Part 16

Between lark’s song and nightingale’s A silent space, while dawning pales, The birds leave still and free For words and kisses musical, For silence and for sighs that fall In the dawn, ’twixt him and me.

LOVE AND WISDOM.

‘When last we gathered roses in the garden I found my wits, but truly you lost yours.’

THE BROKEN HEART.

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JULY, and June brought flowers and love To you, but I would none thereof, Whose heart kept all through summer time A flower of frost and winter rime. Yours was true wisdom—was it not?— Even love; but I had clean forgot, Till seasons of the falling leaf, All loves, but one that turned to grief. At length at touch of autumn tide, When roses fell, and summer died, All in a dawning deep with dew, Love flew to me, love fled from you.

The roses drooped their weary heads, I spoke among the garden beds; You would not hear, you could not know, Summer and love seemed long ago, As far, as faint, as dim a dream, As to the dead this world may seem. Ah sweet, in winter’s miseries, Perchance you may remember this, How wisdom was not justified In summer time or autumn-tide, Though for this once below the sun, Wisdom and love were made at one; But love was bitter-bought enough, And wisdom light of wing as love.

GOOD-BYE.

KISS me, and say good-bye; Good-bye, there is no word to say but this, Nor any lips left for my lips to kiss, Nor any tears to shed, when these tears dry; Kiss me, and say, good-bye.

Farewell, be glad, forget; There is no need to say ‘forget,’ I know, For youth is youth, and time will have it so, And though your lips are pale, and your eyes wet, Farewell, you must forget.

You shall bring home your sheaves, Many, and heavy, and with blossoms twined Of memories that go not out of mind; Let this one sheaf be twined with poppy leaves When you bring home your sheaves.

In garnered loves of thine, The ripe good fruit of many hearts and years, Somewhere let this lie, grey and salt with tears; It grew too near the sea wind, and the brine Of life, this love of mine.

This sheaf was spoiled in spring, And over-long was green, and early sere, And never gathered gold in the late year From autumn suns, and moons of harvesting, But failed in frosts of spring.

Yet was it thine my sweet, This love, though weak as young corn witheréd, Whereof no man may gather and make bread; Thine, though it never knew the summer heat; Forget not quite, my sweet.

AN OLD PRAYER.

Χαιρέ μοι, ῶ Βασίλεια, διαμπερὲς εἰς ὅ κε γῆρας Ἔλθῃ καὶ θάνατος,τὰ τ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται.

ODYSSEY, xiii. 59.

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MY prayer an old prayer borroweth, Of ancient love and memory— ‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death, That come to all men, come to thee.’ Gently as winter’s early breath, Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee, To lands whereof no man knoweth Of summer, over land and sea; So with thy soul may summer be, Even as the ancient singer saith, ‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death, That come to all men, come to thee.’

LOVE’S MIRACLE.

WITH other helpless folk about the gate, The gate called Beautiful, with weary eyes That take no pleasure in the summer skies, Nor all things that are fairest, does she wait; So bleak a time, so sad a changeless fate Makes her with dull experience early wise, And in the dawning and the sunset, sighs That all hath been, and shall be, desolate.

Ah, if Love come not soon, and bid her live, And know herself the fairest of fair things, Ah, if he have no healing gift to give, Warm from his breast, and holy from his wings, Or if at least Love’s shadow in passing by Touch not and heal her, surely she must die.

DREAMS.

HE spake not truth, however wise, who said That happy, and that hapless men in sleep Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep As countless, careless, races of the dead. Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread, And one beholds the faces that he sighs In vain to bring before his daylit eyes, And waking, he remembers on his bed;

And one with fainting heart and feeble hand Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land, Where strength and courage were of no avail; And one is borne on fairy breezes far To the bright harbours of a golden star Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.

FAIRY LAND.

IN light of sunrise and sunsetting, The long days lingered, in forgetting That ever passion, keen to hold What may not tarry, was of old, In lands beyond the weary wold; Beyond the bitter stream whose flood Runs red waist-high with slain men’s blood. Was beauty once a thing that died? Was pleasure never satisfied? Was rest still broken by the vain Desire of action, bringing pain, To die in languid rest again? All this was quite forgotten there, Where never winter chilled the year, Nor spring brought promise unfulfilled, Nor, with the eager summer killed, The languid days drooped autumnwards. So magical a season guards The constant prime of a cool June; So slumbrous is the river’s tune, That knows no thunder of heavy rains, Nor ever in the summer wanes, Like waters of the summer time In lands far from the Fairy clime.

Yea, there the Fairy maids are kind, With nothing of the changeful mind Of maidens in the days that were; And if no laughter fills the air With sound of silver murmurings, And if no prayer of passion brings A love nigh dead to life again, Yet sighs more subtly sweet remain, And smiles that never satiate, And loves that fear scarce any fate. Alas, no words can bring the bloom Of Fairy Land; the faint perfume, The sweet low light, the magic air, To eyes of who has not been there: Alas, no words, nor any spell Can lull the eyes that know too well, The lost fair world of Fairy Land.