Making for manhood which nowise we mar:
See, while I kiss it, the flush on his face —
Rosny, Rosny!
Light does he laugh: “With your love in my soul” —
(Clara, Clara!)
“How could I other than — sound, safe, and whole —
Cleave who opposed me asunder, yet stand
Scatheless beside you, as, touching love’s goal,
Who won the race kneels, craves reward at your hand —
Rosny, Rosny?”
Ay, but if certain who envied should see
Clara, Clara.
Certain who simper: “The hero for me
Hardly of life were so chary as miss
Death — death and fame — that’s love’s guerdon when She
Boasts, proud bereaved one, her choice fell on this
Rosny, Rosny!”
So, — go on dreaming, — he lies mid a heap
(Clara, Clara,)
Of the slain by his hand: what is death but a sleep?
Dead, with my portrait displayed on his breast:
Love wrought in his undoing: “No prudence could keep
The love-maddened wretch from his fate.”
That is best,
Rosny, Rosny.
Dubiety
I WILL be happy if but for once:
Only help me, Autumn weather,
Me and my cares to screen, ensconce
In luxury’s sofa-lap of leather!
Sleep? Nay, comfort — with just a cloud
Suffusing day too clear and bright:
Eve’s essence, the single drop allowed
To sully, like milk, Noon’s water-white.
Let gauziness shade, not shroud, — adjust,
Dim and not deaden, — somehow sheathe
Aught sharp in the rough world’s busy thrust,
If it reach me through dreaming’s vapor-wreath.
Be life so, all things ever the same!
For, what has disarmed the world? Outside,
Quiet and peace: inside, nor blame
Nor want, nor wish whate’er betide.
What is it like that has happened before?
A dream? No dream, more real by much.
A vision? But fanciful days of yore
Brought many: mere musing seems not such.
Perhaps but a memory, after all!
— Of what came once when a woman leant
To feel for my brow where her kiss might fall.
Truth ever, truth only the excellent!
Now
OUT of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, — so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, — condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense —
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me —
Me — sure that despite of time future, time past, —
This tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet —
The moment eternal — just that and no more —
When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!
Humility
WHAT girl but, having gathered flowers,
Stript the beds and spoilt the bowers,
From the lapful light she carries
Drops a careless bud? — nor tarries
To regain the waif and stray:
“Store enough for home” — she’ll say.
So say I too: give your lover
Heaps of loving — under, over,
Whelm him — make the one the wealthy!
Am I all so poor who — stealthy
Work it was! — picked up what fell:
Not the worst bud — who can tell?
Poetics
“SO say the foolish!” Say the foolish so, Love?
”Flower she is, my rose” — or else, “My very swan is she” —
Or perhaps, “Yon maid-moon, blessing earth below, Love,
That art thou!” — to them, belike: no such vain words from me.
“Hush, rose, blush! no balm like breath,” I chide it:
”Bend thy neck its best, swan, — hers the whiter curve!”
Be the moon the moon: my Love I place beside it:
What is she? Her human self, — no lower word will serve.
Summum Bonum
ALL the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —
Truth, that’s brighter than gem,
Trust, that’s purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe — all were for me
In the kiss of one girl.
A Pearl, a Girl
A SIMPLE ring with a single stone,
To the vulgar eye no stone of price:
Whisper the right word, that alone —
Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice,
And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)
Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole
Through the power in a pearl.
A woman (‘tis I this time that say)
With little the world counts worthy praise
Utter the true word — out and away
Escapes her soul: I am wrapt in blaze,
Creation’s lord, of heaven and earth
Lord whole and sole — by a minute’s birth —
Through the love in a girl!
Speculative
OTHERS may need new life in Heaven —
Man, Nature, Art — made new, assume!
Man with new mind old sense to leaven,
Nature, — new light to clear old gloom,
Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room.
I shall pray: “Fugitive as precious —
Minutes which passed, — return, remain!
Let earth’s old life once more enmesh us,
You with old pleasure, me — old, pain,
So we but meet nor part again!”
White Witchcraft
IF you and I could change to beasts, what beast should either be?
Shall you and I play Jove for once? Turn fox then, I decree!
Shy wild sweet stealer of the grapes! Now do your worst on me!
And thus you think to spite your friend — turned loathsome? What, a toad?
So, all men shrink and shun me! Dear men, pursue your road!
Leave but my crevice in the stone, a reptile’s fit abode
Now say your worst, Canidia! “He’s loathsome, I allow:
There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow:
But see his eyes that follow mine — love lasts there, anyhow.”
Bad Dreams I
LAST NIGHT I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, “Some love, some faith you keep?”
You answered, “Faith gone, love estranged.”
Whereat I woke — a twofold bliss:
Waking was one, but next there came
This other: “Though I felt, for this,
My heart break, I loved on the same.”
Bad Dreams II
YOU in the flesh and here —
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!
The fact and each circumstance
Dare you disown? Not you!
That vast dome, that huge dance,
And the gloom
which overgrew
A — possibly festive crew!
For why should men dance at all —
Why women — a crowd of both —
Unless they are gay? Strange ball —
Hands and feet plighting troth,
Yet partners enforced and loth!
Of who danced there, no shape
Did I recognize: thwart, perverse,
Each grasped each, past escape
In a whirl or weary or worse:
Man’s sneer met woman’s curse,
While he and she toiled as if
Their guardian set galley-slaves
To supple chained limbs grown stiff:
Unmanacled trulls and knaves —
The lash for who misbehaves!
And a gloom was, all the while,
Deeper and deeper yet
O’ergrowing the rank and file
Of that army of haters — set
To mimic love’s fever-fret.
By the wall-side close I crept.
Avoiding the livid maze.
And, safely so far, outstepped
On a chamber — a chapel, says
My memory or betrays —
Closet-like, kept aloof
From unseemly witnessing
What sport made floor and roof
Of the Devil’s palace ring
While his Damned amused their king.
Ay, for a low lamp burned,
And a silence lay about
What I, in the midst, discerned
Though dimly till, past doubt,
‘Twas a sort of throne stood out —
High seat with steps, at least:
And the topmost step was filled
By — whom? What vestured priest?
A stranger to me, — his guild,
His cult, unreconciled
To my knowledge how guild and cult
Are clothed in this world of ours:
I pondered, but no result
Came to — unless that Giaours
So worship the Lower Powers.
When suddenly who entered?
Who knelt — did you guess I saw?
Who — raising that face were centred
Allegiance to love and law
So lately — off-casting awe,
Down-treading reserve, away
Thrusting respect . . . but mine
Stands firm — firm still shall stay!
Ask Satan! for I decline
To tell — what I saw, in fine!
Yet here in the flesh you come —
Your same self, form and face, —
In the eyes, mirth still at home!
On the lips, that commonplace
Perfection of honest grace!
Yet your errand is — needs must be —
To palliate — well, explain,
Expurgate in some degree
Your soul of its ugly stain.
Oh, you — the good in grain —
How was it your white took tinge?
”A mere dream” — never object!
Sleep leaves a door on hinge
Whence soul, ere our flesh suspect,
Is off and away: detect
Her vagaries when loose, who can!
Be she pranksome, be she prude,
Disguise with the day began:
With the night — ah, what ensued
From draughts of a drink hell-brewed?
Then She: “What a queer wild dream!
And perhaps the best fun is —
Myself had its fellow — I seem
Scarce awake from yet. ‘Twas this —
Shall I tell you? First, a kiss!
“For the fault was just your own, —
’Tis myself expect apology:
You warned me to let alone
(Since our studies were mere philology)
That ticklish (you said) Anthology.
“So I dreamed that I passed exam
Till a question posed me sore:
‘Who translated this epigram
By — an author we best ignore?’
And I answered, ‘Hannah More’!”
Bad Dreams III
THIS was my dream: I saw a Forest
Old as the earth, no track nor trace
Of unmade man. Thou, Soul, explorest —
Though in a trembling rapture — space
Immeasurable! Shrubs, turned trees,
Trees that touch heaven, support its frieze
Studded with sun and moon and star:
While — oh, the enormous growths that bar
Mine eye from penetrating past
Their tangled twins where lurks — nay, lives
Royally lone, some brute-type cast
I’ the rough, time cancels, man forgives.
On, Soul! I saw a lucid City
Of architectural device
Every way perfect. Pause for pity,
Lightning! nor leave a cicatrice
On those bright marbles, dome and spire,
Structures palatial, — streets which mire
Dares not defile, paved all too fine
For human footstep’s smirch, not thine —
Proud solitary traverser,
My Soul, of silent lengths of way —
With what ecstatic dread, aver,
Lest life start sanctioned by thy stay!
All, but the last sight was the hideous!
A City, yes, — a Forest, true, —
But each devouring each. Perfidious
Snake-plants had strangled what I knew
Was a pavilion once: each oak
Held on his horns some spoil he broke
By surreptitiously beneath
Upthrusting: pavements, as with teeth,
Griped huge weed widening crack and split
In squares and circles stone-work erst.
Oh, Nature — good! Oh, Art — no whit
Less worthy! Both in one — accurst!
Bad Dreams IV
IT happened thus: my slab, though new,
Was getting weather-stained, — beside,
Herbage, balm, peppermint, o’ergrew
Letter and letter: till you tried
Somewhat, the Name was scarce descried.
That strong stern man my lover came:
— Was he my lover? Call him, pray,
My life’s cold critic bent on blame
Of all poor I could do or say
To make me worth his love one day —
One far day when, by diligent
And dutiful amending faults,
Foibles, all weaknesses which went
To challenge and excuse assaults
Of culture wronged by taste that halts —
Discrepancies should mar no plan
Symmetric of the qualities
Claiming respect from — say — a man
That’s strong and stem. “Once more he pries
Into me with those critic eyes!”
No question! so — ”Conclude, condemn
Each failure my poor self avows!
Leave to its fate all you contemn!
There’s Solomon’s selected spouse:
Earth needs must hold such maids — choose them!”
Why, he was weeping! Surely gone
Sternness and strength: with eyes to ground
And voice a broken monotone —
”Only be as you were! Abound
In foibles, faults, — laugh, robed and crowned
“As Folly’s veriest queen, — care I
One feather-fluff? Look pity, Love,
On prostrate me — your foot shall try
This forehead’s use — mount thence above,
And reach what Heaven you dignify!”
Now, what could bring such change about?
The thought perplexed: till, following
His gaze upon the ground, — why, out
Came all the secret! So, a thing
Thus simple has depos
ed my king!
For, spite of weeds that strove to spoil
Plain reading on the lettered slab,
My name was clear enough — no soil
Effaced the date when one chance stab
Of scorn . . . if only ghosts might blab!
Inapprehensiveness
WE two stood simply friend-like side by side,
Viewing a twilight country far and wide,
Till she at length broke silence. “How it towers
Yonder, the ruin o’er this vale of ours!
The West’s faint flare behind it so relieves
Its rugged outline — sight perhaps deceives,
Or I could almost fancy that I see
A branch wave plain — belike some wind-sown tree
Chance-rooted where a missing turret was.
What would I give for the perspective glass
At home, to make out if ‘tis really so!
Has Ruskin noticed here at Asolo
That certain weed-growths on the ravaged wall
Seem” . . . something that I could not say at all,
My thought being rather — as absorbed she sent
Look onward after look from eyes distent
With longing to reach Heaven’s gate left ajar —
“Oh, fancies that might be, oh, facts that are!
What of a wilding? By you stands, and may
So stand unnoticed till the judgment Day,
One who, if once aware that your regard
Claimed what his heart holds, — woke, as from its sward
The flower, the dormant passion, so to speak —
Then what a rush of life would startling wreak
Revenge on your inapprehensive stare
While, from the ruin and the West’s faint flare,
You let your eyes meet mine, touch what you term
Quietude — that’s an universe in germ —
The dormant passion needing but a look
To burst into immense life!”
”No, the book
Which noticed how the wall-growths wave,” said she,
“Was not by Ruskin.”
I said, “Vernon Lee.”
Which?
SO, the three Court-ladies began
Their trial of who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man:
Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed
Boy-Cupid’s exemplary catcher and cager;
An Abbé crossed legs to decide on the wager.
First the Duchesse: “Mine for me —
Who were it but God’s for Him,
And the King’s for — who but he?
Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim
His cup with perfection: a lady’s true lover,
He holds — save his God and his king — none above her.”
”I require” — outspoke the Marquise —
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 230