Weeds by the Wall Part 17

THE WOMAN SPEAKS.

Why have you come? to see me in my shame?

A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn?-- And then to ask me! You, by whom was torn And then cast by, like some vile rag, my name!

What shelter could you give me, now, that blame And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice?

Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame?

"You love me"?--G.o.d!--If yours be love, for l.u.s.t h.e.l.l must invent another synonym!

If yours be love, then hatred is the way To Heaven and G.o.d! and not with soul but dust Must burn the faces of the Cherubim,-- O lie of lies, if yours be love, I say!

LOVE, THE INTERPRETER.

Thou art the music that I hear in sleep, The poetry that lures me on in dreams; The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themes Of young romance in revery's mystic keep.

The lily's aura, and the damask deep That clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seems To haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams, Like some wild spirit, 'thwart the cataract's leap-- Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness, Pervading all my world; interpreting The marvel and the wonder these disclose: For, lacking thee, to me were meaningless Life, love and hope, the joy of every thing, And all the beauty that the wide world knows.

UNANSWERED.

How long ago it is since we went Maying!

Since she and I went Maying long ago!

The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.

Ah, time will change us; yea, I hear it saying,-- "She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.

The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress."-- "True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!

These things are changed, but is her heart, her heart?"

EARTH AND MOON.

I saw the day like some great monarch die, Gold-couched, behind the clouds' rich tapestries.

Then, purple-sandaled, clad in silences Of sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli.

The twilight, like a mourning queen, trailed by, Dim-paged of dreams and shadowy mysteries; And now the night, the star-robed child of these, In meditative loveliness draws nigh.

Earth,--like to Romeo,--deep in dew and scent, Beneath Heaven's window, watching till a light, Like some white blossom, in its square be set,-- Lifts a faint face unto the firmament, That, with the moon, grows gradually bright, Bidding him climb and clasp his Juliet.

PEARLS.

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lanes, The valves of nacre of a mussel-sh.e.l.l, Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell Of some strange blossom that long afternoons Of summer coax to open: all the moon's Chaste l.u.s.tre in it; hues that only dwell With purity.... It takes me, like a spell, Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes, A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks, Searching for sh.e.l.ls deep in the creek's slow swirl, Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay: While, 'mid wild-roses,--all her tomboy locks Blond-blowing,--stood, unnoticed then, a girl, My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.

IN THE FOREST.

One well might deem, among these miles of woods, Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,-- Broceliand and Dean; where, clothed in mail, The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.--And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot; And in the cloud, that looms above the glen,-- In which the sun burns like the Table Round,-- Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot.

ENCHANTMENT.

The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy, Along which bluet and anemone Spread a dim carpet; where the twilight hath Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath.

Wood-fragrance breathes,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be Some sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams, That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

DUSK.

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold, And 'mid their sheaves,--where, like a daisy bloom Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom, The star of twilight flames,--as Ruth, 'tis told, Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old, The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.

Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone, its foam like some white foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart _her_ name,--like some sweet bee Within a flow'r,--blowing a fairy flute.

THE BLUE BIRD.

From morn till noon upon the window-pane The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails, And all the afternoon the bl.u.s.tering gales Beat at the door with furious feet of rain.

The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain, Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails, On which the sullen slug left slimy trails-- Meseemed the sun would never shine again.

Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer,-- A skyey herald tabarded in blue,-- A bluebird bugled ... and at once a bow Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear G.o.d's sapphire s.p.a.ces crystallizing through The strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

CAN SUCH THINGS BE?

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened--dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great cas.e.m.e.nts let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of t.i.tian and of Tintoret.

And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came.

Hurrying, yet slow ... I thought long centuries Pa.s.sed ere she entered--she, I loved of yore, For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.