Выбрать главу

Where love and fear meet

Having ceased to be:

All this, and such disconsolate finery

As doth remain in this gaunt castle of my heart

Thou gatherest of thy clemency

Sifting the fair and foul apart,

Thou weavest for thy self a sun-gold bower

By subtily incanted raed

Every unfavorable and ill-happed hour

Turneth blind and potently is stayed

Before the threshold of thy dwelling place

Holy, as beneath all-holy wings

Some sacred covenant had passed thereby

Wondrous as wind murmurings

That night thy fingers laid on mine their benediction

When thru the interfoliate strings

Joy sang among God’s earthly trees

Yea in this house of thine that I have found at last

Meseemeth a high heaven’s antepast

And thou thyself art unto me

Both as the glory head and sun

Casting thine own anthelion

Thru this dull mist

My soul was wont to be.

To One That Journeyeth with Me

“Naethless, whither thou goest I will go”

Let, Dear, this sweet thing be, if be it may

But hear this truth for truth,

Let hence and alway whither soe’er I wander there I know

Thy presence, if the waning wind move slow

Thru woodlands where the sun’s last vassals stray

Or if the dawn with shimmering array

Doth spy the land where eastward peaks bend low.

Yea all day long as one not wholly seen

Nor ever wholly lost unto my sight

Thou mak’st me company for love’s sweet sake

Wherefor this praising from my heart I make

To one that brav’st the way with me for night

Or day, and drinks with me the soft wind and the keen.

Domina

My Lady is tall and fair to see

She swayeth as a poplar tree

When the wind bloweth merrily

Her eyes are grey as the grey of the sea

Not clouded much to trouble me

When the wind bloweth merrily

My Lady’s glance is fair and straight

My Lady’s smile is changed of late

Tho the wind bloweth merrily

Some new soul in her eyes I see

Not as year-syne she greeteth me

When the wind bloweth merrily

Some strange new thing she can not tell

Some mystic danaan spell

When the wind bloweth merrily

Maketh her long hands tremble some

Her lips part, tho no words come

When the wind bloweth merrily

Her hair is brown as the leaves that fall

She hath no villeiny at all

When the wind bloweth merrily

When the wind bloweth my Lady’s hair

I bow with a murmured prayer

For the wind that bloweth merrily

With my lady far, the days be long

For her homing I’d clasp the song

That the wind bloweth merrily

Wind song: this is my Lady’s praise

What be lipped words of all men’s lays

When the wind bloweth merrily

To my Lady needs I send the best

Only the wind’s song serves that behest.

For the wind bloweth merrily.

The Lees

There is a mellow twilight ’neath the trees

Soft and hallowed as is a thought of thee,

Low soundeth a murmurous minstrelsy

A mingled evensong beneath the breeze

Each creeping, leaping chorister hath ease

To sing, to whirr his heart out, joyously;

Wherefor take thou my laboured litany

Halting, slow pulsed it is, being the lees

Of song wine that the master bards of old

Have left for me to drink thy glory in.

Yet so these crimson cloudy lees shall hold

Some faint fragrance of that former wine

O Love, my White-flower-o-the-Jasamin

Grant that the kiss upon the cup be thine.

Per Saecula

Where have I met thee? Oh Love tell me where

In the aisles of the past were thy lips known

To me, as where your breath as roses blown

Across my cheek? Where through your tangled hair

Have I seen the eyes of my desire bear

Hearts crimson unto my heart’s heart? As mown

Grain of the gold brown harvest from seed sown

Bountifully amid spring’s emeralds fair

So is our reaping now: But speak that spring

Whisper in the murmurous twilight where

I met thee mid the roses of the past

Where you gave your first kiss in the last,

Whisper the name thine eyes were wont to bear

The mystic name whereof my heart shall sing.

Shadow

Darkness hath descended upon the earth

And there are no stars

The sun from zenith to nadir is fallen

And the thick air stifleth me.

Sodden go the hours

Yea the minutes are molten lead, stinging and heavy

I saw her yesterday.

And lo, there is no time

Each second being eternity.

Peace! trouble me no more.

Yes, I know your eyes clear pools

Holding the summer sky within their depth

But trouble me not

I saw HER yesterday.

Peace! your hair is spun gold fine wrought and wondrous

But trouble me not

I saw her yester e’en.

Darkness hath filled the earth at her going

And the wind is listless and heavy

When will the day come: when will the sun

Be royal in bounty

From nadir to zenith up-leaping?

For lo! his steeds are weary, not having beheld her

Since sun set.

Oh that the sun steeds were wise

Arising to seek her!

The sun sleepeth in Orcus.

From zenith to nadir is fallen his glory

Is fallen, is fallen his wonder

I saw her yesterday

Since when there is no sun.

ONE WHOSE SOUL WAS

SO FULL OF ROSE

LEAVES STEEPED IN

GOLDEN WINE THAT THERE

WAS NO ROOM THEREIN

FOR ANY VILLEINY—

The Banners

My wandring brother wind wild bloweth now

October whirleth leaves in dusty air

September’s yellow gold that mingled fair

With green and rose tint on each maple bough

Sulks into deeper browns and doth endow

The wood-way with a tapis broidered rare — And where

King oak tree his brave panoply did wear

Of quaint device and colored

The dawn doth show him but a shorn stave now.

If where the wood stood in its pageantry

A castle holyday’d to greet its queen

Now but the barren banner poles be seen

Yea that the ruined walls stand ruefully

I make no grief, nor do I feel this teen

Sith thou mak’st autumn as spring’s noon to me.

“To draw back into the soul of things.” PAX

Meseemeth that ’tis sweet this wise to lie

Somewhile quite parted from the stream of things

Watching alone the clouds’ high wanderings

As free as they are in some wind-free sky

While naught but thoughts of thee as clouds glide by

Or come as faint blown wind across the strings

Of this odd lute of mine imaginings

And make it whisper me quaint things and high

Such peace as this would make death’s self most sweet

Could I but know, Thou maiden of the sun,

That thus thy presence would go forth with me

Unto that shadow land where ages’ feet

Have wandered, and where life’s dreaming done

Love may dream on unto eternity.