The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 2

not its mystic course to spin,
For weal or woe, for woe or weal.
I
FLOS AEVORUM
You must mean more than just this hour,
You perfect thing so subtly
fair,
Simple and complex as a flower,
Wrought with such planetary
care;
How patient the eternal power
That wove the marvel of your
hair.
How long the sunlight and the sea
Wove and re-wove this rippling
gold
To rhythms of eternity;
And many a flashing thing grew old,

Waiting this miracle to be;
And painted marvels manifold,

Still with his work unsatisfied,
Eager each new effect to try,
The
solemn artist cast aside,
Rainbow and shell and butterfly,
As some
stern blacksmith scatters wide
The sparks that from his anvil fly.
How many shells, whorl within whorl,
Litter the marges of the sphere

With wrack of unregarded pearl,
To shape that little thing your ear:

Creation, just to make one girl,
Hath travailed with exceeding fear.
The moonlight of forgotten seas
Dwells in your eyes, and on your
tongue
The honey of a million bees,
And all the sorrows of all song:

You are the ending of all these,
The world grew old to make you
young.
All time hath traveled to this rose;
To the strange making of this face

Came agonies of fires and snows;
And Death and April, nights and
days
Unnumbered, unimagined throes,
Find in this flower their
meeting place.
Strange artist, to my aching thought
Give answer: all the patient
power
That to this perfect ending wrought,
Shall it mean nothing
but an hour?
Say not that it is all for nought
Time brings Eternity a
flower.
All the words in all the world
Cannot tell you how I love you,
All
the little stars that shine
To make a silver crown above you;
"ALL THE WORDS IN ALL THE WORLD"
All the flowers cannot weave
A garland worthy of your hair,
Not a
bird in the four winds
Can sing of you that is so fair.
Only the spheres can sing of you;
Some planet in celestial space,

Hallowed and lonely in the dawn,
Shall sing the poem of your face.
"I SAID--I CARE NOT"

I said--I care not if I can
But look into her eyes again,
But lay my
hand within her hand
Just once again.
Though all the world be filled with snow
And fire and cataclysmal
storm,
I'll cross it just to lay my head
Upon her bosom warm.
Ah! bosom made of April flowers,
Might I but bring this aching brain,

This foolish head, and lay it down
On April once again!
"ALL THE WIDE WORLD IS BUT THE THOUGHT OF YOU"
All the wide world is but the thought of you:
Who made you out of
wonder and of dew?
Was it some god with tears in his deep eyes,

Who loved a woman white and over-wise,
That strangely put all
violets in your hair--
And put into your face all distance too?
"LIGHTNINGS MAY FLICKER ROUND MY HEAD"
Lightnings may flicker round my head,
And all the world seem doom,

If you, like a wild rose, will walk
Strangely into the room.
If only my sad heart may hear
Your voice of faery laughter--
What
matters though the heavens fall,
And hell come thundering after.
"THE AFTERNOON IS LONELY FOR YOUR FACE"
The afternoon is lonely for your face,
The pampered morning mocks
the day's decline--
I was so rich at noon, the sun was mine,
Mine
the sad sea that in that rocky place
Girded us round with blue
betrothal ring.
Because your heart was mine, your heart, that precious
thing.
The night will be a desert till the dawn,
Unless you take some
ferry-boat of dreams,
And glide to me, a glory of silver beams,

Under my eyelids, like sad curtains drawn;
So, by good hap, my heart
can find its way
Where all your sweetness lies in fragrant disarray.

Ah! but with morn the world begins anew,
Again the sea shall sing up
to your feet,
And earth and all the heavens call you sweet,
You all
alone with me, I all alone with you,
And all the business of the
laurelled hours
Shyly to gaze on that betrothal ring of ours.
"SORE IN NEED WAS I OF A FAITHFUL FRIEND"
Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
And it seemed to me that life

Had come to its much desired end--
Just then God gave me a wife.
I had seen the beauty of fairy things,
And seen the women walk;
I
had heard the voice of the seven sins
And all the wonderful talk.
Ah, the promising earth that seems so kind,
And the comrades with
outstretched hand--
But did you ever stand alone
In a black,
forsaken land?
Then the wonderful things that God can do
One
comes to understand:
How He turns the desert dust to a dream,
And the lonely wind to a
friend,
And makes a bright beginning
Of what had seemed the end:

'Twas in such an hour God placed in mine
The moonbeam hand of
a friend.
"I THOUGHT, BEFORE MY SUNLIT TWENTIETH YEAR"
I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,
That I knew Love, and
Death that goes with it;
And my young broken heart in little songs,

Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end
Wildly--and waited--being
then nineteen.
I walked a little longer on my