Helen of Troy | Page 4

shall
live to conquer Greece again!
Beatrice
Send out the singers -- let the room be still;
They have not eased my
pain nor brought me sleep.
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark


That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for
the light is red,
And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula
upon an altar-screen.
Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,


For I have had enough of saints and prayers.
Strange broken thoughts
are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.

It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the
arras there.
Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end
of time.
You have a mouth for loving -- listen then:
Keep tryst with
Love before Death comes to tryst;
For I, who die, could wish that I
had lived
A little closer to the world of men,
Not watching always
thro' the blazoned panes
That show the world in chilly greens and
blues
And grudge the sunshine that would enter in.
I was no part of
all the troubled crowd
That moved beneath the palace windows here,

And yet sometimes a knight in shining steel
Would pass and catch
the gleaming of my hair,
And wave a mailed hand and smile at me,

Whereat I made no sign and turned away,
Affrighted and yet glad and
full of dreams.
Ah, dreams and dreams that asked no answering!
I
should have wrought to make my dreams come true,
But all my life
was like an autumn day,
Full of gray quiet and a hazy peace.
What was I saying? All is gone again.
It seemed but now I was the
little child
Who played within a garden long ago.
Beyond the walls
the festal trumpets blared.
Perhaps they carried some Madonna by

With tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers,
A painted Virgin with a
painted Child,
Who saw for once the sweetness of the sun
Before
they shut her in an altar-niche
Where tapers smoke against the windy
gloom.
I gathered roses redder than my gown
And played that I was
Saint Elizabeth,
Whose wine had turned to roses in her hands.
And
as I played, a child came thro' the gate,
A boy who looked at me
without a word,
As tho' he saw stretch far behind my head
Long
lines of radiant angels, row on row.
That day we spoke a little,
timidly,
And after that I never heard the voice
That sang so many
songs for love of me.
He was content to stand and watch me pass,

To seek for me at matins every day,
Where I could feel his eyes the

while I prayed.
I think if he had stretched his hands to me,
Or
moved his lips to say a single word,
I might have loved him -- he had
wondrous eyes.
Ornella, are you there? I cannot see --
Is every one so lonely when he
dies?
The room is filled with lights -- with waving lights --
Who are the
men and women 'round the bed?
What have I said, Ornella? Have
they heard?
There was no evil hidden in my life,
And yet, and yet, I
would not have them know --
Am I not floating in a mist of light?
O lift me up and I shall reach the
sun!
Sappho
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos,
over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.

Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still
the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.

Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges
creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,

And running, running, till the night was black,
Would fall
forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off
the sea?
Ah, quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are
stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any
rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to
Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer
than death.
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God's
daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet

To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart
of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
I hold my
peace, my Cleis, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird's wing


Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah, never any more
when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall
I steal forth to seek for solitude
Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre,

Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice.
Ah, never with a throat
that aches with song,
Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,

Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
The quiver and the crying
of my heart.
Still I remember how I strove to flee
The love-note of
the birds, and bowed my head
To hurry faster, but