A Jongleur Strayed | Page 6

of
your eyes,
As on your cheek, soft as a moth, it lies;
And, as a
church, I softly enter in
The solemn twilight of your mighty hair,

Down falling there.
These are Love's shadows, Love knows none but these:
Shadows that
are the very soul of light,
As morning and the morning blossom
bright,
Or jewelled shadows of moon-haunted seas;
The darkest
shadows in this world of ours
Are made of flowers.
AFTER TIBULLUS
Illius est nobis lege colendus amor
On her own terms, O lover, must thou take
The heart's beloved: be
she kind, 'tis well,
Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake
But for
the fire in thee that melts her snows
For a brief spell
She loves
thee--"loves" thee! Though thy heart should break, Though thou
shouldst lie athirst for her in hell,
She could not pity thee: who of the
Rose,
Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return
Of love for love? and she is even as those.
Beauty is she, thou Love,
and thou must learn,
O lover, this:
Thine is she for the music thou
canst pour
Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream; Thine, while
thy kiss
Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream
That is
not thou nor she but merely bliss;
The music ended, she is thine no
more.

In her Eternal Beauty bends o'er thee,
Be thou content;
She is the
evening star in thy hushed lake
Mirrored,--be glad;
A soul-less creature of the element,
Nor good,
nor bad;
That which thou callest to in the far skies
Comes to thee in
her eyes;
That thou mayst slake
Thy love of lilies, lo! her breasts! Be wise,

Ask not that she, as thou, should human be,
She that doth smell so
sweet of distant heaven;
Pity is mortal leaven,
Dews know it not,
nor morning on the hills,
And who hath yet found pity of the sea

That blesses, knowing not, and, not knowing, kills;
And sister unto all
of these is she,
Whose face, as theirs, none reads; whose heart none
knows; Whose words are as the wind's words, and whose ways,
O
lover, learn,
Swerve not, or turn
Aside for prayers, or
broken-hearted praise:
The young moon looks not back as on she
goes.
On their own terms, O lover!--Girl, Moon, Rose.
A WARNING
We that were born, beloved, so far apart,
So many seas and lands,

The gods, one sudden day, joined heart to heart,
Locked hands in
hands,
Distance relented and became our friend,
And met, for our
sakes, world's end with world's end.
The earth was centred in one
flowering plot
Beneath thy feet, and all the rest was not.
Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again
Bring distance back,
and place
Poles and equators, mountain range and plain,
Between
me and thy face,
Undoing what the gods divinely planned;
Heart,
canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand?
Not twice the gods
their slighted gifts bestow;
Bethink thee well, beloved, ere thou dost
go.
PRIMUM MOBILE

When thou art gone, then all the rest will go;
Mornings no more shall
dawn,
Roses no more shall blow,
Thy lovely face withdrawn--

Nor woods grow green again after the snow;
For of all these thy
beauty was the dream,
The soul, the sap, the song;
To thee the
bloom and beam
Of flower and star belong,
And all the beauty
thine of bird and stream.
Thy bosom was the moonrise, and the morn
The roses of thy cheek,

No lovely thing was born
But of thy face did speak--
How shall
all these endure, of thee forlorn?
The sad heart of the world grew glad
through thee,
Happy, men toiled and spun
That had thy smile for
fee;
So flowers seek the sun,
So singing rivers hasten to the sea.
Yet, though the world, bereft, should bleakly bloom,
And wanly
make believe
Against the general doom,
For me the earth you leave

Shall be for ever but a haunted room;
Yea! though my heart beat
on a little space,
When thou art strangely gone
To thy far
hiding-place,
Soon shall I follow on,
Out-footing Death to
over-take thy face.
THE LAST TRYST
The cowbells wander through the woods,
'Neath arching boughs a
stream slips by,
In all the ferny solitude
A chipmunk and a butterfly

Are all that is--and you and I.
This summer day, with all its flowers,
With all its green and gold and
blue,
Just for a little while is ours,
Just for a little--I and you:
Till
the stars rise and bring the dew.
One perfect day to us is given;
Tomorrow--all the aching years;

This is our last short day in heaven,
The last of all our kisses nears--

Then life too arid even for tears.
Here, as the day ends, we two end,

Two that were one, we said, for

ever;
We had Eternity to spend,
And laughed for joy to know that
never
Two so divinely one could sever.
A year ago--how rich we seemed!
Like piles of gold our kisses lay,

Enough to last our lives we dreamed,
And lives to come, we used to
say--
Yet are we at the last to-day.
The last, I say, yet scarce believe
What all my heart is black with
knowing;
Doomed, I yet watch for some reprieve,
But know too
well that love is going,
As sure as yonder stream is