FLAME

You have understood so little of me, and my adoration That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones, You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my moans. You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter, You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd; But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter; I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud! A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning, A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow; I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning, And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now. In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes; They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for you; In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew. Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters; You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign, But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of fetters And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine. All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces, Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head, For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led. I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles sacred With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell; I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping acrid And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell! 1914

Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day, And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash. Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit. Now can I sing the sickly lines of love And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out In the sad spaces of the gloaming night, And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark. My words were fireless in the flaming sun, And all the throats of flowers from their content Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face And bade me give them tunes to make them dance.... Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast And sterile as the arms of my desire She flings her light despairing on the sky. The night is strange and still, for dropping tears, Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave. 1914

Washed at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves, As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light, Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought The thought of you, which held against mine ear Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul; The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love, The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death, The following of beauty's fugitive limbs Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast Gleam on the clouds and foam, Call to her lovers.— Thus standing in the blasting of the wind, And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea, Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels, Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought. 1916

My poems cannot laugh. They are the voice Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea, And this wild joy my love has brought to me Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice. I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing, Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep, And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string; To fashion for my love one perfect verse Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word, Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse. But as a coward in the general gloom I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill, Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill Of love that moves with music into Doom; Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold, And like a gay canary in a cage Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold. 1916

On the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered, Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream, And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden highlights, And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed. We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment, And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white wine, And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing, Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs. 1916

Oh canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears Whose wind-like voices Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears While the body rejoices. Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun Trailing his scarlet vesture Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun, Turns with a gesture Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey. I follow the shadows of sorrow That press so close to the dancing heels of the day And darken the morrow. The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see Beyond its golden visor The leering skull that derides at our lives and me Being older than life and wiser.... I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the whip Beyond the sound of the treetops singing To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip, Or rush of feathers winging.... Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my cheek Murmuring tenderly The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the bleak Windows of frost so slenderly Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might be If life were as kind as a lover, If we were beloved of the world and the world of we. Thy white words hover Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest Silvering heaven With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest. If I could have given My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee, Ah then and then only The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me And death were not lonely. 1916

As in the silence the clear moonlight drips Among the fields that love her drowsily, These passionate moments trickle on through time, From soul to languorous soul. Like mad musicians upon fretted harps, The senses play upon the poignant nerves,— And colours clothe our mood As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms Irised with pallors of an opal's heart In which the glittered pattern of desire Smoulders and changes.... O love, thou nightingale-throated singer, Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star And keep thy silver delicate delight Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad. Let thy fairy feet Go tripping down a scarcely scented path, Between an avenue of breathless flowers. The hours glide by as swans across a lake, Across the luminous waters of desire, And beat as wings the rustle of soft words, As love bends down, Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth. 1917

I can but give thee unsubstantial things Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought, No gems or garments marvellously wrought On ivory spools with rare embroiderings. Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought With blood and beauty. I have only sought A song that hovers on illusive wings. Accept from me a dream that hath no art, I give my empty hands for thee to hold, Take thou the gift of silence for my part, With all the deeper things I have not told. Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold. 1917

I have no other friend but thee, But while I tell thee all my thought Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams, Soothsayings and sighs, and little things— How canst thou listen to me? II Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long, And when my cheek grew pale I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back Responsive in the double rose of joy— But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness Where the ghost moon glides between us.... III When at a masquerade I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng, Our faces painted each in some disguise Of varnished revelry; I whisper in thine ear Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales, Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet, And shower the multicoloured streamers high Where Folly is king of midnight— Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside, And thy still face looks out, Weary and overwise Where the mad pretence avails not. IV Long ago we walked together in a garden; It was evening and the leaves fell down; Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen, Over flowers and branches that were withered there— And the air was weary with the scent of other days, A fragrance faint and pensive. The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet Were as old dreams retold, Stirred from the golden quilt of memory, And farewells rang their whispering bells, Tolling the days away. But peace lay folded between our hands As we thought of the vanishing years And of love dying in the arms of love. V Sometimes I look into the glass And see my face without the conquering light That gave me glamour when I gave thee love. Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty, To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire, And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell, And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven. I would be for thee As a ring of white flowers on the sward, As a red fire playing to thy breath, As a flock of kingfishers Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes! Remember only this, My will toward all loveliness, and look Deep in thyself for my reflected soul. VI Be perfect—for I love thee more in thought Than thou canst reach in every trivial day. Since days are as the flowers on a wreath That wither while we bind them each to each. Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days Can wall it in a little space of ground. Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour, But the patient spirit stands Waiting the last fulfilment. Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands Or as an endless rosary. Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter And my hands part from the unriveted faith With Amen scarcely sighed. 1917

Bodies heaving like waves, Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam, The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow, Splashed with ecstasial moonlight, Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles. Lingering touch of fingers, Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell, And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness Against the ivory forehead of the moon. 1919

Your face to me is like a beautiful city Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea, And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves Heavily laden with memories.... I roam over all the earth Making rhymes of you, and singing songs, Because your face will never let me rest, Because I can not frame it in a star Surrounded with my cloudy reveries, Because I may not pluck it like a flower To breathe the incense of its perfumed soul— Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword Whose sheath is in my breast! 1918

Oh! why will you not let me love you Well enough? You have plucked my blossoms, Gathered the leaves And revived them with water; But all the tortuous roots Delving for your spirit In subterranean passions With a blind unresting desire, Have you felt them, have you known? In the blackest night of sleep Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion, My soul still swims toward you Against the envious pressure of the tide.... You who are so tired, so filled with sleep That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek Lest its heaviness should stir your rest, How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden That is too vast for me to bear alone? I tell you Love is no little thing, No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air, No thin flute music petaling the silence As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree. It is the thought that broods upon its death, The dread of mountains looking to the storm Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain. It is the fire that pillars up the stars To mix its flame with their eternal gold. Oh, listen to me! You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven. You shall know me In the pensive shadows of trees, In the luminary phantoms Reflected in the stillness of a lake; In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves And quivering in the moss; In the abandoned play of breakers Showering their crystals to the moon; In the folly of rainbow dolphins. I only ask of you To be the diver in my deepest pool, To bring from out its blue obscurity The things my life has moulded unaware, Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned In loneliness of prayer unlit by life, Created out of nothing save myself Within the blind fast silence of the soul. 1918

My devotion kneels to you, Holding a candle to illumine your face. My loneliness is your shadow Along the solitary roads. My passion is a book between your hands Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets, A volume of pressed flowers Scenting your fingers though you read it not. And my white faith Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace. 1919