Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems | Page 7

to live.
Dipped in Stygian waves of pain,?We can never feel again;?Time may hurl his deadliest darts,?Love may practise all his arts;
Like some Balder, lo! we stand?Safe 'mid hurtling spear and brand,?Only Death--ah! sweet Death, throw!--?Holds the fatal mistletoe.
Let the young unconquered soul?Love the unit as the whole,?Let the young uncheated eye?Love the face fore-doomed to die:
But, my Celia, not for us?Pleasures half so hazardous;?Let us set our hearts on play,?'Tis, alas! the only way--
Make of life the jest it is,?Laugh and fool and (maybe!) kiss,?Never for a moment, dear,?Love so well to risk a fear.
Is not this, my Celia, say,?The only wise--and weary--way?
TIME'S MONOTONE
Autumn and Winter,?Summer and Spring--?Hath Time no other song to sing??Weary we grow of the changeless tune--
June--December,?December--June!
Time, like a bird, hath but one song,?One way to build, like a bird hath he;?Thus hath he built so long, so long,?Thus hath he sung--Ah me!
Time, like a spider, knows, be sure,?One only wile, though he seems so wise:?Death is his web, and Love his lure,?And you and I his flies.
'Love!' he sings?In the morning clear,?'Love! Love! Love!'?And you never hear?How, under his breath,?He whispers, 'Death!?Death! Death!'
Yet Time--'tis the strangest thing of all--?Knoweth not the sense of the words he saith;?Eternity taught him his parrot-call?Of 'Love and Death.'
Year after year doth the old man climb?The mountainous knees of Eternity,?But Eternity telleth nothing to Time--?It may not be.
COR CORDIUM
O GOLDEN DAY! O SILVER NIGHT!
O golden day! O silver night!?That brought my own true love at last,?Ah, wilt thou drop from out our sight,?And drown within the past?
One wave, no more, in life's wide sea,?One little nameless crest of foam,?The day that gave her all to me?And brought us to our home.
Nay, rather as the morning grows?In flush, and gleam, and kingly ray,?While up the heaven the sun-god goes,?So shall ascend our day.
And when at last the long night nears,?And love grows angel in the gloam,?Nay, sweetheart, what of fears and tears?--?The stars shall see us home.
LOVE'S EXCHANGE
Simple am I, I care no whit?For pelf or place,?It is enough for me to sit?And watch Dulcinea's face;?To mark the lights and shadows flit?Across the silver moon of it.
I have no other merchandise,?No stocks or shares,?No other gold but just what lies?In those deep eyes of hers;?And, sure, if all the world were wise,?It too would bank within her eyes.
I buy up all her smiles all day?With all my love,?And sell them back, cost-price, or, say,?A kiss or two above;?It is a speculation fine,?The profit must be always mine.
The world has many things, 'tis true,?To fill its time,?Far more important things to do?Than making love and rhyme;?Yet, if it asked me to advise,?I'd say--buy up Dulcinea's eyes!
TO A SIMPLE HOUSEWIFE
Who dough shall knead as for God's sake?Shall fill it with celestial leaven,?And every loaf that she shall bake?Be eaten of the Blest in heaven.
LOVE'S WISDOM
Sometimes my idle heart would roam?Far from its quiet happy nest,?To seek some other newer home,?Some unaccustomed Best:?But ere it spreads its foolish wings,?'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
Sometimes my idle heart would sail?From out its quiet sheltered bay,?To tempt a less pacific gale,?And oceans far away:?But ere it shakes its foolish wings,?'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
Sometimes my idle heart would fly,?Mothlike, to reach some shining sin,?It seems so sweet to burn and die?That wondrous light within:?But ere it burns its foolish wings,?'Heart, stay at home, be wise!' Love's wisdom sings.
HOME ...
'We're going home!' I heard two lovers say,?They kissed their friends and bade them bright good-byes; I hid the deadly hunger in my eyes,?And, lest I might have killed them, turned away.?Ah, love! we too once gambolled home as they,?Home from the town with such fair merchandise,--?Wine and great grapes--the happy lover buys:?A little cosy feast to crown the day.
Yes! we had once a heaven we called a home?Its empty rooms still haunt me like thine eyes,?When the last sunset softly faded there;?Each day I tread each empty haunted room,
And now and then a little baby cries,?Or laughs a lovely laughter worse to bear.
LOVE'S LANDMARKS
The woods we used to walk, my love,?Are woods no more,?But' villas' now with sounding names--?All name and door.
The pond, where, early on in March,?The yellow cup?Of water-lilies made us glad,?Is now filled up.
But ah! what if they fill or fell?Each pond, each tree,?What matters it to-day, my love,?To me--to thee?
The jerry-builder may consume,?A greedy moth,?God's mantle of the living green,?I feel no wrath;
Eat up the beauty of the world,?And gorge his fill?On mead and winding country lane,?And grassy hill.
I only laugh, for now of these?I have no care,?Now that to me the fair is foul,?And foul as fair.
IF, AFTER ALL ...!
This life I squander, hating the long days?That will not bring me either Rest or Thee,?This health I hack and ravage as with knives,?These nerves I fain