Perpetual Light | Page 9

be bitter,

Bitter as gall,
The dark heart go lonely--
Save for one tower,

One cyathus only,
One wine of power!
My love's white beauty
Is this tower,
The wine of her beauty

My
wine of power,
The cup of her spirit
Mine to drain
With awful
knowledge
And trembling pain.
She only, she only
Stands on the stars.
Her small hands grapple


Heaven's black bars.
Only her deep love
Pays the price
Of a sight
of the vistas
Of paradise.
Each goblet may shatter,
Each tower may fall,
Low livid sunset

Darken on all--
In her soul's high tower
My love pours wine,
And
the glory and the power
Of the stars are mine!
RECOGNITION
Like the twilight blowing over sunset water
Under high holy hills
purple-mirrored in a mere,
Quietly and smiling, my dear love brought
her
Heart to my heart, and through the dusk drew near;
Drew to me near, drew my brows up to the tender
Caress of her hands.
And I lifted up my eyes
To hers, and deep within them saw a silent
splendor
More still, more strange than the planets' in the skies.
Each gazed on each. O what is mortal seeing
To the glory of that
depth, to the glory of that height
Through veils revealed, when all the
gates of being
Burst open to a torrent of such blinding light!
Yes, and here I stand warped by life's derision,
A mountebank
grimacing lest at last I weep.
What man could tell that I had ever seen
a vision
More wonderful than any on the steeps of sleep?
Days come, days go, as the clock ticks hours.
Years loom, years pass;
the shadows rise....
Like the twilight breathing over holy flowers

Once my love drew near. And I lifted up my eyes....
TRIBUTE
Remembering one woman I have seen
And have known,
Benignant
eyes, nobility of mien,
A scarf from off a perfect shoulder blown,

Solicitude, white ardor in a face,
Motions like water under the moon's
grace,--
I wonder much how men can be so base,
So worse than

stone.
Oh murmurings of music through the world,
Ye women born
To
arduous things and angers, and upwhirled
Like tongues of flame
through smoke of the world's scorn,
Crystalline lights, awful and
fitful gleams
Of reconciliation with our dreams,
Through you alone
the world's true spirit streams
Sounding her silver horn.
All things I wish for you that height may hold,
Who hold the race,

Oh desperate runners on the track unrolled
Over the highlands now,
in the sun's face;
O swift and free, hoverers on the verge
Whence
the impossible things we mocked emerge,--
O wings--wings--sliding
the starry surge
And veering on the chase!
The satyr and the centaur race below
Deriding wings above.
Manful
they meet and fight to overthrow
All they are wearied of,--
Manful
they build, demolish, drive, are driven,--
But you are free, who have
more greatly striven,
Yours is the light above their lightless heaven,

For yours is Love!
THE SILVER HIND
Through the black forest
You glance, you start,--
Through the black
forest
That is my heart!
Beautiful, silver-heeled,
Swift as wind,

Topping the brake
Like a flying hind!
I have a bugle
Of ivory
The wizard of twilight
Gave to me.
I
hear it winding in my heart,
In the black forest, where you start.
And I know,
Like huntsmen in gold and green,
That my thoughts
spur past
Where you have been,
And, like hounds that have slipped
the leash,
They race,--
Bell-tongued brachets

Upon your trace.
Through the black forest
You reach, you run,
Out of the shadow,

Into the sun.
And the hunt behind
Is lyric and loud
Where horses

and hounds
And huntsmen crowd....
But you are gone--
Oh, you are gone
Out to the blaze and glory of
dawn!
Leaving the print of blood-red anemones
In the mould, and
echoes of ancient glees
Shaking like silver leaves on my sombre
trees!
ARISTEAS RELATES HIS YOUTH
(_Who, in his age, was reported a magician throughout all Greece, as it
was said that his soul could leave his body at will._)
Early rose was the light
As I sought the portico
Whence her wings
had fluttered in flight
And with surge and flow
Had risen to soar,
and go
Out, out over the sea,
Dwindling white and soft and slow

To a memory.
Oh, grief of all years to be!
Most miserable of men!
My throat
ached with my tears,
As a sword driven through my ears
Was my
anguish then.
Dark were the rooms where they lay
Who loved in the flesh

(Diana's disciples they said!)
In that lupanar of the dead.
Sweet was
the flesh they loved,
Graceful the limbs that moved,
Wild the
passion that they
Desired afresh
In the night. Were they not of the world,
Of lust and
toil and war?
And I--I too?
Yea--till that music swirled
About me,
and I knew
I was visited of a star!
A star it was grew and grew
(As hot in the dark I lay,
Panting, after
the feast,)
Glorious out of the east,
And a face that made my soul

A slowly uncrumpling scroll,
It glimmered so near and fey!
Her voice rippled like water
In the light gold-green
Of some
mid-noon ravine.
She stooped, the moon's daughter,

With her hand

underneath my head
And her lips on the lips of the dead.
I arose
from my rumpled bed.
A waterfall sliding green
In a silver-mosaicked screen
We two trod
under;
Then I turned where her light touch led,
Trembling but
unafraid.
Across some Elysian sod,
Winged of heel, I floated--a