Poems

I. Sometimes you are younger than the dawn; But sometimes you are older than the stars. Your eyes are made that way: new light is drawn From the piled gold where ancient suns have gone, When your gaze reaches mine. Immersed in wars, I seek rebellion, fearing to rebel; And sigh, not yet desirous of relief; And grieve, not yet relinquishing my grief; And love the more—I who have loved so well. II. I love you. But it is a sorry task To probe the depths of why or how I love. We lovers are more fools the more we ask What lurks behind our kisses, what the mask Of rotting flesh conceals. Surely I love. Surely? Great heaven, who would tell the moon That she’s the light when she herself is cold? Without your love mine would be growing old; Without your eyes, mine would be ashes soon. III. Ashes? Yet there is something infinite About an ash—hoary and cold and wise. Across the spent fires of the night they flit, And often when the day grows pale, they sit, Like monarchs, on a vanished enterprise. Ah, even thus my young love would endure! Without her light the moon would still express Her strength, in shadows not yet bodiless— Hoary and cold and wise: thus am I sure. IV. I have addressed you with love’s first address: I’ve sealed the envelope with all my soul. Each day you add one burden to distress: Your silence! Ah, what icy ghosts caress Expectant hearts when women are the goal— What undreamt women do we hope to see When gazing like tired children heavenward! We say: God help us if our souls are barred From the white arches of infinity. V. Strange that your silence is so deafening And your unwritten page so full of thought! Each time they do not come your letters bring A chaos of conjecture, gathering Its forces like mad winds, ’till I am caught— And swept—and swept into an agony. Ah, ruinous silence that awakes such stress! The noisy thunders of my heart suppress The frail, pale music of my memory. VI. How long! How long, great God, must I regret Fleshly communions with the scattered ghosts Whom in the by-ways of the past I met, And whom I am desirous to forget, Lest at their feasts they shout aloud old toasts And grin with laughter that is desolate? For then the crimson tinge would cross your cheek— A tragic color—and your heart would seek Mutely for spring, though shorn of leaves by Fate. VII. Winter! It is not winter when the snows Whiten the houses and the bare brown trees. It is not winter when the north wind blows, Nor yet when mountain lakes are glazed, and floes On the horizons of the Arctic freeze. There is no winter if the heart is warm!— And I would ask you to remember it. My dear, when you are silent, I must sit Frozen among the figures of the storm. VIII. What do I mean by such queer similes? O heart beloved, I mean to show you how The red autumnal stretches of the trees In crystal twilight, ere the black ponds freeze, Would but reflect your stillness, were I now To tell you things a man’s life most conceals: And next to say that what the autumn is To you, winter would be to me. And this Seems all that any simile reveals. IX. When marble wears the touch of Grecian hands, Or Leonardo’s paints on canvas live, I think the gods are building on the sands Castles of stone, but no one understands How much they can inspire one heart to give: Though I who dream about your untouched hair Can follow Leonardo’s rapid brush, And with it paint those yearning strokes, and crush Beneath a large ideal, life’s strong despair. X. Dante was more than half of Beatrice! Thus for a woman’s warm identity We men go asking where our heaven is, And having found it, for that woman’s kiss We build the altars and the destiny. O Beatrice! How much we would forget, If Dante had forgotten what to write! The Silence and the Distance and the Night— These he erased—and we remember yet! XI. But more than half of Dante was her frame— So fragile and so exquisite that rime Could but produce the soundings of her name, And leave all cold the radiance, the flame Which from her gaze swept Dante out of time. Oh, say not that a woman ever dies When Dante loves her! Yet when Dante loves, His soul becomes the body that he loves: A woman will not have it otherwise. XII. If Beauty can be kind I know it not, Because you have not touched me with your lips, Nor yielded with your eyes. It is my lot To sit, an outcast on some barren spot, And watch the summer clouds, like treasure-ships, Sailing beyond me toward the evening. The beauty there is infinite, is blue!— But pitiless as effigies of you, And bitter with remembrance of the spring. XIII. I am a madman in the wilderness: The gods of anger have bestirred my pen. Where is your magic now? Or your caress? The pressure of your arms, your tenderness? I’ll tear myself away from these, since men Are not as angels are—eternally. Damnation!—ah, but hush—see, my wild hands! If pity be the food my heart demands, Then for the love of heaven pity me. XIV. Or do not pity me. Love is too great For kindly words and sighs and handkerchiefs. Your eyes will be my stars, your arms my fate, And I shall wait for these, although I wait Until the ship goes shattering on reefs Which lurk beyond horizons sailed in vain. Then let the ocean froth, let tempests rave; Let the straight masts bow stiffly to their grave; Let the old love go—go—nor come again! XV. My lady condescends! A little note Written, upon my soul, in hat and glove, Leaves everything unsaid: and what she wrote Would strangle the young cupid by the throat, If he were not immortal. I may love, And she—is glad to have it so. Ah me! How fine a woman draws the thread of hair Which holds her lover dangling in the air, Suspended above all eternity. RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.