Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses,Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea,Alone can flush the exalted consciousnessWith shafts of sensible divinity —Light of the World, essential loveliness:Him whom the Muse hath made thy votaryNot from her paths and gentle preceptureShall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spellThat taught him first to feel thy secret charmsAnd o'er the earth, obedient to their lure,Their sweet surprise and endless miracle,To follow ever with insatiate arms.On summer afternoons,When from the blue horizon to the shore,Casting faint silver pathways like the moon'sAcross the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor,Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlementsDrawn to the crest of some bleak eminence,When autumn twilight fades on the sere hillAnd autumn winds are still;To watch the East for some emerging sign,Wintry Capella or the PleiadesOr that great huntsman with the golden gear;Ravished in hours like theseBefore thy universal shrineTo feel the invoked presence hovering near,He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hoursSpent on the roads of wandering solitudeHave set their sober impress on his brow,And he, with harmonies of wind and woodAnd torrent and the tread of mountain showers,Has mingled many a dedicative vowThat holds him, till thy last delight be known,Bound in thy service and in thine alone.
I, too, among the visionary throngWho choose to follow where thy pathway leads,Have sold my patrimony for a song,And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds.From that first image of beloved walls,Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees,Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls,Tingeing a child's fantastic reveriesWith radiance so fair it seems to beOf heavens just lost the lingering evidenceFrom that first dawn of roseate infancy,So long beneath thy tender influenceMy breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief secondThe veil through which those infinite offers beckonedHas seemed to tremble, letting throughSome swift intolerable viewOf vistas past the sense of mortal seeing,So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might seeIn ferny dells the rustic deity,I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being,Flooded an instant with unwonted light,Quivered with cosmic passion; whether thenOn woody pass or glistening mountain-heightI walked in fellowship with winds and clouds,Whether in cities and the throngs of men,A curious saunterer through friendly crowds,Enamored of the glance in passing eyes,Unuttered salutations, mute replies, —In every character where light of thineHas shed on earthly things the hue of things divineI sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking,If ever transport crossed my brow bespeakingSuch fire as a prophetic heart might feelWhere simple worship blends in fervent zeal,It was the faith that only love of theeNeeded in human hearts for Earth to seeSurpassed the vision poets have held dearOf joy diffused in most communion here;That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed,Lover of thee in all thy rays informed,Needed no difficulter disciplineTo seek his right to happiness withinThan, sensible of Nature's loveliness,To yield him to the generous impulsesBy such a sentiment evoked. The thought,Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought,That thou unto thy worshipper might beAn all-sufficient law, abode with me,Importing something more than unsubstantial dreamsTo vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams.
Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot.Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves.How swift were disillusion, were it notThat thou art steadfast where all else deceives!Solace and Inspiration, Power divineThat by some mystic sympathy of thine,When least it waits and most hath need of thee,Can startle the dull spirit suddenlyWith grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, —Long as the light of fulgent evenings,When from warm showers the pearly shades disbandAnd sunset opens o'er the humid land,Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, —Long as pale mist and opalescent dyesHung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest,Fields of remote enchantment can suggestSo sweet to wander in it matters nought,They hold no place but in impassioned thought,Long as one draught from a clear sky may beA scented luxury;Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire,Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyreAeolian for thine every breath to stir;Oft when her full-blown periods recur,To see the birth of day's transparent moonFar from cramped walls may fading afternoonFind me expectant on some rising lawn;Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn,Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs,Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse,Afoot when the great sun in amber floodsPours horizontal through the steaming woodsAnd windless fumes from early chimneys startAnd many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heartEager for aught the coming day affordIn hills untopped and valleys unexplored.Give me the white road into the world's ends,Lover of roadside hazard, roadside friends,Loiterer oft by upland farms to gazeOn ample prospects, lost in glimmering hazeAt noon, or where down odorous dales twilit,Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream,Over the plain where blue seas border itThe torrid coast-towns gleam.
I have fared too far to turn back now; my breastBurns with the lust for splendors unrevealed,Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west,Pallid horizons, winds that valley and fieldLaden with joy, be ye my refuge still!What though distress and poverty assail!Though other voices chide, yours never will.The grace of a blue sky can never fail.Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet,My youth with visions of such glory nursed,Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feetOn any venture set, but 'twas the thirstFor Beauty willed them, yea, whatever beThe faults I wanted wings to rise above;I am cheered yet to think how steadfastlyI have been loyal to the love of Love!
The Deserted Garden
I know a village in a far-off landWhere from a sunny, mountain-girdled plainWith tinted walls a space on either handAnd fed by many an olive-darkened laneThe high-road mounts, and thence a silver bandThrough vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,Winds off to that dim corner of the skiesWhere behind sunset hills a stately city lies.
Here, among trees whose overhanging shadeStrews petals on the little droves below,Pattering townward in the morning weighedWith greens from many an upland garden-row,Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayedIts scalloped edge, and passers to and froHeard never from beyond its crumbling heightSweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.
But here where little lizards bask and blinkThe tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run,At whose red bells the humming bird to drinkStops oft before his garden feast is done;And rose-geraniums, with that tender pinkThat cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,Have covered part of this old wall, entwinedWith fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.
And crowning other parts the wild white roseRivals the honey-suckle with the bees.Above the old abandoned orchard showsAnd all within beneath the dense-set trees,Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows,That settled in its wavy depth one seesGrass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between,Down fading avenues of implicated green;
Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous nightWith stars and pearly nebula o'erlay;Azalea-boughs half rosy and half whiteShine through the green and clustering apple-spray,Such as the fairy-queen before her knightWaved in old story, luring him awayWhere round lost isles Hesperian billows breakOr towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;
And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide,And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet,Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied,Sometime on pathway borders neatly set,Now blossom through the brake on either side,Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette,With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees,Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,
That sprung like Hermes from his natal caveIn some blue rampart of the curving West,Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave,Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest,Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples paveIts placid floor; at length a long-loved guest,He steals across this plot of pleasant ground,Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.
Here many a day right gladly have I sped,Content amid the wavy plumes to lie,And through the woven branches overheadWatch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by,And soaring birds make their dissolving bedFar in the azure depths of summer sky,Or nearer that small huntsman of the air,The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;
Pillowed at ease to hear the merry tuneOf mating warblers in the boughs aboveAnd shrill cicadas whom the hottest noonKeeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dovePours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croonThat like the voice of visionary loveOft have I risen to seek through this green maze(Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);
And, parting tangled bushes as I passedDown beechen alleys beautiful and dim,Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at lastMy feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim,And snowy callas' velvet cups are massedAround the mossy, fern-encircled brim.Here, then, that magic summoning would cease,Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.
And here where the blanched lilies of the valeAnd violets and yellow star-flowers teem,And pink and purple hyacinths exhaleTheir heavy fume, once more to drowse and dreamMy head would sink, from many an olden taleDrawing imagination's fervid theme,Or haply peopling this enchanting spotOnly with fair creations of fantastic thought.
For oft I think, in years long since gone by,That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle handsStored all this bowery bliss to beautifyThe paradise of some unsung romance;Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye,'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance,Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and shareTheir simple loveliness with the enamored air.
Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers deckedThe altars of First Love were these green ways, —These lawns and verdurous brakes forever fleckedWith the warm sunshine of midsummer days;Oft where the long straight allies intersectAnd marble seats surround the open space,Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand,Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.
When twilight deepened, in the gathering shadeBeneath that old titanic cypress row,Whose sombre vault and towering colonnadeDwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below,Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed,Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glowGrew less and patterning the garden floorFaint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.
And the strange tempest that a touch impartsThrough the mid fibre of the molten frame,When the sweet flesh in early youth assertsIts heyday verve and little hints enflame,Disturbed them as they walked; from their full heartsWelled the soft word, and many a tender nameStrove on their lips as breast to breast they strainedAnd the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.
Love's soul that is the depth of starry skiesSet in the splendor of one upturned faceTo beam adorably through half-closed eyes;Love's body where the breadth of summer daysAnd all the beauty earth and air compriseCome to the compass of an arm's embrace,To burn a moment on impassioned lipsAnd yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,
They knew; and here where morning-glories clingRound carven forms of carefullest artifice,They made a bower where every outward thingShould comment on the cause of their own bliss;With flowers of liveliest hue encompassingThat flower that the beloved body is —That rose that for the banquet of Love's beeHas budded all the aeons of past eternity.
But their choice seat was where the garden wall,Crowning a little summit, far and near,Looks over tufted treetops onto allThe pleasant outer country; rising hereFrom rustling foliage where cuckoos callOn summer evenings, stands a belvedere,Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrunWith flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.
Still round the turrets of this antique towerThe bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown,Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower,Wreathing the lower surface further down,Hide the old plaster in a very showerOf motley blossoms like a broidered gown.Outside, ascending from the garden grove,A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.
And whoso mounts by this dismantled stairFinds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed,Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquareRinged all about with a twofold arcade.Backward dense branches intercept the glareOf afternoon with eucalyptus shade;Eastward the level valley-plains expand,Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,Frequent with hamlet, grove, and lucent lakeWhere the blue hills' inverted contours lie;Far to the east where billowy mountains breakIn surf of snow against a sapphire sky,Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;
And over plain and far sierra spreadThe fulgent rays of fading afternoon,Showing each utmost peak and watershedAll clarified, each tassel and festoonOf floating cloud embroidered overhead,Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn,Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and freeIn peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.
Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair;Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strongSweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare,Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song,Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger thereFar from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along,With purple sail and steered by seraph handsTo isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.
And out of this old house a flowery fane,A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome,They built, and furnished it with gold and grain,And bade all spirits of beauty hither come,And winged Love to enter with his trainAnd bless their pillow, and in this his homeMake them his priests as Hero was of yoreIn her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.
Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought,Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste,Polychrome chests and cabinets inwroughtWith pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placedTo light the lounger on some low divan,Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.
And there was spread, upon the ample floors,Work of the Levantine's laborious loom,Such as by Euxine or Ionian shoresCarpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom.Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery storesBlushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom,And little birds through wicker doors left wideFlew in to trill a space from the green world outside.
And there was many a dainty attitude,Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed,Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stoodFain of the bath's delight, yet still afraidLest aught in that palatial solitudeLurked of most menace to a helpless maid.Therefore forever faltering she stands,Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.
Close by upon a beryl column, cladIn the fresh flower of adolescent grace,They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad,The nude Antinous. That gentle face,Forever beautiful, forever sad,Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze,Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smileAt revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.
And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more,Clustering their rosy bridal bed around,Whose scented breadth a silken fabric woreBroidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground,Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus boreOr Venus' bed in her enchanted mound,While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes,All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.
'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of,Thither with one fair spirit to retire,Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with LoveAnd feast on kisses to the heart's desire;Where by a casement opening on a grove,Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir,A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs,Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.
Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay,Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned,She lies and dreams eternity away,Above the treetops in Broceliande,Sometimes at twilight when the woods are grayAnd wolf-packs howl far out across the lande,Waking to love, while up behind the treesThe large midsummer moon lifts—even so loved these.
For here, their pleasure was to come and sitOft when the sun sloped midway to the west,Watching with sweet enjoyment interknitThe long light slant across the green earth's breast,And clouds upon the ranges opposite,Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest,Topple and break and fall in purple rain,And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.
Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flungAcross the luminous azure overhead,Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hungThe fragmentary rainbow's green and red.Joy it was here to love and to be young,To watch the sun sink to his western bed,And streaming back out of their flaming coreThe vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar.
Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn,Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuliThat peeped above the mountain-tops would burnCarmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high,More delicate than sprays of maiden fern,Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky,Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night,Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.
And they would watch the first faint stars appear,The blue East blend with the blue hills below,As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws nearInto one pulse of fluid rapture grow.New fragrance on the freshening atmosphereWould steal with evening, and the sunset glowDraw deeper down into the wondrous westRound vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.
So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore,The snow-peaks fade to frosty opaline,To pearl the domed clouds the mountains bore,Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been —Showing as darkness deepened more and moreThe incandescent lightnings flare within,And Night that furls the lily in the glenAnd twines impatient arms would fall, and then—and then . . .
Sometimes the peasant, coming late from townWith empty panniers on his little drovePast the old lookout when the Northern CrownGlittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted downAnd voices singing through the leaves aboveThose songs that well from the warm heart that woosAt balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.
And he would pause under the garden wall,Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,With all the sultry South in it, and allIts importunity of love and pain;And he would wait till the last passionate fallDied on the night, and all was still again, —Then to his upland village wander home,Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.
O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays —Sweet opportunity for happinessSo brief, so passing beautiful—O days,When to the heart's divine indulgencesAll earth in smiling ministration pays —Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!
The wake of color that follows her when MayWalks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned,The deep horizons of a summer's day,Fair cities, and the pleasures that aboundWhere music calls, and crowds in bright arrayGather by night to find and to be found;What were these worth or all delightful thingsWithout thine eyes to read their true interpretings!
For thee the mountains open glorious gates,To thee white arms put out from orient skies,Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits,Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes,Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fetesEternity has travailed to devise;Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last!Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorialLet my sun set who found the world so fair!Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronalHas rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!Among the pious testimonials there,Witness how sweetly on my heart as wellThe miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,And, from the hues that far horizons take,And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal,Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake,Whose only motive was the will to kneelWhere Beauty's purest benediction spake,Who only coveted what grove and fieldAnd sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield —
A nympholept, through pleasant days and drearSeeking his faultless adolescent dream,A pilgrim down the paths that disappearIn mist and rainbows on the world's extreme,A helpless voyager who all too nearThe mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream,Clutched at Love's single respite in his needMore than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed —
That coming one whose feet in other daysShall bleed like mine for ever having, moreThan any purpose, felt the need to praiseAnd seek the angelic image to adore,In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet waysCounting what most makes life worth living for,That so some relic may be his to seeHow I loved these things too and they were dear to me.
I sometimes think a conscious happinessMantles through all the rose's sentient vineWhen summer winds with myriad calycesOf bloom its clambering height incarnadine;I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,And limbs that crowned desires at length entwineAre nerves through which that being drinks delight,Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.
And such were theirs: the traveller without,Pausing at night under the orchard trees,Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,For through their song and in the murmuring breezeIt seemed angelic choirs were all aboutMingling in universal harmonies,As though, responsive to the chords they woke,All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.
And still they think a spirit haunts the place:'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pallAnd through the branches twinkling fireflies traceTheir mimic constellations, if it fallThat one should see the moon rise through the laceOf blossomy boughs above the garden wall,That surely would he take great ill thereofAnd famish in a fit of unexpressive love.
But this I know not, for what time the wainWas loosened and the lily's petal furled,Then I would rise, climb the old wall again,And pausing look forth on the sundown world,Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain,The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled,The poplar-bordered roads, and far awayFair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray.
Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar —Faint song and preludes of the summer night;Deep in the cloudless west the evening starHung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light;From the dark vale where shades crepuscularDimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.
The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white armsCame sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping coldThat twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,Not back to Seville and its sunny plainsWinged their brief-biding dreams, but once again,Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan,They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard.Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea,Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors,Shiny and sparkling,—arms and crowns and rings:Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, —To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down,Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again,And watch the glinting metal trickle off,Even as at night some fisherman, home boundWith speckled cargo in his hollow keelCaught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines,Dips in his paddle, lifts it forth again,And laughs to see the luminous white dropsFall back in flakes of fire. . . . Gold was the dreamThat cheered that desperate enterprise. And now? . . .Victory waited on the arms of Spain,Fallen was the lovely city by the lake,The sunny Venice of the western world;There many corpses, rotting in the wind,Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous ragsNo jewel caught the sun, no tawny chainGleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er.Pillage that ran red-handed through the streetsCame railing home at evening empty-palmed;And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone,Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's bloodRetreating, cast the cumbrous load away:They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down,Who tipped thonged chests into the stream belowAnd over wealth that might have ransomed kingsPassed on to safety;—cheated, guerdonless —Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped)A city naked, of that golden dreamShorn in one moment like a sunset sky.
Deep in a chamber that no cheerful rayPurged of damp air, where in unbroken nightBlack scorpions nested in the sooty beams,Helpless and manacled they led him down —Cuauhtemotzin—and other lords beside —All chieftains of the people, heroes all —And stripped their feathered robes and bound them thereOn short stone settles sloping to the head,But where the feet projected, underneathHeaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed,The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned,Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault.Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers; someStood at the sufferers' heads and all the whileHissed in their ears: "The gold . . . the gold . . . the gold.Where have ye hidden it—the chested gold?Speak—and the torments cease!"
They answered not.Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimedNo accent fell to chide or to betray,Only it chanced that bound beside the kingLay one whom Nature, more than other menFraming for delicate and perfumed ease,Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth,Had weaned from gentle usages so farTo teach that fortitude that warriors feelAnd glory in the proof. He answered not,But writhing with intolerable pain,Convulsed in every limb, and all his faceWrought to distortion with the agony,Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal,The secret half atremble on his lips,Livid and quivering, that waited yetFor leave—for leave to utter it—one sign —One word—one little word—to ease his pain.
As one reclining in the banquet hall,Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers,Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelrySurge round him on the tides of wine, but he,Staunch in the ethic of an antique school —Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind —With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene,Himself impassive, silent, self-contained:So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched,Amid the tortured and the torturers.He who had seen his hopes made desolate,His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him,And watched while Pestilence and Famine piledHis stricken people in their reeking doors,Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown armsStretched up to greet him in one last farewellAs back and forth he paced along the streetsWith words of hopeless comfort—what was thisThat one should weaken now? He weakened not.Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealtIn pity nor in scorn, but, turning round,Met that racked visage with his own unmoved,Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes,And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice,As who would speak not all in gentlenessNor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am -I- thenUpon a bed of roses?"
Stung with shame —Shame bitterer than his anguish—to betraySuch cowardice before the man he loved,And merit such rebuke, the boy grew calm;And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries,And shook away his tears, and strove to smile,And turned his face against the wall—and died.
The Nympholept
There was a boy—not above childish fears —With steps that faltered now and straining ears,Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still,Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hillStood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blueAnd all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew,Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun,Walked up into the mountains. One by oneEach towering trunk beneath his sturdy strideFell back, and ever wider and more wideThe boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed,From dawn till the last trace of slanting shadeHad vanished from the canyons, and, dismayedAt that far length to which his path had led,He paused—at such a height where overheadThe clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill,And all was hushed and calm and very still,Save, from abysmal gorges, where the soundOf tumbling waters rose, and all aroundThe pines, by those keen upper currents blown,Muttered in multitudinous monotone.Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare,With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer,Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder,He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder,Rolled down upon the muffled harmoniesOf wind and waterfall and whispering trees,Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fearWould seize him then, as they who seemed to hearIn Tracian valleys or Thessalian woodsThe god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes;I think it was the same: some piercing senseOf Deity's pervasive immanence,The Life that visible Nature doth indwellGrown great and near and all but palpable . . .He might not linger, but with winged stridesLike one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides —Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine,By glade and flowery lawn and upland green,And never paused nor felt assured againBut where the grassy foothills opened. Then,While shadows lengthened on the plain belowAnd the sun vanished and the sunset-glowLooked back upon the world with fervid eyeThrough the barred windows of the western sky,Homeward he fared, while many a look behindShowed the receding ranges dim-outlined,Highland and hollow where his path had lain,Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.
The Wanderer
To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward soOver new mountains piled and unploughed waves,Back of old-storied spires and architravesTo watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,
And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when dayFlooded with gold some domed metropolis,Between new towers to waken and new blissSpread on his pillow in a wondrous way:
These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates,Coming to market with his morning load,The peasant found him early on his roadTo greet the sunrise at the city-gates, —
There where the meadows waken in its rays,Golden with mist, and the great roads commence,And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense,Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze.
White dunes that breaking show a strip of sea,A plowman and his team against the blue,Swiss pastures musical with cowbells, too,And poplar-lined canals in Picardie,
And coast-towns where the vultures back and forthSail in the clear depths of the tropic sky,And swallows in the sunset where they flyOver gray Gothic cities in the north,
And the wine-cellar and the chorus there,The dance-hall and a face among the crowd, —Were all delights that made him sing aloudFor joy to sojourn in a world so fair.
Back of his footsteps as he journeyed fellRange after range; ahead blue hills emerged.Before him tireless to applaud it surgedThe sweet interminable spectacle.
And like the west behind a sundown seaShone the past joys his memory retraced,And bright as the blue east he always facedBeckoned the loves and joys that were to be.
From every branch a blossom for his browHe gathered, singing down Life's flower-lined road,And youth impelled his spirit as he strodeLike winged Victory on the galley's prow.
That Loveliness whose being sun and star,Green Earth and dawn and amber evening robe,That lamp whereof the opalescent globeThe season's emulative splendors are,
That veiled divinity whose beams transpireFrom every pore of universal space,As the fair soul illumes the lovely face —That was his guest, his passion, his desire.
His heart the love of Beauty held as hidesOne gem most pure a casket of pure gold.It was too rich a lesser thing to hold;It was not large enough for aught besides.
The Need to Love
The need to love that all the stars obeyEntered my heart and banished all beside.Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.
Before the beauty of the west on fire,The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed,Cloud-like arose the image of desire,And cast out peace and maddened solitude.
I sought the City and the hopes it held:With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleledShut out the fair horizons of the world —
A truant from the fields and rustic joy,In my changed thought that image even soShut out the gods I worshipped as a boyAnd all the pure delights I used to know.
Often the veil has trembled at some tideOf lovely reminiscence and revealedHow much of beauty Nature holds besideSweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield:
Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eavesWhen summer cumulates their golden chains,Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves,Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes,
An organ-grinder's melancholy tuneIn rainy streets, or from an attic sillThe blue skies of a windy afternoonWhere our kites climbed once from some grassy hill:
And my soul once more would be wrapped entireIn the pure peace and blessing of those yearsBefore the fierce infection of DesireHad ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears
Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did,Again ere long the prison-shades would fallThat Youth condemns itself to walk amid,So narrow, but so beautiful withal.
And I have followed Fame with less devotion,And kept no real ambition but to seeRise from the foam of Nature's sunlit oceanMy dream of palpable divinity;
And aught the world contends for to mine eyeSeemed not so real a meaning of successAs only once to clasp before I dieMy vision of embodied happiness.
El Extraviado
Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind,I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurledLeave the familiar gardens and visited fields behindTo follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.
I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyesOn the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack.For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skiesI have chosen the sod for my pillow and a threadbare coat for my back.
Evening of ample horizons, opaline, delicate, pure,Shadow of clouds on green valleys, trailed over meadows and trees,Cities of ardent adventure where the harvests of Joy mature,Forests whose murmuring voices are amorous prophecies,
World of romance and profusion, still round my journey spreadThe glamours, the glints, the enthralments, the nurture of one whose feetFrom hours unblessed by beauty nor lighted by love have fledAs the shade of the tomb on his pathway and the scent of the winding-sheet.
I never could rest from roving nor put from my heart this needTo be seeing how lovably Nature in flower and face hath wrought, —In flower and meadow and mountain and heaven where the white clouds breedAnd the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught.
Over the azure expanses, on the offshore breezes borne,I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led,Sufficed with the sunshine and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn,The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead.
La Nue
Oft when sweet music undulated round,Like the full moon out of a perfumed seaThine image from the waves of blissful soundRose and thy sudden light illumined me.
And in the country, leaf and flower and airWould alter and the eternal shape emerge;Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.
The little cloud-gaps in the east that filledGray afternoons with bits of tenderest blueWere windows in a palace pearly-silledThat thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.
And in the city, dominant desireFor which men toil within its prison-bars,I watched thy white feet moving in the mireAnd thy white forehead hid among the stars.
Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,Radiant there with rosy arms outspread,Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude,Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,
Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills,Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line,Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills,Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;
The gold all color and grace are folded o'er,The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, —Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core,The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.
Round thee revolves, illimitably wide,The world's desire, as stars around their pole.Round thee all earthly loveliness besideIs but the radiate, infinite aureole.
Thou art the poem on the cosmic page —In rubric written on its golden ground —That Nature paints her flowers and foliageAnd rich-illumined commentary round.
Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tearsHover about like butterflies and bees.Thou art the theme the music of the spheresEchoes in endless, variant harmonies.
Thou art the idol in the altar-nicheFaced by Love's congregated worshippers,Thou art the holy sacrament round whichThe vast cathedral is the universe.
Thou art the secret in the crystal where,For the last light upon the mystery Man,In his lone tower and ultimate despair,Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.
And soft and warm as in the magic sphere,Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire,So in my heart thine image would appear,Curled round with the red flames of my desire.
All That's Not Love . . .
All that's not love is the dearth of my days,The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,The temple in times without prayer, without praise,The altar unset and the candle unlit.
Let me survive not the lovable swayOf early desire, nor see when it goesThe courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.
The delicate hues of its sevenfold ringsThe rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blueThe butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,But even with their beauty life fades from them too.
No more would I linger past Love's ardent boundsNor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.
Paris
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;But Paris for the smoothness of the pathsThat lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those daysWhen there's no lovelier prize the world displaysThan, having beauty and your twenty years,You have the means to conquer and the ways,
And coming where the crossroads separateAnd down each vista glories and wonders wait,Crowning each path with pinnacles so fairYou know not which to choose, and hesitate —
Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloomOf some old quarter take a little roomThat looks off over Paris and its towersFrom Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, —
So high that you can hear a mating doveCroon down the chimney from the roof above,See Notre Dame and know how sweet it isTo wake between Our Lady and our love.
And have a little balcony to bringFair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,And swallows circle over in the Spring.
There of an evening you shall sit at easeIn the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,There with your little darling in your arms,Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.
And looking out over the domes and towersThat chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,While the bright clouds banked eastward back of themBlush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,
You cannot fail to think, as I have done,Some of life's ends attained, so you be oneWho measures life's attainment by the hoursThat Joy has rescued from oblivion.
Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: Come out under the lights and leaves to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .
Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."
Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.
And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dineOn the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .
But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll alongAnd mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.
Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;
Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads,and courtezans like powdered moths,And peddlers from Algiers, with clothsbright-hued and stitched with golden threads;
And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapesIn corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;
And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press,And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:
All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing whatMakes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.
"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!"Friends greet and banter as they pass.'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,
A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and bloodAllied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .
The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer,And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.
And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls,And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.
But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet,Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.
Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhereSo many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.
Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls,Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.
From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic thereSpin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,
That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blueThe crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .
Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance,And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.
Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim,Docked, in the model's present whim, 'frise' and banged above the brows.
Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays,In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,
As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating themIn each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.
Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete,Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,
And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist,She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .
But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veinsAs first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.
Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yieldThe scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,
Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneathTo all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.
Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to seeThe tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.
Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seemTo float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,
Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued,In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.
And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing danceThey waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .
Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair,And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.
Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhileIn the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:
The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees,Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their 'brune' and 'blonde'. . . .
Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris—not as many do,Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show —
But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every dayCan lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.
And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise —That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife —
Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key,And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.
And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory,Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:
When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood,And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,
At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled,The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.
Choral Song
Have ye gazed on its grandeurOr stood where it standsWith opal and amberAdorning the lands,And orcharded domesOf the hue of all flowers?Sweet melody roamsThrough its blossoming bowers,Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.
A city resplendent,Fulfilled of good things,On its ramparts are pendentThe bucklers of kings.Broad banners unfurledAre afloat in its air.The lords of the worldLook for harborage there.None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.
'Tis the city of Lovers,There many paths meet.Blessed he above others,With faltering feet,Who past its proud spiresIntends not nor hearsThe noise of its lyresGrow faint in his ears!Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.
It was thither, ambitious,We came for Youth's right,When our lips yearned for kissesAs moths for the light,When our souls cried for LoveAs for life-giving rainWan leaves of the grove,Withered grass of the plain,And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.
Under arbor and trellis,Full of flutes, full of flowers,What mad fortunes befell us,What glad orgies were ours!In the days of our youth,In our festal attire,When the sweet flesh was smooth,When the swift blood was fire,And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
The Sultan's Palace
My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.
I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bowWere keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing browThe hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.
Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth aroundWith their insatiate need to wonder and adore.
The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strandsA radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine.
A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees,A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell,Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee'sWhen from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell.
I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writIn tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay,The names of caliphs were who once held court in it,Their baths and bowers were mine to dwell in for a day.
Their robes and rings were mine to draw from shimmering trays —Brocades and broidered silks, topaz and tourmaline —Their turban-cloths to wind in proud capricious ways,And fasten plumes and pearls and pendent sapphires in.
I rose; far music drew my steps in fond pursuitDown tessellated floors and towering peristyles:Through groves of colonnades fair lamps were blushing fruit,On seas of green mosaic soft rugs were flowery isles.
And there were verdurous courts that scalloped arches wreathed,Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli.Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed,And having Youth I had their Open Sesame.
I paused where shadowy walls were hung with cloths of gold,And tinted twilight streamed through storied panes above.In lamplit alcoves deep as flowers when they unfoldSoft cushions called to rest and fragrant fumes to love.
I hungered; at my hand delicious dainties teemed —Fair pyramids of fruit; pastry in sugared piles.I thirsted; in cool cups inviting vintage beamed —Sweet syrups from the South; brown muscat from the isles.
I yearned for passionate Love; faint gauzes fell away.Pillowed in rosy light I found my heart's desire.Over the silks and down her florid beauty lay,As over orient clouds the sunset's coral fire.
Joys that had smiled afar, a visionary form,Behind the ranges hid, remote and rainbow-dyed,Drew near unto my heart, a wonder soft and warm,To touch, to stroke, to clasp, to sleep and wake beside.
Joy, that where summer seas and hot horizons shoneHad been the outspread arms I gave my youth to seek,Drew near; awhile its pulse strove sweetly with my own,Awhile I felt its breath astir upon my cheek.
I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay, —What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine,I only lived to search and sample them the dayWhen between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine!
Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be,As though in any fond imaginary sphereLay more to tempt man's soul to immortalityThan ripens for his bliss abundant now and here!
Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth.Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them,I want no better joys than those that from green EarthMy spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem.
I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor.I never thought it else than but to cease to dwellSpectator, and resolve most naturally once moreInto the dearly loved eternal spectacle.
Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fairI yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine,Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there,And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine.
Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men,You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know,Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even thenOf lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so.
Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commendThis immaterial self and flamelike part of me, —Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end,The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea, —
Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of thoseWho love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may beThe elemental cells and nervules that composeIts divine consciousness and joy and harmony.
Fragments
In that fair capital where Pleasure, crownedAmidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules,I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyesWere my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread armsMy gilded deep horizons. I rejoicedIn yielding to all amorous influenceAnd multiple impulsion of the flesh,To feel within my being surge and swayThe force that all the stars acknowledge too.Amid the nebulous humanityWhere I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered,I saw a million motions, but one law;And from the city's splendor to my eyesThe vapors passed and there was nought but Love,A ferment turbulent, intensely fair,Where Beauty beckoned and where Strength pursued.
There was a time when I thought much of Fame,And laid the golden edifice to beThat in the clear light of eternityShould fitly house the glory of my name.
But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan,Over the fair foundation scarce begun,While I with lovers dallied in the sun,The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran.
And now, too late to see my vision, rise,In place of golden pinnacles and towers,Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers,Only beloved of birds and butterflies.
My friends were duped, my favorers deceived;But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there,That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fairI scarce regret the temple unachieved.
For there were nights . . . my love to him whose browHas glistened with the spoils of nights like those,Home turning as a conqueror turns home,What time green dawn down every street uprearsArches of triumph! He has drained as wellJoy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried:Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by.This only matters: from some flowery bed,Laden with sweetness like a homing bee,If one have known what bliss it is to come,Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lipsThe fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To himThe hills have bared their treasure, the far cloudsUnveiled the vision that o'er summer seasDrew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known,He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds,And, pillowed on a memory so sweet,Unto oblivious eternityWithout regret yield his victorious soul,The blessed pilgrim of a vow fulfilled.
What is Success? Out of the endless oreOf deep desire to coin the utmost goldOf passionate memory; to have lived so wellThat the fifth moon, when it swims up once moreThrough orchard boughs where mating orioles buildAnd apple flowers unfold,Find not of that dear need that all things tellThe heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled.
O Love, whereof my boyhood was the dream,My youth the beautiful novitiate,Life was so slight a thing and thou so great,How could I make thee less than all-supreme!In thy sweet transports not alone I thoughtMingled the twain that panted breast to breast.The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caughtInto the pulse of Nature and possessedBy the same light that consecrates it so.Love!—'tis the payment of the debt we oweThe beauty of the world, and whensoe'erIn silks and perfume and unloosened hairThe loveliness of lovers, face to face,Lies folded in the adorable embrace,Doubt not as of a perfect sacrificeThat soul partakes whose inspiration fillsThe springtime and the depth of summer skies,The rainbow and the clouds behind the hills,That excellence in earth and air and seaThat makes things as they are the real divinity.
Thirty Sonnets:
Sonnet I
Down the strait vistas where a city streetFades in pale dust and vaporous distances,Stained with far fumes the light grows less and lessAnd the sky reddens round the day's retreat.Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet,Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down.Now the lamps brighten and the quickening townRings with the trample of returning feet.And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mouldSunk all the drowsy and unloved daylightIn layers of odorous softness, Paphian girlsCover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls,Crown, and about her spangly vestments foldThe ermine of the empire of the Night.
Sonnet II
Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,Between the rivers and the illumined skyWhose fervid depths reverberate from on highFierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.They mark it inland; blithe and fair of faceHer suitors follow, guessing by the glareBeyond the hilltops in the evening airHow bright the cressets at her portals blaze.On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a dayFalls like the soot and dirt on city-snow;There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams.Her paths are disillusion and decay,With ruins piled and unapparent woe,The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.
Sonnet III
There was a youth around whose early wayWhite angels hung in converse and sweet choir,Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, —In cloud and far horizon to desire.His life was nursed in beauty, like the streamBorn of clear showers and the mountain dew,Close under snow-clad summits where they gleamForever pure against heaven's orient blue.Within the city's shades he walked at last.Faint and more faint in sad recessionalDown the dim corridors of Time outworn,A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past,A hymn of glories fled beyond recallWith the lost heights and splendor of life's morn.
Sonnet IV
Up at his attic sill the South wind cameAnd days of sun and storm but never peace.Along the town's tumultuous arteriesHe heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:Each night the whistles in the bay, the sameWhirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars:For smoke that half obscured, the circling starsBurnt like his youth with but a sickly flame.Up to his attic came the city cries —The throes with which her iron sinews heave —And yet forever behind prison doorsWelled in his heart and trembled in his eyesThe light that hangs on desert hills at eveAnd tints the sea on solitary shores. . . .
Sonnet V
A tide of beauty with returning MayFloods the fair city; from warm pavements fumeOdors endeared; down avenues in bloomThe chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe;The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;And through the streets, like veins when they abound,The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.Here let me live, here let me still pursuePhantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, —Thy strange allurements, City that I love,Maze of romance, where I have followed tooThe dream Youth treasures of its dearest needAnd stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.