Part 13

But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan, Over the fair foundation scarce begun, While I with lovers dallied in the sun, The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran.

And now, too late to see my vision, rise, In place of golden pinnacles and towers, Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers, Only beloved of birds and butterflies.

My friends were duped, my favorers deceived; But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there, That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fair I scarce regret the temple unachieved.

III

For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those, Home turning as a conqueror turns home, What time green dawn down every street uprears Arches of triumph! He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by. This only matters: from some flowery bed, Laden with sweetness like a homing bee, If one have known what bliss it is to come, Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lips The fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To him The hills have bared their treasure, the far clouds Unveiled the vision that o'er summer seas Drew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known, He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds, And, pillowed on a memory so sweet, Unto oblivious eternity Without regret yield his victorious soul, The blessed pilgrim of a vow fulfilled.

What is Success? Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory; to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple flowers unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled.

O Love, whereof my boyhood was the dream, My youth the beautiful novitiate, Life was so slight a thing and thou so great, How could I make thee less than all-supreme! In thy sweet transports not alone I thought Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast. The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caught Into the pulse of Nature and possessed By the same light that consecrates it so. Love!--'tis the payment of the debt we owe The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er In silks and perfume and unloosened hair The loveliness of lovers, face to face, Lies folded in the adorable embrace, Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice That soul partakes whose inspiration fills The springtime and the depth of summer skies, The rainbow and the clouds behind the hills, That excellence in earth and air and sea That makes things as they are the real divinity.

Thirty Sonnets:

Sonnet I

Down the strait vistas where a city street Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances, Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less And the sky reddens round the day's retreat. Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet, Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down. Now the lamps brighten and the quickening town Rings with the trample of returning feet. And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mould Sunk all the drowsy and unloved daylight In layers of odorous softness, Paphian girls Cover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls, Crown, and about her spangly vestments fold The ermine of the empire of the Night.

Sonnet II

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze. They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare Beyond the hilltops in the evening air How bright the cressets at her portals blaze. On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow; There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams. Her paths are disillusion and decay, With ruins piled and unapparent woe, The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.

Sonnet III

There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, -- In cloud and far horizon to desire. His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam Forever pure against heaven's orient blue. Within the city's shades he walked at last. Faint and more faint in sad recessional Down the dim corridors of Time outworn, A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past, A hymn of glories fled beyond recall With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn.

Sonnet IV

Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame. Up to his attic came the city cries -- The throes with which her iron sinews heave -- And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . .

Sonnet V

A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when they abound, The lust for pleasure throbs itself away. Here let me live, here let me still pursue Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -- Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.

Sonnet VI

Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs, The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame, The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among! It walks here aureoled with the city-light, Forever through the myriad-featured mass Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, -- Heard sometimes in a song across the night, Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pass, And when love yields to love seen face to face.

Sonnet VII

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one--a woman crowned With all perfection, blemishless and high, As the full moon amid the moonlit sky, With the world's praise and wonder clad around. And I who held this notion of success: To leave no form of Nature's loveliness Unworshipped, if glad eyes have access there, -- Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goal To find where that sweet shrine is and extol The hand that triumphed in a work so fair.

Sonnet VIII

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous; But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes, The fair world glistens, and in after days The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes Lives in my step and lightens all my face, -- So they who found the Earthly Paradise Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.

Sonnet IX

Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, So to my being's innermost recess Flooded the light of so much loveliness; She held as in a vase of priceless ware The wine that over arid ways and bare My youth was the pathetic thirsting for, And where she moved the veil of Nature grew Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.

Sonnet X

A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood Adorning every little thing she does Sits like enchantment, making glorious A careless pose, a casual attitude; Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage, To keep alive in this our latter age That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise.