I FEEL the Spring far off, far off,The faint far scent of bud and leaf—Oh how can Spring take heart to comeTo a world in grief,Deep grief?
The sun turns north, the days grow long,Later the evening star grows bright—How can the daylight linger onFor men to fight,Still fight?
The grass is waking in the ground,Soon it will rise and blow in waves—How can it have the heart to swayOver the graves,New graves?
Under the boughs where lovers walkedThe apple-blooms will shed their breath—But what of all the lovers nowParted by death,Gray Death?
WIND and hail and veering rain,Driven mist that veils the day,Soul's distress and body's pain,I would bear you while I may.
I would love you if I might,For so soon my life will beBuried in a lasting night,Even pain denied to me.
WHAT do I owe to youWho loved me deep and long?You never gave my spirit wingsOr gave my heart a song.
But oh, to him I lovedWho loved me not at all,I owe the little open gate
That led thru heaven's wall.
THE northern woods are delicately sweet,The lake is folded softly by the shore,But I am restless for the subway's roar,The thunder and the hurrying of feet.I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beatAgainst the image of the tower that boreMe high aloft, as if thru heaven's doorI watched the world from God's unshaken seat.I would go back and breathe with quickened senseThe tunnel's strong hot breath of powdered steel;But at the ferries I should leave the tenseDark air behind, and I should mount and beOne among many who are thrilled to feelThe first keen sea-breath from the open sea.
THE lightning spun your garment for the nightOf silver filaments with fire shot thru,A broidery of lamps that lit for youThe steadfast splendor of enduring light.The moon drifts dimly in the heaven's height,Watching with wonder how the earth she knewThat lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,Should wear upon her breast a star so white.The festivals of Babylon were darkWith flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down;The Saturnalia were a wild boy's larkWith rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town—But you have found a god and filched from himA fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.
A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wallSomewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,The ebbing tide forsakes the listless landWith the old murmur, long and musical;The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,—Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.I would that I were there and over meThe cold insistence of the tide would roll,Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,—Then with the ebbing I should drift and beLess than the smallest shell along the shoal,Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.
I CAME from the sunny valleysAnd sought for the open sea,For I thought in its gray expansesMy peace would come to me.
I came at last to the oceanAnd found it wild and black,And I cried to the windless valleys,"Be kind and take me back!"
But the thirsty tide ran inland,And the salt waves drank of me,And I who was fresh as the rainfallAm bitter as the sea.
ONE by one, like leaves from a tree,All my faiths have forsaken me;But the stars above my headBurn in white and delicate red,And beneath my feet the earthBrings the sturdy grass to birth.I who was content to beBut a silken-singing tree,But a rustle of delightIn the wistful heart of night—I have lost the leaves that knewTouch of rain and weight of dew.Blinded by a leafy crownI looked neither up nor down—But the little leaves that dieHave left me room to see the sky;Now for the first time I knowStars above and earth below.
WHEN I go back to earthAnd all my joyous bodyPuts off the red and whiteThat once had been so proud,If men should pass aboveWith false and feeble pity,My dust will find a voiceTo answer them aloud:
"Be still, I am content,Take back your poor compassion,Joy was a flame in meToo steady to destroy;Lithe as a bending reedLoving the storm that sways her—I found more joy in sorrowThan you could find in joy."
OH chimes set high on the sunny towerRing on, ring on unendingly,Make all the hours a single hour,For when the dusk begins to flower,The man I love will come to me! . . .
But no, go slowly as you will,I should not bid you hasten so,For while I wait for love to come,Some other girl is standing dumb,Fearing her love will go.
Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high!Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free !Oh sun awake in the covered sky,For the man I love, loves me I . . .
Oh drifting steam disperse and die,Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,—Fate heard afar my happy cry,And laid her finger on my mouth.
The dusk was blue with blowing mist,The lights were spangles in a veil,And from the clamor far belowFloated faint music like a wail.
It voiced what I shall never speak,My heart was breaking all night long,But when the dawn was hard and gray,My tears distilled into a song.
I said, "I have shut my heartAs one shuts an open door,That Love may starve thereinAnd trouble me no more."
But over the roofs there cameThe wet new wind of May,And a tune blew up from the curbWhere the street-pianos play.
My room was white with the sunAnd Love cried out in me,"I am strong, I will break your heartUnless you set me free."
OH, there are eyes that he can see,And hands to make his hands rejoice,But to my lover I must beOnly a voice.
Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,And lips whereon his lips can lie,But I must be till I am deadOnly a cry.
How many times we must have metHere on the street as strangers do,Children of chance we were, who passed
The door of heaven and never knew.
So soon my body will have goneBeyond the sound and sight of men,And tho' it wakes and suffers now,Its sleep will be unbroken then;But oh, my frail immortal soulThat will not sleep forevermore,A leaf borne onward by the blast,A wave that never finds the shore.
Now while my lips are livingTheir words must stay unsaid,And will my soul rememberTo speak when I am dead?
Yet if my soul rememberedYou would not heed it, dear,For now you must not listen,And then you could not hear.
I SAID, "I will take my lifeAnd throw it away;I who was fire and songWill turn to clay."
"I will lie no more in the nightWith shaken breath,I will toss my heart in the airTo be caught by Death."
But out of the night I heard,Like the inland sound of the sea,The hushed and terrible sobOf all humanity.
Then I said, "Oh who am ITo scorn God to his face?I will bow my head and stayAnd suffer with my race."
I GAVE my first love laughter,I gave my second tears,I gave my third love silenceThru all the years.
My first love gave me singing,My second eyes to see,But oh, it was my third loveWho gave my soul to me.
ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem,Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,To reach me. You are as the wind I breatheHere on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,With only light between the heavens and me.I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,The eager whisper and the searching eyes.
Listen, I love you. Do not turn your faceNor touch me. Only stand and watch awhileThe blue unbroken circle of the sea.Look far away and let me ease my heartOf words that beat in it with broken wing.Look far away, and if I say too much,Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,The foam-crest drifts along a happy waveToward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.
I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,That in some strange way I was strong enoughTo keep my love unuttered and to standAltho' I longed to kneel to you that nightYou looked at me with ever-calling eyes.Was I not calm? And if you guessed my loveYou thought it something delicate and free,Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.Yet in my heart there was a beating stormBending my thoughts before it, and I stroveTo say too little lest I say too much,And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame.Yet when I heard your name the first far timeIt seemed like other names to me, and IWas all unconscious, as a dreaming riverThat nears at last its long predestined sea;And when you spoke to me, I did not knowThat to my life's high altar came its priest.But now I know between my God and meYou stand forever, nearer God than I,And in your hands with faith and utter joyI would that I could lay my woman's soul.
Oh, my loveTo whom I cannot come with any giftOf body or of soul, I pass and go.But sometimes when you hear blown back to youMy wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,Know that I sang for you alone to hear,And that I wondered if the wind would bringTo him who tuned my heart its distant song.So might a woman who in lonelinessHad borne a child, dreaming of days to come,Wonder if it would please its father's eyes.But long before I ever heard your name,Always the undertone's unchanging noteIn all my singing had prefigured you,Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.Yet I was free as an untethered cloudIn the great space between the sky and sea,And might have blown before the wind of joyLike a bright banner woven by the sun.I did not know the longing in the night—You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.All things in all the world can rest, but I,Even the smooth brief respite of a waveWhen it gives up its broken crown of foam,Even that little rest I may not have.And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joyIn all the piercing beauty of the worldI would give up—go blind forevermore,Rather than have God blot from out my soulRemembrance of your voice that said my name.
For us no starlight stilled the April fields,No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,Yet where we walked the city's street that nightFelt in our feet the singing fire of spring,And in our path we left a trail of lightSoft as the phosphorescence of the seaWhen night submerges in the vessel's wakeA heaven of unborn evanescent stars.
Off Gibraltar
BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,The sun goes down in yellow mist,The sky is fresh with dewy starsAbove a sea of amethyst.
Yet in the city of my loveHigh noon burns all the heavens bare—For him the happiness of light,For me a delicate despair.
Off Algiers
Oh give me neither love nor tears,Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,Go lightly on your pilgrimageUnburdened by desire.
Forget me for a month, a year,But, oh, beloved, think of meWhen unexpected beauty burnsLike sudden sunlight on the sea.
Naples
Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung—Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!
Capri
When beauty grows too great to bearHow shall I ease me of its ache,For beauty more than bitternessMakes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming seaWith isles like flowers against her breast,Only one voice in all the worldCould give me rest.
Night Song at Amalfi
I asked the heaven of starsWhat I should give my love—It answered me with silence,Silence above.
I asked the darkened seaDown where the fishers go—It answered me with silence,Silence below.
Oh, I could give him weeping,Or I could give him song—But how can I give silenceMy whole life long?
Ruins of Paestum
On lowlands where the temples lieThe marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,Only the little songs of birdsLink the unbroken hours.
So in the end, above my heartOnce like the city wild and gay,The slow white stars will pass by night,The swift brown birds by day.
Rome
Oh for the rising moonOver the roofs of Rome,And swallows in the duskCircling a darkened dome!
Oh for the measured dawnsThat pass with folded wings—How can I let them goWith unremembered things?
Florence
The bells ring over the Anno,Midnight, the long, long chime;Here in the quivering darknessI am afraid of time.
Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,Time takes too much from me,And yet to rock and riverHe gives eternity.
Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio
The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,The marble satyr plays a mournful strainThat leaves the rainy fragrance musical.
Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me,Then would I still my soul and for an hourChange to a laurel in the glancing shower.
Stresa
The moon grows out of the hillsA yellow flower,The lake is a dreamy brideWho waits her hour.
Beauty has filled my heart,It can hold no more,It is full, as the lake is full,From shore to shore.
Hamburg
The day that I come home,What will you find to say,—Words as light as foamWith laughter light as spray?
Yet say what words you willThe day that I come home;I shall hear the whole deep oceanBeating under the foam.
MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;Only the white immortal stars shall know,Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp.I think you are not wholly careless now,Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour,Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep,Floors that have borne me when a gale of joyLifted my soul and made me half a god.Farewell! Across the threshold many feetShall pass, but never Sappho's feet again.Girls shall come in whom love has made awareOf all their swaying beauty—they shall sing,But never Sappho's voice, like golden fire,Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters.There shall be swallows bringing back the springOver the long blue meadows of the sea,And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain,But never Sappho's whisper in the night,Never her love-cry when the lover comes.Farewell! I close the door and make it fast.
The little street lies meek beneath the moon,Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea.I too go seaward and shall not return.Oh garlands on the doorposts that I pass,Woven of asters and of autumn leaves,I make a prayer for you: Cypris be kind,That every lover may be given love.I shall not hasten lest the paving stonesShould echo with my sandals and awakeThose who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep,Lest they should rise and see me and should say,"Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?"Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,But they go driven, straining back with fear,And Sappho goes as lightly as a leafBlown from brown autumn forests to the sea.
Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves,I shall await the waking of the dawn,Lying beneath the weight of dark as oneLies breathless, till the lover shall awake.And with the sun the sea shall cover me—I shall be less than the dissolving foamMurmuring and melting on the ebbing tide;I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells;And yet I shall be greater than the gods,For destiny no more can bow my soulAs rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills.Yes, if my soul escape it shall aspireTo the white heaven as flame that has its will.I go not bitterly, not dumb with pain,Not broken by the ache of love—I goAs one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep.Yet they shall say: "It was for Cercolas;She died because she could not bear her love."They shall remember how we used to walkHere on the cliff beneath the oleandersIn the long limpid twilight of the spring,Looking toward Lemnos, where the amber skyWas pierced with the faint arrow of a star.How should they know the wind of a new beautySweeping my soul had winnowed it with song?I have been glad tho' love should come or go,Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them,Happy again when it has left them rest.Others shall say, "Grave Dica wrought her death.She would not lift her lips to take a kiss,Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile.She was a pool the winter paves with iceThat the wild hunter in the hills must leaveWith thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun."Ah Dica, it is not for thee I go;And not for Phaon, tho' his ship lifts sailHere in the windless harbor for the south.Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile,Watch over one whose gods are far away.Egypt, be kind to him, his eyes are deep—Yet they are wrong who say it was for him.How should they know that Sappho lived and diedFaithful to love, not faithful to the lover,Never transfused and lost in what she loved,Never so wholly loving nor at peace.I asked for something greater than I found,And every time that love has made me weep,I have rejoiced that love could be so strong;For I have stood apart and watched my soulCaught in the gust of passion, as a birdWith baffled wings against the dusty whirlwindStruggles and frees itself to find the sky.It is not for a single god I go;I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.I will not be a reed to hold the soundOf whatsoever breath the gods may blow,Turning my torment into music for them.They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel—Beauty in all things and in every hour.The gods have given life—I gave them song;The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps,There is a rim of silver on the sea,As one grown tired who hopes to sleep, I go.
Oh Litis, little slave, why will you sleep?These long Egyptian noons bend down your headBowed like the yarrow with a yellow bee.There, lift your eyes no man has ever kindled,Dark eyes that wait like faggots for the fire.See how the temple's solid square of shadePoints north to Lesbos, and the splendid seaThat you have never seen, oh evening-eyed.Yet have you never wondered what the NileIs seeking always, restless and wild with springAnd no less in the winter, seeking still?How shall I tell you? Can you think of fieldsGreater than Gods could till, more blue than nightSown over with the stars; and delicateWith filmy nets of foam that come and go?It is more cruel and more compassionateThan harried earth. It takes with unconcernAnd quick forgetting, rapture of the rainAnd agony of thunder, the moon's whiteSoft-garmented virginity, and thenThe insatiable ardor of the sun.And me it took. But there is one more strong,Love, that came laughing from the elder seas,The Cyprian, the mother of the world;She gave me love who only asked for death—I who had seen much sorrow in men's eyesAnd in my own too sorrowful a fire.I was a sister of the stars, and yetShaken with pain; sister of birds and yetThe wings that bore my soul were very tired.I watched the careless spring too many timesLight her green torches in a hungry wind;Too many times I watched them flare, and thenFall to forsaken embers in the autumn.And I was sick of all things—even song.In the dull autumn dawn I turned to death,Buried my living body in the sea,The strong cold sea that takes and does not give—But there is one more strong, the Cyprian.Litis, to wake from sleep and find your eyesMet in their first fresh upward gaze by love,Filled with love's happy shame from other eyes,Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in lightAs tho' you looked unthinking at the sun,Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you cameNot from the sunny shallow pool of sleep,But from the sea of death, the strangling seaOf night and nothingness, and waked to findLove looking down upon you, glad and still,Strange and yet known forever, that is peace.So did he lean above me. Not a wordHe spoke; I only heard the morning seaSinging against his happy ship, the keenAnd straining joy of wind-awakened sailsAnd songs of mariners, and in myselfThe precious pain of arms that held me fast.They warmed the cold sea out of all my blood;I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep.There on the ship with wines and olives laden,Led by the stars to far invisible ports,Egypt and islands of the inner seas,Love came to me, and Cercolas was love.
III ¹ ¹ From " Helen of Troy and Other Poems."
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.Twilight has veiled the little flower-faceHere on my heart, but still the night is kindAnd leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.Am I that Sappho who would run at duskAlong the surges creeping up the shoreWhen tides came in to ease the hungry beach,And running, running till the night was black,Would fall forespent upon the chilly sandAnd quiver with the winds from off the sea?Ah quietly the shingle waits the tidesWhose waves are stinging kisses, but to meLove brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.I crept and touched the foam with fevered handsAnd cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,From whom the sea is bitterer than death.Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no moreTo thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,It is that thou hast made my life too sweetTo hold the added sweetness of a song.There is a quiet at the heart of love,And I have pierced the pain and come to peaceI hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;And softer than a little wild bird's wingAre kisses that she pours upon my mouth.Ah never any more when spring like fireWill flicker in the newly opened leaves,Shall I steal forth to seek for solitudeBeyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre,Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice.Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,Shall I go forth to hide awhile from LoveThe quiver and the crying of my heart.Still I remember how I strove to fleeThe love-note of the birds, and bowed my headTo hurry faster, but upon the groundI saw two wingèd shadows side by side,And all the world's spring passion stifled me.Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might,No lonely place where thou hast never trod,No desert thou hast left uncarpetedWith flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.In many guises didst thou come to me;I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,Phaon allured me with a look of thine,In Anactoria I knew thy grace,I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;But never wholly, soul and body mine,Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.Now have I found the peace that fled from me;Close, close against my heart I hold my world.Ah, Love that made my life a Iyric cry,Ah, Love that tuned my lips to Iyres of thine,I taught the world thy music, now aloneI sing for one who falls asleep to hear.