Complete Works of Adelaide Crapsey
Page 2
Look, little son, look;
The grapes are translucent and ripe,
They are heavy and fragrant with juice,
They wait for the hands of the vintagers;
For a long time the grapes were not,
And were in the womb of the earth,
Then out of the heavens came the rain,
The sun sent down his warmth from the sky,
At the touch of life, life stirred,
And the earth brought forth her fruits in due season.
I was a maid and alone,
When, behold, there came to me a vision;
My heart cried out within me,
And the voice was the voice of God.
Yea, a virgin I dreamed of love,
And I was troubled and sore afraid,
I wept and was glad,
For the word of my heart named me blessèd,
My soul exalted the might of creation.
I was a maid and alone,
When, behold, my lover came to me,
My belovèd held me in his arms.
Joy! Joy! Joy!
Now is the vision fulfilled;
I have conceived,
I have carried in my womb,
I have brought forth
The life of the world;
Out of my joy and my pain,
Out of the fulness of my living
Hath my son gained his life.
Look, little son, look:
The grapes are ripe for the gathering;
The fresh, deep earth is in them,
And clean water from the clouds.
And golden, golden sun is in the heart of the grapes.
Look, little son, look:
The earth, your mother,
And the touch of life who is your father,
They have provided food for you
That you also may live.
The vineyards are planted on the hillside,
They are the vineyards of my beloved,
He chose a favorable spot,
His hands prepared the soil for the planting;
He set out the young vines
And cared for them till the time of their bearing.
Now is his labour fulfilled who worked with God.
The fruit of the vineyard is ripe,
The vintagers laugh in the sun,
They sing while they gather the grapes,
For the vintage is a good one,
The wine vats are pressed down and running over.
Joy! Joy! Joy!
Now is the wonder accomplished;
Out of the heart of the living grape
Hath the hand of my beloved
Wrung the wine of the dream of life.
Belovèd,
My little son’s father,
Together we have given life,
And the vision of life;
Shall we not rejoice
Who have made eternal
The days of our living.
Look, little son, look:
The grapes glow with rich juice;
The juice of the grape hath in it
The substance of the earth,
And the air’s breath;
It hath in it the soul of the vintage.
Put forth your hand, little son,
And take for yourself the life
That your father and your mother
Have provided for you.
Joy! Joy! Joy!
The hills are glad,
The valleys re-echo with merriment,
In my heart is the sound of laughter,
And my feet dance to the time of it;
Oh, little son, carried light on my shoulder,
Let us go laughing and dancing through the live days,
For this is the hour of the vintage,
When man gathereth for himself the fruits of the vineyard.
1905.
John Keats —
(February 1820-February 1821)
Meet thou the event
And terrible happening of
Thine end: for thou art come
Upon the remote, cold place
Of ultimate dissolution and
With dumb, wide look
Thou, impotent, dost feel
Impotence creeping on
Thy potent soul. Yea, now, caught in
The aghast and voiceless pain
Of death, thyself doth watch
Thyself becoming naught.
Peace. Peace. for at
The last is comfort. Lo, now
Thou hast no pain. Lo, now
The waited presence is
Within the room; the voice
Speaks final-gentle: “Child,
Even thy careful nurse,
I lift thee in my arms
For greater ease and while
Thy heart still beats, place my
Cool fingers of oblivion on
Thine eyes and close them for
Eternity. Thou shalt
Pass sleeping, nor know
When sleeping ceases. Yet still
A little while thy breathing lasts,
Gradual is faint and fainter; I
Must listen close — the end.”
Rest. And you others.. All.
Grave-fellows in
Green place. Here grows
Memorial every spring’s
Fresh grass and here
Your marking monument
Was built for you long, long
Ago when Caius Cestius died.
Rome 1909.
Cinquains
1911-1913
November Night
Listen..
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Release
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.
Triad
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow. the hour
Before the dawn.. the mouth of one
Just dead.
Snow
Look up...
From Weakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind...look up, and scent
The snow!
Anguish
Keep thou
Thy tearless watch
All night but when blue dawn
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep!
Trapped
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year.. and ever days and years..
Well?
Moon-shadows
Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead.
Susanna And The Elders
“Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?”
“For that
She is beautiful, delicate:
Therefore.”
Youth
But me
They cannot touch,
Old age and death.. the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!
Languor After Pain
Pain ebbs,
And like cool balm,
An opiate weariness
Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed
Pale wrists.
The Guarded Wound
If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!
Winter
The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land.. alack,
The little people in th
e hills
Will die!
Night Winds
The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?
Arbutus
Not spring’s
Thou art, but hers,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter’s, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.
Roma Aeterna
The sun
Is warm to-day,
O Romulus, and on
Thine olden Palatine the birds
Still sing.
He’s killed the may and he’s laid her by / To bear the red rose company.
Not thou,
White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart’s
Shed blood.
Amaze
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Shadow
A-sway,
On red rose,
A golden butterfly..
And on my heart a butterfly
Night-wing’d.
Fate Defied
As it
Were tissue of silver
I’ll wear, O Fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.
Madness
Burdock,
Blue aconite,
And thistle and thorn.. of these,
Singing I wreathe my pretty wreath
O’death.
The Warning —
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk.. as strange, as still.
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?
Saying of II Haboul
Guardian Of The Treasure Of Solomon
And Keeper Of The Prophet’s Armour
My tent
A vapour that
The wind dispels and but
As dust before the wind am I
Myself.
The Death Of Holofernes
Israel!
Wake! Be gay!
Thine enemy is brought low
Thy foe slain-by the hand, by the hand
Of a woman!
Laurel In The Berkshires
Sea-foam
And coral! Oh, I’ll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun’s
Gold flood.
Niagara
Seen on a night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
The Grand Canyon
By Zeus!
Shout word of this
To the eldest dead! Titans,
Gods, Heroes, come who have once more
A home!
Now Barabbas Was A Robber
No guile?
Nay, but so strangely
He moves among us. Not this
Man but Barabbas! Release to us
Barabbas!
Refuge In Darkness
With night’s
Dim veil and blue
I will cover my eyes,
I will bind close my eyes that are
So weary.
PART II
To Walter Savage Landor
Ah, Walter, where you lived I rue
These days come all too late for me;
What matter if her eyes are blue
Whose rival is Persephone?
Fiesole, 1909.
The Pledge
White doves of Cytherea, by your quest
Across the blue Heaven’s bluest highest air,
And by your certain homing to Love’s breast,
Still to be true and ever true — I swear.
Hypnos, God of Sleep
The shadowy boy of night
Crosses the dusking land;
He sows his poppy-seeds
With steady, gentle hand.
The shadowy boy of night
Young husbandman of dreams,
Garners his gracious blooms
By far and moonlit streams.
Expenses
Little my lacking fortunes show
For this to eat and that to wear;
Yet laughing, Soul, and gaily go!
An obol pays the Stygian fare.
London, 1910
Adventure
Sun and wind and beat of sea,
Great lands stretching endlessly...
Where be bonds to bind the free?
All the world was made for me!
On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees
Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown?
Warning To The Mighty
Ere the horned owl hoot
Once and twice and thrice there shall
Go among the blind brown worms
News of thy great burial;
When the pomp is passed away,
“Here’s a King,” the worms shall say.
Oh, Lady, Let The Sad Tears Fall
Oh, Lady, let the sad tears fall
To speak thy pain,
Gently as through the silver dusk
The silver rain.
Oh, let thy bosom breathe its grief
In such soft sigh
As hath the wind in gardens where
Pale roses die.
Dirge
Never the nightingale,
Oh, my dear,
Never again the lark
Thou wilt hear;
Though dusk and the morning still
Tap at thy window-sill,
Though ever love call and call
Thou wilt not hear at all,
My dear, my dear.
The Sun-Dial
Every day,
Every day,
Tell the hours
By their shadows,
By their shadows.
The Entombment
In a cave born,
(Mary said)
In a cave is
My Son buried.
Autumn
Fugitive, wistful,
Pausing at edge of her going,
Autumn, the maiden, turns,
Leans to the earth with ineffable
Gesture. Ah, more than
Spring’s skies her skies shine
Tender and frailer
Bloom than plum-bloom or almond
Lies on her hillsides, her fields,
Misted, faint-flushing. Ah, lovelier
Is her refusal than
Yielding who pauses with grave
Backward smiling, with light
Unforgettable touch of
Fingers withdrawn... Pauses, lo
Vanishes. fugitive, wistful...
Ah me.. Alas..
(He)
Ah me, my love’s heart,
Like some frail flower, apart,
High, on the cliff’s edge growing,
Touched by unhindered sun to sweeter showing,
Swung by each faint wind’s faintest blowing,
But so, on the cliff’s edge growing,
From man’s reach aloof, apart:
Ah me, my love’s heart!
(She)
Alack, alas, my lover,
As one who would discover
At world’s end his path,
Nor knows at all what faëry way he hath
Who turneth dreaming into faith
And followeth that near path
His own heart dareth to discover:
Alack, alas, my lover!
Perfume of Youth
(Girl’s Song)
In Babylon, in Nineveh,
And long ago, and far away,
The lilies and the lotus
blew
That are my sweet of youth to-day.
From those high gardens of the Gods
That eyes of men may never see,
The amaranth and asphodel
Immortal odours shed on me.
In vial of my early years,
As in a crystal vial held,
What precious fragrance treasured up
Of age and agelessness distill’d.
Thine but to give. Give straightway all.
Yea, straight, mine hands, the ointment rare
In great libation joyous pour!
Oh, look of youth... Oh, golden hair...
Rapunzel
All day, all day I brush
My golden strands of hair;
All day I wait and wait..
Ah, who is there?
Who calls? Who calls?
The gold
Ladder of my long hair
I loose and wait.. and wait..
Ah, who is there?
She left at dawn.. I am blind
In the tangle of my long hair..
Is it she? the witch? the witch?
Ah, who is there?
Narcissus
“Boy, lying
Where the long grass
Edges the pool’s brim,
What do you watch
There in the water? the blue
Colour of Heaven
Mirrored, repeated? the brown
Tree-trunks and branches
Waveringly imaged? These,
Boy, do you watch?”
“Nay but mine eyes;
Nay but the trouble
Deep in mine eyes.”
Vendor’s Song
My songs to sell, good sir!