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.