Fifty years Other Poems | Page 6

breaking light of love;?And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,?The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,?To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight?Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.
SONNET
(_From the Spanish of Plácido_)
Enough of love! Let break its every hold!?Ended my youthful folly! for I know?That, like the dazzling, glister-shedding snow,?Celia, thou art beautiful, but cold.?I do not find in thee that warmth which glows,?Which, all these dreary days, my heart has sought,?That warmth without which love is lifeless, naught?More than a painted fruit, a waxen rose.
Such love as thine, scarce can it bear love's name,?Deaf to the pleading notes of his sweet lyre,?A frank, impulsive heart I wish to claim,?A heart that blindly follows its desire.?I wish to embrace a woman full of flame,?I want to kiss a woman made of fire.
FROM THE SPANISH
Twenty years go by on noiseless feet,?He returns, and once again they meet,?She exclaims, "Good heavens! and is that he?"?He mutters, "My God! and that is she!"
FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND
Three students once tarried over the Rhine,?And into Frau Wirthin's turned to dine.
"Say, hostess, have you good beer and wine??And where is that pretty daughter of thine?"
"My beer and wine is fresh and clear.?My daughter lies on her funeral bier."
They softly tipped into the room;?She lay there in the silent gloom.
The first the white cloth gently raised,?And tearfully upon her gazed.
"If thou wert alive, O, lovely maid,?My heart at thy feet would to-day be laid!"
The second covered her face again,?And turned away with grief and pain.
"Ah, thou upon thy snow-white bier!?And I have loved thee so many a year."
The third drew back again the veil,?And kissed the lips so cold and pale.
"I've loved thee always, I love thee to-day,?And will love thee, yes, forever and aye!"
BEFORE A PAINTING
I knew not who had wrought with skill so fine?What I beheld; nor by what laws of art?He had created life and love and heart?On canvas, from mere color, curve and line.?Silent I stood and made no move or sign;?Not with the crowd, but reverently apart;?Nor felt the power my rooted limbs to start,?But mutely gazed upon that face divine.
And over me the sense of beauty fell,?As music over a raptured listener to?The deep-voiced organ breathing out a hymn;?Or as on one who kneels, his beads to tell,?There falls the aureate glory filtered through
The windows in some old cathedral dim.
I HEAR THE STARS STILL SINGING
I hear the stars still singing?To the beautiful, silent night,?As they speed with noiseless winging?Their ever westward flight.?I hear the waves still falling?On the stretch of lonely shore,?But the sound of a sweet voice calling?I shall hear, alas! no more.
GIRL OF FIFTEEN
Girl of fifteen,?I see you each morning from my window?As you pass on your way to school.?I do more than see, I watch you.?I furtively draw the curtain aside.?And my heart leaps through my eyes?And follows you down the street;?Leaving me behind, half-hid?And wholly ashamed.
What holds me back,?Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,?But my forty years beyond your fifteen?
Girl of fifteen, as you pass?There passes, too, a lightning flash of time?In which you lift those forty summers off my head,?And take those forty winters out of my heart.
THE SUICIDE
For fifty years,?Cruel, insatiable Old World,?You have punched me over the heart?Till you made me cough blood.?The few paltry things I gathered?You snatched out of my hands.?You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips.?You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.
You look at me now and think,?"He is still strong,?There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there. At the end of that time he will be old and broken,?Not able to strike back,?But cringing and crying for leave?To live a little longer."
Those twenty, pitiful, extra years?Would please you more than the fifty past,?Would they not, Old World??Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes,?And snatch them away as I laugh in your face,?Ha! Ha!?Bang--!
DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA
I
Sunrise in the Tropics
Sol, Sol, mighty lord of the tropic zone,?Here I wait with the trembling stars?To see thee once more take thy throne.
There the patient palm tree watching?Waits to say, "Good morn" to thee,?And a throb of expectation?Pulses through the earth and me.
Now, o'er nature falls a hush,?Look! the East is all a-blush;?And a growing crimson crest?Dims the late stars in the west;?Now, a flood of golden light?Sweeps across the silver night,?Swift the pale moon fades away?Before the light-girt King of Day,?See! the miracle is done!?Once more behold! The Sun!
II
Los Cigarillos
This is the land of the dark-eyed gente,?Of the dolce far niente,?Where we dream away?Both the night and day,?At night-time in sleep our dreams we invoke,?Our dreams come by day through the redolent smoke,?As it lazily curls,?And slowly unfurls?From our lips,?And the tips?Of our fragrant cigarillos.?For life