Part 23

Doffing her robe, the maid stood in her beauty, Calm and sure and unafraid, The sinuous splendour of her limbs, A silent symphony of curving line, Which reached its final note In breast and rounded throat. He had not known that flesh could be so fair; Each movement which she made Wove o’er his sense a deeper spell, Her beauty swept him like a flame And caught him unaware. She looked into his eyes, then dropping hers Before that burning gaze, Softly turned and crept with sunlit shoulders Down among the boulders, To the sea. Secure within its covering depth She called to him to follow. She led him out along the tide, With swift unerring stroke, Nor paused till he was at her side. With conquering arm He seized her and from her brow Tossed back the dripping locks, and sought her lips— Her eyes closed,— As all her body yielded to his kiss. Then home he bore her to the shore, Within his heart a song of triumph; In hers, a new-born joy of womanhood. So spring for them passed on to summer.

MARIE TUDOR

MARRIAGE

You, who have given me your name, And with your laws have made me wife, To share your failures and your fame, Whose word has made me yours for life.

What proof have you that you hold me? That in reality I’m one With you, through all eternity? What proof when all is said and done?

In spite of all the laws you’ve made, I’m free. I am no part of you. But wait-the last word is not said; You’re mine, for I’m myself and you.

All through my veins there flows your blood, In you there is no part of me. By virtue of my motherhood Through me you live eternally.

MARIE TUDOR

PITY

Oh do not Pity me because I gave My heart when lovely April with a gust, Swept down the singing lanes with a cool wave; And do not pity me because I thrust Aside your love that once burned as a flame. I was as thirsty as a windy flower That bares its bosom to the summer shower And to the unremembered winds that came. Pity me most for moments yet to be, In the far years, when some day I shall turn Toward this strong path up to our little door And find it barred to all my ecstasy. No sound of your warm voice the winds have borne— Only the crying sea upon the shore.

HAROLD VINAL

A ROSE TO THE LIVING

A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead; In filling love’s infinite store, A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled,— A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.

NIXON WATERMAN

THE STORM

She reached for sunset fires, And lived with stars and the sea, The mountains for her temple, The storm for priest had she.

Together a libation They poured to the God she knew, Such wine as ageless heavens And lonely wisdom brew.

Now she has done with worship, For her all rites are the same; Yet the storm keeps green forever The moss upon her name.

G. O. WARREN

WHERE THEY SLEEP

The fog inrolling, dark and still Lies deep upon the crowded dead As flooding sea upon the sands, And quenches starlight overhead.

Long have they slept. Their separate dust Has mingled with a nameless mould. Only the slower-crumbling stones Still tell so much as may be told.

And now in shoreless fog adrift Like some lone mariner gliding by, I lean above the drowning graves And wonder when I too shall lie

Where evermore the tides of night And earth will hide my lonely rest; And Time will bid my love forget To read the stone upon my breast.

G. O. WARREN

BEAUTY

Not flesh alone am I, when I can be So swiftly caught in Beauty’s shimmering thread Whose slender fibres, woven, held by me, With their frail strength my following heart have led.

Yea, not all mortal, not all death my mind, When, watching by lone twilight waters’ brim I tremblingly decipher, as they wind, Her deathless hieroglyphs, though strange and dim.