This flower that smells of honey and the sea,White laurustine, seems in my hand to beA white star made of memory long agoLit in the heaven of dear times dead to me.A star out of the skies love used to knowHere held in hand, a stray left yet to showWhat flowers my heart was full of in the daysThat are long since gone down dead memory's flow.Dead memory that revives on doubtful ways,Half hearkening what the buried season saysOut of the world of the unapparent deadWhere the lost Aprils are, and the lost Mays.Flower, once I knew thy star‑white brethren bredNigh where the last of all the land made headAgainst the sea, a keen‑faced promontory,Flowers on salt wind and sprinkled sea‑dews fed.Their hearts were glad of the free place's glory;The wind that sang them all his stormy storyHad talked all winter to the sleepless spray,And as the sea's their hues were hard and hoary.Like things born of the sea and the bright day,They laughed out at the years that could not slay,Live sons and joyous of unquiet hours,And stronger than all storms that range for prey.And in the close indomitable flowersA keen‑edged odour of the sun and showersWas as the smell of the fresh honeycombMade sweet for mouths of none but paramours.Out of the hard green wall of leaves that clombThey showed like windfalls of the snow‑soft foam,Or feathers from the weary south‑wind's wing,Fair as the spray that it came shoreward from.And thou, as white, what word hast thou to bring?If my heart hearken, whereof wilt thou sing?For some sign surely thou too hast to bear,Some word far south was taught thee of the spring.White like a white rose, not like these that wereTaught of the wind's mouth and the winter air,Poor tender thing of soft Italian bloom,Where once thou grewest, what else for me grew there?Born in what spring and on what city's tomb,By whose hand wast thou reached, and plucked for whom?There hangs about thee, could the soul's sense tell,An odour as of love and of love's doom.Of days more sweet than thou wast sweet to smell,Of flower‑soft thoughts that came to flower and fell,Of loves that lived a lily's life and died,Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell.O white birth of the golden mountain‑sideThat for the sun's love makes its bosom wideAt sunrise, and with all its woods and flowersTakes in the morning to its heart of pride!Thou hast a word of that one land of ours,And of the fair town called of the Fair Towers,A word for me of my San Gimignan,A word of April's greenest‑girdled hours.Of the old breached walls whereon the wallflowers ranCalled of Saint Fina, breachless now of man,Though time with soft feet break them stone by stone,Who breaks down hour by hour his own reign's span.Of the old cliff overcome and overgrownThat all that flowerage clothed as flesh clothes bone,That garment of acacias made for May,Whereof here lies one witness overblown.The fair brave trees with all their flowers at play,How king‑like they stood up into the day!How sweet the day was with them, and the night!Such words of message have dead flowers to say.This that the winter and the wind made bright,And this that lived upon Italian light,Before I throw them and these words away,Who knows but I what memories too take flight?
The night last night was strange and shaken:More strange the change of you and me.Once more, for the old love's love forsaken,We went out once more toward the sea.For the old love's love‑sake dead and buried,One last time, one more and no more,We watched the waves set in, the serriedSpears of the tide storming the shore.Hardly we saw the high moon hanging,Heard hardly through the windy nightFar waters ringing, low reefs clanging,Under wan skies and waste white light.With chafe and change of surges chiming,The clashing channels rocked and rangLarge music, wave to wild wave timing,And all the choral water sang.Faint lights fell this way, that way floated,Quick sparks of sea‑fire keen like eyesFrom the rolled surf that flashed, and notedShores and faint cliffs and bays and skies.The ghost of sea that shrank up sighingAt the sand's edge, a short sad breathTrembling to touch the goal, and dyingWith weak heart heaved up once in death—The rustling sand and shingle shakenWith light sweet touches and small sound—These could not move us, could not wakenHearts to look forth, eyes to look round.Silent we went an hour together,Under grey skies by waters white.Our hearts were full of windy weather,Clouds and blown stars and broken light.Full of cold clouds and moonbeams driftedAnd streaming storms and straying fires,Our souls in us were stirred and shiftedBy doubts and dreams and foiled desires.Across, aslant, a scudding sea‑mewSwam, dipped, and dropped, and grazed the sea:And one with me I could not dream you;And one with you I could not be.As the white wing the white wave's fringesTouched and slid over and flashed past—As a pale cloud a pale flame tingesFrom the moon's lowest light and last—As a star feels the sun and falters,Touched to death by diviner eyes—As on the old gods' untended altarsThe old lire of withered worship dies—(Once only, once the shrine relightedSees the last fiery shadow shine,Last shadow of flame and faith benighted,Sees falter and flutter and fail the shrine)So once with fiery breath and flyingYour winged heart touched mine and went,And the swift spirits kissed, and sighing,Sundered and smiled and were content.That only touch, that feeling only,Enough we found, we found too much;For the unlit shrine is hardly lonelyAs one the old fire forgets to touch.Slight as the sea's sight of the sea‑mew,Slight as the sun's sight of the star:Enough to show one must not deem youFor love's sake other than you are.Who snares and tames with fear and dangerA bright beast of a fiery kin,Only to mar, only to change herSleek supple soul and splendid skin?Easy with blows to mar and maim her,Easy with bonds to bind and bruise;What profit, if she yield her tamerThe limbs to mar, the soul to lose?Best leave or take the perfect creature,Take all she is or leave complete;Transmute you will not form or feature,Change feet for wings or wings for feet.Strange eyes, new limbs, can no man give her;Sweet is the sweet thing as it is.No soul she hath, we see, to outlive her;Hath she for that no lips to kiss?So may one read his weird, and reason,And with vain drugs assuage no pain.For each man in his loving seasonFools and is fooled of these in vain.Charms that allay not any longing,Spells that appease not any grief,Time brings us all by handfuls, wrongingAll hurts with nothing of relief.Ah, too soon shot, the fool's bolt misses!What help? the world is full of loves;Night after night of running kisses,Chirp after chirp of changing doves.Should Love disown or disesteem youFor loving one man more or less?You could not tame your light white sea‑mew,Nor I my sleek black pantheress.For a new soul let whoso please pray,We are what life made us, and shall be.For you the jungle and me the sea‑spray,And south for you and north for me.But this one broken foam‑white featherI throw you off the hither wing,Splashed stiff with sea‑scurf and salt weather,This song for sleep to learn and sing—Sing in your ear when, daytime over,You, couched at long length on hot sandWith some sleek sun‑discoloured lover,Wince from his breach as from a brand:Till the acrid hour aches out and ceases,And the sheathed eyeball sleepier swims,The deep flank smoothes its dimpling creases.And passion loosens all the limbs:Till dreams of sharp grey north‑sea weatherFall faint upon your fiery sleep,As on strange sands a strayed bird's featherThe wind may choose to lose or keep.But I, who leave my queen of panthers,As a tired honey‑heavy beeGilt with sweet dust from gold‑grained anthersLeaves the rose‑chalice, what for me?From the ardours of the chaliced centre,From the amorous anthers' golden grime,That scorch and smutch all wings that enter,I fly forth hot from honey‑time.But as to a bee's gilt thighs and wingletsThe flower‑dust with the flower‑smell clings;As a snake's mobile rampant ringletsLeave the sand marked with print of rings;So to my soul in surer fashionYour savage stamp and savour hangs;The print and perfume of old passion,The wild‑beast mark of panther's fangs.
I saw my soul at rest upon a dayAs a bird sleeping in the nest of night,Among soft leaves that give the starlight wayTo touch its wings but not its eyes with light;So that it knew as one in visions may,And knew not as men waking, of delight.This was the measure of my soul's delight;It had no power of joy to fly by day,Nor part in the large lordship of the light;But in a secret moon‑beholden wayHad all its will of dreams and pleasant night,And all the love and life that sleepers may.But such life's triumph as men waking mayIt might not have to feed its faint delightBetween the stars by night and sun by day,Shut up with green leaves and a little light;Because its way was as a lost star's way,A world's not wholly known of day or night.All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of nightMade it all music that such minstrels may,And all they had they gave it of delight;But in the full face of the fire of dayWhat place shall be for any starry light,What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way?Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,Watched as a nursling of the large‑eyed night,And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.For who sleeps once and sees the secret lightWhereby sleep shows the soul a fairer wayBetween the rise and rest of day and night,Shall care no more to fare as all men may,But be his place of pain or of delight,There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.Song, have thy day and take thy fill of lightBefore the night be fallen across thy way;Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.
From the depths of the green garden‑closesWhere the summer in darkness dozesTill autumn pluck from his handAn hour‑glass that holds not a sand;From the maze that a flower‑belt enclosesTo the stones and sea‑grass on the strandHow red was the reign of the rosesOver the rose‑crowned land!The year of the rose is brief;From the first blade blown to the sheaf,From the thin green leaf to the gold,It has time to be sweet and grow old,To triumph and leave not a leafFor witness in winter's sightHow lovers once in the lightWould mix their breath with its breath,And its spirit was quenched not of night,As love is subdued not of death.In the red‑rose land not a mileOf the meadows from stile to stile,Of the valleys from stream to stream,But the air was a long sweet dreamAnd the earth was a sweet wide smileRed‑mouthed of a goddess, returnedFrom the sea which had borne her and burned,That with one swift smile of her mouthLooked full on the north as it yearned,And the north was more than the south.For the north, when winter was long,In his heart had made him a song,And clothed it with wings of desire,And shod it with shoon as of fire,To carry the tale of his wrongTo the south‑west wind by the sea.That none might bear it but heTo the ear of the goddess unknownWho waits till her time shall beTo take the world for a throne.In the earth beneath, and aboveIn the heaven where her name is love,She warms with light from her eyesThe seasons of life as they rise,And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,But the wings that lift her and bearAs an eagle's, and all her hairAs fire by the wind's breath curled,And her passage is song through the air,And her presence is spring through the world.So turned she northward and came,And the white‑thorn land was aflameWith the fires that were shed from her feet,That the north, by her love made sweet,Should be called by a rose‑red name;And a murmur was heard as of doves,And a music beginning of lovesIn the light that the roses made,Such light as the music loves,The music of man with maid.But the days drop one upon one,And a chill soft wind is begunIn the heart of the rose‑red mazeThat weeps for the roseleaf daysAnd the reign of the rose undoneThat ruled so long in the light,And by spirit, and not by sight,Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,Still ruled in the viewless night,As love might rule over death.The time of lovers is brief;From the fair first joy to the griefThat tells when love is grown old,From the warm wild kiss to the cold,From the red to the white‑rose leaf,They have but a season to seemAs roseleaves lost on a streamThat part not and pass not apartAs a spirit from dream to dream,As a sorrow from heart to heart.From the bloom and the gloom that enclosesThe death‑bed of Love where he dozesTill a relic be left not of sandTo the hour‑glass that breaks in his hand;From the change in the grey garden‑closesTo the last stray grass of the strand,A rain and ruin of rosesOver the red‑rose land
ICouldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold,Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold,With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea;Couldst thou not watch with me?IIWhat, not one hour? for star by star the nightFalls, and her thousands world by world take flight;They die, and day survives, and what of thee?Couldst thou not watch with me?IIILo, far in heaven the web of night undone,And on the sudden sea the gradual sun;Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree;Couldst thou not watch with me?IVSunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line,Foam by foam quickens on the brightening brine;Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free;Couldst thou not watch with me?VLast year, a brief while since, an age ago,A whole year past, with bud and bloom and snow,O moon that wast in heaven, what friends were we!Couldst thou not watch with me?VIOld moons, and last year's flowers, and last year's snows!Who now saith to thee, moon? or who saith, rose?O dust and ashes, once found fair to see!Couldst thou not watch with me?VIIO dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell!With me it is not, is it with thee well?O sea‑drift blown from windward back to lee!Couldst thou not watch with me?VIIIThe old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers.The old days are full of dead old loves of ours,Born as a rose, and briefer born than she;Couldst thou not watch with me?IXCould two days live again of that dead year,One would say, seeking us and passing here,Where is she?and one answering,Where is he?Couldst thou not watch with me?XNay, those two lovers are not anywhere;If we were they, none knows us what we were,Nor aught of all their barren grief and glee.Couldst thou not watch with me?XIHalf false, half fair, all feeble, be my verseUpon thee not for blessing nor for curse;For some must stand, and some must fall or flee;Couldst thou not watch with me?XIIAs a new moon above spent stars thou wast;But stars endure after the moon is past.Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three?Couldst thou not watch with me?XIIIWhat of the night? The night is full, the tideStorms inland, the most ancient rocks divide;Yet some endure, and bow nor head nor knee;Couldst thou not watch with me?XIVSince thou art not as these are, go thy ways;Thou hast no part in all my nights and days.Lie still, sleep on, be glad—as such things be;Thou couldst not watch with me.
There is no woman living that draws breathSo sad as I, though all things sadden her.There is not one upon life's weariest wayWho is weary as I am weary of all but death.Toward whom I look as looks the sunflowerAll day with all his whole soul toward the sun;While in the sun's sight I make moan all day,And all night on my sleepless maiden bedWeep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,That thou or he would take me to the dead,And know not what thing evil I have doneThat life should lay such heavy hand on me.Alas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?What honour shall thou have to quench my breath,Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?My heart is harmless as my life's first day:Seek out some false fair woman, and plague herTill her tears even as my tears fill her bed:I am the least flower in thy flowery way,But till my time be come that I be deadLet me live out my flower‑time in the sunThough my leaves shut before the sunflower.O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower!Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me,That live down here in shade, out of the sun,Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death?Shall he that feeds his heart full of the dayCare to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath?Because she loves him shall my lord love herWho is as a worm in my lord's kingly way?I shall not see him or know him alive or dead;But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to theeThat in brief while my brief life‑days be done,And the worm quickly make my marriage‑bed.For underground there is no sleepless bed:But here since I beheld my sunflowerThese eyes have slept not, seeing all night and dayHis sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun.Wherefore if anywhere be any death,I would fain find and fold him fast to me,That I may sleep with the world's eldest dead,With her that died seven centuries since, and herThat went last night down the night‑wandering way.For this is sleep indeed, when labour is done,Without love, without dreams, and without breath,And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.Ah, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?Wilt thou not be as now about my bedThere underground as here before the sun?Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,Thy moving vision without form or breath?I read long since the bitter tale of herWho read the tale of Launcelot on a day,And died, and had no quiet after death,But was moved ever along a weary way,Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me,O my king, O my lordly sunflower,Would God to me too such a thing were done!But if such sweet and bitter things be done,Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.For in that living world without a sunThy vision will lay hold upon me dead,And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.Yet if being wroth God had such pity on her,Who was a sinner and foolish in her day,That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,Why should he not in some wise pity me?So if I sleep not in my soft strait bedI may look up and see my sunflowerAs he the sun, in some divine strange way.O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what wayThis sore sweet evil unto us was done.For on a holy and a heavy dayI was arisen out of my still small bedTo see the knights tilt, and one said to me"The king," and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath,And if the girl spake more, I heard not her,For only I saw what I shall see when dead,A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,That shone against the sunlight like the sun,And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.Howbeit I shall not die an evil deathWho have loved in such a sad and sinless way,That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.So when mine eyes are shut against the sun,O my soul's sun, O the world's sunflower,Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead.And dying I pray with all my low last breathThat thy whole life may be as was that day,That feast‑day that made trothplight death and me,Giving the world light of thy great deeds done;And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,That God be good as God hath been to her.That all things goodly and glad remain with her,All things that make glad life and goodly death;That as a bee sucks from a sunflowerHoney, when summer draws delighted breath,Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way,And love make life a fruitful marriage‑bedWhere day may bring forth fruits of joy to dayAnd night to night till days and nights be dead.And as she gives light of her love to thee,Give thou to her the old glory of days long done;And either give some heat of light to me,To warm me where I sleep without the sun.O sunflower made drunken with the sun,O knight whose lady's heart draws thine to her,Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.There is a weed lives out of the sun's way,Hid from the heat deep in the meadow's bed,That swoons and whitens at the wind's least breath,A flower star‑shaped, that all a summer dayWill gaze her soul out on the sunflowerFor very love till twilight finds her dead.But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,Knows not when all her loving life is done;And so much knows my lord the king of me.Aye, all day long he has no eye for me;With golden eye following the golden sunFrom rose‑coloured to purple‑pillowed bed,From birthplace to the flame‑lit place of death,From eastern end to western of his way.So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,So the white star‑flower turns and yearns to thee,The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,Trod underfoot if any pass by her,Pale, without colour of summer or summer breathIn the shrunk shuddering petals, that have doneNo work but love, and die before the day.But thou, to‑day, to‑morrow, and every day,Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me.Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sunShall drop its golden seed in the world's way,That all men thereof nourished shall praise theeFor grain and flower and fruit of works well done;Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,Bring forth such growth of the world's garden‑bedAs like the sun shall outlive age and death.And yet I would thine heart had heed of herWho loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's deathDown the sun's way after the flying sun,For love of her that gave thee wings and breath,Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.
ISon of the lightning and the light that glowsBeyond the lightning's or the morning's light,Soul splendid with all‑righteous love of right,In whose keen fire all hopes and fears and woesWere clean consumed, and from their ashes roseTransfigured, and intolerable to sightSave of purged eyes whose lids had cast off night,In love's and wisdom's likeness when they close,Embracing, and between them truth stands fast,Embraced of either; thou whose feet were setOn English earth while this was England yet,Our friend that art, our Sidney's friend that wast,Heart hardier found and higher than all men's past,Shall we not praise thee though thine own forget?IILift up thy light on us and on thine own,O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rodTo scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God,A staff for man's free thought to walk alone,A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throneOn ways untrodden where his fathers trodEre earth's heart withered at a high priest's nodAnd all men's mouths that made not prayer made moan.From bonds and torments and the ravening flameSurely thy spirit of sense rose up to greetLucretius, where such only spirits meet,And walk with him apart till Shelley cameTo make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweetAnd mix with yours a third incorporate name.
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres,Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.Les Fleurs du Mal.
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres,Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.Les Fleurs du Mal.
IShall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?Or quiet sea‑flower moulded by the sea,Or simplest growth of meadow‑sweet or sorrel,Such as the summer‑sleepy Dryads weave,Waked up by snow‑soft sudden rains at eve?Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,Half‑faded fiery blossoms, pale with heatAnd full of bitter summer, but more sweetTo thee than gleanings of a northern shoreTrod by no tropic feet?IIFor always thee the fervid languid gloriesAllured of heavier suns in mightier skies;Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighsWhere the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,The barren kiss of piteous wave to waveThat knows not where is that Leucadian graveWhich hides too deep the supreme head of song.Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bearHither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,Blind gods that cannot spare.IIIThou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:Fierce loves, and lovely leaf‑buds poisonous,Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none otherBlowing by night in some unbreathed‑in clime;The hidden harvest of luxurious time,Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleepMake the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,Seeing as men sow men reap.IVO sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,That were athirst for sleep and no more lifeAnd no more love, for peace and no more strife!Now the dim gods of death have in their keepingSpirit and body and all the springs of song,Is it well now where love can do no wrong,Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fangBehind the unopening closure of her lips?Is it not well where soul from body slipsAnd flesh from bone divides without a pangAs dew from flower‑bell drips?VIt is enough; the end and the beginningAre one thing to thee, who art past the end.O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,No triumph and no labour and no lust,Only dead yew‑leaves and a little dust.O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,Whereto the day is dumb, nor any nightWith obscure finger silences your sight,Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,Sleep, and have sleep for light.VINow all strange hours and all strange loves are over,Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,Hast thou found place at the great knees and feetOf some pale Titan‑woman like a lover,Such as thy vision here solicited,Under the shadow of her fair vast head,The deep division of prodigious breasts,The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,The weight of awful tresses that still keepThe savour and shade of old‑world pine‑forestsWhere the wet hill‑winds weep?VIIHast thou found any likeness for thy vision?O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?What of despair, of rapture, of derision,What of life is there, what of ill or good?Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood?Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,The faint fields quicken any terrene root,In low lands where the sun and moon are muteAnd all the stars keep silence? Are there flowersAt all, or any fruit?VIIIAlas, but though my flying song flies after,O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleetSinging, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,Some dim derision of mysterious laughterFrom the blind tongueless warders of the dead,Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head,Some little sound of unregarded tearsWept by effaced unprofitable eyes,And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs—These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,Sees only such things rise.IXThou art far too far for wings of words to follow,Far too far off for thought or any prayer.What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,The low light fails us in elusive skies,Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blindAre still the eluded eyes.XNot thee, O never thee, in all time's changes,Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scrollI lay my hand on, and not death estrangesMy spirit from communion of thy song—These memories and these melodies that throngVeiled porches of a Muse funereal—These I salute, these touch, these clasp and foldAs though a hand were in my hand to hold,Or through mine ears a mourning musicalOf many mourners rolled.XII among these, I also, in such stationAs when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods,And offering to the dead made, and their gods,The old mourners had, standing to make libation,I stand, and to the gods and to the deadDo reverence without prayer or praise, and shedOffering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear,And what I may of fruits in this chilled air,And lay, Orestes‑like, across the tombA curl of severed hair.XIIBut by no hand nor any treason stricken,Not like the low‑lying head of Him, the King,The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,Thou liest, and on this dust no tears could quickenThere fall no tears like theirs that all men hearFall tear by sweet imperishable tearDown the opening leaves of holy poets' pages.Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;But bending us‑ward with memorial urnsThe most high Muses that fulfil all agesWeep, and our God's heart yearns.XIIIFor, sparing of his sacred strength, not oftenAmong us darkling here the lord of lightMakes manifest his music and his mightIn hearts that open and in lips that softenWith the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine,And nourished them indeed with bitter bread;Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came,The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flameWas lighted, and thine hungering heart he fedWho feeds our hearts with fame.XIVTherefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting,God of all suns and songs, he too bends downTo mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,And hallows with strange tears and alien sighsThine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,And over thine irrevocable headSheds light from the under skies.XVAnd one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,And stains with tears her changing bosom chill:That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,That thing transformed which was the Cytherean,With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divineLong since, and face no more called Erycine;A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.Thee also with fair flesh and singing spellDid she, a sad and second prey, compelInto the footless places once more trod,And shadows hot from hell.XVIAnd now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,No choral salutation lure to lightA spirit sick with perfume and sweet nightAnd love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.There is no help for these things; none to mendAnd none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,Will make death clear or make life durable.Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vineAnd with wild notes about this dust of thineAt least I fill the place where white dreams dwellAnd wreathe an unseen shrine.XVIISleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.Out of the mystic and the mournful gardenWhere all day through thine hands in barren braidWove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey,Sweet‑smelling, pale with poison, sanguine‑hearted,Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,Shall death not bring us all as thee one dayAmong the days departed?XVIIIFor thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,With sadder than the Niobean womb,And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done;There lies not any troublous thing before,Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,All waters as the shore.
Death, what hast thou to do with me? So saithLove, with eyes set against the face of Death;What have I done, O thou strong Death, to thee,That mine own lips should wither from thy breath?Though thou be blind as fire or as the sea,Why should thy waves and storms make war on me?Is it for hate thou hast to find me fair,Or for desire to kiss, if it might be,My very mouth of song, and kill me there?So with keen rains vexing his crownless hair.With bright feet bruised from no delightful way,Through darkness and the disenchanted air,Lost Love went weeping half a winter's day.And the armèd wind that smote him seemed to say,How shall the dew live when the dawn is fled,Or wherefore should the Mayflower outlast May?Then Death took Love by the right hand and said,Smiling: Come now and look upon thy dead.But Love cast down the glories of his eyes,And bowed down like a flower his flowerless head.And Death spake, saying: What ails thee in such wise,Being god, to shut thy sight up from the skies?If thou canst see not, hast thou ears to hear?Or is thy soul too as a leaf that dies?Even as he spake with fleshless lips of fear,But soft as sleep sings in a tired man's ear,Behold, the winter was not, and its mightFell, and fruits broke forth of the barren year.And upon earth was largess of great light,And moving music winged for worldwide flight,And shapes and sounds of gods beheld and heard,And day's foot set upon the neck of night.And with such song the hollow ways were stirredAs of a god's heart hidden in a bird,Or as the whole soul of the sun in springShould find full utterance in one flower‑soft word,And all the season should break forth and singFrom one flower's lips, in one rose triumphing;Such breath and light of song as of a flameMade ears and spirits of them that heard it ring.And Love beholding knew not for the sameThe shape that led him, nor in face nor name,For he was bright and great of thews and fair,And in Love's eyes he was not Death, but Fame.Not that grey ghost whose life is empty and bareAnd his limbs moulded out of mortal air,A cloud of change that shifts into a showerAnd dies and leaves no light for time to wear:But a god clothed with his own joy and power,A god re‑risen out of his mortal hourImmortal, king and lord of time and space,With eyes that look on them as from a tower.And where he stood the pale sepulchral placeBloomed, as new life might in a bloodless face,And where men sorrowing came to seek a tombWith funeral flowers and tears for grief and grace,They saw with light as of a world in bloomThe portal of the House of Fame illumeThe ways of life wherein we toiling tread,And watched the darkness as a brand consume.And through the gates where rule the deathless deadThe sound of a new singer's soul was shedThat sang among his kinsfolk, and a beamShot from the star on a new ruler's head.A new star lighting the Lethean stream,A new song mixed into the song supremeMade of all souls of singers and their might,That makes of life and time and death a dream.Thy star, thy song, O soul that in our sightWast as a sun that made for man's delightFlowers and all fruits in season, being so nearThe sun‑god's face, our god that gives us light.To him of all gods that we love or fearThou amongst all men by thy name wast dear,Dear to the god that gives us spirit of songTo bind and burn all hearts of men that hear.The god that makes men's words too sweet and strongFor life or time or death to do them wrong,Who sealed with his thy spirit for a signAnd filled it with his breath thy whole life long.Who made thy moist lips fiery with new winePressed from the grapes of song, the sovereign vine,And with all love of all things loveliestGave thy soul power to make them more divine.That thou might'st breathe upon the breathless restOf marble, till the brows and lips and breastFelt fall from off them as a cancelled curseThat speechless sleep wherewith they lived opprest.Who gave thee strength and heat of spirit to pierceAll clouds of form and colour that disperse,And leave the spirit of beauty to remouldIn types of clean chryselephantine verse.Who gave thee words more golden than fine goldTo carve in shapes more glorious than of old,And build thy songs up in the sight of timeAs statues set in godhead manifold:In sight and scorn of temporal change and climeThat meet the sun re‑risen with refluent rhyme—As god to god might answer face to face—From lips whereon the morning strikes sublime.Dear to the god, our god who gave thee placeAmong the chosen of days, the royal race,The lords of light, whose eyes of old and earsSaw even on earth and heard him for a space.There are the souls of those once mortal yearsThat wrought with fire of joy and light of tearsIn words divine as deeds that grew thereofSuch music as he swoons with love who hears.There are the lives that lighten from aboveOur under lives, the spheral souls that moveThrough the ancient heaven of song‑illumined airWhence we that hear them singing die with love.There all the crowned Hellenic heads, and thereThe old gods who made men godlike as they were,The lyric lips wherefrom all songs take fire,Live eyes, and light of Apollonian hair.There, round the sovereign passion of that lyreWhich the stars hear and tremble with desire,The ninefold light Pierian is made oneThat here we see divided, and aspire,Seeing, after this or that crown to be won;But where they hear the singing of the sun,All form, all sound, all colour, and all thoughtAre as one body and soul in unison.There the song sung shines as a picture wrought,The painted mouths sing that on earth say nought,The carven limbs have sense of blood and growthAnd large‑eyed life that seeks nor lacks not aught.There all the music of thy living mouthLives, and all loves wrought of thine hand in youthAnd bound about the breasts and brows with goldAnd coloured pale or dusk from north or south.Fair living things made to thy will of old,Born of thy lips, no births of mortal mould,That in the world of song about thee waitWhere thought and truth are one and manifold.Within the graven lintels of the gateThat here divides our vision and our fate,The dreams we walk in and the truths of sleep,All sense and spirit have life inseparate.There what one thinks, is his to grasp and keep;There are no dreams, but very joys to reap,No foiled desires that die before delight,No fears to see across our joys and weep.There hast thou all thy will of thought and sight,All hope for harvest, and all heaven for flight;The sunrise of whose golden‑mouthed glad headTo paler songless ghosts was heat and light.Here where the sunset of our year is redMen think of thee as of the summer dead,Gone forth before the snows, before thy day,With unshod feet, with brows unchapleted.Couldst thou not wait till age had wound, they say,Round those wreathed brows his soft white blossoms? Nay,Why shouldst thou vex thy soul with this harsh air,Thy bright‑winged soul, once free to take its way?Nor for men's reverence hadst thou need to wearThe holy flower of grey time‑hallowed hair;Nor were it fit that aught of thee grew old,Fair lover all thy days of all things fair.And hear we not thy words of molten goldSinging? or is their light and heat acoldWhereat men warmed their spirits? Nay, for allThese yet are with us, ours to hear and hold.The lovely laughter, the clear tears, the callOf love to love on ways where shadows fall,Through doors of dim division and disguise,And music made of doubts unmusical;The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes,1And filled death's lips with fiery words and sighs,And half asleep let feed from veins of hisHer close red warm snake's mouth, Egyptian‑wise:And that great night of love more strange than this,2When she that made the whole world's bale and blissMade king of all the world's desire a slave,And killed him in mid kingdom with a kiss;Veiled loves that shifted shapes and shafts, and gave,3Laughing, strange gifts to hands that durst not crave,Flowers double‑blossomed, fruits of scent and hueSweet as the bride‑bed, stranger than the grave;All joys and wonders of old lives and newThat ever in love's shine or shadow grew,And all the grief whereof he dreams and grieves,And all sweet roots fed on his light and dew;All these through thee our spirit of sense perceives,As threads in the unseen woof thy music weaves,Birds caught and snared that fill our ears with thee,Bay‑blossoms in thy wreath of brow‑bound leaves.Mixed with the masque of death's old comedyThough thou too pass, have here our flowers, that weFor all the flowers thou gav'st upon thee shed,And pass not crownless to Persephone.Blue lotus‑blooms and white and rosy‑redWe wind with poppies for thy silent head,And on this margin of the sundering seaLeave thy sweet light to rise upon the dead.
1La Morte Amoureuse.2Une Nuit de Cléopâtre.3Mademoiselle de Maupin.