A Woman of Thirty | Page 9

in her place has come another,
With troubled smile and brooding eyes,?Insatiate of sacrifice?And wholly, utterly your mother.
To Allen
Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much?Comes true in your quick smile,?And on your cheek I see her touch?And sometimes in your eyes a while?Immortal beauty's fleeting image lies.?Dear child, in whose veins beat?The marching centuries of lovers' feet,?All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise--?The souls who, loving beauty, gave you birth,?With a chain of passion binding beauty to earth,?A captured dream--these souls breathe with your breath?Living again in beauty that knows no death.
To Helen
Lie still in my arms, little four-years-old,
Little bud that glows?With more beauty and passion than it can hold,
Little flaming rose,
The spring's red blossoms, when winter lies deep
On a wind-swept world?Of tossing branches, lie safely asleep
In brown buds curled.
They wake--and the wind strips their petals away
And spills them afar--?Can I keep you from blooming, whatever I say,
Wild bud that you are!
The Immortal
Child of a love denied, a dream unborn,?Spirit more brave?Than passion's unfulfilment, wiser than fate--?Nor breast nor grave?As cradle you have known,--?I mourn?That my soul knows its own?Too late!
A soul's half-breath,?Passion's unremembered dream,?Perfume without a vase,?Intangible you seem?To life or death.
And when the coloured mantle of the days?Slips from my shoulders, and I lie?Forgetful, dumb,?Mingled with earth in passionless embrace,?Will you, forgotten as a bird,?Singing unheard?In space,?Will you not come?When every other dream is gone,?Bringing to that silent place?The shadow of a gesture flung?By motionless hands, a floating echo hung?From an unspoken word,?And to the empty sky?The sunset of a day which did not dawn?And cannot die !
To an Absent Child
I
At first in dreams?I pressed you so close?That you melted away on my breast,?But now I wait, breathless and motionless,?Till I feel your slender arms caress me?Like swallows blown against me?And quickly flown.
II
Small flower,?My body is the earth from which you sprang,?But we are more to each other than earth and flower,?Closer, even, than earth and flower,?For the sky in me is one with the sky in you...
My love for you?Is like sunlight shining in a quiet place,?You shall feel my love like soft light?Pouring about you.
III
I will not kiss you,?For my kisses are a chain without an end;?Nor take you in my arms,?My arms would smother you against my breast;?I will not even touch your shining head--?But lift your eyes up, flower-face,?And I will fill them as full of love?As they can hold!
IV
Ah no! If you were here?I would sweep you into my arms and hold you close!?Though my love is of the spirit?I must feel your little restless body?Pressed for a moment against my heart.
Summer Night
Rain, rain murmuring endless complaints?In mournful whisperings that never cease,?You bring my tired brain a certain peace?Like Latin prayers to absent-minded saints.
And whether silently to earth you fall,?Or dashed and driven in tempestuous flight?Like souls before God's wrath, the thirsty night,?The soft and fecund earth shall drink you all.
Maura
I
Maura dreams unwakened--?The warm winds touch the bands?That hold her hair.?The call of a silver horn floats by,?A lover tosses flowers into her hands.
Maura dreams unwakened--?She joins the maidens in their dance,?Her limbs follow slow rhythms,?A lover leads her into the shade,?She moves as in a trance.
II
What dim confusion?Troubles her dream,?What passionate caress?Disturbs her spirit's rapt seclusion?
Earth draws her close. How warm?Is lover-earth! Like a sleeping bird?She gives herself, then suddenly?She is a leaf whirled in the storm.
Somewhere in a quiet room, her soul unstirred,?Dead... or sleeping,?Through the blind tumult hears afar?The note of a horn, like a silver thread.?She has given her soul to an echo's keeping.
III
Who knows the mountain where the hunter rides?Winding his horn??Maura who heard it in her dream?Wakens forlorn,?Too late to catch the tenuous thread?Of silver sound?Which in the troubled, intricate fugue of earth?Is drowned.
IV
Maura cannot follow over the hill,?Her youth is landlocked as a hidden pool?Where thirsty love drinks deep,?A shining pool, where lingers?The colour of an unseen golden sky,?A pool where echoes fall asleep.
But restless fingers?Trouble the waters cool,?Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy?The mirrored dream. The pool is never still,?And broken echoes die.
V
The silver call has gone, but there is left to her?The gentleness of earth,?The simple mysteries of sleep and death,?Of love and birth.?There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers?Reaching for dreams.
And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night,?And the wide melody of evening sky?Where gleams?A colour like the echo of a horn.?There is a far hill where winds die,?And over the hill lies music yet unborn.
VI
Maura lies dead at last,?The body she gave to child and lover?Now feeds flower and tree.
Earth's arms are wide to her. What breast?Offers such gentle sleeping??Her limbs lie peacefully.
From the dark West?There comes a note like the echoing cry?Of one who rides through the dusk alone?After the hunt sweeps by.
It fades--the night wind is forlorn--?Music is still,?But Maura has followed the silver