Contemporary Belgian Poetry.

AUTUMN EVENING IN THE ORCHARD. In the monotonous orchard alley glints The languid sun that yet is loth to leave This unripe, fascinating autumn eve, And draws a pastel with faint, feminine tints. Spite of the great gold fruits around us strown, Of the last freshly-opened roses, which But now we gathered, spite of all the rich Odour filling the dusk from hay new-mown, Of all the ripe, warm, naked fruit thou art I covet nothing but the savour, while Thou liest in the grass there with a smile, Tormenting with thy curious eyes my heart. YOU WHOM I LOVE IN SILENCE. You whom I love in silence, as I must, Fain had I been in olden tournament To shiver lances for your eyes' content, Making full many a baron bite the dust. Or rather I had been that favoured page Who trained your hounds and falcons that he might After you down the valley, o'er the height Go galloping in eager vassalage. I might have heard my lord solicit bliss, And swear to you his vehement promises; And gone to mass with you at dewy prime; And in the cool of evenings I, to woo The smile of your loved lips, had sung to you The secret love of lovers of old time.

THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL RING. "Ut quæ cum gestaverit fidelitatem integram suo sponso tenens in mutua caritate vivat." Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold Which bride and bridegroom shall together hold! They whom fresh water gave to You are now United in You by the marriage vow. The ring is of a heavy, beaten ore, And yet it shall not make the finger sore. But easefully be carried day and night, Because its secret spirit makes it light. Its perfect circle sinks into the skin, Nor hurts it, and the phalanx growing thin Under its pressure moulds itself ere long, Yet keeps its agile grace and still is strong. So love, which in this symbol lies, with no Beginning more nor ending here below, Shall, if You bless it, Lord, like gold resist, And never show decay, nor flaw, nor twist, And be so light, though solid, that the soul, A composite yet indivisible whole, Shall keep its tender impress to the last, And never know the bonds that bind it fast. THE BENEDICTION OF WINE. "Ut vinum cor hominis lætifloet." Lord, You who heard the prayer of Your divine Mother, and gave Your guests that Cana wine, Deign now to bless as well the vintage new, Which cheers the heart of those who pray to you. The breeze blew warm upon the flowering shoot, And the sky coloured all the round, green fruit, Which, guarded from oidium and lice, Thrushes, phylloxera, and from dormice, Ripened as You, O Lord, would have it be. The tendril curled around the sapling tree, And soon the shoots bent under sun-blue sheaves With which September loads the crackling leaves. Over the winepress sides the juice has run, And, heavily fermenting, cracked the tun. O Lord, we dedicate to You this wine, Wherein is pent the spirit of the Rhine; We vow to You the vintages of France, Of the Moselle, Black Forest, of Byzance; Cyprus, Marsala, Malaga, and Tent, Malmsey, and Shiraz of the Orient; That of the Gold Isles scented by the sea, Sherry, Tokay, Thetalassomene; Nectar of bishops and of kings, champagne; The blue wine from the hill-sides of Suresnes; The sour, white wine of Huy; Château Margaux, Shipped to Your abbots world-wide from Bordeaux; Oporto's wine that drives the fever out, And gave to English statesmen rest and gout; Lacryma Christi, Châteauneuf of Popes, Grown, O good Lord, upon Avignon's slopes; Whether in skins or bottles; those you quaff With ceremonial face or lips that laugh; Keep them still clear when cobwebs round them grow, To make all world-sick hearts leap up and glow, To lighten minds that carking cares oppress, And yet not dimming them with drunkenness; Put into them the vigour which sustains Muscles grown flabby; and along the veins Let them regenerate impoverished blood; And bless the privileged pure wine and good, Whose common, fragile colour, still unspiced, Suddenly ceasing to be wine, O Christ, Soon as the blest, transmuting word is said, Perpetuates Your blood for sinners shed. THE BENEDICTION OF THE CHEESES. "Dignare sanctificare hanc creaturam casei quam ex adipe animalium producere dignatus es." When from the void, good Lord, this earth You raised, You made vast pasture-lands where cattle grazed, Where shepherds led their flocks, and shore their fleeces, And scraped their hides and cut them into pieces, When they had eaten all their nobler flesh, Which with earth's virgin odour still was fresh. O'er Herve's plateaux our cattle pass, and browse The ripe grass which the mist of summer bows, And over which the scents of forests stream. They give us butter, curds, and milk, and cream. God of the fields, Your cheeses bless to-day, For which Your thankful people kneel and pray. Let them be fat or light, with onions blent, Shallots, brine, pepper, honey; whether scent Of sheep or fields is in them, in the yard Let them, good Lord, at dawn be beaten hard; And let their edges take on silvery shades Under the most red hands of dairymaids; And, round and greenish, let them go to town Weighing the shepherd's folding mantle down; Whether from Parma or from Jura heights, Kneaded by august hands of Carmelites, Stamped with the mitre of a proud abbess, Flowered with the fragrance of the grass of Bresse, From Brie, hills of the Vosges, or Holland's plain, From Roquefort, Gorgonzola, or from Spain! Bless them, good Lord! Bless Stilton's royal fare, Red Cheshire, and the tearful, cream Gruyère! Bless Kantercaas, and bless the Mayence round, Where aniseed and other grains are found; Bless Edam, Pottekees, and Gouda then, And those that we salute with "Sir," like men.

TO THE MUSE. Skilful the rune of symbols to unravel, And mute avowals hearkened unawares, Before the light from lips of flowers fares With chosen petals I have strown the gravel. She I awaited came not to the lawn, And, solitary, I have chased all night The lilac's and the lily's breath in flight, And drunk it deeply in the brimful dawn. Upon the sand these flowers that I have strown My foot has crushed them down with cruel force, And I am kneeling near the mirroring source, Where I have sought her mouth and kissed mine own. But now I know, and sing with fire renewed Thy mercy, and thy beauty, and thy youth Eternal, and I love thee without ruth, Whom Sappho the divine and Virgil wooed. I have all odours to perfume thee here, And dyes for mouth and eyes, and I will make Thy looks more luminous, and deep, and clear Than the stainless azure bathing in this lake. Come with thy too red lips and painted eyes! My senses wait for thee in these bright bowers, Where they are flowering with the soul of flowers, O mother of fables and of lyric lies, O courtesan! Come where these willows wave, Lie by the water, I would have thee bare, With nothing round thine ample shoulders save All the sun's gold vibrating in thy hair. A DREAM. Dream of the far hours when We were exiled beyond the pale Of our happiness; draw again Over our love that ancient veil. Offer your lips to the evening breeze That sings among the branches and passes, Lay back your head on my knees, Where the river the willow glasses. Rest in my hands your head Tired with the weight of the autumn in its tresses red, And dream! (A fabulous sunset bleeds In the calm water wherein, Among the reeds, Our double shadow grows thin, Bathed in the sunset's red, And the radiant gold of your head.) Dream of your virginal spirit's plight, When I opened your robe in our wedding night. (The noise of a wing that lags Dies in the waterflags. And the shadows which descend With the afterglow, Mysterious and slow, Stay on the bank and o'er the waters bend Their faces of silence.) Dream of our love, of our joys, And in the shadow sing them low; At the rim of your naked lips My voice shall ambush your voice. (The moonbeams slow and white Linger on the forest tops, Fall and glide on the river they light, And now a veil of radiance drops On our protecting willow....) Dream, this is the hour of snow.

THOU WHOM THE SUMMER CROSSES, AS A FAWN. Thou whom the summer crosses, as a fawn, Red in the sun, through forest alleys springs, My soul with the deep shadows round thee drawn, Hast thou not seen the sad, blonde swarm of bees Pass hanging on the eddies of the breeze, Bearing on millions of exiguous wings A little motionless and gilded queen?... Hast thou not felt the orphan grace that starts To life with life in any beast, and glows, Tormented with enchantment, in the hearts Of delicate fawns and simple eyes of does?... My sylvan soul, so full of nests and warm, Remembering thy flown birds with pangs how keen, Shalt thou not ever, in parched summer's breath, Hang like a humming heart and keep the swarm Of gilded bees bearing their golden queen Upon thine orphan heart more sad than death?... And shalt thou ever of ecstatic nights, And of the royal Summer crossing earth, Know but the printed foot in amorous flights Of the red fawn, and shadow-dappled mirth?... Soul whom the Winter too shall cross ere long, And, after, Passion's Spring as bindweeds strong, More sad than death shall thou not ever seize This little orphan, golden queen, in state Borne round the world upon the eddying breeze By many a thousand longings that vibrate?... THE LEGEND OF SAINT URSULA. Painted by Carpaccio. The slender Ursula has decked her hair, And her pale visage, and her trailing gown With odorous collars and with shining pearls; Her tapering hand the precious burden holds Of a sheaf of delicately broken folds; Her fragile temple bears the seal of God. There comes to meet her, o'er the port's green wave, A gallant pagan prince clad with gold hair, And grace and love, and loveliness suave. The maiden and the youth have mouths so grave, That in the sleeping air on the lagoon Already seem the harps of death to swoon.... Ursula, virgin, humble as blonde thatch, Is earnest, and in costly raiment straight, And like a kingdom taketh her the prince.... But she already knows love there is none! But she already knows another youth, The fairest archer of a lordly race, Awaits her at another ocean's rim To free her sovran soul to fly to God.... And yet she cometh, with her exquisite neck Beaten by tresses garlanded with pearls, And the golden youth who loves her with sad cheer Hearkens approaching nigh his trembling heart, Following her silent step, a host of wings!... THE SOUL'S PROMISE. If you can see my soul within my eyes, I will be softer than a bed of down For your fatigue to sigh in and to swoon; I will be kinder to you and more sweet Than after vain adieux returning soon, And tenderer than a sky bedimmed with doves! Ah! if you feel my heart rise in my eyes, Like the sick perfume of the autumn rose, If you will enter on my spirit's waste, Upon whose stones no foot but yours shall sound, If you will love my visions and my vows, I will be more your kin than all your own! Upon my soul's wild thyme and moss, and on Its bare stones where the sun is wont to dance, And in its wind with fire and solace laden, In the whole desert of my crimson love, I will immerse you in my honeycombs. Ah! can you gaze into my blinding soul, And know my heart has leapt into my eyes, As the sling sends after the singing bird A stone at the mysterious welkin thrown?... If you will scan the desert of mine eyes, O you will see what suffering immense, And what vast joy and silence how divine, When, from my soul's height I shall bear you at, We shall feel rise in us the wondrous wave Of scents of roses and the falling night!... A SECRET. I will put my two hands on my mouth, to hush The words that, when I see you, to it rush. I will put my two hands on mine eyes, lest you Should in them find what I were fain you knew. I will put them on my bosom, to conceal That which might seem the desperate heart's appeal. And I will put them gently into yours, My two hands sick with grief that long endures.... And they shall come full of their tenderness, Most silently, and even with no caress, With the whole burden of a secret broken, Of which my mouth, eyes, heart had gladly spoken. Tired of being empty they to you shall come, Heavy with sadness, sad with being dumb; So desolate, discouraged, pale and frail, That you may bend, perhaps, and see they ail! ...

OF EVENING. All at the heart of a far domain, With those to whom our hearts do strain, My Truelove weeps for me, distraught By my death the week has wrought. My heart's Belovèd grieveth sore, And plunges her two hands like flowers Into her eyes whose sorrow showers, My heart's Belovèd grieveth sore. All at the heart of a far domain, Unto her feet her skates she ties, Feeling that in her heart is ice, Far unto me her tired feet strain; My Truelove hangs to the Chapel pane, That gazes over all the plain, With rings, and salt, and dry bread, my Wretched soul that will not die. All at the heart of a far domain, My Truelove never will weep again The festivals the seasons bring, With family rings on fingers twain; My Love has seen me promising, Like a saint, to spirits pure A Sunday that shall aye endure, And all at the heart of a far domain. FULL OF GRACE. And Jesus all rosy, And the earth all blue, Mary of grace, in your round hands upcurled, As might two fruits be: Jesus and the world, And Jesus all rosy, And the earth all blue. And Jesus, and Mary, And Joseph the spouse, For all my life I place my trust in you, As they in Brittany and childhood do, And Joseph the spouse, And Jesus and Mary. Then Egypt too, The flight and Herod, My old soul and my feet that tremble, seeing Towards the distant places ambling, fleeing, And the ass and Herod, And Egypt too. Now, Jesus all golden, Like statues of Christ, O Mary, in your hands that hold the sword, Over my town whereon your tears are poured, Jesus more golden In your arms and Christ. FULL OF GRACE. Now more and more, fain were my lips Your inexhaustible Grace to say, O Mary, at the sailing-day Of bowsprits and of all my ships Unto the islands of the sea, Where went my merchandize of old, By winds on other oceans rolled From isle to island of the sea. But I have donned the broken shoes Of those who dwell on land, and sprent My tongue with ash of discontent Because my memory seems to lose The sounding Psalm that sang You Hail, Who decked my prows in gold attire, When in Your hands the sheets were fire, The sun a spreading peacock's tail. Now be it so, since in me stays Salvation that the sails possess Under the wind the stars caress Of far beyond and other days, And let it be Your self-same Grace In this to-day of broken shoon, The same sky, and the same round moon As when I sailed, O Rich in Grace. COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED. Ineffable souls are known to me, In houses of poor bodies pent, And sick to death with discontent, Ineffable souls are known to me; Known to me are poor Christmas eyes, Shining out their little lights As prayers go glimmering through the nights Known to me are poor Christmas eyes Weeping with coveting the sky Into their hands with misery meek; And feet that stumble as they seek In pilgrimage the radiant sky. And then poor hungers too I know, Poor hungers of poor teeth upon Loaves baked an hundred years agone; And then poor thirsts I also know; And women sweet ineffably, Who in poor, piteous bodies dwell, And very handsome men as well, But who are sick as women be. COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED. Now Winter gives me his hand to hold, I hold his hand, his hand is cold; And in my head, afar off, blaze Old summers in their sick dog-days; And in slow whiteness there arise Pale shimmering tents deep in my eyes And Sicilies are in them, rows Of islands, archipelagos. It is a voyage round about, Too swift to drive my fever out, To all the countries where you die, Sailing the seas as years go by, And all the while the tempest beats Upon the ships of my white sheets, That surge with starlight on them shed, And all their swelling sails outspread. I taste upon my lips the salt Of ocean, like the bitter malt Drunk in the land's last orgy, when From the taverns reel the men; And now I see that land I know: It is a land of endless snow...; Make thou the snow less hard to bear, O Mary of good coverings, there, And less like hares my fingers run O'er my white sheets that fever spun. COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED. I pray too much for ills of mine, O Mary, others suffer keen, Witness the little trees of green Laid where Your altar candles shine; For all the joys of kermesse days, And all the roads that thither wend Are full of cripples without end, By night are all the kermesse ways. And then the season grows too chill For these consumptive steeds of wood, Although the drunken organ should, Alone, keep its illusions still. Poorer than I have more endured; Despairing of their hands and feet, Poor folks that cough and nothing eat, People too agèd to be cured, With ulcers wherein winter smarts, O Virgin, meekly, turn by turn, They come to You and candles burn, All in a nook of silvered hearts. COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED. Now is the legend revealed, And my cities also are healed, Consoled till they love each other, Like a child that has wept, by its mother, In the things mysterious all Of altars processional, And now all my country is dight With dahlias and lilies white, Your candles to glorify Mary, ere May passes by. Lo! endless the pleasure is, May returned, and maladies Borne to horizons blue, On vessels simple and true, Far away, on the sea so far Hardly seen, or like dots they are. Now, under trees, the time glides In the street where my life abides; Mary of meek workers, steep In the May-wood my head in the sleep And the rest that my good tools have earned; Sound mind in a sound body urned, In a Mary-month more splendid, Because all my task is ended. TO THE EYES. Now, sky of azure On houses rosy, Like a child of Flanders preach The simple religion I teach, Like a sky of azure On houses rosy; Lo, to the vexed I bring these roses, When their memory to the islands reaches, The voices that my gospel preaches, Like the gladsome text A child's talk glozes. You people happy With very little: You women and men of my city, And of all my moments of pity, Be happy With very little; For letters blue On pages rosy, This is all the book that I read you, Unto your pleasaunce to lead you, In a country blue Houses rosy. TO THE MOUTH. For, you my brothers and sisters, With me in my bark you shall go, And my cousins, the fishers, shall show Where the fin of the shoaled fishes glisters, Whose tides the bow-nets heap, Till the baskets cry out, days and days, Darkening the blue ocean's face, As in a path crowded sheep. You shall see my nets all swell, And St. Peter helping the fishes Which for the Fridays he wishes, Sole, flounder, mackerel. And St. John the Evangelist Lending a hand with the sheets, At the low ebb of autumn heats, When haddocks come, says the mist. And our women with tucked-up sleeves, Like banquets on your tables; And miracles, and fables To tell in the holy eves. FOR THE EAR. Then nearer and nearer yet To the sea in a golden fret, On the dikes where the houses end, The trees to the sea-breeze that bend; With their baptismal names anchored here, In the rivers to which they are dear, The vessels my harbour loves best, Clustered, a choir, at their rest. Now in their festivity, I salute you, Anna-Marie, Who seem in your white sails to bear Cherubs that flit through the air; And with joy that I scarcely can speak I see you again, Angélique, You with no shrouds on your mast, Safe returned from Iceland at last. But now, like Gabrielle, sing Your new sails smooth as a wing, And weep no more, Madeleine, For your nets you have lost on the main, Since all are pardoned, even The wind, for kisses given, So that in kisses and glee These visiting billows may be Content with the homage they pay, High the sea, to sing the May. TO-DAY IS THE DAY OF REST, THE SABBATH. To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath, A morning of sunshine, and of bees, And of birds in the garden trees, To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath; The children are in their white dresses, Towns are gleaming through the azure haze, This is Flanders with poplar-shaded ways, And the sea the yellow dunes caresses. To-day is the day of all the angels: Michael with his swallows twittering, Gabriel with his wings all glittering, To-day is the day of all the angels; Then, people here with happy faces, All the people of my country, who Departed one by one, two by two, To look at life in blue distant places; To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath— The miller is sleeping in the mill— To-day is the day of rest, the Sabbath, And my song shall now be still. MARY, SHED YOUR HAIR. Mary, shed Your hair, for lo! Here the azure cherubs blow, And Jesus wakes upon Your breast; Where His rosy fingers rest; And golden angels lay their chins Upon their breathing violins. Now morning in the meads is green, And, Mary, look at Life's demesne: How infinitely sweet it seems, From the forests and the streams To roofs that cluster like an isle; And, Mary, see Your cities smile Happy as any child at play, While from spires and steeples they Proclaim the simple Gospel peace With their showering melodies From the gold dawn to the sunset sky, Greeted, Mary of Houses, by The men of Flanders loving still The brown, centennial earth they till. And sing now, all ye merry men Who plough the glebe, sing once again Your Flanders sweet to larks that sing With gladsome voices concerting, And sail afar, ye ships that glass Your flags in billows green as grass, For Jesus holds His hands above, Mary, this festival of love Made by the sky for summer's birth, With silk and velvet covering earth. AND MARY READS A GOSPEL-PAGE. And Mary reads a Gospel-page, With folded hands in the silent hours, And Mary reads a Gospel-page, Where the meadow sings with flowers, And all the flowers that star the ground In the far emerald of the grass, Tell her how sweet a life they pass, With simple words of dulcet sound. And now the angels in the cloud, And the birds too in chorus sing, While the beasts graze, with foreheads bowed, The plants of scented blossoming; And Mary reads a Gospel-page, The pealing hours she overhears, Forgets the time, and all the years, For Mary reads a Gospel-page; And masons building cities go Homeward in the evening hours, And, cocks of gold on belfry towers, Clouds and breezes pass and blow. AND WHETHER IN GRAY OR IN BLACK COPE. And whether in gray or in black cope,— Spider of the eve, good hope,— Smoke ye roofs, and tables swell With meats to mouths delectable; And while the kitchen smoke upcurls, Kiss and kiss, you boys and girls! Night, the women, where they sit, Can no longer see to knit; Now, like loving fingers linking, Work is done and sleep is blinking, As balm on pious spirits drips, All tearful eyes, all praying lips, And straw to beasts, to mankind beds Of solace for their weary heads. Good-night! and men and women cross Arms on your souls, or hearts that toss. And in your dreams of white or blue, Servants near the children you; And peace now all your life, you trees, Mills, and roofs, and brooks, and leas, And rest you toilers all, between The woollen soft, the linen clean, And Christs forgotten in the cold, And Magdalenes within the fold, And Heaven far as sees the eye, At the four corners of the sky.

HER VOICE. O voice vibrating like the song of birds, O frail, sonorous voice wherein upwells Laughter more bright than ring of wedding bells, I listen to her voice more than her words. Soul of old rebecs, spirit of harpsichords, Within her voice your soft inflection dwells; Blisses of love some ancient viol tells, Kiss snatched by lips that swift lips turn towards. Her voice is sweetness of chaste dreams, the scent Of iris, cinnamon, and incense blent, A music drunk, a folded mountain's calm; It is within me made of living sun, Of luminous pride and rhythms vermilion; It is the purest, the most dazzling psalm. COPHETUA. With right arm on the open casement rim, The negro King Cophetua, with sad mien, And eyes that do not see, looks at the green Autumnal ocean rolling under him. His listless dream goes wandering without goal; He is not one who would be passion's slave; And no remorse, nor memory from its grave May haunt the leisure of his empty soul. He does not hear the melancholy chaunt Of girls who beg before him, hollow, gaunt With fasting, coughing in the mellow sun, And unawares, he knows not how it came, he feels within his hardened heart a flame, And burns his eyes at the eyes of the youngest one. DESIRES. What does she dream, lost in her hair's cascade, The lonely child with flowering hands as wan As garlands pale?—Of the plains of days agone With pools of water lilies, where she strayed On paths of chance her hands with flowers arrayed, And where alms welcomed her?—And never shone As now her eyes her jewels braided on Her gowns of gold and purple and brocade. But she sees nothing round her. In the room Amber and aromatics melt the gloom, The dusk's hot odour through the window streams; As heavy as an opal's changing fires, Sigh in the evening mist and die desires, While naked at her glass the maiden dreams. ADVENTURE. Under the diadem of rustling pearls And sapphires in their grasp of gold, In yellow hair that undulatingly unfurls Over her shoulders slow and cold, And purple cloak exulting with brocade, The Princess of the Manor's Games and Joys. And in the jubilant noise Rivers of lightning flame unrolled, And the rich purple torch sheds its delight, And twists its rustling tresses in the night. The Princess of the Manor's Joys Lifts in a dawn of amethysts Her tender visage that more sadly aches Than gloamings on the lunar face of lakes, With lingering smile upon her lip she lists, And casts a call into the evening mists. In spite of omens tragical, All they who wait upon her come To lawns where sistrum, fife, and drum To revelry and dancing call. O King! like mourning is our merry-making! Out of our arms thou hast thyself exiled, And by our kisses art no more beguiled! Our hearts for thee are aching! Thou hast fled, thou hast fled, And in the night I raise my head, And call for thee with sobs, and bosom sore! But still our festivals shall be forsaken, The mourning from our hearts shall not be taken, My fingers nevermore Shall o'er thy golden velvet tresses glide; My heavy arms shall nevermore thy neck enlace In passionate embrace Rich with the jewels of the bracelets of my pride! Farandola and roundelay, And the mad songs of pride, In sudden waves over the threshold glide, And through the chambers sway. Thou never shalt return from unknown lands, O King! The sceptre is fallen from thy hands, The lassitude that lulled thee in its lap Has stolen from thy proud, young years their sap, Now art thou crossing thresholds far forlorn Of mysteries and adventures luring thee Where monsters crouch beneath the twisted tree; Chimeras and the pitiless unicorn Shall belch their fire where thou thy way wouldst grope And thou shalt nevermore have my caress To soothe thee into happy heedlessness Of life, and perils of inimical hope. O come back, ere it be too late! At evening come unto the Joys that wait, Come to the dancing and to thy Princess, Who cradled thee with kisses and with tenderness, And sweet refrains of songs. Come to thy crown and sceptre, and the throngs Of them that love thee, and the memory Of thine ancestors shall bring back to thee Forgetfulness of mad adventures in the kiss Of her who thy Princess and Sister is. LUXURY. How vain are songs! Can they be worth the hymn To your ecstatic eyes of mine that swim? The noblest song of man no bosom stirs, Weak are sonorous words, but conquerors Are ye, glances of amber and of fire, Lips you, and clinging kisses slow to tire That in my soul are scorching! You that dare Leap out of longing, kisses! And you hair Of virgin gold that glints like noonday suns! And marble whiteness where, like lava, runs Your wild blood, snow and brazier!— Here I lie Your slave for ever, at your feet I die In sleepful spasms that the senses cloy, And the slow languor of the tasted joy; Mad with your velvety and waxen flesh That holds my soul and body in its mesh; I love you, I am poured out at your feet, Your hands are with lascivious jasmine sweet, Your beauty blooms for me! In my embrace I feel your life blowing upon my face, And entering into me! Your blinding eyes Thrill me with raptures of that Paradise Whose rubies bleed, whose yellow topazes Sleep in the sloth of sensualities, And where the limitless horizons hide Our Hell of luxuries grated round with pride. I love thee, though the kisses of thy teeth, Cunning to bite in their red vulva sheath, Have the allure of Lamias that enslave With luxury swift and cruelty suave. Through tortures from your native Orient swim Ineffably pure o'er peaceful lakes the slim Swans of your voice white in their wildering And subtle scents of snow, and on their wing Bear me towards the hope your bright eyes beam. Now let me lie upon your breasts and dream. Say nothing! Let us sleep in our blue bower Under the tufted pleasures of the hour, By the night's tranquil torpor lulled and kissed ... Already yon far dawn of amethyst Dyes the deep heavens, and the moon at rest Upon her soft cloud cushions hath caressed With argent light the forest's idle trance, And starred the stream with eyes that gleam and glance! And now the dawn is on our pillow—hide Your eyes—I shiver—they are haggard, wide! SEA-SCAPE. Under basaltic porticoes of calm sea-caves, Heavy with alga and the moss of fucus gold, In the occult, slow shaking of sea-waves, Among the alga in proud blooms unfold The cups of pride of silent, slender gladioles.... The mystery wherein dies the rhythm of the waves In gleams of kisses long and calm unrolls, And the red coral whereon writhes the alga cold Stretches out arms that bleed with calm flowers, and beholds Its gleams reflected in the rest of waves. Now here you stand in gardens flowered with alga, cold In the nocturnal, distant song of waves, Queen whose calm, pensive looks are glaucous gladioles, Raising above the waves their light-filled bowls, Among the alga on the coral where the ocean rolls. A PROPITIOUS MEETING. Propitious dawn smiles on him wandering And fretful in the evil forest deeps; The heavy night's long, bitter rumour sleeps; The sun's clear song makes the horizon ring. The scent of sage and thyme is as a sting Unto his jaded sense, the wind that sweeps The blue sea round the promontory steeps Freshens with hope his fate's proud blossoming. The glory of Joy into his soul returns, And his heroic dream leaps up and burns, Even as this dawn's far-flung vermilion, And lo! at the horizon, very calm, Pacing their steeds, and holding out their palm, The Kings he deemed dead marching in the sun. THE HOURS. The tiring hour that weeps, And the young hour gay with sun, Hour after hour creeps, Hours after hours run Along the river banks. This is an hour of dawn that vapour cloaks. Yonder a thread, so it would seem, Stretches a bridge across the stream. Shadow follows shadow, the mist chokes The water sleepy as a moat's, A tug smokes, And drags its heavy, grating chain, And drags its train Of ghostlike boats, Walls of black Along a hidden track Towards the arches blear Where now they disappear. Like sudden palms of gold, Three sunbeams glide To where the waters hide, And all along the river in the cold Life is again begun, With all its joys Of toil and noise Awakening in the quivering, crimson sun. The hour is rising radiant with mirth, Beaming smiles down on the earth, O festival of light! Here is life that smiles upon its toil, And with high forehead makes the night recoil Towards the sun in heavens bright With strength and with delight. Life quickens on faces Mad and fervent zest. To live! is when the hot blood races And swells the breast, And makes the words leap out in ready throng! Life is to be alone and strong, And master of one's fate! Ye floods of purple pour in state, Ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along! The wise Have never lived and do not know what joys Are in mad battle, carnage and great noise, When courage with courage vies. The wise Are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night Exile themselves from the festival of light Weeping its tears of proud gold on the river, O'er the lamp-lit book to shiver. To live Is better, and to ring one's heel On the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel, Or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread The grass of roads down-trodden by the fugitive Foe who has dyed them red. But the young hour gay with sun, The tiring hour that weeps, Hour after hour creeps Hours after hours run Along the river banks. Now cooler are noon's beams, O dreams reposed with languor and with ease, The waters creep, O calm dreams! Upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees The peaceful fishers sleep; A long thread swims upon the dying stream. In the foliage never a shiver, The sun darts never a beam, All is dumb. The earth around, the meadows and the river, And the air with sunshine numb, And the forest with its leafy houses, Everywhere all action drowses, And the earth hesitates with indecision, A smoker's vague vision. The only wisdom is to live The hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes. Why should we madly follow fugitive Inclement pride and crumbling hopes Along the precipices of the heavy night, That swallows up all ruined light? No! to live Is to follow all the river's turnings, Sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings, With prow set to the Orient of oblivion, To conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile, That no discoverer will ever set foot on Save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while, O dream! The young hour gay with sun, The tiring hour that weeps, Hour after hour creeps, Hours after hours run, Along the river banks. AWAKE Awake! It is a joy among hibernal hours To plunge into the pane the hoar-frost flowers; Behold: the petals glittering on the pane Open their wings that dream would follow fain. Awake, and revel in the dawn's pure joys, And smile upon the time the sun becalms: In the bright garden, save in dream, no noise But a long imagined shivering, O palms! Come, and behold my love, as ever of old, Make the vast silence flower lit by thy glance, Glad with its peaceful pinions to enfold Our passion soothed with rich remembrance. LIFE IS CALM. Life is calm, Even as this evening of sweet summer, now The bird is silent on the bough, That bends above the river, Whose reeds no longer quiver; And the pacific night and wise Sleeps without a shudder under cloudless skies. Life is calm! It is your face, O sister dear, At happiness scarce smiling here, Life is your face, dear sister, So calm; As life is and your happiness, Your face is cloudless, calm, and passionless. Even the river hushes Between its banks, among its rushes; One by one fall flowers; Silent, gentle eventide, Life is calm where waters glide; By waters where the happiness that lies Smiling, sister, in the tender flashing of your eyes, Is wondering at the waters, and the evenings, and the hours. FRONTISPIECE. The gems that ivories clip, And chrysoberyls puerile, Mingling their gleams, beguile The dole of the black tulip; The fountain weeps in the old Garden o'er flowers sad, Which by the dawn are clad In amethyst and in gold: In the boxwood shadow lingers, In sentimental fêtes, The chevalier, and awaits The princess whose pale fingers Are flowers that bring relief Unto her languorous grief. INVITATION. The ruby my vow desires For your beauty smiling kind Is surely incarnadined By a limpid mirror's fires. Ice with the flame interchanges, And your eyes hard with dignity Bruise the sobbed longing to be A bauble your hand arranges. But remember the waters yonder Cradle the vessels that wander To the isle in the bright future hidden, And come while the winter is dark, To sail our adventurous bark Madly o'er oceans forbidden. TO THE POLE. Through fogs impassible that freeze the soul, And under torpor-laden skies of gray, If none can ever open out a way To the icy horror of the reachless Pole, Yet those who died or shall die striving thither, In faith of victory and glory of dream, Have known the rapturous pride of conquest gleam, Brief flower of hope that never grief shall wither. But thou, long cheated by the immutable thirst Of being loved, hast too, too well rehearsed The vanity of combats sterile all, And dost with bitter, pitiless irony see Those who go following ghosts that ever flee Sink in the chasm where thyself didst fall.

SHE. She whom my heart in dream already loves Will under childlike curls have great blue eyes; Her voice will be as sweet as that of doves, Her skin a faint rose like a dream that dies. So slender she will be among earth's daughters, That you would think of lilies under glass, Of a fountain weeping to the sky its waters, Or the moon's beam quivering on dewy grass. And, from her deep heart to her lips arising, Guessing what seeds of songs are in me sown, She will be ever humming them, disguising My soul with the golden gamut of her own. And never a bitter word will come from her; Her eyes will always call to my caress, Chaste as the eyes of my own mother were, Melting with my own mother's tenderness. EVIL LOVE. I have yearned for the wicked child With her sensual mouth's red glow, And her restless eyes that show How sateless her soul is and wild. The lustful virgin, the child With her sick flesh fainting above The sweat of novels of love, By which her soul is defiled. She sins in her sleep; and in Her evil smile there gleams, Implacable as her dreams, The lust of perversion and sin. I have dreamt of the virgin impure; The fire of her hair has profaned My chastity with its lure— And my eyes with tears are stained. THE OWL. There is a haggard flitting through the night, And stupid wings are writhing through the wind, And then, afar, a screeching of dark fright, Like cries of a frail conscience that has sinned. It is the shy owl of long moonless nights, It is the inconsolable owl who peers With blear eyes through drear darkness, and who blights The peace of sleep with stark foreboding fears. The inconsolable night-bird weeping through The gloam, the spectral bird who fears the day, Whose panic flitting chills the dark, and who Fills space with cries that quiver with dismay. But thou, poor owl, an ivied steeple seëst, Where thou canst hide from dawning's garish hour— My heart, who from the kiss of woman fleëst, Where shalt thou find the peace of some old tower? OF SAD JOY. I am angry with you, little girl, Because of your gracious smiles, And your restful lips, and teeth of pearl, And the black glitter of your great eyes. I am angry with you, but on my knees, For when I went away, in happy wise, Far from you, far as goes the breeze, I could think of nothing but of your eyes. I was timid, I never dared look back, And I went singing as madmen do, To forget your eyes, alack! But my song was all about you. SOME SONG OR OTHER. The song of moonlight all That trembles as aspens shake, The thrush sang it at the evenfall To the listening swan on the blue lake. It is all of love and distress, And of joy and of love, and then There are sobs of gold and weariness, And ever comes joy back again. Far, far away flew the thrush, And the swan went pondering All the new words, by lily and rush, With his head underneath his wing. OF AUTUMN. While the moon through the heavens glides, With music enchanting our way, Come in the gladness to stray Of the gorgeous autumn-tides. Now comes the wind, and lifts The gold of glad forests along; And many a mystical song Along the breeze with it drifts. This life is most gracious and dear, Enchanting our way as we go With the laughter and golden glow Of autumns singing clear. ON THE SEA. Blow, blow, thou boisterous tempest, Blow, bitter winds and stark; The fisher, he cannot hear you, A-sailing in his dream-bark. He sails to what pale daughters, To what horizons dim? Rage, rage ye winds and climb ye waters, But we are waiting for him. We are the lovelorn maidens, Alone in the wearisome dark; You winds and you waters that love us, Overturn him in his dream-bark.

PSYCHOLOGY. A surgeon, I the souls of men dissect, Bending my feverish brow above their shameless Perversions, sins, and vices, all their nameless Primitive lusts and appetites unchecked. Upon my marble men and women spread Their open bellies, where I find the hidden Ulcers of passions filthy and forbidden, And probe the secret wounds of dramas dread. Then, while my arms with scrofulous blood are dyed, I note in poems clear with scrupulous art What my keen eyes in these dark deeps descried. And if I need a subject, I am able To stretch myself on the dissecting table, And drive the scalpel into my own heart. THE CAPITAL. A dolorous fruit is the vast capital. Its bursten skin and pulp too ripened dye Opulently their rich rottenness With green gold, violet, and red phosphorus. Oozing a sickly sweet, thick, cancerous juice, Its spongy flesh melts in the mouth, and in Its pensive poisons germinate the rank, Perverted sins of fever-tortured brains. So strange its spice, so exquisite its taste,— A macerated ginger in a rare elixir,— I plunged my teeth in it with greedy haste. But dizziness I ate, and madness drank. And that is why I trail a debile frame, With my youth dying in the husk of my strength. THE PENITENT. The penitent of cities damned am I. In shameful taverns where rank liquors flow, And in new Sodoms viciously aglow, Where outrage hides its lusts with murder nigh, I watch in flaring nights with mournful eye, And shuddering hear what monsters still we grow. And all the crimes of men oppress me so I call for vengeance to the angered sky. Wrathful as prophets went in Holy Writ, I walk with haggard cheek in public places, Confessing sins that I do not commit. And the Pharisees cry out with upturned faces: "I thank thee, God, that I am not as this Infamous poet by thy judgment is!" "ET ERITIS SICUT DII." Sick Artist, from the world around thee shrinking To nurse the high ideal of thine Art, Give thou no place to Nature in thy thinking, That foolish, fertile slut obscene and stinking— To the Artificial consecrate thy heart. In spite of reed-pipes and loud songs of marriage, Be thou remote, Reality desert, The blood and flesh of women proud of carriage, The flabby flesh of women thou disparage, Deny their beauty which is only dirt. Are thy tired spirit and thy parched mouth aching For the cooling, carnal draught of their caress? This is a thirst that thou canst best be slaking, Swooning among thy lamp-lit bottles, breaking The odorous seals of drunken dizziness. Dream drunk with rum, whose tropic-heated spices Ferment into a scented wine that joins Thy subtle spirit in voluptuous vices With negro women whose smooth flesh entices Thy lubric hand to their anointed loins. Drink kirsch, as turbulent as cascades shaded By forests where the maidens bathe their feet; Musked maraschino, sucked by mouths pomaded In the sick air of brothels golden-braided By those who queen it on the yielding seat; And, hypocrite with ice one cannot sunder Out of his flame, drink kümmel, whose bright feast Of boreal snow-masked fire evokes the wonder Of roses under snow, O roses ... under Archangel heavens women of the East. And, for its green of bindweed-tangled fancies, Drink absinthe, which shall open out to thee Those forests where the fairy Vivien dances, And the sage Merlin with her feet entrances In the hoarse brushwood by the bitter sea. Then to thy reeling brain shall dreams come sailing, Upon the calm bed where thy body sank, And thou shalt see dissolved in shadows paling, All earthly things around thee, failing, failing, While brighter surge the visions rank on rank. Behold! Among the wan blue vapours, steaming Before the scented, sounding sunrise, glows A belt of glaciers whose thin peaks of dreaming Mirrored upon an azure lake are gleaming In the tropic valley guarded by their snows. The leaves of mangoes, palms, and fig-trees sighing Are wafting coolness o'er the billowing grass, Where, garlanded like flowers, are women lying, Bathing their lily limbs, beneath the flying Jewels of furtive humming-birds that pass. And a cascade of dazzling nakednesses Falls from the peaks of glaciers in shoals, And every following body holds and presses The one that went before, holds and caresses; A living stream of beauty rolls and rolls. Arms, loins, and thighs are linked and intertwining, Lightnings are playing on a vaporous mesh Of luminous hair and supple limbs combining, And from the lofty peaks of glaciers shining For ever falling are new waves of flesh. Drink every drop of this pure wine, and waste In thine embraces all these limbs unreal. Lie in thy bed of snow, and, undebased, Enjoy all flesh in thine own flesh, and taste The monstrous joy of soiling the Ideal. VENGEANCE. Woman with heart stabbed by a hidden wrong, Whose vengeful fingers, proud, and tapering long, Have strapped thy naked lover in his sleep Down to the bed, where now his wild eyes weep Their scalding tears like vitriol, and stare On broken furniture and carpets where Weapons, clothes, flowers are in mad medley cast, In sheets still with his kisses warm, thou hast To soldiers prostituted thee, and spent Their vigour with thy body's vehement Surging of spasms quivering under them; But what thought, like a hideous diadem Of thorns, hath rent thy forehead, when the third, His white flesh scarcely sated, having heard Thy lustful moaning till his heart grew sick, Looked, as a bitch looks beaten with a stick, To the black, frantic face of thy betrayer, And asked with plaintive murmur: "Shall I slay her?" THE SONG OF THE FORGES. O frenzied forges with your noise and blaring, Red, reeking fires that comb dishevelled skies, Your hollow rumbling is like stifled swearing, And the grassed earth about you burns and dies. When blind, mad man, intent on gain and plunder, Thinks he is matter's master, in your maw Lugubriously rolls a hollow thunder, That says: We forge and forge, without a flaw, The chains from which thou hast not wit to save thee, O foolish man! we rivet link by link The shackles which for ever shall enslave thee. Sweat, pant, and fill the furnace to the brink, Throw in the coal, and pour the crackling casting Through the cut sand, beat, crush the pig to shape, Temper the sword, sheet, deck, and rig with masting The tyrant ships that sweep the sea with grape, Crowd with machines the hamlet and the haven, To prison thee more deep than dungeons held In durance making thee a pauper craven... Stupid humanity! we weld and weld With the vile toil disease beyond reclaiming, And imbecility, and discontent, Murder, and hate that sets the mansion flaming, Bloody revolt and heavy punishment. We forge the fate of every generation; We crush the father and the child as well, Spitting at heavens that shake with consternation The soot and coal of our relentless hell! See! to the stainless blue of skies upcurling Our towering chimneys' belched, polluted breath, Above the waste and ravaged lands unfurling Their sable flags of slavery and death! HERMAPHRODITE. Rosy and naked, pure as a flower divine, The mystic being of old stories sleeps, Stretched in the grass like a bough of eglantine, In the flowery clearing in the forest deeps. Upon his folded arm he rests his head; The sleeping kisses of the sun repose Upon his delicate body softly spread, And shimmer from his shoulders to his toes. And near him, with a murmur as of bees, Runs the clear brook through grass and lily flowers, Under the fig-trees' laden boughs, and flees, Winding along the tangled secret bowers. Sweet sorcery of the flesh! A sphinx above thee Asks the thrilled senses to resolve desires! With shame and terror tremble all who love thee, And they who see thee burn with thousand fires. Seeing thy more than human loveliness Women and youths their envious glances dart; They sigh with lowered eyes, and weep, and press Sometimes their hand upon their maddened heart. "Where is the heavenly goddess," so they cry, "Whose loveliness can match thy perfect frame? And what young god, all sun and spring, can vie With all this freshness blent with tender flame?" O to drink madly on one mouth the kisses Of Aphrodite and Adonis both, And, trembling, to discover all blent blisses In the same frame to no perversions loth! Faust had left Margaret for thee, and lewd Anacreon had never lost a day on Bathyllus, Sappho would not have pursued In her escape Erinna, no nor Phaon. Under thy foot earth lapped with pallid flames Trembles, and all the flowers die where it hovers Man clips no more the woman, and hot dames Enlace their arms no more around young lover O last ideal of decaying races, Mortal revealer of best beauties, thy Poisons poured lavishly in thine embraces Have made the ancient cities rot and die. And now to us thou comest, while uncloses Under thy feet a dawn that pales the day's; And poets, mad with incense and with roses, Laud thee with chants of glory, love, and praise. Sweet being, grant to us thy sweetest blisses! We drag ourselves under thy conquering feet, While, in a downy drunkenness, thy kisses Gather our last and loveliest heart's beat. THE DAYS OF YORE. I have inhaled love like a garland sprent With morning dew, and fragrant with a scent That set my kisses fluttering over it, As butterflies of silk and velvet flit. And savoured it like some fruit from the South, Whose luscious pulp melts slowly in the mouth. And, cups of sapphire effervescing bright, Blue eyes have made me drunk with spring's delight! And, ruby cups brimmed with a blood that seethed, Lips have a dizziness upon me breathed!... —Fall o'er the past, ye mists of memory! And now, thou deep, swart night envelop me! In thy wan winding-sheet my heart enfold, To sleep alone, and motionless, and cold.

ART. What use is action? We have thought until The world is but the shadow of our dreams. What if the sap in all the gardens teems, Sunk back upon itself is our limp will. The mind has ravaged space, and we are ill With what we know; yet knowledge only seems, Upon life's verge a net of cheating gleams; And my possessions leave me tired and chill. But thou alone, O torch of sacred Art, With first, primeval beauty warm the heart, And flash thy multiple glimpses of the Ideal; And thou, O Poet, make lost Eden shine Within us, and behind the seeming real Show us the essences of things divine. THERMOPYLÆ. The sombre gorge is only lighted by The bucklers on the beeches. Near their chief The warriors, with no fear and with no grief, Await their fate. And now the dawn is nigh. To-morrow Greece shall mourn them: they must die. The priests have read the auguries like a leaf. Hydarnes, with the footstep of a thief, Slinks with his traitor where the shadows lie. So be it. Under arrows showering thick By shadows shielded they will fight, beneath The overhanging rocks, with pike and teeth. And when the sword breaks they will grip the stick. They share a few figs for their breakfast, right Calmly. They with Pluto sup to-night. A NAVAL BATTLE. The fleets rush headlong o'er the sea, and lock In a loud, long impact deafening the ear; The hissing arrows make the heavens blear, The heavy waves are clashing shock on shock. Ares is with us, driving like a flock The Persian ships which, when they staggering rear, The rostrum pierces till, in mad career, They crowd the shore and shatter on the rock. The dusk climbs, but the most illustrious chase The coward, and thrust from every vantage-place. But now the moon breaks through the clouds, to show Our native land kissed by its tender ray, The glittering summits and the silvered bay, And the free sea flowered with corpses of the foe.

THE TRIBUNES. The people have had masters whose strong faces, Charged with imperious will, their masses cowed, Who spoke with regal voices ringing loud To draw out of their sleep lethargic races. The word they cast down from the market-places In the four winds of Heaven vibrated proud With bitter love and majesty unbowed, Threatening to make of cities desert spaces. The crowd remember yet their magic names, And echo them with thunderous acclaims Of welcome to the coming victory. The legendary marble where they stand Rises on history's threshold, and their hand Wrathfully sways the billowing days to be. CORDOVANS. You leathers red with autumn's, victory's dyes! In some old oratory's night you blaze, Where sleeps the heavy splendour of dead days; You with your hues of epic, evening skies, Mysterious as fiery meres of gold, You dream of those who trailed their swords, and bowed Above your cushions stamped with wafers proud Their gashed, tanned faces in the days of old, With an odour of adventure in their capes. Red leathers whom the peace of hangings drapes, You are like tragic sunsets, worn were ye By legendary heroes, who enriched The Kings they served, and all the world bewitched, And who upon a copper, kindled sea, You Cordovans dyed deep with war and pride, Embarked in summer cool of eventide! You are chimerical with gathered lives; Of new Americas you guard the gleams, You sunk in dazzled and vermilion dreams, In you the soul of ancient suns survives! FLORISE. Richly mature, upon the bed of joy Strown with crushed flowers, Florise bends lovingly Her heavy-lidded great eyes o'er the boy Whom she has made man ere his puberty. Fair as a sunset that on roses lingers, Sweet as the wind is he in lilac-trees. With gratitude he fondles the deft fingers That guided him into love's mysteries. Heavy with glad fatigue, their senses thus Dream, but breaking off their amorous Embrace, as though a cry she would withhold, She feels her heart within her pale, and presses Her face upon the pillow, for she guesses Her too young lover sees her growing old. HECATE. The moon has a kiss that clings Like those of cold women whom Minions with fertile womb Drive from the bed of Kings. She weeps her white distress On spires, and lays a sheet Of suppliant light at the feet Of crosses pitiless. But breaks her prayer, which is vain, And raises herself again, In pale and barren pride; And casts, with the cruel glance Of her lidless eye, far and wide Hysteric radiance. IN THE REIGN OF THE BORGIAS. In the gilt palace where young slave-girls show Like bunches of gold grapes their breasts erect, In a soft room with burning drapery decked, The conclave's end illumes a golden glow. Near pages who their yellow hair have smoothed, And whom the evening's kisses feminize, Sit, red as lava in their gorgeous dyes, The Roman Cardinals, by music soothed. They worship flesh; and the unnatural, thinned Voices of eunuchs quiver o'er their napes With a thrill of pleasure like the lust of rapes; And Roman girls dishevel in the wind, In the fantastic, smoky night of porches, Their manes of fire like wildly streaming torches. ABSORPTION. Woman, my longing to be nothing clings To thee, whose stagnant eyes are pools of night, Liquid indifference, where is no light Save the kaleidoscope of imaged things. Thy sable hair, so sultry and so fresh, When I untie it, billows o'er thy shape Like evening's shadow o'er a pale landscape, And slowly eats the whiteness of thy flesh. The sapid kiss of thy rich-moulded mouth Falls, with no impulse known, and with no sound, As ripened fruit falls heavy to the ground, In the slow silence of the autumn's drouth. As into water I descend in thee; And I am cradled vaguely on thy breasts, Which are as white as billows' foamy crests, And heave above thy breathing like the sea. Thy cadenced walk is like old liturgies; It trails with royal rhythm its broad verses, And with grave grace before mine eyes rehearses All the Gregorian chant's solemnities. O save me from my murderous dreams, thou bright Bosom of silence, mouth that sates the sense, Urn of oblivion, pillow of indolence; Annihilate me in thy bosom's night! My weakness by thy savorous strength is nursed, And in thy gaping love absorbing me I taste the time when all I am shall be In Nature's vast and flowering corpse dispersed. THE YOUTH AMONG THE LILIES. In the voluptuous Room of Lilies, made As a deaf ear by the unhealthy shade Of vinous tapestry wherein ferments The sunset, drunk with Church and censer scents The dying Dauphin, with his woman's slow Eyes, sees at his feet the ermine snow Of the hushed carpet, and the oriel's slit Sifting a trembling glimmer on to it Of lying lilacs and of faëry roses, And the pale youth his heavy lids uncloses And sees upon the heaven's crimson rim Women whose lifted breasts call unto him. RESIGNATION. I have fought against myself, I have cried in pain, Writhed breathless in my wounded spirit's night, And with my life in rags, a piteous sight, I come out of the Hell which is my brain. I know full well to-day, my dream was mad; My love of autumn was a crime, no doubt; And like a nail I tear the yearning out That my too simple heart for childhood had. My cross! Lance in my side! I bring to you This verse like Christmas evenings white and calm, When the sovran palpitation of the palm Hovers against the heaven's freezing blue; This verse whereinto all my grief shall pass, Verse of a man resigned, misunderstood, Verse into which my love must shed its blood, Long bleeding, like a sunset on stained glass. VOICES. Voice of my weeping blood, voices you of my flesh, My panting, frantic flesh, O pensive voices, Louder than when a surging crowd rejoices, Hush! lest the dear, dead past should bloom afresh! Be silent, you long voices! Memory closes On velvet voices, voices of flowers of old That dreamt in her flesh and sang in her voice of gold; Voice of lascivious jasmine and moss roses, Be silent! Hush my sorrow and my shame! Into my heart silence and winter came: Silence is snowing into my heart's dark vast. Snow, snow, O silence! Spread your cool above Hell's roses, cover up their fires at last, And in the shadow slain my only love. And in the shadow slain my only love.

THE RESURRECTION OF DREAMS. It is as warm as when the lilacs' scent Is with the fragrance of magnolias blent, When you can hear the seeds crack in the ground, When first your face and hands are summer-browned When every now and then in heavy drops The rain begins, and all as sudden stops.... Slate and rust clouds voluptuously mass Their bulk o'er the green corn and nibbled grass Of fields that billow to yon purpled woods, Which, through bronzed clouds, a sheaf of sunbeam floods. Sweating, I climb the slope, where, like a long White ribbon, runs the brook and sings his song. A noisy cock pursues a clucking hen. A sparrow flies with bits of hay. And then Such is the silence you can hear from far, Where the red roof-tiles of the village are, The heavy, steady humming of the bees ... (Can there be blossoms on the willow-trees?) Here is the wood.—Pale with surprise you see The ardent silence and the mystery Whose sap swells in the branches which it studs With downy catkins and with sticky buds. Under the elm-trees' violaceous shade The fresh anemones have snowed the glade; The undergrowth bathes in a fawn half-light; The pure air crackles with a lizard's flight; And there, where on the hazel bough is poured A ray of sunshine darted like a sword, A trembling cloud of yellow pollen rises.... And now mysterious mirth my heart surprises With words and cries of love and tenderness, And an intoxicated glow and stress, Because the spring with legendary dyes, The white of snow and blue of Paradise, And tender green of leaves all dewy sprent, With nightingales, and honeysuckle's scent, And chafers hanging heavily from blue Lilacs, wet with rosy diamonds too, With the clear crystal and mad pearls that gush Out of the beak of quail and pairing thrush, All the divine, forgotten spring reminds My heart of ardours where the pathway winds!... I love! My breast is full of flowers and birds! I shall break out in ecstasy of words! I love!—But whom?—I care not whom nor how! I love, with all my blood in frenzy now, And all the sighs that heave my breast, the maid Who smiling comes beneath her cool sunshade.... MIDNIGHT. The earth is black with trees of velvet under A low sky laden with great clouds of thunder. The gnomes of midnight haunt the dark, whose ears, With luxury veiled, hear as a deaf man hears. One is uneasy in one's stifling sheets, And so uneasily the poor heart beats That, bathed in sweat, at last you leave your bed, And as in dream about the chamber tread. You throw the window open. Not a sound. Surely the wind is swooning on the ground, And listening to some holy, mystic birth Preparing in the entrails of the earth. You listen, earnest, to your heart's loud shock Beating with pained pulsations like a clock. Then to the window-sill you pull a chair, And watch the clouds weigh down the helpless air Over the gardens whence, in sick perfumes, Exudes the sweat of trees and wildered blooms. HIDING FROM THE WORLD. Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet? And open in the dewy, dustless air Its dainty chalice with blue petals, where The shade of bushes makes a shy retreat? And we will frame our daily happiness By joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress Far from the world, its noises and conceit ... Shall we not hide our modest love between Trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green? THE GUST OF WIND. I closed my window, lit my lamp, reclined My temple on my hand, and sadly thought: "Now let me read, and dream, and rest my mind ... But, O my God, my heart is so distraught! Yet, let me read." It was a traveller's book. O sailing on broad rivers, on whose shore Are baobabs and mangroves, while the song Of curious birds wafts with the ship along, Together with the tiger's grating roar.... A sudden gust of wind the window shook, Followed afar off by continued whining. I throw the window open wide, to look Into the night, and see, with white teeth shining In mocking grin, Death pass upon a steed With yellow teeth, making its wet flanks bleed With spurs of bone, and in the wind its mane Tossing, together with his winding-sheet; See Death, while all the trees moan out in pain, Race under clouds lit by a livid sheet, And brandishing above him his bright scythe! Afar, Italian poplars curve their slim And parallel trunks beneath the wind of him; Dishevelled willows in the shadow writhe, And the earth, looking at the monster, pants.... Now he is swallowed by the raucous squall. Long I stand gazing at the rise and fall Of foliage broken by a rending sob, When suddenly the wind, with hollow throb,— Lugubrious present from the Reaper!—heaves Into the room a flight of withered leaves. THE SETTING SUN. The stainless snow and the blue, Lit by a pure gold star, Nearly meet; but a bar Of fire separates the two. A rime-frosted, black pinewood, Raising, as waves roll foam, Its lances toothed like a comb, Dams the horizon's blood. In the tomb of blue and white Nothing stirs save a crow, Unfolding solemnly slow Its silky wing black as night.

ERRANT SYMPATHY. From some unknown horizon, Wafted from far away, Fraternal sympathy flies on The scented breath of the May. Now dreamers in cloudland turrets, And maidens ripe with the time, Up the white steps of their spirits Feel loves invisible climb. They know not from what glances, In the pensive peace of the hour, There are unknown lips in their fancies Opening with theirs in flower. So keen and kind the bliss is, That their foreheads, younger made By these intangible kisses, Guard dreams that never fade. THE GARDEN INCLOSED. Fulcite me floribus. Dear is thy bandage, Love, To my heavy lids that it closes; It weighs like the sweet burden of Sunshine on frail, white roses. I walk as to voices that call, I seem over waters to hover, And every wave, like a lover, Folds round my feet as they fall. Who has unloosened my tresses, As through the dark places I came? Girdled with unseen caresses, I plunge into billows of flame. My lips, where my soul is crooning, Open in rapt desire, Like a burning blossom swooning Over a river on fire. * * * * * * * * * Dormis et cor meum vigilat. My hands lie for my breasts to soothe, Of playing and of distaffs tired; My white hands, my hands desired, Seem asleep on waters smooth. Far from futile, waste repining, On this my beauty's throne, Frail, calm, gentle Queens reclining, My royal hands dream of their own. And while mine eyes are closed, and still is The golden hair my breast that robes, I am the virgin holding lilies, I am the infant holding globes. * * * * * * * * * Si floruit vinea. In mulberry time they sang my lips that yield To keen caresses, And, like the rain upon the summer field, My long, warm tresses. In time of vintaging they sang mine eyes, Mine eyes half-closed, Veiled by tired lids and lashes unreposed, Like autumn skies. I have all gleams and savours, I am supple As a bindweed in hedgerow bowers, My breasts are curved as flames are, or a couple Of sister flowers. * * * * * * * * * Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi. When thou dost plunge into mine eyes thine eyes, I am all within mine eyes. When thy mouth unties my mouth, My love is nothing save my mouth. When thy fingers lightly touch my hair, I am not if it be not there. When they touch my breasts at any time, Like a sudden fire to them I climb. Is it this which is to thee most dear? Here my soul is, all my life is here. * * * * * * * * * In a perfume of white roses She sits, dream fast; And the shadow is beautiful as though an angel there were glassed. The gloam descends, the grove reposes; The leaves and branches through On the gold Paradise is opening one of blue. A last faint wave breaks on the darkening shore. A voice that sang just now is murmuring. A murmuring breath is breathing ... now no more. In the silence petals fall.... * * * * * * * * * The angel of the morning star came down Into her garden, and he spake to her: "Come with me, I will show thee many a lake, Valleys delightful, secret forest bowers, Where still, in other dreams than ours, The subtle spirits wake Of the earth." She stretched her arms, with laughter Looking between her lashes on The angel flaming in the sun, And, when he moved, in silence followed after. And while they wandered to the groves of shade The Angel round her laid His arm, and set Among her bright hair longer than his wings The flowers he gathered dewy wet Upon the branches over her. THE TEMPTATION. Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters, Glittering sons and radiant daughters. —D.G. ROSSETTI. A silence softened the declining day, A moan, and then a love-sigh died away. Apples were falling one by one between The grasses warm and shadows emerald green. The sun sank down from branch to branch; a bird Singing among the stirless leaves was heard. A scent of soft and swooning blossoms strayed, Like a slow sea-wave, through the deepening shade. And, to hear better her who comes, with bent Eyes, as in dream, and heart to meet her sent, By paths where never sound the silence jars, Voluptuous evening, in the heated air, With hands of subtle and accomplice care, Spread the insidious net of oblique stars. ART THOU WAKING? Art thou waking, my perfume sunny, My perfume of gilded bees, Art thou floating along the breeze, My perfume of sweet honey? In the hush of the gloam, when my feet Roam through the rich garden-closes, Dost thou tell I am coming, thou smell Of my lilacs, and my warm roses? Am I not like in this gloam a Cluster of fruit concealed By the leaves, and by nothing revealed, Save in the night its aroma? Does he know, now the hour is dim, That I am half opening my hair, Does he know that it scents the air, Does its odour reach to him? Does he feel I am straining my arms? And that the lilies of my valleys Are dewy with passion-balm That for his touching tarries? ALL OF WHITE AND OF GOLD. All of white and of gold Are the pinions of my angels; But Love Hath pinions changing. His sweet wings are turn by turn The colour of purple and roses, And the crimson sea where uncloses The kiss of the sun. The beautiful wings of my angels Are very slow, And open closed. But the agile wings of Love Are impatient, And like hearts never rest. THE RAIN. The rain, my sister dear, The summer rain warm and clear, Gently flees, gently flies, Through the moist atmosphere. Her collar of white pearls has come undone in the skies. Blackbirds sing with all your might, Dance magpies! Among the branches downward pressed, Dance flowers, dance every nest, All that comes from the skies is blest. To my mouth she approaches Her wet lips of strawberries wild; She has touched me with a mouth that smiled, Everywhere at once, With her millions of little fingers. On a lawn Of sounding flowers, From the dawn to the evening hours, And from the evening to the dawn, She rains and rains again, She rains with might and main. Then the sun with golden hair Dries the bare Feet of the rain. AT SUNSET. At sunset, Swans of jet, Or fairies sombre, Come out of the flowers, and things, and us These are our shadows. They advance: the day retreats. Into the dusk they go, With a gliding movement slow. They gather, to each other call, Seek with noiseless footfall, And together all With their wings so light Make the great night. But the dawn in the sea Awakes and takes His torch, then he Climbs gleam by gleam, Climbs in a dream. Out of the waves arise His tresses fair, And blue eyes. At once, as they were blown Away, the shadows flee. Where? Who can see? Into the earth? Into the sea? Into a flower? Into a stone? Into us? Who knows? Their wings they close, And now repose. It is the morn. A BARQUE OF GOLD. In a barque of the Orient Maidens three are coming back, Maidens three from the Orient Are coming in a barque of gold. One is black, Her hands the rudder hold, On her curving lips with their essences of roses She brings to us strange stories, In the silence. One is brown, She holds the full sail down, And on her feet are wings, An angel's mien to us she brings In her motionless bearing. But one is fair, At the prow she is sleeping, As from the rising sun her hair The wave is sweeping, She brings us back in her eyes so bright All the light. LILIES THAT SPIN. Now in this April morning, sweet With folded shadows and doves cooing, The dear child with her shy conceit What is she busy doing? The blonde trace where her footsteps go Is lost in the grated garden's alleys; I do not know, I do not know The meaning of her cunning sallies. With a long gown down to her heel, Pensive and slow, with a silent gesture Upon the sun at a white wheel She is spinning a blue linen vesture. And with blue eyes of bridal bliss Smiling at her dream that glances, Weaving golden foliages Among the lilies of her fancies.

THE SPINSTER PAST. The old woman spins, and her wheel Is prattling of old, old things; As though to a doll she sings, And memories over her steal. The hemp is yellow and long, The old woman spins the thread, Bending her white, weary head Over the wheel's lying song. The wheel goes round with a whirl, The yellow hemp is unwound, She turns it round and round, She is playing like a girl. The yellow hemp is unwound, She sees herself a girl, As blonde as the skeins that whirl, She is dancing round and round. The wheel rolls round with a whirr, And the hemp is humming as well, She hears an old lover tell And whisper his love for her. Her tired hands rest above The wheel, its spinning is done, And with the hemp are spun Her memories of love. ROUNDEL OF OLD WOMEN. Little old women, my thoughts, The snow falls from the vast, Death and uncertainty palls All the things of the past. Why is my heart so chill Under these skies overcast, In these winters that last and last, These winters calm and still? You little old women who glean, Make a bonfire of your past, Of your reeds snapped by the blast, And of all your barren dreams. All that your sorrow remembers, Burn it like dry brushwood, And sit and warm your blood Over the dying embers. And mumble in grief and dejection Of the happy days of your youth, And empty with fingers of ruth The spindles of blue recollection. And when the cottage is damp With the weeping of the night, One of you will light, Like a shaded, smoky lamp, —Oh! why must I weep and perish, And nothing, nothing forget?— The best of memories yet, The memory of Her you cherish. HANDS. Glued like the eyes of a thief At my heart's window-pane, gazing in, Were two pale hands, hands of grief, Hands as of Death, bone and skin. I shivered to see them stare, Weird as the moon in the blue, Lifting to me their despair, As the hands of the damned might do. And He of those desolate hands, Who was my visitor grim? Death on my threshold stands, Since I gazed on the hands of Him. It was not a blessing they shed, Curst of a truth were they, For I have longed to be dead, Since I saw their ghastly ray. For the wine of my loving is sour, And full of tears and of harm, And deadens the bread of the hour That is signed with their fatal charm. Hands of poison! Hands of despair! Gestures of virgins of gloom! You have shone on my house as a pair Of candles a corpse illume! I have seen Hope close her door, And my mourning is watching Death, While the North wind is blowing o'er My candle dead in His breath. MY EYES. Poor eyes, you lamps that are failing, How little remains of your glow? Encroaching night is veiling The things of the here-below. Or is your gathering gloaming Indifference alone? O eyes that once went roaming To Beauty and the Unknown! You sink your lids like a curtain, When Love goes by, a flame; You know your sorrow is certain, And age to you is shame. And yet, my heart's best praising, O flameless lamps, is for you; Through you my spirit gazing First saw, and felt, and knew! You showed me the mountain steep, with The sea and the stars above, And all that my life is deep with: My child, and death, and Love. MY HANDS. My poor hands, so wan and faded, Agile once as a bird, My rhythms of speech you aided, And by my brain you were stirred; Poor wrinkled hands, like two Old women worn and wizened, My thoughts run on, but you In listlessness are prisoned. Yet I bless you, my hands, now that strife Is done, and the heart reposes; You taught me the touch of roses; And the caresses of life. All the hands you touched, hands of brothers, And of women I loved in dole, And the faithful hands of mothers: I bear you yet in my soul. SILENCES. There is an age, sad age, and hour obscure, When man, aweary of adventurous dreams, Turns from the far horizon's lure His eyes towards the Inn of Good Repose. Then simple Thoughts and staid, Like an eager, humble serving-maid, With delicate cares discreet Lull infinite regrets to sleep, And kindle in the heart once more The fire of memories of the yore, And from the hearth drive hopes importunate, That one by one may steal within the great Silences. The silence of our memories Whereon already falls the snow of years; Love's silence, whose abandoned tomb No tender hand makes bloom; Silence of hopes long seeking, which Have died like beggars in the ditch; Silence of faith, whose torch has been put out By life and doubt. These silences our brothers, in they glide, Like white monks, rigid, stern, And sit down, without speaking, at our side.... Then we with Truth sojourn. Ere they had come we saw but of the world Its flowers and orchards pasturing our eyes, But, when they entered in, our deeper souls Explored, together with our thought, the night. One of life's secrets each of them reveals, One of fate's shadows each of them dispels, And they can tell us whether we have walked Along the road where God's hand pointed us. Our friends, our children, all whose life seemed bound Together with our own most intricately, We see them far, alone in the great fight Waged with Infinity, and Pain, and Death. We thought that their hands which our hands have clasped, And the long gazing of our eyes in theirs, And that our voices uttering one thought, And all our common hopes and self-same griefs, And all our evenings lived beneath one lamp, And all those hours upon one dial told, The self-same clock of destiny— Sealed our converging fates for evermore! Now suddenly we are alone, so far From life that we can scan the vast expanse That separates us and divides us all. These pure child's eyes, these beautiful fondled hands, These voices intertwined like woven flowers, Have touched perhaps, and recognized each other, But like to friends, or strangers almost, who To-morrow will resume their separate way. And now that silence from us far removes The lies of love for which our senses longed, Lo, in the universe our soul is lost! The child of our own blood, who, piously, Some last, last night will come to close our eyes, How he is one, his fate how otherwise Than ours, how far removed, and how alone! He enters life! He is no more our own! Thus shall they go towards the call, Till, lonely and despoiled of all, Naked and poor we face the eternal hour! And, seeing our heart as a temple with no god, And closed our soul to every new delight, Empty our hands, and in our eyes no sight, We shall make question of ourselves: What tie Unites this lowest, lamentable thing We are ... to Immortality?

THE HOTHOUSE. O hothouse in the forest deeps! And your doors for ever closed! And all there is beneath your dome! And under my soul in your analogies! The thoughts of a princess who is hungry, The weariness of a sailor in the desert, A brass band at the windows of incurables. Go to the wannest corners! You think of a woman fainted on a day of harvest, There are postillions in the courtyard of the hospital; Afar goes by a hunter of elks, become a nurse. Look around in the moonlight! (O nothing here is in its place!) You think of a mad woman before her judges, A man-of-war at full sail on a canal, Birds of night on lilies, A knell at noon, (Down yonder under these bell-glasses!) A halting-place of sick men on the moorlands, An odour of ether on a sunny day. My God! my God! when shall we have the rain, And the snow and the wind in the hothouse! ORISON. Pity my absence on The threshold of my will! My soul is helpless, wan, With white inactions ill. In tasks abandoned stands My soul with sobbing pale, O'er shut things its tired hands Tremble without avail. And while my heart breathes out Bubbles of lilac dreams, My soul is wafted about In a wax moon's watery gleams; In a moonlight where glimmer the lorn Lilies of the to-morrows; A moonlight where nothing is born But its hands in the shadow of sorrows. HOT-HOUSE OF WEARINESS. O weariness blue in the breast! Wedding the better sight, In the weeping, wan moonlight, Of my blue dreams with languor oppressed! This weariness blue evermore, Where through the deep windows green, As in a hot-house are seen, With moon and with glass covered o'er, The mighty forests undying Whose nightly forgetfulness, Like a dream motionless, On the roses of passion is lying; Where rises a slow water-beam, Mingling the moon and the sky In a glaucous, eternal sigh, Monotonous as a dream. DARK OFFERING. I bring my poor work, which Is like the dreams of the dead, And the moon on the fauna rich Of my remorse is shed: With swords my wishes crowned, Violet snakes that creep Through my dreams and enlace in my sleep, Lions in sunshine drowned, Lilies in far waters green, Closed hands that never shall ope, Red stems of hatred between Sorrows of love without hope. Pity the song, Lord God! And let my sad prayers rise, While the scattered moon on the sod Keeps night at the rim of the skies. THE HEART'S FOLIAGE. Under the blue crystal bell Of my reveries tired and ill, My griefs intangible Grow gradually still. Plants of symbols thronging, Lilies of pleasures of old, The slow palms of my longing, Bind-weeds soft, mosses cold. Alone in the centre of them, One rigid lily heaves Its frail and pallid stem Over the dolorous leaves. And in the gleams that it pours, Like a gradual moon, towards the bare Blue crystal heavens, soars Its mystical white prayer. SOUL. My soul! O my soul too sheltered verily! And these flocks of my desires in a hot-house! Waiting for a tempest on the meadows! Let us go to the most feverish patients! They have strange exhalations. In the middle of them, I cross a battlefield with my mother. They are burying a fallen comrade at noon, While the sentinels are eating their repast. Let us go also to the weakest: They have strange perspirations! Here is a sick bride, Treason on the Sunday, And little children in prison. (And further on, through the vapour,) Is this a dying woman at a kitchen's door! Or a sister shelling peas at the bed's foot of an incurable? And last of all let us go to the most sad: (Last of all, for they have poisons.) O! my lips accept the kisses of a wounded one! All the châtelaines have died of hunger, this summer, in the turrets of my soul! Here is the daybreak entering the festival! I catch a glimpse of sheep that stray on quays, And there is a sail at the windows of the hospital. There is a long road from my heart unto my soul! And all the sentinels are dead at their post! One day there was a poor little banquet in the suburbs of my soul! Hemlock was being mown one Sunday morning; And all the virgins of the convent were watching vessels passing on the canal, one day of fasting and of sunshine, While the swans were pining under a poisonous bridge; They were pruning trees round the prison, They were bringing medicines one afternoon in June, And meals of patients were being spread at all the horizons! My soul! And the sadness of it all, my soul! and the sadness of it all! LASSITUDE. These kisses know no longer where to rest, For blind and cold the eyes were they caressed; Henceforth asleep in splendid reverie they Watch dreamily, as in the grass dogs may, The grey horizon-herded sheep-folk graze Upon the turf the moon's dishevelled rays, Kissed by the sun, dark as their life is dark; Indifferent, without an envious spark For pleasure's roses under them unclosing; And this long, green, ununderstood reposing. TIRED WILD BEASTS. O laughter and passion-sighs, And sobs that the sick breast heaves! Sick and with half-closed eyes Among dishevelled leaves, My hate's hyenas slouching, My sin's yellow dogs, and, large, At the weary, pale desert's marge, The lions of love are crouching! In a listless dream they lie, And, languid and oppressed, Under their colourless sky They watch, and shall without rest, Temptation's sheep together, Or one by one, depart, And in the moon at tether The passions of my heart. LUSTRELESS HOURS. Here are old desires marching past, Dream after dream reeling by, Dream after dream failing fast; Hope's days are doomed to die! To whom must we flee to-day! No star to show us whereto; But ice on our hearts grown gray, And in the moon linen blue. Sob after sob is trapped! Fireless the sick in the city, The grass of the lambs is lapped In snow, Sweet Saviour, pity! But I, till the sleep is done, Await, I shall waken soon, I wait for a little sun On my hands iced by the moon. THE HOSPITAL. Hospital! Hospital on the canal! Hospital in July! There is a fire in the room! While ocean liners blow their whistle on the canal! (O! do not come near the windows!) Emigrants are crossing a palace! I see a yacht in the tempest! I see flocks on all the ships! (It is better to keep all the windows closed, One is almost sheltered from the outside.) It is like a hot-house on snow, You are going with a woman's churching on a stormy day, You have a glimpse of plants shed o'er a linen sheet, There is a conflagration in the sun, And I cross a forest full of wounded men. O! now at last the moonlight! A jet of water rises in the middle of the room! A troop of little girls half open the door! I catch a glimpse of lambs on an island in the meadows! And of beautiful plants on a glacier! And lilies in a marble vestibule! There is a festival in a virgin forest! And an oriental vegetation in a cave of ice! Listen! the locks are opened! And the ocean liners stir the water of the canal! O! but the sister of charity poking the fire! All the beautiful green rushes of the banks are on fire! A vessel full of wounded men rocks in the moonlight! All the King's daughters are in a bark in the storm! And the Princesses are going to die in a field of hemlock! O! do not leave the lattices ajar! Listen: the ocean liners still are blowing their whistle on the horizon! Some one is being poisoned in a garden! People are banqueting in the house of their enemies! There are stags in a town that is besieged! And a menagerie amid the lilies! There is a tropical vegetation in a coal-pit! A flock of sheep is crossing an iron bridge! And the lambs of the meadow are coming sadly into the room! Now the sister of charity lights the lamps, She brings the patients their meal, She has closed the windows on the canal, And all the doors to the moon. WINTER DESIRES. I weep for lips whose brief Red no kisses hath known, And for longing left to moan In a reaped, rich harvest of grief. The rain must pour and pour! Or the snow is thick on the sward, While crouching wolves do ward My threshold of dreams evermore, And watch in my soul ever sighing, With eyes in the past nigh dead, All the blood that of old was shed Of lambs on the hard ice dying. Only the moon with its chill, Monotonous sadness lights, While autumn the thin grass blights, My longing with hunger ill. ROUNDELAY OF WEARINESS. I sing the dirges pale Of kisses lost and cold; On love's thin grass I behold Weddings of them that ail. In my slumber voices sing; How nonchalant they are! And in streets without sun or star Lilies are opening. These things my heart desired, These flights that backward fall, Are the poor in a palace hall, And in the dawn candles tired. At the grim night's threshold I launch Mine eyes far out, and know That the moon, with its linen slow And blue, my dreams will stanch. BURNING GLASS. Ancient hours I behold Under regrets ripening, And fairer flora spring From their secrets' azure mould. Desires blow through my spirit. O glass upon my desires! And the withered grass my soul fires, When breathing memories stir it. It grows with my thoughts for mould, And in the blue fleeing fast I see the griefs of the past Their flower-petals unfold. My soul through memories gropes, Feels the touch of their Curtaining dead mohair; And greens with other hopes. LOOKS OF EYES. O these looks of poor, tired eyes! And yours and mine! And those that are no more and those that shall be! And those that never shall arrive and those that notwithstanding do exist! Some seem to be visiting the poor on a Sunday; Some are like sick people with no home; Some are like lambs in a meadow covered with linen. And these unusual looks! There are some under whose vault are people watching the execution of a virgin in a closed room, And some that make one think of unknown melancholies! Of peasants at the windows of a factory, Of a gardener who has turned weaver, Of a summer afternoon in a museum of waxen images, Of the thoughts of a queen who watches a sick man in the garden, Of an odour of camphor in the forest, Of shutting a princess up in a tower, some festal day, Of sailing for a whole week on a warm canal. Pity all those who come out with short steps like convalescents at harvest time! Pity all those who look like children gone astray at meal-time! Pity the eyes of the wounded man who looks up at the surgeon, His looks like tents under the storm! Pity the looks of the tempted virgin! (O! rivers of milk are going to flee in the darkness! And the swans are dead amid the serpents!) And the looks of the virgin who succumbs! Princesses abandoned in swamps without an issue! And these eyes wherein vessels in full sail vanish lit by the tempest! And the pity of all these looks which suffer with not being otherwhere! And all the sufferings indistinct and yet diverse! And these that never any one will understand! And these poor looks nigh mute! And these poor looks that whisper! And these poor stifled looks! Here in our midst one thinks one is in a castle which serves as a hospital! And so many others look like tents, lilies of war, on the convent's narrow lawn! And so many others look like wounded men being tended in a hot-house! And so many others look like a sister of charity on an ocean liner where there are no sick! O! to have seen all these looks! To have taken all these looks into oneself! And to have exhausted mine in meeting them! And henceforth not to be able any more to close my eyes! THE SOUL IN THE NIGHT. My soul in the end is tired; Tired of her sad, sad state, And of being undesired. Sad and tired I await Your hands upon my face. I await your pure hands, still As angels of ice might be, Till they bring the ring to me: On my face your fingers chill, Like a treasure under the sea. I await their healing deep, Not to die in the sun, To die without hope in the sun! They wash my burning eyes, Where so many poor ones sleep. Where so many swans on the sea, Are stretching, lost on the main, Their necks morose in vain, Where along the gardens of winter, The sick break roses in rain. I wait for your pure fingers yet, Like angels of ice are they, I wait till mine eyes they wet, The withered grass of mine eyes, Where the tired lambs are astray! SONGS. I. Into a cave the maid she threw, A sign upon the door she drew; The maid forgot the light, the key Fell down into the sea. She waited while the summer went: More than seven years she was pent, Every year a stranger passed. She waited while the winter went; And while she waited, waited yet, Her hair the light could not forget. It sought the light, and found it out, It glided through the stones about, And lit the rocks that held her pent. One eve again a passer-by, He knew not what the radiance meant, And dared not come anigh. He thinks a portent is foretold, He thinks it is a well of gold. He thinks the angels are at play, He turns aside, and wends his way. II. And if he come back some day, What shall be said to him?— One for him waited, say, Until her eyes grew dim.... And if again he spake, And did not know me more?— Like a sister answer make, He might be suffering sore.... And if he would be told Where you are dwelling now?— Give him my ring of gold, And bend your silent brow.... And if he miss the clock's tick, And see the dust on the floor?— Show him the lamp's burnt wick, Show him the open door.... And if his last he saith, And ask how you fell asleep?— Tell him I smiled in death, For fear lest he should weep.... III. Three little maidens they have slain To find out what their hearts contain The first of them was brimmed with bliss, And everywhere her blood was shed For full three years three serpents hiss. The second full of kindness sweet, And everywhere her blood was shed, Three lambs three years have grass to eat. The third was full of pain and rue, And everywhere her blood was shed, Three seraphim watch three years through. IV. The maids with the bandaged eyes (Do off the bands of gold) The maids with the bandaged eyes Are seeking their destinies.... Went in at the noon of day (Keep on the bands of gold) In at the gate went they Of the palace of prairies gray.... Life saluting then, (Tie close the bands of gold) Life saluting then, They never came out again. V. The three blind sisters, (Let not our hope grow cold) The three blind sisters Have their lamps of gold. Into the tower they climb, (We, you, and they) Into the tower they climb, Wait till the seventh day.... Ah! said the first one, (Still hopes the heart, and fights) Ah! said the first one, I can hear our lights.... Ah! said the second, bending, (They, you, and we) Ah! said the second, bending, It is the King ascending.... Nay, said the saintliest, (Still be our courage stout) Nay, said the saintliest, Our lights have all gone out.... VI. The seven virgins of Orlamonde, When the fairy had passed away, The seven virgins of Orlamonde, Sought the gates of day. Have lit the wick of their seven lanterns, Have opened, flight by flight, The door of full four hundred chambers, But have not found the light ... They come unto the sounding caverns, Go down, with courage cold, And in the lock of a closed portal Find a key of gold. Through the chinks they see the ocean, They are afraid of death, Dare not ope, knock at the portal, With bated breath. VII. She had three diadems of gold, To whom did she give them? Does one unto her parents bring: And they have bought three reeds of gold, And kept it till the Spring. Gives one unto her lovers all: And they have bought three nets of silver, And kept it till the Fall. One she to her children brings: And they have brought three iron rings, And chained it up the Winter long. VIII. Towards the palace she came— The sun was scarcely rising— Towards the palace she came, The knights all gazed, surmising, Silent was every dame. She stopped before the gate— The sun was scarcely rising— She stopped before the gate; They heard the Queen descending, And the King questioning her. Where are you wending, where are you wending? One scarce can see, take care— Where are you wending, where are you wending? Does some one wait for you there? But she made answer not. She came down towards the Stranger,— Take care, one scarce can see— She came down towards the Stranger; The Stranger kissed the Queen, No word did either say, But went straightway. The King at the gate was weeping;— Take care, one scarce can see— The King at the gate was weeping; They heard the Queen departing, They heard the leaves down-sweeping. IX. You have lighted the lamps,— O! the sun in the garden! You have lighted the lamps, The sun through the fissures slants, Open the gates of the garden! The keys of the doors are lost, We must wait, we must wait always, The keys are fallen from the tower, We must wait, we must wait always, We must wait for other days ... Other days shall open the doors, The forest keeps the bolts, Around us burn the holts, It is the light of the dead leaves, Which burn on the doors' thresholds ... The other days are wearisome, The other days are also shy, The other days will never come, The other days shall also die, We too shall die here by and bye. X. I have sought for thirty years, my sisters, Where hides he ever? I have sought for thirty years, my sisters, And found him never ... I have walked for thirty years, my sisters, Tired are my feet and hot, He was everywhere, my sisters, Existing not ... The hour is sad in the end, my sisters, Take off my shoon, The evening is dying also, my sisters, My sick soul will swoon ... Your years are sixteen, my sisters, The far plains are blue, Take you my staff, my sisters, Seek also you ...