Happiness

For you, I could forget the gay
Delirium of merriment,
And let my laughter die away
In endless silence of content.
    I could forget, for your dear sake,
    The utter emptiness and ache
    Of every loss I ever knew. -
    What could I not forget for you?

I could forget the just deserts
Of mine own sins, and so erase
The tear that burns, the smile that hurts,
And all that mars or masks my face.
    For your fair sake I could forget
    The bonds of life that chafe and fret,
    Nor care if death were false or true. -
    What could I not forget for you?

What could I not forget? Ah me!
One thing, I know, would still abide
Forever in my memory,
Though all of love were lost beside -
    I yet would feel how first the wine
  ...

When the bright sun back on his yearly road
    Comes towards us, his great glory seems to me,
As from the sky he pours it all abroad,
    A golden herald, my beloved, of thee.

When from the south the gentle winds do blow,
    Calling the flowers that sleep beneath the earth,
It sounds like sweetest music, that doth go
    Before thy coming, full of love and mirth.

When one by one the violets appear,
    Opening their purple vests so modestly,
To greet the virgin daughter of the year,
    Each seems a fragrant prophecy of thee.

For with the spring thou shalt return again;
    Therefore the wind, the flower, and clear sunshine,
A double worship from my heart obtain,
    A love and welcome not their own, but thine.

    Though I see within thine eyes
    Sudden frown of cloudy skies,
    Yet I bid them "merry morn"
    For they tell me Love is born.
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        For they tell me Love is born.

    Storms of mocking from thy lips
    Lash me still like airy whips;
    But to-day thy scorn I scorn
    For I know that Love is born.
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        For I know that Love is born.

    O the hail that rattles fierce
    Through my hodden cloak to pierce!
    What care I if rags be torn?
    Love and I are beggars born!
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        Love and I are beggars born.

    My lady in her white silk shawl
        Is like a lily dim,
    Within the twilight of the room
        Enthroned and kind and prim.

    My lady!    Pale gold is her hair.
        Until she smiles her face
    Is pale with far Hellenic moods,
        With thoughts that find no place

    In our harsh village of the West
        Wherein she lives of late,
    She's distant as far-hidden stars,
        And cold - (almost!) - as fate.

    But when she smiles she's here again
        Rosy with comrade-cheer,
    A Puritan Bacchante made
        To laugh around the year.

    The merry gentle moon herself,
        Heart-stirring too, like her,
    Wakening wild and innocent love
        In every worshipper.

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Are the flowers more sweet than mine?
I had never such bloom of roses,
Such yellow and pink woodbine.

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Are the fruits all red and gold,
While here the grapes are bitter
That hang for my fingers’ hold?

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Do the birds all fly to sing?
Over the fence between us
One would think ’twas always spring.

I thought my own wide garden
Once more sweet and fair than all,
Till I saw the gold and crimson
Just over my neighbour’s wall.

But now I want his thrushes,
And now I want his vine,
If I cannot have his cherries
That grow more red than mine.

The serpent ’neath his apples
Will tempt me to my fall,
And then-I’ll steal my neighbour’...

Tune - "Robin Adair."



I.

    While larks with little wing
        Fann'd the pure air,
    Tasting the breathing spring,
        Forth I did fare:
    Gay the sun's golden eye
    Peep'd o'er the mountains high;
    Such thy morn! did I cry,
        Phillis the fair.

II.

    In each bird's careless song,
        Glad I did share;
    While yon wild flowers among,
        Chance led me there:
    Sweet to the opening day,
    Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
    Such thy bloom! did I say,
        Phillis the fair.

III.

    Down in a shady walk
        Doves cooing were,
    I mark'd the cruel hawk,
        Caught in a snare:
    So kind may fortune be,
    Such make...

Two fairies it was
On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
With the flowers to play.
The flowers they plucked
They cast on the ground
For others, and those
For still others they found.
Flower-guided it was
That they came as they ran
On something that lay
In the shape of a man.
The snow must have made
The feathery bed
When this one fell
On the sleep of the dead.
But the snow was gone
A long time ago,
And the body he wore
Nigh gone with the snow.
The fairies drew near
And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
And a chain at his side.
They knelt in the leaves
And eerily played
With the glittering things,
And were not afraid.
And when they went home
To hide in their burrow,
They took them along...

We judge by appearance merely:
If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.
So I grew the hair so long on my head
That my mother wouldn't know me,
Till a woman in a night-club said,
As I was passing by,
"Hullo, here comes Salome ..."

I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,
And, oh Salome; there I was -
Positively jewelled, half a vampire,
With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily
Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire
Over the brink of the crag of sense,
Looking down from perilous eminence
Into a gulf of windy night.
And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,
And I'm not a poet: but never despair!
I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.

I am laughing by the brook with her,
Splashed in its tumbling stir;
And then it is a blankness looms
As if I walked not there,
Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,
And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes
We sit where none espies;
Till a harsh change comes edging in
As no such scene were there,
But winter, and I were bent and thin,
And cinder-gray my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,
Weightless as thistleball;
And then a curtain drops between,
As if I danced not there,
But wandered through a mounded green
To find her, I knew where.

March 1913.

    "These things are real," said one, and bade me gaze
        On black and mighty shapes of iron and stone,
    On murder, on madness, on lust, on towns ablaze,
        And on a thing made all of rattling bone:
    "What," said he, "will you bring to match with these?"
        "Yea! War is real," I said, "and real is Death,
    A little while - mortal realities;
        But Love and Hope draw an immortal breath."

    Think you the storm that wrecks a summer day,
        With funeral blackness and with leaping fire
    And boiling roar of rain, more real than they
        That, when the warring heavens begin to tire,
    With tender fingers on the tumult paint;
        Spanning the huddled wrack from base to cope
    With soft effulgence, like some haloed saint, ...

My soul is like a prisoned lark,
    That sings and dreams of liberty,
The nights are long, the days are dark,
    Away from home, away from thee!

My only joy is in my dreams,
    When I thy loving face can see.
How dreary the awakening seems,
    Away from home, away from thee!

At dawn I hasten to the shore,
    To gaze across the sparkling sea--
The sea is bright to me no more,
    Which parts me from my home and thee.

At twilight, when the air grows chill,
    And cold and leaden is the sea,
My tears like bitter dews distil,
    Away from home, away from thee.

I could not live, did I not know
    That thou art ever true to me,
I could not bear a doubtful woe,
    Away from home, away from thee.

I could not l...

Open thy gates
To him who weeping waits,
And might come in,
But that held back by sin.
Let mercy be
So kind, to set me free,
And I will straight
Come in, or force the gate.

On to Iona! What can she afford
To 'us' save matter for a thoughtful sigh,
Heaved over ruin with stability
In urgent contrast? To diffuse the WORD
(Thy Paramount, mighty Nature! and Time's Lord)
Her Temples rose, 'mid pagan gloom; but why,
Even for a moment, has our verse deplored
Their wrongs, since they fulfilled their destiny?
And when, subjected to a common doom
Of mutability, those far-famed Piles
Shall disappear from both the sister Isles,
Iona's Saints, forgetting not past days,
Garlands shall wear of amaranthine bloom,
While heaven's vast sea of voices chants their praise.

(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE.)
INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER.


I.
White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops that plead for pardon
And pine for fright
Because the hard East blows
Over their maiden rows
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

Behind the veil, forbidden,
Shut up from sight,
Love, is there sorrow hidden,
Is there delight?
Is joy thy dower or grief,
White rose of weary leaf,
Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?

Soft snows that hard winds harden
Till each flake bite
Fill all the flowerless garden
Whose flowers took flight
Long since when summer ceased,
And men rose up from feast,
And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.

II.<...

Fera stella (se 'l cielo ha forza in noi).

TO PINE FOR HER IS BETTER THAN TO ENJOY HAPPINESS WITH ANY OTHER.


    Ill-omen'd was that star's malignant gleam
That ruled my hapless birth; and dim the morn
That darted on my infant eyes the beam;
And harsh the wail, that told a man was born;
And hard the sterile earth, which first was worn
Beneath my infant feet; but harder far,
And harsher still, the tyrant maid, whose scorn,
In league with savage Love, inflamed the war
Of all my passions.--Love himself more tame,
With pity soothes my ills; while that cold heart,
Insensible to the devouring flame
Which wastes my vitals, triumphs in my smart.
One thought is comfort--that her scorn to bear,
Excels e'er prosperous love, with other earthly fair.

Though the torrents from their fountains
Roar down many a craggy steep,
Yet they find among the mountains
Resting-places calm and deep.

Clouds that love through air to hasten,
Ere the storm its fury stills,
Helmet-like themselves will fasten
On the heads of towering hills.

What, if through the frozen centre
Of the Alps the Chamois bound,
Yet he has a home to enter
In some nook of chosen ground:

And the Sea-horse, though the ocean
Yield him no domestic cave,
Slumbers without sense of motion,
Couched upon the rocking wave.

If on windy days the Raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less she loves her haven
In the bosom of the cliff.

The fleet Ostrich, till day closes,
Vagrant over desert sands,
Broo...

Though the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her,--
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,
As she flits and flutters,
And laughs at the thunder when it mutters.
O happy bird, of heart most gay
To sing when skies are gray!

When the clouds are full,
And the tempest master
Lets the loud winds sweep
From his bosom deep
Like heralds of some dire disaster,
Then the heart alone
To itself makes moan;
And the songs come slow,
While the tears fall fleeter,
And silence than song by far seems sweeter.
Oh, few are they along the way
Who sing when skies are gray!

Why should I weary you, dear heart, with words,
Words all discordant with a foolish pain?
Thoughts cannot interrupt or prayers do wrong,
And soft and silent as the summer rain
Mine fall upon your pathway all day long.

Giving as God gives, counting not the cost
Of broken box or spilled and fragrant oil,
I know that, spite of your strong carelessness,
Rest must be sweeter, worthier must be toil,
Touched with such mute, invisible caress.

One of these days, our weary ways quite trod,
Made free at last and unafraid of men,
I shall draw near and reach to you my hand.
And you? Ah! well, we shall be spirits then,
I think you will be glad and understand.