Kitabı oku: «Gypsy Verses», sayfa 5

THE CHOICE

 
The long well rose above me, a slim shaft,
With wet, black walls, and high aloft the light
Round as a moon intensified my night.
I ate the air and bitterly I quaffed
The death damp; nor my pleading nor my craft
Availed to aid me in my desperate plight:
The vista of high heaven the only sight
To see, and at my woe high heaven had laughed.
 
 
Suddenly the darkness deepened, and a face
Gloomed on the opening, terrible and grim
An Afreet! In his hands he held disgrace
And direst poverty and ruinous strife.
“Choose now between,” he cried, “calm Death by him
And Life empoisoned,” yet I cried, “Give Life.”
 

THE BROOK

 
I have a little brook in the deeps of my heart.
What does it matter if the day be chill or clear,
Coloured like a tourmaline and wingèd like a dart,
Voiced like a nightingale, it sings all the year.
 
 
Small bright herbs on the banks of the stream,
Moon-pale primroses, and tapestries of fern,
This is the reality and life is just a dream,
Iridescent bubble that the moon tides turn.
 

AT THE END OF THE WORLD

 
To the world’s end, to the world’s end,
Did I wander seeking you,
And wide was the water and dark was the fell,
With Time at my heels like a hound of hell,
And the worst still left to do.
 
 
To the world’s end, to the world’s end,
And the void to verify.
They told me of a tale of love supreme.
“Sometimes,” I cried, “I have caught the gleam,
I shall seek it tho’ I die.”
 
 
At the world’s end, at the world’s end,
At the end of the endless mile,
Nothing to see but the silent snow—
I turned with my tears to your heart, and lo!
Love was with me all the while!
 

THE GYPSY

 
O, she was most precious, as the wind’s self was fair.
What did I give her when I had her on my knee?
Red kisses for her coral lips, and a red comb for her hair.
She took my gifts, she took my heart, and fled away from me.
 
 
O, but she was fanciful, she found a savage mate,
He scorned her, he spurned her, he drove her from his door;
She cuddled in his inglenook and laughed at all his hate,
She took his curses, took his blows, and never left him more.
 

BOY O’ DREAMS

 
Must I leave you in the mountains,
Boy o’ dreams,
Must I leave you where the fountains
Toss the silver of their streams,
Where the trees are clothed in samite,
And the little broken moon
Is a symbol and an answer,
Like the reading of a rune?
 
 
May I take you to the city,
Boy o’ dreams,
Where your heart will break with pity
At the lethargy that seems
Only half alive to living,
Only enemy to mirth,
Where the dusty facts will blind you
To the fancies of the earth?
 
 
I must take you—but I’ll keep you,
Boy o’ dreams,
Where no alien winds shall sweep you,
In a secret place that gleams,
With the light of your own laughter,
Yours the vessel, yours the chart,
And we’ll brave the storm together.
You, the captain of my heart.
 

BALLAD OF THE SLAVE

 
The helot got him a hempen cord,
A slave of love was he,
“She made me dance to her circumstance—
In the air one dances free!”
 
 
She sits on a throne of ivory
Serene in her silver gown,
“Ah, woe,” he cried, “but the world is wide,
But ’tis straight where I lie down.
 
 
“She mocked, she scorned, and she hated me,
She shall pity me not,” he said;
“Too late for the nether way of hate,
I may flout her when I’m dead.”
 
 
Out in the dark of the moonless sky,
The rope was round his neck,
“’Tis the torque of gold from her throat so cold,
Why should I rue or reck?”
 
 
Tighter tangled the hempen cord;
“’Tis her fingers hot with fire,
In a tempest of fear she draws me near,—
Now dying is not so dire!”
 
 
Black, more black grew the empty void,
“And I but a broken reed,
For there’s only her face in this grisly place”—
But his love stood there indeed!
 
 
Close to her heart she took his head,
And she kissed him back to breath,
“You are mine by right of that line of white,
You are mine—by Life and Death!”
 

FOAM

 
I have dallied with wantons, made mad by their passionate wine,
Time, like a golden ball, I have tossed to the wastes of the air.
I have whispered with Beauty, whose song has been sister to mine,
Laughed with the long late hours who lie with the stars in their hair.
 
 
Like the spume on the crest of the wave blowing back to the sea,
Cast from the depths beneath, now to riot and dance in the light,
I have flung you the foam of my heart, to be mask unto me,
Caught to my heart again from the doom of your fugitive sight.
 

THE SEAL

 
The document of day is folded down,
Night, the great lawyer, takes the waiting sheet,
And o’er the murky shadows of the town
Sets his red seal, to make the deed complete.
 

RELEASE

 
I asked to be released, I did not know
’Twas hate, not love, that would not let me go.
Vengeance had burned your image on my mind,
I gazed and gazed until my eyes were blind.
Now—neither pride nor love has set me free,
But happy chance—in wonderful degree.
 
 
Shackled by memory, a prey to fear,
Once you were mine by the black load I bore,
But now, released, I lose you—O my Dear,
Ever, irrevocably mine no more!