Heartbreak

1.
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me - who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

2.
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream -
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart; -
As I must on thine,
Oh, beloved as thou art!

3.
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast; -
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

    As I stand waiting in the rain
    For the foggy hoot of the London train,
    Gazing at silent wall and lamp
    And post and rail and platform damp,
    What is this power that comes to my sight
    That I see a night without the night,
    That I see them clear, yet look them through,
    The silvery things and the darkly blue,
    That the solid wall seems soft as death,
    A wavering and unanchored wraith,
    And rails that shine and stones that stream
    Unsubstantial as a dream?
    What sudden door has opened so,
    What hand has passed, that I should know
    This moving vision not a trance
    That melts the globe of circumstance,
    This sight that marks not least or most
    And makes a stone a passing ghost?
    Is it that a yea...

Listen, dearest! you must love me more,
More than you did before!
Hark, what a beating here of wings!
Never at rest,
Dear, in your breast!
Is it your heart with its flutterings,
Making a music, love, for us both?
Or merely a moth, a velvet-winged moth,
Which out of the garden's fragrance swings,
Weaving a spell,
That holds the rose and the moon in thrall?
I love you more than I can tell;
And no recall
How long ago
Our quarrel and all!
You say, you know,
A perfect pearl grows out of well,
A little friction; tiny grain
Of sand or shell
So love grew out of that moment's pain,
The heart's disdain
Since then I have thought of no one but you,
And how your heart would beat on mine,
Like light on dew.
And I thought how foolish t...

You in the flesh and here,
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!

The fact and each circumstance
Dare you disown? Not you!
That vast dome, that huge dance,
And the gloom which overgrew
A possibly festive crew!

For why should men dance at all
Why women a crowd of both
Unless they are gay? Strange ball
Hands and feet plighting troth,
Yet partners enforced and loth!

Of who danced there, no shape
Did I recognize: thwart, perverse,
Each grasped each, past escape
In a whirl or weary or worse:
Man’s sneer met woman’s curse,

While he and she toiled as if
Their guardian set galley-slaves
To supple chained limbs grown stiff:
Unmanacled trulls...

[The poet dramatises his Lady's loneliness]

Alone! once more alone! how like a tomb
My little parlour sounds which only now
Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice.
So still! so empty! Surely one might fear
The walls should meet in ruinous collapse
That held no more his music. Yet they stand
Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless
As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built
But never came to sleep in; built, indeed,
For - that grey moth to flit in like a ghost!

Alone! another feast-day come and gone,
Watched through the weeks as in my garden there
I watch a seedling grow from blade to bud
Impatient for its blossom. So this day
Has bloomed at last, and we have plucked its flower
And shared its sweetness, and once more the time
Is as t...

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger under the palms of Southern California.)


Under the palms of San Diego
    Where gold-skinned Mexicans loll at ease,
And the red half-moons of their black-pipped melons
    Drop from their hands in the sunset seas,
And an incense, out of the old brown missions,
    Blows through the orange trees;

I wished that a poet who died in Europe
    Had found his way to this rose-red West;
That Keats had walked by the wide Pacific
    And cradled his head on its healing breast,
And made new songs of the sun-burned sea-folk,
    New poems, perhaps his best.

I thought of him, under the ripe pomegranates
    At the desert's edge, where the grape-vines grow,
In a sun-kissed ranch between...

    One summer's morning I heard a lark
    Singing to heaven, a sweet-throated bird;
    One winter's night I was glad in the dark
    Because of the wondrous song I had heard.

    The joy of life, I have heard you say,
    Is my love, my laughter, my smiles and tears;
    When I have gone on the long, strange way,
    Let these stay with you through all the years -

    These be the lark's song. What is love worth
    That cannot crowd, in the time that's given
    To two like us on this gray old earth,
    Such bliss as will last till we reach heaven?

    Dear one, think oft of the full, glad years,
    And, thinking of them, forget to weep.
    Whisper: "Remembrance holds no tears!"
    And kiss my mouth when I fall on sleep.

Well, it was two days after my husband died,
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four, the room with the red wall-paper,
Some chorus girls and men were singing that song
‘They’ll soon be lighting candles
Round a box with silver handles’ and hearing them sing it
I started to cry. Just then he came along
And stopped on the stairs and turned and looked at me,
And took the cigar from his mouth and sort of smiled
And said, ‘Say, what’s the matter?’ and then came down
Where I was leaning against the wall,
And touched my shoulder, and put his arm around me . . .
And I was so sad, thinking about it,
Thinking that it was raining, and a cold night,
With Jim so unaccustomed to being dead,
That I was happy to...

My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,
And it is not life that makes me move.

Beautiful, tender, wasting away for sorrow;
Thus to-day; and how shall it be with thee to-morrow?
Beautiful, tender - what else?
A hope tells.

Beautiful, tender, keeping the jubilee
In the land of home together, past death and sea;
No more change or death, no more
Salt sea-shore.

This is the path he used to take,
That ended at a rose-porched door:
He takes it now for oldtime's sake;
And love of yore.

The blue mertensia, by the stone,
Lifts questioning eyes, that seem to say,
'Why is it now you walk alone
On this dim way?"

And then a wild bird, from a bough,
Out of his heart the answer takes:
"He walks alone with memory now
And heart that breaks.

"And Loss and Longing, witches, who
Usurp the wood and change to woe
The dream of happiness he knew
Long, long ago.

"The faery princess, from whose gaze
The blue mertensia learned that look,
Retaining still beside these ways
The joy it took."

He listens, conscious of no part
In wildwood question and reply
The wood, from out its mighty ...

The sunburnt face in the willow shade
To the face in the water-mirror said,

"O deep mysterious face in the stream,
Art thou myself or am I thy dream?"

And the face deep down in the water's side
To the face in the upper air replied,

"I am thy dream, them poor worn face,
And this is thy heart's abiding place.

"Too much in the world, come back and be
Once more my dream-fellow with me,

"In the far-off untarnished years
Before thy furrows were washed with tears,

"Or ever thy serious creature eyes
Were aged with a mist of memories.

"Hast thou forgotten the long ago
In the garden where I used to flow,

"Among the hills, with the maple tree
And the roses blowing over me?--

"I who am now but a wraith of thi...

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings -
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

They have left the doors ajar; and by their clash,
And prelude on the keys, I know the song,
Their favourite—which I call ‘The Tables Turned.’
Evelyn begins it ‘O diviner Air.’

EVELYN.

O diviner Air,
Thro’ the heat, the drowth, the dust, the glare,
Far from out the west in shadowing showers,
Over all the meadow baked and bare,
Making fresh and fair
All the bowers and the flowers,
Fainting flowers, faded bowers,
Over all this weary world of ours,
Breathe, diviner Air!

A sweet voice that—you scarce could better that.
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn.

EDITH.

O diviner light,
Thro’ the cloud that roofs our noon with night,
Thro’ the blotting mist, the blinding showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,
Over ...

Two crowned Kings, and One that stood alone
With no green weight of laurels round his head,
But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,
And wearied with man's never-ceasing moan
For sins no bleating victim can atone,
And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.
Girt was he in a garment black and red,
And at his feet I marked a broken stone
Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.
Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame,
I cried to Beatrice, 'Who are these?'
And she made answer, knowing well each name,
'AEschylos first, the second Sophokles,
And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.'

When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath,
When we are dust, when we are dust!

Not dead, not undesirous yet,
Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever l...

Nature, thou accept the song,
To thee the simple lines belong,
Inspir'd as brushing hill and dell
I stroll'd the way to Holywell.
Though 'neath young April's watery sky,
The sun gleam'd warm, and roads were dry;
And though the valleys, bush, and tree
Still naked stood, yet on the lea
A flush of green, and fresh'ning glow
In melting patches 'gan to show
That swelling buds would soon again
In summer's livery bless the plain.
The thrushes too 'gan clear their throats,
And got by heart some two 'r three notes
Of their intended summer-song,
To cheer me as I stroll'd along.
The wild heath triumph'd in its scenes
Of goss and ling's perpetual greens;
And just to say that spring was come,
The violet left its woodland home,
And, hermit-like, from sto...

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.