Kitabı oku: «The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy», sayfa 3

THE WIND WITCH

 
The wind that met her in the park,
Came hurrying to my side —
It ran to me, it leapt to me,
And nowhere would abide.
 
 
It whispered in my ear a word,
So sweet a word, I swear,
It smelt of honey and the kiss
It'd stolen from her hair.
 
 
Then shouted me the flowery way
Whereon she walked with dreams,
And bade me wait and watch her pass
Among the glooms and gleams.
 
 
It ran to meet her as she came
And clasped her to its breast;
It kissed her throat, her chin, her mouth,
And laughed its merriest.
 
 
Then to my side it leapt again,
And took me by surprise:
The kiss it'd stolen from her lips
It blew into my eyes.
 
 
Since then, it seems, I have grown blind
To every face but hers:
It haunts me sleeping or awake,
And is become my curse.
 
 
The spell, that kiss has laid on me,
Shall hold my eyes the same,
Until I give it back again
To lips from which it came.
 

OLD GHOSTS

 
Clove-spicy pinks and phlox that fill the sense
With drowsy indolence;
And in the evening skies
Interior splendor, pregnant with surprise,
As if in some new wise
The full moon soon would rise.
 
 
Hung with the crimson aigrets of its seeds
The purple monkshood bleeds;
The dewy crickets chirr,
And everywhere are lights of lavender;
And scents of musk and myrrh
To guide the foot of her.
 
 
She passes like a misty glimmer on
To where the rose blooms wan, —
A twilight moth in flight, —
As in the west its streak of chrysolite
The dusk erases quite,
And ushers in the night.
 
 
And now another shadow passes slow,
With firefly light a-glow:
The scent of a cigar,
And two who kiss beneath the evening-star,
Where, in a moonbeam bar,
A whippoorwill cries afar.
 
 
Again the tale is told, that has been told
So often here of old:
Ghosts of dead lovers they?
Or memories only of some perished day? —
Old ghosts, no time shall lay,
That haunt the place alway.
 

THE NAME ON THE TREE

 
I saw a name carved on a tree – "Julia";
A simpler name there could not be – Julia:
But seeing it I seemed to see
A Devon garden, – pleasantly
About a parsonage, – the bee
Made drowsy-sweet; where rosemary
And pink and phlox and peony
Bowed down to one
Whom Herrick made to bloom in Poetry.
 
 
A moment there I saw her stand, – Julia;
A gillyflower in her hand, – Julia:
And then, kind-faced and big and bland,
As raised by some magician's wand,
Herrick himself passed by, sun-tanned,
And smiling; and the quiet land
Seemed to take on and understand
A dream long dreamed,
And for the lives of two some gladness planned.
 
 
And then I seemed to hear a sigh, – "Julia!"
And someone softly walking nigh, – Julia:
The leaves shook; and a butterfly
Trailed past; and through the sleepy sky
A bird flew, crying strange its cry —
Then suddenly before my eye
Two lovers strolled – They knew not why
I looked amazed, —
But I had seen old ghosts of long dead loves go by.
 

THE HAUNTED GARDEN

 
There a tattered marigold
And dead asters manifold,
Showed him where the garden old
Of time bloomed:
Briar and thistle overgrew
Corners where the rose once blew,
Where the phlox of every hue
Lay entombed.
 
 
Here a coreopsis flower
Pushed its disc above a bower,
Where once poured a starry shower,
Bronze and gold:
And a twisted hollyhock,
And the remnant of a stock,
Struggled up, 'mid burr and dock,
Through the mold.
 
 
Flower-pots, with mossy cloak,
Strewed a place beneath an oak,
Where the garden-bench lay broke
By the tree:
And he thought of her, who here
Sat with him but yesteryear;
Her, whose presence now seemed near
Stealthily.
 
 
And the garden seemed to look
For her coming. Petals shook
On the spot where, with her book,
Oft she sat. —
Suddenly there blew a wind:
And across the garden blind,
Like a black thought in a mind,
Stole a cat.
 
 
Lean as hunger; like the shade
Of a dream; a ghost unlaid;
Through the weeds its way it made,
Gaunt and old:
Once 't was hers. He looked to see
If she followed to the tree. —
Then recalled how long since she
Had been mold.
 

THE CLOSED DOOR

 
Shut it out of the heart – this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.
The bond of the flesh is transitory,
And beauty goes with the lapse of years —
The brow's white rose and the hair's dark glory —
God be thanked for the severing shears!
 
 
Over the past, Heart, waste no tears!
Over the past, and all its madness,
Its wine and wormwood, hopes and fears,
That never were worth a moment's sadness.
Here she lies who was part o' its gladness,
Wife and mistress, and shared its woe,
The good of life as well as its badness, —
Look on her face and see if you know.
 
 
Is this the face? – yea, ask it slow! —
The hair, the form, that we used to cherish? —
Where is the glory of long-ago?
The beauty we said would never perish. —
Like a dream we dream, or a thought we nourish,
Nothing of earth immortal is:
This is the end however we flourish —
All that is fair must come to this.
 

THE LONG ROOM

 
He found the long room as it was of old,
Glimmering with sunset's gold;
That made the tapestries seem full of eyes
Strange with a wild surmise:
Glaring upon a Psyche where she shone
Carven of stainless stone,
Holding a crystal heart where many a sun
Seemed starrily bound in one:
And near her, grim in rigid metal, stood
An old knight in a wood,
Groping his way: the bony wreck, that was
His steed, at weary pause.
And over these a canvas – one mad mesh
Of Chrysoprase tints of flesh
And breasts – Bohemian cups, whose glory gleamed
For one who, brutish, seemed
A hideous Troll, unto whose lustful arms
She yielded glad her charms.
 
 
Then he remembered all her shame; and knew
The thing that he must do:
These were but records of his life: the whole
Portrayed to him his soul. —
So, drawing forth the slim Bithynian phial,
He drained it with a smile.
And 'twixt the Knight and Psyche fell and died;
The arras, evil-eyed,
Glared grimly at him where all night he lay,
And where a stealthy ray
Pointed her to him– her, that nymph above,
Who gave the Troll her love.
 

IN PEARL AND GOLD

 
When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk,
The moon curves, silvering the dusk, —
As in a garden, dreaming,
A lily slips its dewy husk
A firefly in its gleaming, —
I of my garden am a guest;
My garden, that, in beauty dressed
Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers,
Chats with me of the perished hours,
When she companioned me in life,
Living remote from care and strife.
 
 
It says to me: "How sad and slow
The hours of daylight come and go,
Until the Night walks here again
With moon and starlight in her train,
And she and I with perfumed words
Of winds and waters, dreaming birds,
And flowers and crickets and the moon,
For hour on hour, in soul commune. – "
And you, and you,
Sit here and listen in the dew
For her, the love, you used to know,
Who often walked here, long ago,
Long ago;
The young, sweet love you used to know
Long ago
Whom oft I watched with violet eye,
Or eye of dew, as she passed by:
As she passed by.
 
 
And I reply, with half a sigh: —
"You knew her too as well as I,
That young sweet love of long-ago!
That young sweet love, who walked here slow. —
Oh, speak no more of the days gone by,
Dear days gone by,
Lest I lay me down on your heart and die!"
 

MOON FAIRIES

 
The moon, a circle of gold,
O'er the crowded housetops rolled,
And peeped in an attic, where,
'Mid sordid things and bare,
A sick child lay and gazed
At a road to the far-away,
A road he followed, mazed,
That grew from a moonbeam-ray,
 
 
A road of light that led
From the foot of his garret-bed
Out of that room of hate,
Where Poverty slept by his mate,
Sickness – out of the street,
Into a wonderland,
Where a voice called, far and sweet,
"Come, follow our Fairy band!"
 
 
A purple shadow, sprinkled
With golden star-dust, twinkled
Suddenly into the room
Out of the winter gloom:
And it wore a face to him
Of a dream he'd dreamed: a form
Of Joy, whose face was dim,
Yet bright with a magic charm.
 
 
And the shadow seemed to trail,
Sounds that were green and frail:
Dew-dripples; notes that fell
Like drops in a ferny dell;
A whispered lisp and stir,
Like winds among the leaves,
Blent with a cricket-chirr,
And coo of a dove that grieves.
 
 
And the Elfin bore on its back
A little faery pack
Of forest scents: of loam
And mossy sounds of foam;
And of its contents breathed
As might a clod of ground
Feeling a bud unsheathed
There in its womb profound.
 
 
And the shadow smiled and gazed
At the child; then softly raised
Its arms and seemed to grow
To a tree in the attic low:
And from its glimmering hands
Shook emerald seeds of dreams,
From which grew fairy bands,
Like firefly motes and gleams.
 
 
The child had seen them before
In his dreams of Fairy lore:
The Elves, each with a light
To guide his feet a-right,
Out of this world to a world
Where Magic built him towers,
And Fable old, unfurled,
flags like wonderful flowers.
 
 
And the child, who knew this, smiled,
And rose, a different child:
No more he knew of pain,
Or fear of heart and brain. —
At Poverty there that slept
He never even glanced,
But into the moon-road stept,
And out of the garret danced.
 
 
Out of the earthly gloom,
Out of the sordid room,
Out, on a moonbeam ray! —
Now at last to play
There with comrades found!
Children of the moon,
There on faery ground,
Where none would find him soon!
 

HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE

 
Febrile perfumes as of faded roses
In the old house speak of love to-day,
Love long past; and where the soft day closes,
Down the west gleams, golden-red, a ray.
 
 
Pointing where departed splendor perished,
And the path that night shall walk, and hang,
On blue boughs of heaven, gold, long cherished —
Fruit Hesperian, – that the ancients sang.
 
 
And to him, who sits there dreaming, musing,
At the window in the twilight wan,
Like old scent of roses interfusing,
Comes a vision of a day that's gone.
 
 
And he sees Youth, walking brave but dimly
'Mid the roses, in the afterglow;
And beside him, like a star seen slimly,
Love, who used to meet him long-ago.
 
 
And again he seems to hear the flowers
Whispering faintly of what no one knows —
Of the dreams they dreamed there for long hours,
Youth and Love, between their hearts a rose.
 
 
Youth is dead; and Love, oh, where departed!
Like the last streak of the dying day,
Somewhere yonder, in a world uncharted,
Calling him, with memories, away.