English Poems | Page 4

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 sun on the meadows to think of her;?O sweet as violets in early spring?The flower-girls to the city bring,?O, healing-bright to wintry eyes?As primrose-gold 'neath northern skies--?But O for fit thing to compare?With the joy I have in the thought of her!?So all day long doth her holy face?Bring fragrance to the barren place,?And whensoe'er it comes nearest me,?My loom it weaveth busily.
Some days there be when the loom is still?And my soul is sad as an autumn hill,?But how to tell the blessed time?When my heart is one glowing prayer of rhyme!?Think on the humming afternoon?Within some busy wood in June,?When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,?Are fiery outposts of the shade;?While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,?And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,?Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel:--?Hour when some poet-wit might feign?The drowsy tune of the throbbing air?The weaving of the gossamer?In secret nooks of wood and lane--?The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers,?Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours.?Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer,?If truly that the mystic golden boom,?Is the