More Songs From Vagabondia | Page 8

hill?Where the shadows waded.?"Heigho, Soncy!" "Heigho, me!"?Then I did as day did.
All her tousled beauty bright?And teasing as before,?I left her there in sweet despair,?A soncy maid no more.
WHEN I WAS TWENTY.
_It was June, and I was twenty.?All my wisdom, poor but plenty,?Never learned_ Festina lente.?Youth is gone, but whither went he?
Madeline came down the orchard?With a mischief in her eye,?Half demure and half inviting,?Melting, wayward, wistful, shy.
Four bright eyes that found life lovely,?And forgot to wonder why;?Four warm lips at one love-lesson,?Learned by heart so easily.
We gained something of that knowledge?No man ever yet put by,?But his after days of sorrow?Left him nothing but to die.
Madeline went up the orchard,?Down the hurrying world went I;?Now I know love has no morrow,?Happiness no by-and-by.
_Youth is gone, but whither went he??All my wisdom, poor but plenty,?Never learned_ Festina lente.?It was June, and I was twenty.
IN A SILENCE
Heart to heart!?And the stillness of night and the moonlight, like hushed breathing Silently, stealthily moving across thy hair!
O womanly face!?Tender and strong and lucent with infinite feeling,?Shrinking with startled joy, like wind-struck water,?And yet so frank, so unashamed of love!
Ay, for there it is, love--that's the deepest.?Love's not love in the dark.?Light loves wither i' the sun, but Love endureth,?Clothing himself with the light as with a robe.
I would bare my soul to thy sight--?Leave not a secret deep unsearched,?Unrevealing its shame or its glory.?Love without Truth shall die as a soul without God.?A lying love is the love of a day?But the brave and true shall love forever.
Build Love a house;?Let the walls be thick;?Shut him in from the sight of men;?But hide not Love from himself.
Ah, the summer night!?The wind in the trees and the moonlight!?And my kisses on thy throat?And thy breathing in my hair!
Silent, lips to lips!?But our souls have held speech, thought answering echoing thought, Though the only words were kisses.
THE BATHER.
I saw him go down to the water to bathe;?He stood naked upon the bank.
His breast was like a white cloud in the heaven,
that catches the sun;?It swelled with the sharp joy of the air.
His legs rose with the spring and curve of young birches;?The hollow of his back caught the blue shadows:
With his head thrown up to the lips of the wind;?And the curls of his forehead astir with the wind.
I would that I were a man, they are so beautiful;?Their bodies are like the bows of the Indians;?They have the spring and the grace of bows of hickory.
I know that women are beautiful, and that I am beautiful;?But the beauty of a man is so lithe and alive and triumphant, Swift as the night of a swallow and sure as the
pounce of the eagle.
NOCTURNE: IN ANJOU.
I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night.?Her nightingales were singing in the trees?Beside the castled river; and the wind?Fell like a woman's fingers on my cheek.?And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;?The night went on with me into my dream.?This only I remember, that I cried:?"O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,?Sing me one song of those lost books of yours?For which we poets still go sorrowing;?That when I meet my fellows on the earth?I may rejoice them more than many pearls;"?And she, the sweetly smiling, answered me,?As one who dreams, "I have forgotten them."
NOCTURNE: IN PROVENCE.
The blue night, like an angel, came into the room,--?Came through the open window from the silent sky?Down trellised stairs of moonlight into the dear room?As if a whisper breathed of some divine one nigh.?The nightingales, like brooks of song in Paradise,?Gurgled their serene rapture to the silent sky--?Like springs of laughter bubbling up in Paradise,?The serene nightingales along the riverside?Purled low in every tree their star-cool melodies?Of joy--in every tree along the riverside.
Did the vain garments melt in music from your side??Did you rise from them as a lily flowers i' the air??--But you were there before me like the Night's own bride-- I dared not call you mine. So still and tall you were,?I never dreamed that you were mine--I never dreamed?I loved you--I forgot I loved you. You were air?And music, and the shadows that you stood in, seemed?Like priests that keep their sombre vigil round a shrine--?Like sombre priests that watch about a glorious shrine.
And then you stepped into the moonlight and laid bare?The wonder of your body to the night, and stood?With all the stars of heaven looking at you there,?As simply as a saint might bare her soul to God--?As simply as a saint might bathe in lakes of prayer--?Stood with the holy moonlight falling on you there?Until I thought that in a glory unaware?I had seen a soul stand forth and bare itself to God--?A saintly soul lay bare its innocence to God.
JUNE NIGHT IN WASHINGTON.
The scent of honeysuckle,?Drugging the twilight?With its sweet opiate