by Homer
As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid
On the hasp of the window, and my Delight
Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide,
Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side,
There were but a step to be made. 510
The fancy flatter’d my mind,
And again seem’d overbold;
Now I thought that she cared for me,
Now I thought she was kind
Only because she was cold. 515
I heard no sound where I stood
But the rivulet on from the lawn
Running down to my own dark wood;
Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell’d
Now and then in the dim-gray dawn; 520
But I look’d, and round, all round the house I beheld
The death-white curtain drawn;
Felt a horror over me creep,
Prickle my skin and catch my breath,
Knew that the death-white curtain meant but sleep, 525
Yet I shudder’d and thought like a fool of the sleep of death.
XV
SO dark a mind within me dwells,
And I make myself such evil cheer,
That if I be dear to some one else
Then some one else may have much to fear; 530
But if I be dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear.
Shall I not take care of all that I think,
Yea ev’n of wretched meat and drink,
If I be dear, 535
If I be dear to some one else.
XVI
THIS lump of earth has left his estate
The lighter by the loss of his weight;
And so that he find what he went to seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown 540
His heart in the gross mud-honey of town,
He may stay for a year who has gone for a week.
But this is the day when I must speak,
And I see my Oread coming down,
O this is the day! 545
O beautiful creature, what am I
That I dare to look her way;
Think I may hold dominion sweet,
Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast,
And dream of her beauty with tender dread, 550
From the delicate Arab arch of her feet
To the grace that, bright and light as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head,
And she knows it not: O, if she knew it,
To know her beauty might half undo it. 555
I know it the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of Time,
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime,
Perhaps from a selfish grave.
What, if she be fasten’d to this fool lord, 560
Dare I bid her abide by her word?
Should I love her so well if she
Had given her word to a thing so low?
Shall I love her as well if she
Can break her word were it even for me? 565
I trust that it is not so.
Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart,
Let not my tongue be a thrall to my eye
For I must tell her before we part,
I must tell her, or die. 570
XVII
GO not, happy day,
From the shining fields,
Go not, happy day,
Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West, 575
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes
Falters from her lips, 580
Pass and blush the news
O’er the blowing ships.
Over blowing seas,
Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news, 585
Blush it thro’ the West;
Till the red man dance
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man’s babe
Leap, beyond the sea. 590
Blush from West to East,
Blush from East to West,
Till the West is East,
Blush it thro’ the West.
Rosy is the West, 595
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
And a rose her mouth.
XVIII
I HAVE led her home, my love, my only friend.
There is none like her, none. 600
And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on
Calming itself to the long-wish’d-for end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised good.
None like her, none. 605
Just now the dry-tongued laurel’s pattering talk
Seem’d her light foot along the garden walk,
And shook my heart to think she comes once more,
But even then I heard her close the door,
The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. 610
There is none like her, none.
Nor will be when our summers have deceased.
O, art thou sighing for Lebanon
In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,
Sighing for Lebanon, 615
Dark cedar, tho’ thy limbs have here increased,
Upon a pastoral slope as fair,
And looking to the South, and fed
With honey’d rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head 620
Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there 625
Shadowing the snow-limb’d Eve from whom she came.
Here will I lie, while these long branches sway,
And you fair stars that crown a happy day
Go in and out as if at merry play,
Who am no more so all forlorn 630
As when it seem’d far better to be born
To labour and the mattock-harden’d hand,
Than nursed at ease and brought to understand
A sad astrology, the boundless plan
That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, 635
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,
Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man.
But now shine on, and what care I,
Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl 640
The countercharm of space and hollow sky,
And do accept my madness, and would die
To save from some slight shame one simple girl.
Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to love than is or ever was 645
In our low world, where yet ’tis sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea. 650
Not die; but live a life of truest breath,
And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.
O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?
Make answer, Maud my bliss, 655
Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss,
Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?
“The dusky strand of Death inwoven here
With dear Love’s tie, makes Love himself more dear.”
Is that enchanted moan only the swell 660
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight 665
And given false death her hand, and stol’n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell. 670
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart’s heart, my ownest own, farewell;
It is but for a little space I go:
And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night! 675
Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow
Of your soft splendours that you look so bright?
I have climb’d nearer out of lonely Hell.
Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,
Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, 680
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe
That seems to draw — but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well.
XIX
HER brother is coming back to-night,
Breaking up my dream of delight. 685
My dream? do I dream of bliss?
I have walk’d awake with Truth.
O when did a morning shine
So rich in atonement as this
For my dark-dawning youth, 690
Darken’d watching a mother decline
And that dead man at her heart and mine:
For who was left to watch her but I?
Yet so did I let my freshness die.
I trust that I did not talk 695
To gentle Maud in our walk
(For often in lonely wanderings
I have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father’s sin: 700
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother’s faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying
Vext with lawyers and harass’d with debt: 705
For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing,
A world of trouble within!
And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved 710
As one scarce less forlorn,
Dying abroad and it seems apart
From him who had ceased to share her heart,
And ever mourning over the feud,
The household Fury sprinkled with blood 715
By which our houses are torn:
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed —
That Maud’s dark father and mine 720
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,
On the day when Maud was born;
Seal’d her mine from her first sweet breath.
Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death 725
Mine, mine — our fathers have sworn.
But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,
That, if left uncancell’d, had been so sweet:
And none of us thought of a something beyond, 730
A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,
As it were a duty done to the tomb,
To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild 735
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches — I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer
To be friends, to be reconciled!
But then what a flint is he! 740
Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch’d on me
This brother had laugh’d her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken’d into a frown, 745
Chid her, and forbid her to speak
To me, her friend of the years before;
And this was what had redden’d her cheek
When I bow’d to her on the moor.
Yet Maud, altho’ not blind 750
To the faults of his heart and mind,
I see she cannot but love him,
And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,
And tells me, when she lay 755
Sick once, with a fear of worse,
That he left his wine and horses and play,
Sat with her, read to her, night and day,
And tended her like a nurse.
Kind? but the deathbed desire 760
Spurn’d by this heir of the liar —
Rough but kind? yet I know
He has plotted against me in this,
That he plots against me still.
Kind to Maud? that were not amiss. 765
Well, rough but kind; why, let it be so:
For shall not Maud have her will?
For, Maud, so tender and true,
As long as my life endures
I feel I shall owe you a debt, 770
That I never can hope to pay;
And if ever I should forget
That I owe this debt to you
And for your sweet sake to yours;
O then, what then shall I say? — 775
If ever I should forget,
May God make me more wretched
Than ever I have been yet!
So now I have sworn to bury
All this dead body of hate, 780
I feel so free and so clear
By the loss of that dead weight,
That I should grow light-headed, I fear,
Fantastically merry;
But that her brother comes, like a blight 785
On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.
XX
STRANGE, that I felt so gay,
Strange, that I tried to-day
To beguile her melancholy;
The Sultan, as we name him, — 790
She did not wish to blame him —
But he vext her and perplext her
With his worldly talk and folly:
Was it gentle to reprove her
For stealing out of view 795
From a little lazy lover
Who but claims her as his due?
Or for chilling his caresses
By the coldness of her manners,
Nay, the plainness of her dresses? 800
Now I know her but in two,
Nor can pronounce upon it
If one should ask me whether
The habit, hat, and feather,
Or the frock and gipsy bonnet 805
Be the neater and completer;
For nothing can be sweeter
Than maiden Maud in either.
But to-morrow, if we live,
Our ponderous squire will give 810
A grand political dinner
To half the squirelings near;
And Maud will wear her jewels,
And the bird of prey will hover,
And the titmouse hope to win her 815
With his chirrup at her ear.
A grand political dinner
To the men of many acres,
A gathering of the Tory,
A dinner and then a dance 820
For the maids and marriage-makers,
And every eye but mine will glance
At Maud in all her glory.
For I am not invited,
But, with the Sultan’s pardon, 825
I am all as well delighted,
For I know her own rose-garden,
And mean to linger in it
Till the dancing will be over;
And then, oh then, come out to me 830
&nbs
p; For a minute, but for a minute,
Come out to your own true lover,
That your true lover may see
Your glory also, and render
All homage to his own darling, 835
Queen Maud in all her splendour.
XXI
RIVULET crossing my ground,
And bringing me down from the Hall
This garden-rose that I found,
Forgetful of Maud and me, 840
And lost in trouble and moving round
Here at the head of a tinkling fall,
And trying to pass to the sea;
O Rivulet, born at the Hall,
My Maud has sent it by thee 845
(If I read her sweet will right)
On a blushing mission to me,
Saying in odour and colour, “Ah, be
Among the roses to-night.”
XXII
COME into the garden, Maud, 850
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown. 855
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 860
To faint in his light, and to die.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
To the dancers dancing in tune; 865
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
I said to the lily, “There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone? 870
She is weary of dance and play.”
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away. 875
I said to the rose, “The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine,” so I sware to the rose, 880
“For ever and ever, mine.”
And the soul of the rose went into my blood,