Miscellany of Poetry | Page 5

the sun, As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span, Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man.
While that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge, Came like the west wind roaring up the cannon of St. George, Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn, And their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridge-heads of the Marne;?And across the carnage of the Guard by Paris in the plain?The Normans to the Bretons cried; and the Bretons cheered again; But he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three. Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,?That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain.

RICHARD CHURCH
PSYCHE GOES FORTH TO LIFE
What are these tears of loneliness to-night??Hark! In my neighbour's house the music swells,?Joins with the wind and fills the empty skies?And dies away, like echo of old age?Sighing and dying in the heart that fails.?Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps?Into my home, into my waiting heart!?Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas,?Where is the old content of maidenhood,?The calmness and the laughter and the song,?The patient hands unshaken as the needle?Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips?Murmured, untroubled girlhood at their brink?
Was that but yesterday?... How long ago,?How the swift moments flow along the flood.?For yesterday was sweet indifference;?These little drooping breasts had never known?This pain that swells them out and makes them ache?For Love to touch them, for the nestling lips?To trouble them as a warm lifting wind?Murmurs between two swelled and ripening grapes?Whispering of future wines of mad delight.?Ah, let me learn of this! A rapture fills?My limbs, and in my womb there stirs a craving?For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows?About me in such radiance, the light, the strife?Of music, hue and perfume of the rose.?Oh garden of desire, where one awaits?My coming with the sudden knowledge glowing?Deep in my eyes, made sombre as the day?Is somber in the summer noon of light.?Now I perceive I am a sacred temple?Long closed about the hidden flame of life,?Closed with white ivories and gliding shapes?Of river waves, and waves upon the sea?Rising and gliding. Every magic curve?Of these unheeded arms, this supple waist--?So are my eyes set on the infinite--?Are ministering music unto life?Calling love forth to worship in my shrine,?To fill this temple with the prophecy?Of further, wider, deeper life to come.
Hark! The music of the night is rising up!?My neighbour's house is all a flame of song.?I must abide until the prelude closes,?Until his heart has ceased its preparation?And he comes forth into the dying year,?Leaves his house of inspiration empty,?And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth?Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way?With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home,?Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips?Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again?Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying?To call me forth, who am waiting in my home,?Waiting in sweet imprisonment, the bonds?Of love restraining me from running forth?To greet him and to lead him to my soul.
Oh the swift pain, the agony of waiting,?Galled with these terrible sweet bonds of love?That will not let me rise, though my cold hands?Are wrung with grief ... for do I not behold?Upon the outer night the rising fire,?The danger and the terror of love's flight;?Do I not know my lover; that his eyes?Are blinded by this madness of the skies.?Do I not hear him moaning in the night?For one to lead him to his waiting love,?To lead him to the temple of delight,?To the white ivory casket where his soul?Is set with lovely secrets? Do I not hear?The little echoes roll, and fade, and fret?About the murmuring foliage of the garden?Wherein the temple lies? Do I not fear?Lest in the outer glories he be lost?And thwarted of his heart's desire, that flies?Like a dove before his coming, and alights?Within the inner courtyard of my soul?Bearing such messages of him who comes?That all the altars of my love are kindled?To flame ere he approaches, which fades away?And counterfeits the sweetest death that ever?Sighed the approach of day, and left the stars?More bright to be entranced of the dawn?
Be patient, Oh, my heart! A little while?And he shall pierce the darkness of the night?That flows between my home and his. The song?The youth, the early light that he has lost?Are as a little strength submerged and drowned?In this fierce rage that bids him seek me out?And take me in the darkness of my home,?And change, and fill me, as the virgin night?Is changed to day, and as the moonlight sky?Is emptied of her sterile ray, and filled?With overflooding light