English Poems | Page 4

his castle near,--
And
those poor lovers sleep, forgot at last their fear.
His horse left steaming at his journey's end,
Up through his palace
stairs with springing tread
He strode; the silence met him like a friend,

Fain to dissuade him from that deed of dread,
Making a breeze

about his burning head,
Laying large hands of comfort on his soul;

Within the ashes of his cheek burned red
A long-shut rose of youth,
as to the goal
Of death he sped, as once to love's own tryst he stole.
He caught a sound as of a rose's breath,
He caught another breath of
deeper lung,
Rose-leaves and oak-leaves on the wind of death;
He
drew aside the arras where they clung
In the dim light, so lovely and
so young--
They lay in sin as in a cradle there,
Twin babes that in
one bosom nestling hung:
Even Lanciotto paused, ah, will he spare?

Who could not quite forgive a wrong that is so fair!
The grave old clock ticked somewhere in the gloom,
A dozen waiting
seconds rose and fell
Ere his pale dagger flickered in the room,

Then quenched its corpse-light in their bosoms' swell-- 'Thus, dears, I
mate you evermore in hell.'
Their blood ran warm about them and
they sighed
For the mad smiter did his work too well,
Just drew
together softly and so died,
Fell very still and strange, and moved not
side by side.
Yea, moved not, though two hours he watched the twain
And heard
their blood drip drip upon the floor,
Twice with stern voice he spake
to them again,
And then, a little tenderly, once more,--
'Thus, dears,
in hell I mate you evermore.'
And when the curious fingers of the day

Unravelled all the dark, and morning wore,
And the young light
played round them where they lay,
The souls were many leagues
upon the hellward way.
YOUNG LOVE
N.B.--_This sequence of poems has appeared in former
editions
under the title of 'Love Platonic_.'
I
1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon

That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly
queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that
all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe
Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.
For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth
like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy
mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Sing on, my soul, the
world beneath thee swinging,
A bough of song above a sea of sleep.
2
Who is the lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise
For whom all my life's but the
string
Of a rosary painful of days;
Which I count with a curious smile
As a miser who hoardeth his gain,
Though, a madhearted spendthrift
the while,
I but gather to waste again.

Yea, I pluck from the tree of the years,
As a country maid greedy of flowers,
Each day brimming over with
tears,
And I scatter like petals its hours;
And I trample them under my feet
In a frenzy of cloven-hoofed swine,
And the breath of their dying is
sweet,
And the blood of their hearts is as wine.
O, I throw me low down on the ground
And I bury my face in their death,
And only I rise at the sound
Of a wind as it scattereth,
As it scattereth sweetly the dried
Leaves withered and brittle and sere
Of days of old years that have
died--
And, O, it is sweet in my ear
And I rise me and build me a pyre
Of the whispering skeleton things,
And my heart laugheth low with
the fire,
Laugheth high with the flame as it springs;
And above in the flickering glare
I mark me the boughs of my tree,
My tree of the years, growing bare.
Growing bare with the scant days to be.

Then I turn to my beads and I pray
For the axe at the root of the tree--
Last flower, last bead--ah! last day
That shall part me, my darling, from thee!
And I pray for the knife on the string
Of this rosary painful of days:
But who is the Lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise!
II
I make this rhyme of my lady and me
To give me ease of my misery,

Of my lady and me I make this rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.

And I weave its warp from day to day
In a golden loom deep hid
away
In my secret heart, where no one goes
But my lady's self,
and--no one knows.
With bended head all day I pore
On a joyless task, and yet before

My eyes all day, through each weary hour,
Breathes my lady's face
like a dewy flower.
Like rain it comes through the dusty air,
Like