Poems & Ballads Volume I Part 14

Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew Through Mitylene Shook the fierce quivering blood in you By night, Faustine.

The shameless nameless love that makes h.e.l.l's iron gin Shut on you like a trap that breaks The soul, Faustine.

And when your veins were void and dead, What ghosts unclean Swarmed round the straitened barren bed That hid Faustine?

What sterile growths of s.e.xless root Or epicene?

What flower of kisses without fruit Of love, Faustine?

What adders came to shed their coats?

What coiled obscene Small serpents with soft stretching throats Caressed Faustine?

But the time came of famished hours, Maimed loves and mean, This ghastly thin-faced time of ours, To spoil Faustine.

You seem a thing that hinges hold, A love-machine With clockwork joints of supple gold-- No more, Faustine.

Not G.o.dless, for you serve one G.o.d, The Lampsacene, Who metes the gardens with his rod; Your lord, Faustine.

If one should love you with real love (Such things have been, Things your fair face knows nothing of, It seems, Faustine);

That clear hair heavily bound back, The lights wherein Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black; Your throat, Faustine,

Strong, heavy, throwing out the face And hard bright chin And shameful scornful lips that grace Their shame, Faustine,

Curled lips, long-since half kissed away, Still sweet and keen; You'd give him--poison shall we say?

Or what, Faustine?

A CAMEO

There was a graven image of Desire Painted with red blood on a ground of gold Pa.s.sing between the young men and the old, And by him Pain, whose body shone like fire, And Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.

Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold, The insatiable Satiety kept hold, Walking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.

The senses and the sorrows and the sins, And the strange loves that suck the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Hate Till lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture, Followed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.

Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate, Upon whose lock was written _Peradventure_.

SONG BEFORE DEATH

(FROM THE FRENCH)

1795

Sweet mother, in a minute's span Death parts thee and my love of thee; Sweet love, that yet art living man, Come back, true love, to comfort me.

Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!

But my love comes not any day.

As roses, when the warm West blows, Break to full flower and sweeten spring, My soul would break to a glorious rose In such wise at his whispering.

In vain I listen; wellaway!

My love says nothing any day.

You that will weep for pity of love On the low place where I am lain, I pray you, having wept enough, Tell him for whom I bore such pain That he was yet, ah! wellaway!

My true love to my dying day.

ROCOCO

Take hands and part with laughter; Touch lips and part with tears; Once more and no more after, Whatever comes with years.

We twain shall not remeasure The ways that left us twain; Nor crush the lees of pleasure From sanguine grapes of pain.

We twain once well in sunder, What will the mad G.o.ds do For hate with me, I wonder, Or what for love with you?

Forget them till November, And dream there's April yet; Forget that I remember, And dream that I forget.

Time found our tired love sleeping, And kissed away his breath; But what should we do weeping, Though light love sleep to death?

We have drained his lips at leisure, Till there's not left to drain A single sob of pleasure, A single pulse of pain.

Dream that the lips once breathless Might quicken if they would; Say that the soul is deathless; Dream that the G.o.ds are good; Say March may wed September, And time divorce regret; But not that you remember, And not that I forget.

We have heard from hidden places What love scarce lives and hears: We have seen on fervent faces The pallor of strange tears: We have trod the wine-vat's treasure, Whence, ripe to steam and stain, Foams round the feet of pleasure The blood-red must of pain.

Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme; But rose-leaves of December The frosts of June shall fret, The day that you remember, The day that I forget.

The snake that hides and hisses In heaven we twain have known; The grief of cruel kisses, The joy whose mouth makes moan; The pulse's pause and measure, Where in one furtive vein Throbs through the heart of pleasure The purpler blood of pain.

We have done with tears and treasons And love for treason's sake; Room for the swift new seasons, The years that burn and break, Dismantle and dismember Men's days and dreams, Juliette; For love may not remember, But time will not forget.

Life treads down love in flying, Time withers him at root; Bring all dead things and dying, Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit, Where, crushed by three days' pressure, Our three days' love lies slain; And earlier leaf of pleasure, And latter flower of pain.

Breathe close upon the ashes, It may be flame will leap; Unclose the soft close lashes, Lift up the lids, and weep.

Light love's extinguished ember, Let one tear leave it wet For one that you remember And ten that you forget.

STAGE LOVE

When the game began between them for a jest, He played king and she played queen to match the best; Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter, These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.

Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night; All the sting and all the stain of long delight; These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her, When she played at half a love with half a lover.