Sonnet VI
Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs,The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram,A garret and a glimpse across the roofsOf clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame,The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatheringsWhere I drank deep the bliss of being young,The strife and sweet potential flux of thingsI sought Youth's dream of happiness among!It walks here aureoled with the city-light,Forever through the myriad-featured massFlaunting not far its fugitive embrace, —Heard sometimes in a song across the night,Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pass,And when love yields to love seen face to face.
Sonnet VII
To me, a pilgrim on that journey boundWhose stations Beauty's bright examples are,As of a silken city famed afarOver the sands for wealth and holy ground,Came the report of one—a woman crownedWith all perfection, blemishless and high,As the full moon amid the moonlit sky,With the world's praise and wonder clad around.And I who held this notion of success:To leave no form of Nature's lovelinessUnworshipped, if glad eyes have access there, —Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goalTo find where that sweet shrine is and extolThe hand that triumphed in a work so fair.
Sonnet VIII
Oft as by chance, a little while apartThe pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:Not though high heaven should rend would deeper aweFill me than penetrates my spirit thus,Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet sawSeem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,The fair world glistens, and in after daysThe memory of kind lips and laughing eyesLives in my step and lightens all my face, —So they who found the Earthly ParadiseStill breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.
Sonnet IX
Amid the florid multitude her faceWas like the full moon seen behind the laceOf orchard boughs where clouded blossoms partWhen Spring shines in the world and in the heart.As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floorOf summer woods through flower and foliage pour,So to my being's innermost recessFlooded the light of so much loveliness;She held as in a vase of priceless wareThe wine that over arid ways and bareMy youth was the pathetic thirsting for,And where she moved the veil of Nature grewDiaphanous and that radiance mantled throughWhich, when I see, I tremble and adore.
Sonnet X
A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued,With palms extent for amorous charityAnd eyes incensed with love for all they see,A wonder more to be adored than wooed,On whom the grace of conscious womanhoodAdorning every little thing she doesSits like enchantment, making gloriousA careless pose, a casual attitude;Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wiseHath come the realm of those old fabulous queensWhose storied loves are Art's rich heritage,To keep alive in this our latter ageThat force that moving through sweet Beauty's meansLifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise.
Sonnet XI
* A paraphrase of Petrarca, 'Quando fra l'altre donne . . .'
When among creatures fair of countenanceLove comes enformed in such proud character,So far as other beauty yields to her,So far the breast with fiercer longing pants;I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance,That wed desire to a thing so high,And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and IOf bliss unpaired are made participants;Hence have come ardent thoughts and waking dreamsThat, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup,Leave it no lust for gross imaginings.Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleamsThat while it gazes lifts the spirit upTo that high source from which all beauty springs.
Sonnet XII
Like as a dryad, from her native boleComing at dusk, when the dim stars emerge,To a slow river at whose silent vergeTall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll,Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoalOf the freaked flag and meadow buttercup,Bend till thine image from the pool beam upArched with blue heaven like an aureole.See how adorable in fancy thenLives the fair face it mirrors even so,O thou whose beauty moving among menIs like the wind's way on the woods below,Filling all nature where its pathway liesWith arms that supplicate and trembling sighs.
Sonnet XIII
I fancied, while you stood conversing there,Superb, in every attitude a queen,Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,So moved amid the multitude Faustine.My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,Be charged with sin if ever before yoursA lesser feeling crossed my mind than hisWho owning grandeur marvels and adores.Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory towerI made your image the high pearly sill,And mounting there in many a wistful hour,Burdened with love, I trembled and was still,Seeing discovered from that azure heightRemote, untrod horizons of delight.
Sonnet XIV
It may be for the world of weeds and taresAnd dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's roseThat oft as Fortune from ten thousand showsOne from the train of Love's true courtiersStraightway on him who gazes, unawares,Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.Then on the soul from some ancestral placeFloods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,When, in the light of that serener sphere,It saw ideal beauty face to faceThat through the forms of this our meaner EarthShines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.
Sonnet XV
Above the ruin of God's holy place,Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood,Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food,Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace,I saw exalted in the latter daysHer whom west winds with natal foam bedewed,Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude,Standing with arms out-stretched and flower-like face.And, sick with all those centuries of tearsShed in the penance for factitious woe,Once more I saw the nations at her feet,For Love shone in their eyes, and in their earsCome unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo!The breast your lips abjured is still as sweet.
Sonnet XVI
Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,With single rites the common debt to pay?On some green headland fronting to the EastOur fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.Naked, uplifting in a laden trayNew milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,Not without twigs of clustering apple-sprayTo wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.The morning planet poised above the seaShall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;Dew-drenched, his delicate virginityShall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.
Kyrenaikos
Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles downIn grove and garden to the sapphire sea;Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown;Let music reach and fair heads circle me,Watching blue ocean where the white sails steerFruit-laden forth or with the wares and newsOf merchant cities seek our harbors here,Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse;But here, with love and sleep in her caress,Warm night shall sink and utterly persuadeThe gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, —Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness,In a flowered balcony beside me laid,Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair.
Antinous
Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest,Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees,With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed,Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides.Single he couched there, to his circling flocksPiping at times some happy shepherd's tune,Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks,And arched with the blue Asian afternoon.Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coastRolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town,There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay.Beyond, on fields of azure light embossedHe watched from noon till dewy eve came downThe summer clouds pile up and fade away.
Vivien
Her eyes under their lashes were blue poolsFringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurledClothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.Her robes were gauzes—gold and green and gules,All furry things flocked round her, from her handNibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.Two peacocks watched her where she made her seatBeside a fountain in Broceliande.Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgotErrand and aim, and knights at noontide here,Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.
I Loved . . .
I loved illustrious cities and the crowdsThat eddy through their incandescent nights.I loved remote horizons with far cloudsGirdled, and fringed about with snowy heights.I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious waysOf wearing among hands that covet and pleadThe rose ablossom at the rainbow's baseThat bounds the world's desire and all its need.Nature I worshipped, whose fecundityEmbraces every vision the most fair,Of perfect benediction. From a boyI gloated on existence. Earth to meSeemed all-sufficient and my sojourn thereOne trembling opportunity for joy.
Virginibus Puerisque . . .
I care not that one listen if he livesFor aught but life's romance, nor puts aboveAll life's necessities the need to love,Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives.But sometime on an afternoon in spring,When dandelions dot the fields with gold,And under rustling shade a few weeks old'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing,Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the powerOf being young and winsome have preparedFor life's last privilege that really pays,Make the companion of an idle hourThese relics of the time when I too faredAcross the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.
With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College
As one of some fat tillage dispossessed,Weighing the yield of these four faded years,If any ask what fruit seems loveliest,What lasting gold among the garnered ears, —Ah, then I'll say what hours I had of thine,Therein I reaped Time's richest revenue,Read in thy text the sense of David's line,Through thee achieved the love that Shakespeare knew.Take then his book, laden with mine own loveAs flowers made sweeter by deep-drunken rain,That when years sunder and between us moveWide waters, and less kindly bonds constrain,Thou may'st turn here, dear boy, and reading seeSome part of what thy friend once felt for thee.
Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles
Be my companion under cool arcadesThat frame some drowsy street and dazzling squareBeyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenadesWhite belfries burn in the blue tropic air.Lie near me in dim forests where the croonOf wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows,Or musing late till the midsummer moonBreaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose.Sweetest of those to-day whose pious handsTend the sequestered altar of Romance,Where fewer offerings burn, and fewer kneel,Pour there your passionate beauty on my heart,And, gladdening such solitudes, impartHow sweet the fellowship of those who feel!
Coucy
The rooks aclamor when one enters hereStartle the empty towers far overhead;Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.The courts where revel rang deep grass and mossCover, and tangled vines have overgrownThe gate where banners blazoned with a crossRolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon.Decay consumes it. The old causes fade.And fretting for the contest many a heartWaits their Tyrtaeus to chant on the new.Oh, pass him by who, in this haunted shadeMusing enthralled, has only this much art,To love the things the birds and flowers love too.
Tezcotzinco
Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold,Thou wert sometime the garden of a king.The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing.The flowers are few. It was not so of old.It was not thus when hand in hand there strolledThrough arbors perfumed with undying SpringBare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening,Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold.Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hearsVague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale rayFrom those old, old, far-off, forgotten years?Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held swayHe stands. Their names are strangers to his ears.Even their memory has passed away.
The Old Lowe House, Staten Island
Another prospect pleased the builder's eye,And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes)Here in the sorrowful suburban lanesWhen first these gables rose against the sky.Relic of a romantic taste gone by,This stately monument alone remains,Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panesBlank as the windows of a skull. But I,On evenings when autumnal winds have stirredIn the porch-vines, to this gray oracleHave laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard,As from the hollow of a stranded shell,Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred)Things indistinct, but not insensible.
Oneata
A hilltop sought by every soothing breezeThat loves the melody of murmuring boughs,Cool shades, green acreage, and antique houseFronting the ocean and the dawn; than theseOld monks built never for the spirit's easeCloisters more calm—not Cluny nor Clairvaux;Sweet are the noises from the bay below,And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees.Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train,Beloved Poesy, great joy was mineTo while a listless spell of summer days,Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain,When evenings found me richer by one line,One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase.
On the Cliffs, Newport
Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'erSmooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloomA savor steals from linden trees in bloomAnd gardens ranged at many a palace door.Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pourTheir pale enchantment down the dim coast-line,Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine,Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore.How sweet, to such a place, on such a night,From halls with beauty and festival a-glare,To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf,Yield to some fond, improbable delight,While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the airSighs with the muffled tumult of the surf!
To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War
A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er.The world takes sides: whether for impious aimsWith Tyranny whose bloody toll enflamesA generous people to heroic war;Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore,Whose pleading hands and suppliant distressStill offer hearts that thirst for RighteousnessA glorious cause to strike or perish for.England, which side is thine? Thou hast had sonsWould shrink not from the choice however grim,Were Justice trampled on and Courage downed;Which will they be—cravens or champions?Oh, if a doubt intrude, remember himWhose death made Missolonghi holy ground.
At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America—November, 1912
I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame,Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast,Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpastGlow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame.Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaimNo hero now, no man with whom men sideAs with their hearts' high needs personified?There are will say, One such our lips could name;Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius mostGifted to rule. Against the world's great manLift their low calumny and sneering criesThe Pharisaic multitude, the hostOf piddling slanderers whose little eyesKnow not what greatness is and never can.
The Rendezvous
He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates —Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves.She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Braided with streams of silver incense riseThe antique prayers and ponderous antiphones.'Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies;'Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones.He marks not the monotonous refrain,The priest that serves nor him that celebrates,But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain!She will not come, the woman that he waits.
How like a flower seemed the perfumed placeWhere the sweet flesh lay loveliest to kiss;And her white hands in what delicious ways,With what unfeigned caresses, answered his!Each tender charm intolerable to lose,Each happy scene his fancy recreates.And he calls out her name and spreads his arms . . . No use!She will not come, the woman that he waits.
But the long vespers close. The priest on highRaises the thing that Christ's own flesh enforms;And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows byAnd through the portal's carven entry swarms.Maddened he peers upon each passing faceTill the long drab procession terminates.No princess passes out with proud majestic pace.She has not come, the woman that he waits.
Back in the empty silent church aloneHe walks with aching heart. A white-robed boyPuts out the altar-candles one by one,Even as by inches darkens all his joy.He dreams of the sweet night their lips first met,And groans—and turns to leave—and hesitates . . .Poor stricken heart, he will, he can not fancy yetShe will not come, the woman that he waits.
But in an arch where deepest shadows fallHe sits and studies the old, storied panes,And the calm crucifix that from the wallLooks on a world that quavers and complains.Hopeless, abandoned, desolate, aghast,On modes of violent death he meditates.And the tower-clock tolls five, and he admits at last,She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Through the stained rose the winter daylight dies,And all the tide of anguish unrepressedSwells in his throat and gathers in his eyes;He kneels and bows his head upon his breast,And feigns a prayer to hide his burning tears,While the satanic voice reiterates'Tonight, tomorrow, nay, nor all the impending years,She will not come,' the woman that he waits.
Fond, fervent heart of life's enamored spring,So true, so confident, so passing fair,That thought of Love as some sweet, tender thing,And not as war, red tooth and nail laid bare,How in that hour its innocence was slain,How from that hour our disillusion dates,When first we learned thy sense, ironical refrain,She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Do You Remember Once . . .
Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,The night we wandered off under the third moon's raysAnd, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?
The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous watersMirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought usFar promise of the spring already northward turned.
And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desireMy arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigherTo the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.
There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure,The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes,I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasureLong sought across the seas and back of summer skies.
Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find themLaid in some desert place, alone or where the tidesOf war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind themLeave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides,
Out of the past's remote delirious abyssesShine forth once more as then you shone,—beloved head,Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses,Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.
And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it,My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame.And darkness will come down, still finding in my spiritThe dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.
You loved me on that moonlit night long since.You were my queen and I the charming princeElected from a world of mortal men.You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then,You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west,Like a returning caravel caressedBy breezes that load all the ambient airsWith clinging fragrance of the bales it bearsFrom harbors where the caravans come down,I see over the roof-tops of the townThe new moon back again, but shall not seeThe joy that once it had in store for me,Nor know again the voice upon the stair,The little studio in the candle-glare,And all that makes in word and touch and glanceThe bliss of the first nights of a romanceWhen will to love and be beloved casts outThe want to question or the will to doubt.You loved me once. . . . Under the western seasThe pale moon settles and the Pleiades.The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan —The hour advances, and I sleep alone.*
—
*
—
Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing!If I have erred I plead but one excuse —The jewel were a lesser joy in wearingThat cost a lesser agony to lose.
I had not bid for beautifuller hoursHad I not found the door so near unsealed,Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers,For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.
If I have wept, it was because, forsaken,I felt perhaps more poignantly than someThe blank eternity from which we wakenAnd all the blank eternity to come.
And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender(In the regret with which my lip was curled)Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendorMy transit through the beauty of the world.
The Bayadere
Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's raysMore than her beautiful bright limbs were hidBy the light veils they burned and blushed amid,Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,And there was invitation in her voiceAnd laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,As though above the gates of ParadiseFair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!
O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and redBlent in the patterns of the Orient loom,Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,She floated with delicious arms outspread.There was no pose she took, no move she made,But all the feverous, love-envenomed fleshWrapped round as in the gladiator's meshAnd smote as with his triple-forked blade.
I thought that round her sinuous beauty curledFierce exhalations of hot human love, —Around her beauty valuable aboveThe sunny outspread kingdoms of the world;Flowing as ever like a dancing fireFlowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists,Around her beauty swept like sanguine mistsThe nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire.
Eudaemon
O happiness, I know not what far seas,Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround,That thus in Music's wistful harmoniesAnd concert of sweet soundA rumor steals, from some uncertain shore,Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:
Whether thy beams be pitiful and come,Across the sundering of vanished years,From childhood and the happy fields of home,Like eyes instinct with tearsFelt through green brakes of hedge and apple-boughRound haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;
Or yet if prescience of unrealized loveStartle the breast with each melodious air,And gifts that gentle hands are donors ofStill wait intact somewhere,Furled up all golden in a perfumed placeWithin the folded petals of forthcoming days.
Only forever, in the old unrestOf winds and waters and the varying year,A litany from islands of the blessedAnswers, Not here . . . not here!And over the wide world that wandering cryShall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die.
Broceliande
Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade,Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the hazeof horizons untravelled, unscanned.Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this worldare the moon-marshalled hosts that invadeBroceliande.
Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband,Vanishing where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade,Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland ——
Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed,Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned,Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle,disturbed and affrayed:Broceliande —Broceliande —Broceliande. . . .
Lyonesse
In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say:Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess,And fertile lowlands lengthening far away,In Lyonesse.
Came a term to that land's old favoredness:Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray,Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.
Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay,Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces,The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day,In Lyonesse.
Tithonus
So when the verdure of his life was shed,With all the grace of ripened manlihead,And on his locks, but now so lovable,Old age like desolating winter fell,Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn:Then from his bed the Goddess of the MornSoftly withheld, yet cherished him no lessWith pious works of pitying tenderness;Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes,And hoary height bent down none otherwiseThan burdened willows bend beneath their weightOf snow when winter winds turn temperate, —So bowed with years—when still he lingered on:Then to the daughter of HyperionThis counsel seemed the best: for she, afarBy dove-gray seas under the morning star,Where, on the wide world's uttermost extremes,Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams,High in an orient chamber bade prepareAn everlasting couch, and laid him there,And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he,Deathless by Jove's compassionless decree,Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest.There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed,Still in an aural, visionary hazeFloat round him vanished forms of happier days;Still at his side he fancies to beholdThe rosy, radiant thing beloved of old;And oft, as over dewy meads at morn,Far inland from a sunrise coast is borneThe drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea,Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, —Lisping sweet names of passion overblown,Breaking with dull, persistent undertoneThe breathless silence that forever broodsRound those colossal, lustrous solitudes.Times change. Man's fortune prospers, or it falls.Change harbors not in those eternal hallsAnd tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies.But through his window there the eastern skiesFall palely fair to the dim ocean's end.There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend,The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'erFalter and turn where they can sail no more.There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow —Cedars and silver poplars, row on row,Through whose black boughs on her appointed night,Flooding his chamber with enchanted light,Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere,Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.
An Ode to Antares
At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glideRobe in gray mist, and through the greening hillsThe hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwillsClamor from every copse and orchard-side,I watched the red star rising in the East,And while his fellows of the flaming signFrom prisoning daylight more and more released,Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher,Out of their locks the waters of the LineShaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire,Rose in the splendor of their curving flight,Their dolphin leap across the austral night,From windows southward opening on the seaWhat eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too,Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony.Where, from the garden to the rail above,As though a lover's greeting to his loveShould borrow body and form and hueAnd tower in torrents of floral flame,The crimson bougainvillea grew,What starlit brow uplifted to the sameMajestic regress of the summering sky,What ultimate thing—hushed, holy, throned as highAbove the currents that tarnish and profaneAs silver summits are whose pure reposeNo curious eyes discloseNor any footfalls stain,But round their beauty on azure eveningsOnly the oreads go on gauzy wings,Only the oreads troop with dance and songAnd airy beings in rainbow mists who throngOut of those wonderful worlds that lie afarBetwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.
Like the moon, sanguine in the orient nightShines the red flower in her beautiful hair.Her breasts are distant islands of delightUpon a sea where all is soft and fair.Those robes that make a silken sheathFor each lithe attitude that flows beneath,Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers,Call them far clouds that half emergeBeyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge,Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showersEnchanted isles by mortal foot untrod,And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod;There always from serene horizons blowSoul-easing gales and there all spice-trees growThat Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nestEach hundred years in Araby the Blest.
Star of the South that now through orient mistAt nightfall off Tampico or BelizeGreetest the sailor rising from those seasWhere first in me, a fond romanticist,The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy pilesCast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles —Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst,O'er planted acres at the jungle's rimReeking with orange-flower and tuberose,Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glowsAmong the palms where beauty waits for him;Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North,Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts,Herald of summer-heat, and all the giftsAnd all the joys a summer can bring forth ——
Be thou my star, for I have made my aimTo follow loveliness till autumn-strownSunder the sinews of this flower-like frameAs rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown.Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrateThan reconcilement to a common fateStrip the enchantment from a world so dressedIn hues of high romance. I cannot restWhile aught of beauty in any path untrodSwells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroadUnworshipped of my love. I cannot seeIn Life's profusion and passionate brevityHow hearts enamored of life can strain too muchIn one long tension to hear, to see, to touch.Now on each rustling night-wind from the SouthFar music calls; beyond the harbor mouthEach outbound argosy with sail unfurledMay point the path through this fortuitous worldThat holds the heart from its desire. Away!Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day,Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick setWith bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret.Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here,White roads wind up the dales and disappear,By silvery waters in the plains afarGlimmers the inland city like a star,With gilded gates and sunny spires ablazeAnd burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze,Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems!How like a fair its ample beauty seems!Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise:What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise,Down seething alleys what melodious din,What clamor importuning from every booth!At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked inBuy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!
Translations
Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI
Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and seaSo spread'st thy pinions that the fame of theeHath reached no less into the depths of Hell.So noble were the five I found to dwellTherein—thy sons—whence shame accrues to meAnd no great praise is thine; but if it beThat truth unveil in dreamings before dawn,Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawnWhen Prato shall exult within her wallsTo see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls,Let it come soon, since come it must, for later,Each year would see my grief for thee the greater.
We left; and once more up the craggy sideBy the blind steps of our descent, my guide,Remounting, drew me on. So we pursuedThe rugged path through that steep solitude,Where rocks and splintered fragments strewed the landSo thick, that foot availed not without hand.Grief filled me then, and still great sorrow stirsMy heart as oft as memory recursTo what I saw; that more and more I reinMy natural powers, and curb them lest they strainWhere Virtue guide not,—that if some good star,Or better thing, have made them what they are,That good I may not grudge, nor turn to ill.
As when, reclining on some verdant hill —What season the hot sun least veils his powerThat lightens all, and in that gloaming hourThe fly resigns to the shrill gnat—even then,As rustic, looking down, sees, o'er the glen,Vineyard, or tilth where lies his husbandry,Fireflies innumerable sparkle: so to me,Come where its mighty depth unfolded, straightWith flames no fewer seemed to scintillateThe shades of the eighth pit. And as to himWhose wrongs the bears avenged, dim and more dimElijah's chariot seemed, when to the skiesUprose the heavenly steeds; and still his eyesStrained, following them, till naught remained in viewBut flame, like a thin cloud against the blue:So here, the melancholy gulf within,Wandered these flames, concealing each its sin,Yet each, a fiery integument,Wrapped round a sinner.
On the bridge intent,Gazing I stood, and grasped its flinty side,Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide,Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "BeholdWhere swathed each in his unconsuming fold,The spirits lie confined." Whom answering,"Master," I said, "thy words assurance bringTo that which I already had supposed;And I was fain to ask who lies enclosedIn the embrace of that dividing fire,Which seems to curl above the fabled pyre,Where with his twin-born brother, fiercely hated,Eteocles was laid." He answered, "MatedIn punishment as once in wrath they were,Ulysses there and Diomed incurThe eternal pains; there groaning they deploreThe ambush of the horse, which made the doorFor Rome's imperial seed to issue: thereIn anguish too they wail the fatal snareWhence dead Deidamia still must grieve,Reft of Achilles; likewise they receiveDue penalty for the Palladium.""Master," I said, "if in that martyrdomThe power of human speech may still be theirs,I pray—and think it worth a thousand prayers —That, till this horned flame be come more nigh,We may abide here; for thou seest that IWith great desire incline to it." And he:"Thy prayer deserves great praise; which willinglyI grant; but thou refrain from speaking; leaveThat task to me; for fully I conceiveWhat thing thou wouldst, and it might fall perchanceThat these, being Greeks, would scorn thine utterance."
So when the flame had come where time and placeSeemed not unfitting to my guide with graceTo question, thus he spoke at my desire:"O ye that are two souls within one fire,If in your eyes some merit I have won —Merit, or more or less—for tribute doneWhen in the world I framed my lofty verse:Move not; but fain were we that one rehearseBy what strange fortunes to his death he came."The elder crescent of the antique flameBegan to wave, as in the upper airA flame is tempest-tortured, here and thereTossing its angry height, and in its soundAs human speech it suddenly had found,Rolled forth a voice of thunder, saying: "When,The twelvemonth past in Circe's halls, againI left Gaeta's strand (ere thither cameAeneas, and had given it that name)Not love of son, nor filial reverence,Nor that affection that might recompenseThe weary vigil of Penelope,Could so far quench the hot desire in meTo prove more wonders of the teeming earth, —Of human frailty and of manly worth.In one small bark, and with the faithful bandThat all awards had shared of Fortune's hand,I launched once more upon the open main.Both shores I visited as far as Spain, —Sardinia, and Morocco, and what moreThe midland sea upon its bosom wore.The hour of our lives was growing lateWhen we arrived before that narrow straitWhere Hercules had set his bounds to showThat there Man's foot shall pause, and further none shall go.Borne with the gale past Seville on the right,And on the left now swept by Ceuta's site,'Brothers,' I cried, 'that into the far WestThrough perils numberless are now addressed,In this brief respite that our mortal senseYet hath, shrink not from new experience;But sailing still against the setting sun,Seek we new worlds where Man has never wonBefore us. Ponder your proud destinies:Born were ye not like brutes for swinish ease,But virtue and high knowledge to pursue.'My comrades with such zeal did I imbueBy these brief words, that scarcely could I thenHave turned them from their purpose; so againWe set out poop against the morning sky,And made our oars as wings wherewith to flyInto the Unknown. And ever from the rightOur course deflecting, in the balmy nightAll southern stars we saw, and ours so low,That scarce above the sea-marge it might show.So five revolving periods the soft,Pale light had robbed of Cynthia, and as oftReplenished since our start, when far and dimOver the misty ocean's utmost rim,Rose a great mountain, that for very heightPassed any I had seen. Boundless delightFilled us—alas, and quickly turned to dole:For, springing from our scarce-discovered goal,A whirlwind struck the ship; in circles threeIt whirled us helpless in the eddying sea;High on the fourth the fragile stern uprose,The bow drove down, and, as Another chose,Over our heads we heard the surging billows close."
Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99
Ruggiero, to amaze the British host,And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks,The bridle of his winged courser loosed,And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks;High in the air, even to the topmost banksOf crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse,And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx,And now across the sea he shaped his course,Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores.
There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted,Where the old saint had left the holy cave,Sought for the famous virtue that it boastedTo purge the sinful visitor and save.Thence back returning over land and wave,Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow,The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave,And, looking down while sailing to and fro,He saw Angelica chained to the rock below.
'Twas on the Island of Complaint—well named,For there to that inhospitable shore,A savage people, cruel and untamed,Brought the rich prize of many a hateful war.To feed a monster that bestead them sore,They of fair ladies those that loveliest shone,Of tender maidens they the tenderest bore,And, drowned in tears and making piteous moan,Left for that ravening beast, chained on the rocks alone.
Thither transported by enchanter's art,Angelica from dreams most innocent(As the tale mentioned in another part)Awoke, the victim for that sad event.Beauty so rare, nor birth so excellent,Nor tears that make sweet Beauty lovelier still,Could turn that people from their harsh intent.Alas, what temper is conceived so illBut, Pity moving not, Love's soft enthralment will?
On the cold granite at the ocean's rimThese folk had chained her fast and gone their way;Fresh in the softness of each delicate limbThe pity of their bruising violence lay.Over her beauty, from the eye of dayTo hide its pleading charms, no veil was thrown.Only the fragments of the salt sea-sprayRose from the churning of the waves, wind-blown,To dash upon a whiteness creamier than their own.
Carved out of candid marble without flaw,Or alabaster blemishless and rare,Ruggiero might have fancied what he saw,For statue-like it seemed, and fastened thereBy craft of cunningest artificer;Save in the wistful eyes Ruggiero thoughtA teardrop gleamed, and with the rippling hairThe ocean breezes played as if they soughtIn its loose depths to hide that which her hand might not.
Pity and wonder and awakening loveStrove in the bosom of the Moorish Knight.Down from his soaring in the skies aboveHe urged the tenor of his courser's flight.Fairer with every foot of lessening heightShone the sweet prisoner. With tightening reinsHe drew more nigh, and gently as he might:"O lady, worthy only of the chainsWith which his bounden slaves the God of Love constrains,
"And least for this or any ill designed,Oh, what unnatural and perverted raceCould the sweet flesh with flushing stricture bind,And leave to suffer in this cold embraceThat the warm arms so hunger to replace?"Into the damsel's cheeks such color flewAs by the alchemy of ancient daysIf whitest ivory should take the hueOf coral where it blooms deep in the liquid blue.
Nor yet so tightly drawn the cruel chainsClasped the slim ankles and the wounded hands,But with soft, cringing attitudes in vainShe strove to shield her from that ardent glance.So, clinging to the walls of some old manse,The rose-vine strives to shield her tender flowers,When the rude wind, as autumn weeks advance,Beats on the walls and whirls about the towersAnd spills at every blast her pride in piteous showers.
And first for choking sobs she might not speak,And then, "Alas!" she cried, "ah, woe is me!"And more had said in accents faint and weak,Pleading for succor and sweet liberty.But hark! across the wide ways of the seaRose of a sudden such a fierce affrayThat any but the brave had turned to flee.Ruggiero, turning, looked. To his dismay,Lo, where the monster came to claim his quivering prey!
On a Theme in the Greek Anthology
Thy petals yet are closely curled,Rose of the world,Around their scented, golden core;Nor yet has Summer purpled o'erThy tender clusters that beginTo swell withinThe dewy vine-leaves' early screenOf sheltering green.
O hearts that are Love's helpless prey,While yet you may,Fly, ere the shaft is on the string!The fire that now is smoulderingShall be the conflagration soonWhose paths are strewnWith torment of blanched lips and eyesThat agonize.
After an Epigram of Clement Marot
The lad I was I longer nowNor am nor shall be evermore.Spring's lovely blossoms from my browHave shed their petals on the floor.Thou, Love, hast been my lord, thy shrineAbove all gods' best served by me.Dear Love, could life again be mineHow bettered should that service be!
Last Poems
1916
The Aisne (1914-15)
We first saw fire on the tragic slopesWhere the flood-tide of France's early gain,Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.
The charge her heroes left us, we assumed,What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved,In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.
Winter came down on us. The low clouds, tornIn the stark branches of the riven pines,Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till mornTraced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.
In rain, and fog that on the withered hillFroze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;Or light snows fell that made forlorner stillThe ravaged country and the ruined town;
Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,The winter constellations blazing forth —Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear —Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.
And the lone sentinel would start and soarOn wings of strong emotion as he knewThat kinship with the stars that only WarIs great enough to lift man's spirit to.
And ever down the curving front, aglowWith the pale rockets' intermittent light,He heard, like distant thunder, growl and growThe rumble of far battles in the night, —
Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,Borne from red fields whose martial names have wonThe power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, —Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .
Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,I found for all dear things I forfeitedA recompense I would not now forego.
For that high fellowship was ours thenWith those who, championing another's good,More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,Taught us the dignity of being men.
There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,And on sublimer summits came to learn,After soft things, the terrible and stern,After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;
There where we faced under those frowning heightsThe blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;There where the watchlights on the winter hillsFlickered like balefire through inclement nights;
There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain —Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.
Champagne (1914-15)
In the glad revels, in the happy fetes,When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearledWith the sweet wine of France that concentratesThe sunshine and the beauty of the world,
Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may treadThe undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.
Here, by devoted comrades laid away,Along our lines they slumber where they fell,Beside the crater at the Ferme d'AlgerAnd up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,
And round the city whose cathedral towersThe enemies of Beauty dared profane,And in the mat of multicolored flowersThat clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.
Under the little crosses where they riseThe soldier rests. Now round him undismayedThe cannon thunders, and at night he liesAt peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . .
That other generations might possess —From shame and menace free in years to come —A richer heritage of happiness,He marched to that heroic martyrdom.
Esteeming less the forfeit that he paidThan undishonored that his flag might floatOver the towers of liberty, he madeHis breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.
Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines,Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.
There the grape-pickers at their harvestingShall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,Blessing his memory as they toil and singIn the slant sunshine of October days. . . .
I love to think that if my blood should beSo privileged to sink where his has sunk,I shall not pass from Earth entirely,But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,
And faces that the joys of living fillGlow radiant with laughter and good cheer,In beaming cups some spark of me shall stillBrim toward the lips that once I held so dear.
So shall one coveting no higher planeThan nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,Even from the grave put upward to attainThe dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;
And that strong need that strove unsatisfiedToward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,Not death itself shall utterly divideFrom the beloved shapes it thirsted for.
Alas, how many an adept for whose armsLife held delicious offerings perished here,How many in the prime of all that charms,Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!
Honor them not so much with tears and flowers,But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies,Where in the anguish of atrocious hoursTurned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,
Rather when music on bright gatherings laysIts tender spell, and joy is uppermost,Be mindful of the men they were, and raiseYour glasses to them in one silent toast.
Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well,They asked no tribute lovelier than this —And in the wine that ripened where they fell,Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.
__
Champagne, France, July, 1915.
The Hosts
Purged, with the life they left, of allThat makes life paltry and mean and small,In their new dedication chargedWith something heightened, enriched, enlarged,That lends a light to their lusty browsAnd a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet,These are the men that have taken vows,These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, —These are the men that are moved no moreBy the will to traffic and grasp and storeAnd ring with pleasure and wealth and loveThe circles that self is the center of;But they are moved by the powers that forceThe sea forever to ebb and rise,That hold Arcturus in his course,And marshal at noon in tropic skiesThe clouds that tower on some snow-capped chainAnd drift out over the peopled plain.They are big with the beauty of cosmic things.Mark how their columns surge! They seemTo follow the goddess with outspread wingsThat points toward Glory, the soldier's dream.With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,They scale the summits of the worldAnd fade on the farthest golden heightIn fair horizons full of light.
Comrades in arms there—friend or foe —That trod the perilous, toilsome trailThrough a world of ruin and blood and woeIn the years of the great decision—hail!Friend or foe, it shall matter nought;This only matters, in fine: we fought.For we were young and in love or strifeSought exultation and craved excess:To sound the wildest debauch in lifeWe staked our youth and its loveliness.Let idlers argue the right and wrongAnd weigh what merit our causes had.Putting our faith in being strong —Above the level of good and bad —For us, we battled and burned and killedBecause evolving Nature willed,And it was our pride and boast to beThe instruments of Destiny.There was a stately drama writBy the hand that peopled the earth and airAnd set the stars in the infiniteAnd made night gorgeous and morning fair,And all that had sense to reason knewThat bloody drama must be gone through.Some sat and watched how the action veered —Waited, profited, trembled, cheered —We saw not clearly nor understood,But yielding ourselves to the masterhand,Each in his part as best he could,We played it through as the author planned.
Maktoob
A shell surprised our post one dayAnd killed a comrade at my side.My heart was sick to see the wayHe suffered as he died.
I dug about the place he fell,And found, no bigger than my thumb,A fragment of the splintered shellIn warm aluminum.
I melted it, and made a mould,And poured it in the opening,And worked it, when the cast was cold,Into a shapely ring.
And when my ring was smooth and bright,Holding it on a rounded stick,For seal, I bade a Turco write'Maktoob' in Arabic.
'Maktoob!' "'Tis written!" . . . So they think,These children of the desert, whoFrom its immense expanses drinkSome of its grandeur too.
Within the book of Destiny,Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space,The day when you shall cease to be,The hour, the mode, the place,
Are marked, they say; and you shall notBy taking thought or using witAlter that certain fate one jot,Postpone or conjure it.
Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.If you must perish, know, O man,'Tis an inevitable partOf the predestined plan.
And, seeing that through the ebon doorOnce only you may pass, and meetOf those that have gone through beforeThe mighty, the elite ——
Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fearYou enter, but serene, erect,As you would wish most to appearTo those you most respect.
So die as though your funeralUshered you through the doors that ledInto a stately banquet hallWhere heroes banqueted;
And it shall all depend thereinWhether you come as slave or lord,If they acclaim you as their kinOr spurn you from their board.
So, when the order comes: "Attack!"And the assaulting wave deploys,And the heart trembles to look backOn life and all its joys;
Or in a ditch that they seem nearTo find, and round your shallow troughDrop the big shells that you can hearComing a half mile off;
When, not to hear, some try to talk,And some to clean their guns, or sing,And some dig deeper in the chalk —I look upon my ring:
And nerves relax that were most tense,And Death comes whistling down unheard,As I consider all the senseHeld in that mystic word.
And it brings, quieting like balmMy heart whose flutterings have ceased,The resignation and the calmAnd wisdom of the East.
I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . .
I have a rendezvous with DeathAt some disputed barricade,When Spring comes back with rustling shadeAnd apple-blossoms fill the air —I have a rendezvous with DeathWhen Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my handAnd lead me into his dark landAnd close my eyes and quench my breath —It may be I shall pass him still.I have a rendezvous with DeathOn some scarred slope of battered hill,When Spring comes round again this yearAnd the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deepPillowed in silk and scented down,Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .But I've a rendezvous with DeathAt midnight in some flaming town,When Spring trips north again this year,And I to my pledged word am true,I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Sonnets:
- Sonnet I -
Sidney, in whom the heyday of romanceCame to its precious and most perfect flower,Whether you tourneyed with victorious lanceOr brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower,I give myself some credit for the wayI have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers,Shunned the ideals of our present dayAnd studied those that were esteemed in yours;For, turning from the mob that buys SuccessBy sacrificing all Life's better part,Down the free roads of human happinessI frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart,And lived in strict devotion all alongTo my three idols—Love and Arms and Song.
- Sonnet II -
Not that I always struck the proper meanOf what mankind must give for what they gain,But, when I think of those whom dull routineAnd the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloudRace through blue heaven on its joyful courseSigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,I think I might have done a great deal worse;For I have ever gone untied and free,The stars and my high thoughts for company;Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,I have had the sense of space and amplitude,And love in many places, silver-shoed,Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.
- Sonnet III -
Why should you be astonished that my heart,Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth,Should be revived by you, and stir and startAs by warm April now, reviving Earth?I am the field of undulating grassAnd you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring,And all my lyric being, when you pass,Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring.I asked you nothing and expected less,But, with that deep, impassioned tendernessOf one approaching what he most adores,I only wished to lose a little spaceAll thought of my own life, and in its placeTo live and dream and have my joy in yours.
- Sonnet IV -
To . . . in church
If I was drawn here from a distant place,'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address,But, gazing once more on your winsome face,To worship there Ideal Loveliness.On that pure shrine that has too long ignoredThe gifts that once I brought so frequentlyI lay this votive offering, to recordHow sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me.Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thingBy futile prayers and vapid psalm-singingTo vent in crowded nave and public pew.My creed is simple: that the world is fair,And beauty the best thing to worship there,And I confess it by adoring you.
__ Biarritz, Sunday, March 26, 1916.
- Sonnet V -
Seeing you have not come with me, nor spentThis day's suggestive beauty as we ought,I have gone forth alone and been contentTo make you mistress only of my thought.And I have blessed the fate that was so kindIn my life's agitations to includeThis moment's refuge where my sense can findRefreshment, and my soul beatitude.Oh, be my gentle love a little while!Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile.Watching some night under a wintry sky,Before the charge, or on the bed of pain,These blessed memories shall revive againAnd be a power to cheer and fortify.
- Sonnet VI -
Oh, you are more desirable to meThan all I staked in an impulsive hour,Making my youth the sport of chance, to beBlighted or torn in its most perfect flower;For I think less of what that chance may bringThan how, before returning into fire,To make my dearest memory of the thingThat is but now my ultimate desire.And in old times I should have prayed to herWhose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were,To prosper me and crown with good successMy will to make of you the rose-twined bowlFrom whose inebriating brim my soulShall drink its last of earthly happiness.
- Sonnet VII -
There have been times when I could storm and plead,But you shall never hear me supplicate.These long months that have magnified my needHave made my asking less importunate,For now small favors seem to me so greatThat not the courteous lovers of old timeWere more content to rule themselves and wait,Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme.Nay, be capricious, willful; have no fearTo wound me with unkindness done or said,Lest mutual devotion make too dearMy life that hangs by a so slender thread,And happy love unnerve me before MayFor that stern part that I have yet to play.
- Sonnet VIII -
Oh, love of woman, you are known to beA passion sent to plague the hearts of men;For every one you bring felicityBringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten.I have been oft where human life sold cheapAnd seen men's brains spilled out about their earsAnd yet that never cost me any sleep;I lived untroubled and I shed no tears.Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing;I always knew that nothing it impliedEqualled the agony of sufferingOf him who loves and loves unsatisfied.War is a refuge to a heart like this;Love only tells it what true torture is.