The Fugitive | Page 7

touch thrills into flowers; that trailing skirt of thine sweeps the whirl of a dance among the stars, and thy many-toned music is echoed from innumerable worlds through signs and colours.
Single and alone in the unfathomed stillness of the soul, art thou, Lady of Silence and Solitude, a vision thrilled with light, a lonely lotus blossoming on the stem of love.
2
Behind the rusty iron gratings of the opposite window sits a girl, dark and plain of face, like a boat stranded on a sand-bank when the river is shallow in the summer.
I come back to my room after my day's work, and my tired eyes are lured to her.
She seems to me like a lake with its dark lonely waters edged by moonlight.
She has only her window for freedom: there the morning light meets her musings, and through it her dark eyes like lost stars travel back to their sky.
3
I remember the day.
The heavy shower of rain is slackening into fitful pauses, renewed gusts of wind startle it from a first lull.
I take up my instrument. Idly I touch the strings, till, without my knowing, the music borrows the mad cadence of that storm.
I see her figure as she steals from her work, stops at my door, and retreats with hesitating steps. She comes again, stands outside leaning against the wall, then slowly enters the room and sits down. With head bent, she plies her needle in silence; but soon stops her work, and looks out of the window through the rain at the blurred line of trees.
Only this--one hour of a rainy noon filled with shadows and song and silence.
4
While stepping into the carriage she turned her head and threw me a swift glance of farewell.
This was her last gift to me. But where can I keep it safe from the trampling hours?
Must evening sweep this gleam of anguish away, as it will the last flicker of fire from the sunset?
Ought it to be washed off by the rain, as treasured pollens are from heart-broken flowers?
Leave kingly glory and the wealth of the rich to death. But may not tears keep ever fresh the memory of a glance flung through a passionate moment?
"Give it to me to keep," said my song; "I never touch kings' glory or the wealth of the rich, but these small things are mine for ever."
5
You give yourself to me, like a flower that blossoms at night, whose presence is known by the dew that drips from it, by the odour shed through the darkness, as the first steps of Spring are by the buds that thicken the twigs.
You break upon my thought like waves at the high tide, and my heart is drowned under surging songs.
My heart knew of your coming, as the night feels the approach of dawn. The clouds are aflame and my sky fills with a great revealing flood.
6
I was to go away; still she did not speak. But I felt, from a slight quiver, her yearning arms would say: "Ah no, not yet."
I have often heard her pleading hands vocal in a touch, though they knew not what they said.
I have known those arms to stammer when, had they not, they would have become youth's garland round my neck.
Their little gestures return to remembrance in the covert of still hours, like truants they playfully reveal things she had kept secret from me.
7
My songs are like bees; they follow through the air some fragrant trace--some memory--of you, to hum around your shyness, eager for its hidden store.
When the freshness of dawn droops in the sun, when in the noon the air hangs low with heaviness and the forest is silent, my songs return home, their languid wings dusted with gold.
8
I believe you had visited me in a vision before we ever met, like some foretaste of April before the spring broke into flower.
That vision must have come when all was bathed in the odour of sal blossom; when the twilight twinkle of the river fringed its yellow sands, and the vague sounds of a summer afternoon were blended; yes, and had it not laughed and evaded me in many a nameless gleam at other moments?
9
I think I shall stop startled if ever we meet after our next birth, walking in the light of a far-away world.
I shall know those dark eyes then as morning stars, and yet feel that they have belonged to some unremembered evening sky of a former life.
I shall know that the magic of your face is not all its own, but has stolen the passionate light that was in my eyes at some immemorial meeting, and then gathered from my love a mystery that has now forgotten its origin.
10
Lay down your lute, my love, leave your arms free to embrace me.
Let your touch bring my overflowing heart