The Fugitive | Page 8

to my body's utmost brink.
Do not bend your neck and turn away your face, but offer up a kiss to me, which has been like some perfume long closed in a bud.
Do not smother this moment under vain words, but let our hearts quake in a rush of silence sweeping all thoughts to the shoreless delight.
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You have made me great with your love, though I am but one among the many, drifting in the common tide, rocking in the fluctuant favour of the world.
You have given me a seat where poets of all time bring their tribute, and lovers with deathless names greet one another across the ages.
Men hastily pass me in the market,--never noting how my body has grown precious with your caress, how I carry your kiss within, as the sun carries in its orb the fire of the divine touch and shines for ever.
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Like a child that frets and pushes away its toys, my heart to-day shakes its head at every phrase I suggest, and says, "No, not this."
Yet words, in the agony of their vagueness, haunt my mind, like vagrant clouds hovering over hills, waiting for some chance wind to relieve them of their rain.
But leave these vain efforts, my soul, for the stillness will ripen its own music in the dark.
My life to-day is like a cloister during some penance, where the spring is afraid to stir or to whisper.
This is not the time, my love, for you to pass the gate; at the mere thought of your anklet bells tinkling down the path, the garden echoes are ashamed.
Know that to-morrow's songs are in bud to-day, and should they see you walk by they would strain to breaking their immature hearts.
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Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?
Let my heart touch yours and kiss the pain out of your silence.
The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour, that love may build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted by this solitary lamp.
We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs of lips must play on by turns--for crown, only one garland to bind my hair after I have put it on your forehead.
Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our bed on the floor; and one kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our small boundless world.
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All that I had I gave to you, keeping but the barest veil of reserve.
It is so thin that you secretly smile at it and I feel ashamed.
The gust of the spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of my own heart moves it as the waves move their foam.
My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.
This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent grace.
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I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.
It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh offering, dressed in a new robe?
My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young grass and now that of the winter rice.
To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.
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I thought I would write love's words in their own colour; but that lies deep in the heart, and tears are pale.
Would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless?
I thought I would sing love's words to their own tune, but that sounds only in my heart, and my eyes are silent.
Would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?
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In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.
It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the words hung back, when you were beside me.
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The night deepens and the dying flame flickers in the lamp.
I forgot to notice when the evening--like a village girl who has filled her pitcher at the river a last time for that day--closed the door on her cabin.
I was speaking to you, my love, with mind barely conscious of