Grass of Parnassus | Page 9

my wits, but truly you lost yours.'
The Broken Heart.
July and June brought flowers and love?To you, but I would none thereof,?Whose heart kept all through summer time?A flower of frost and winter rime.?Yours was true wisdom--was it not??Even love; but I had clean forgot,?Till seasons of the falling leaf,?All loves, but one that turned to grief.?At length at touch of autumn tide?When roses fell, and summer died,?All in a dawning deep with dew,?Love flew to me, Love fled from you.?The roses drooped their weary heads,?I spoke among the garden beds;?You would not hear, you could not know,?Summer and love seemed long ago,?As far, as faint, as dim a dream,?As to the dead this world may seem.?Ah sweet, in winter's miseries,?Perchance you may remember this,?How Wisdom was not justified?In summer time or autumn tide,?Though for this once below the sun,?Wisdom and Love were made at one;?But Love was bitter-bought enough,?And Wisdom light of wing as Love.
GOOD-BYE.
Kiss me, and say good-bye;?Good-bye, there is no word to say but this,?Nor any lips left for my lips to kiss,?Nor any tears to shed, when these tears dry;?Kiss me, and say, good-bye.
Farewell, be glad, forget;?There is no need to say 'forget,' I know,?For youth is youth, and time will have it so,?And though your lips are pale, and your eyes wet,?Farewell, you must forget.
You shall bring home your sheaves,?Many, and heavy, and with blossoms twined?Of memories that go not out of mind;?Let this one sheaf be twined with poppy leaves?When you bring home your sheaves.
In garnered loves of thine,?The ripe good fruit of many hearts and years,?Somewhere let this lie, grey and salt with tears;?It grew too near the sea wind, and the brine?Of life, this love of mine.
This sheaf was spoiled in spring,?And over-long was green, and early sere,?And never gathered gold in the late year?From autumn suns, and moons of harvesting,?But failed in frosts of spring.
Yet was it thine, my sweet,?This love, though weak as young corn withered,?Whereof no man may gather and make bread;?Thine, though it never knew the summer heat;?Forget not quite, my sweet.
AN OLD PRAYER.
[Greek text]
Odyssey, XIII.
My prayer an old prayer borroweth,?Of ancient love and memory--?'Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,?That come to all men, come to thee.'?Gently as winter's early breath,?Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee,?To lands whereof no man knoweth?Of summer, over land and sea;?So with thy soul may summer be,?Even as the ancient singer saith,?'Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,?That come to all men, come to thee.'
A LA BELLE HELENE.
After Ronsard.
More closely than the clinging vine?About the wedded tree,?Clasp thou thine arms, ah, mistress mine!?About the heart of me.?Or seem to sleep, and stoop your face?Soft on my sleeping eyes,?Breathe in your life, your heart, your grace,?Through me, in kissing wise.?Bow down, bow down your face, I pray,?To me, that swoon to death,?Breathe back the life you kissed away,?Breathe back your kissing breath.?So by your eyes I swear and say,?My mighty oath and sure,?From your kind arms no maiden may?My loving heart allure.?I'll bear your yoke, that's light enough,?And to the Elysian plain,?When we are dead of love, my love,?One boat shall bear us twain.?They'll flock around you, fleet and fair,?All true loves that have been,?And you of all the shadows there,?Shall be the shadow queen.?Ah, shadow-loves and shadow-lips!?Ah, while 'tis called to-day,?Love me, my love, for summer slips,?And August ebbs away.
SYLVIE ET AURELIE.
In memory of Gerard De Nerval.
Two loves there were, and one was born?Between the sunset and the rain;?Her singing voice went through the corn,?Her dance was woven 'neath the thorn,?On grass the fallen blossoms stain;?And suns may set, and moons may wane,?But this love comes no more again.
There were two loves and one made white,?Thy singing lips, and golden hair;?Born of the city's mire and light,?The shame and splendour of the night,?She trapped and fled thee unaware;?Not through the lamplight and the rain?Shalt thou behold this love again.
Go forth and seek, by wood and hill,?Thine ancient love of dawn and dew;?There comes no voice from mere or rill,?Her dance is over, fallen still?The ballad burdens that she knew:?And thou must wait for her in vain,?Till years bring back thy youth again.
That other love, afield, afar?Fled the light love, with lighter feet.?Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are,?And flit in dreams from star to star,?That dead love shalt thou never meet,?Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain?Thy soul shall find her soul again.
A LOST PATH.
Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, had a certain proper mode of ecstasy, whereby, as Porphyry saith, his soul, becoming free from the deathly flesh, was made one with the Spirit that is in the world.
Alas, the path is lost, we cannot leave?Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away?As through strewn clouds, that stain the quiet eve,?To heights remoter of the purer day.?The soul may not, returning whence she