roses,When morning burned their blocks with apotheoses.III.I would not choose the sunflowers that uncloseIn daylight; nor the lily long of stem;Nor roses loving winds to fondle them;No, nor great nenuphars whose pulp morose,And wide, cold eyes, charged with eternity,Upon their imaging pond yawn idle-lippedTheir stirless dreams; nor flowers despotic, whippedBy wrath and wind along a hostile sea,To symbolize you. No, but shivering wetUnder the dawn, with great red calyx leavesMingling as jets of blood are fused in sheaves,A group of garden dahlias closely set,Which, in voluptuous days of autumn, brightWith matter's hot maturity and heats,Like monstrous and vermilion women's teats,Grow stiff beneath the golden hands of light.DYING MEN.Sharp with their ills, and lonely in their dying,The sceptic sick watch by their chamber fire,With haggard eyes, the evening magnifyingThe house-fronts, and the blackening church-spire.The hour is dead where in some never-crowdedCity by time extinguished, desolate,They live immured in walls by mourning shrouded,And hear the monumental hinges grate.Haggard and lone, they gaze at Death unbeaten,Like grim old wolves, the hieratic sick;Life and its days identic they have eaten,Their hate, their fate, diseases clustering thick.But shaken in their cynical assurance,And in their haughtiness and pale disgust,They ask: "Is happiness not in enduranceOf wilful suffering, suffering loved with lust?"Of old they felt their hearts go out to others;Benevolent, they pitied alien griefs;And, like apostles, loved their suffering brothers,And feared their pride, cabined in dead beliefs.But now they think that love is more cementedBy cruelty than kindness, which is vain.What of the few, chance tears they have prevented?How many more have flowed? Decreed is pain.Empty the golden islands are, where lingersIn golden mist Dream in a mantle spunOf purple, skimming foam with idle fingersFrom silent gold rained by a teeming sun.Broken the proud masts, and the waves are churning!Steer to extinguished ports the vessel's prow:No lighthouse stretches its immensely burningArm to the great stars—dead the fires are now.Haggard and lone, they gaze at Death unbeaten,Like grim old wolves, the hieratic sick;Life and its days identic they have eaten,Their hate, their fate, diseases clustering thick.With nails of wood they beat hot foreheads. CagesOf bones for fevers are their bodies. BlindTheir eyes, their lips like withered parchment pages.A bitter sand beneath their teeth they grind.Now in their extinct souls a longing blazesTo sail, and in a new world live again,Whose sunset like a smoking tripod raisesThe God of shade and ebony in its brain;In a far land of tempests raging madly,In lands of fury hoarse and livid dreams,Where man can drown, ferociously and gladly,His soul and all his heart in fiery streams.They are the tragic sick sharp with diseases;Haggard and lone they watch the town fires fade;And pale façades are waiting till it pleasesTheir crumbling bodies have their coffins made.THE ARMS OF EVENING.While the cold night stories its terrace, goredAnd dying evening throws upon the heath,And forest fringed with marshes underneath,The gold of his armour and the flash of his sword,Which wave to wave go floating on, too soonYet to have lost day's flaunting ardent glow,But kissed already by the shadowed, slowLips of the pious, silver-handed moon,The lonely moon remembering the day,Whose brandished weapons made a golden glare,A pale wraith in the paleness of the air,The moon for ever pale and far away!THE MILL.Deep in the evening slowly turns the millAgainst a sky with melancholy pale;It turns and turns, its muddy-coloured sailIs infinitely heavy, tired, and ill.Its arms, complaining arms, in the dawn's pinkRose, rose and fell; and in this o'ercast eve,And deadened nature's silence, still they heaveThemselves aloft, and weary till they sink.Winter's sick day lies on the fields to sleep;The clouds are tired of sombre journeyings;And past the wood that gathered shadow flingsThe ruts towards a dead horizon creep.Around a pale pond huts of beechwood builtDespondently squat near the rusty reeds;A lamp of brass hung from the ceiling bleedsUpon the wall and windows blots of gilt.And in the vast plain, with their ragged eyesOf windows patched, the suffering hovels watchThe worn-out mill the bleak horizon notch,—The tired mill turning, turning till it dies.IN PIOUS MOOD.[1]The winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven.And I uplift my heart, my night-worn heart in turn,O Lord, my heart! to thy pale, infinite Inane,And yet I know that nought the implenishable urnMay plenish, that nought is, whereof this heart dies fain;And I know thee a lie, and with my lips make prayerAnd with my knees; I know thy great, shut hands averse,Thy great eyes closed, to all the clamours of despair;It is I, who dream myself into the universe;Have pity on my wandering wits' entire discord;Needs must I weep my woe towards thy silence, Lord!The winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven.—OSMAN EDWARDS.