Heartbreak

I Oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and east them down;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,
Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wadi...

I knew it the first of the summer,
    I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
    But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
    Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
    To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly
    Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
    Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects -
    The moon and the worlds above, -
And our talk was tinctured with science,
    And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship
    You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
    The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
    Though both...

He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover's vows
Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth
Sang tha...

They say there's a high windless world and strange,
Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,
Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,
'Aeterna corpora', subject to no change.
There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;
There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;
Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,
And perishing hearts, imperishable Love. . . .

Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;
Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;
Love has no habitation but the heart.
Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,
Cling, and are borne into the night apart.
The laugh dies with the lips, 'Love' with the lover.

[Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace]


    Chant we the story now
    Tho' in a house we sleep;
    Tho' by a hearth of coals
    Vigil to-night we keep.
    Chant we the story now,
    Of the vague love we knew
    When I from out the sea
    Rose to the feet of you.

    Bird from the cliffs you came,
    Flew thro' the snow to me,
    Facing the icy blast
    There by the icy sea.
    How did I reach your feet?
    Why should I - at the end
    Hold out half-frozen hands
    Dumbly to you my friend?
    Ne'er had I woman seen,
    Ne'er had I seen a flame.
    There you piled fagots on,
    Heat rose - the blast to tame.
    There by the cave-door dark,
    Comforting me you crie...

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

Green mwold on zummer bars do show
That they've a-dripped in winter wet;
The hoof-worn ring o' groun' below
The tree do tell o' storms or het;
The trees in rank along a ledge
Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge;
An' where the vurrow-marks do stripe
The down the wheat woonce rustled ripe.
Each mark ov things a-gone vrom view
To eyezight's woone, to soulzight two.

The grass agean the mwoldren door
'S a token sad o' vo'k a-gone,
An' where the house, bwoth wall an' vloor,
'S a-lost, the well mid linger on.
What tokens, then, could Meary gi'e
That she a-lived, an' lived vor me,
But things a-done vor thought an' view?
Good things that nwone agean can do,
An' every work her love ha' wrought,
To eyezight's woone, but two to thought.

Among the green bushes the songs of the thrushes
Are answering each other in music and glee,
While the magpies and rooks, in woods, hedges, near brooks,
Mount their Spring dwellings on every high tree.
There meet me at eve, love, we'll on grassy banks lean love,
And crop a white branch from the scented may tree,
Where the silver brook wimples and the rosy cheek dimples,
Sweet will the time of that courting hour be.

We'll notice wild flowers, love, that grow by thorn bowers, love,
Though sinful to crop them now beaded with dew;
The violet is thine, love, the primrose is mine, love,
To Spring and each other so blooming and true.
With dewdrops all beaded, the feather grass seeded,
The cloud mountains turn to dark woods in the sky;
The daisy bud closes, while sleep th...

When stormy show'rs from Heav'n descend,
And with their weight the lily bend,
The Sun will soon his aid bestow,
And drink the drops that laid it low.

Oh! thus, when sorrow wrings the heart,
A sigh may rise, a tear may start;
Pity shall soon the face impress
With all its looks of happiness.

I.
‘He is fled—I wish him dead—
He that wrought my ruin—
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.

II.
Who was witness of the crime?
Who shall now reveal it?
He is fled, or he is dead,
Marriage will conceal it . . .
In the night, in the night,
While the gloom is growing.’

III.
Catherine, Catherine, in the night,
What is this you’re dreaming?
There is laughter down in Hell
At your simple scheming . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the ghosts are fleeting.

IV.
You to place a hand in his
Like an honest woman’s,
You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . . .
In the night, O the night!
O the deathwatch b...

I will go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes and cooks.
I long to lie along the banks of brooks,
And watch the boughs above me sway and swing.
Come, I will pluck off custom's livery,
Nor longer be a lackey to old Time.
Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling
The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb
The wild trees for my food, and run
Through dale and upland as a fox runs free,
Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' the warm sun,
And men will call me mad, like that old King.

For I am woodland-natured, and have made
Dryads my bedfellows,
And I have played
With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools
And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools.
Helen, none knows
Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed.
And I ...

Andromache, I think of you! The stream,
The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days
Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief,
The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears,
Made all my fertile memory blossom forth
As I passed by the new-built Carrousel.
Old Paris is no more (a town, alas,
Changes more quickly than man's heart may change);
Yet in my mind I still can see the booths;
The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals;
The grass; the stones all over-green with moss;
The débris, and the square-set heaps of tiles.

There a menagerie was once outspread;
And there I saw, one morning at the hour
When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky,
And the road roars upon the silent air,
A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked
On the dry pavement with his webb...

    This day it was--Ah! years ago,
Long years ago, when first we met;
When first her voice thrill'd through my heart,
Aeolian-sweet, thrill'd through my heart;
    And glances from her soft brown eyes,
    Like gleamings out of Paradise,
Shone on my heart, and made it bright
With fulness of celestial light;
This day it seems--this day--and yet,
    Ah! years ago--long years ago.

    This day it was--Ah! years ago,
Long years ago, when first I knew
How all her beauty fill'd my soul,
With mystic glory fill'd my soul;
    And every word and smile she gave,
    Like motions of a sunlit wave,
Rock'd me with divine emotion,
Joyous, o'er Life's smiling ocean;
This day it seems--this day--and yet,
    Ah! years ago--long years ago.

   ...

Oh, wind of the spring-time, oh, free wind of May,
When blossoms and bird-song are rife;
Oh, joy for the season, and joy for the day,
That gave me the roses of life, of life,
That gave me the roses of life.

Oh, wind of the summer, sing loud in the night,
When flutters my heart like a dove;
One came from thy kingdom, thy realm of delight,
And gave me the roses of love, of love,
And gave me the roses of love.

Oh, wind of the winter, sigh low in thy grief,
I hear thy compassionate breath;
I wither, I fall, like the autumn-kissed leaf,
He gave me the roses of death, of death,
He gave me the roses of death.

My gentle harp, once more I waken
    The sweetness of thy slumbering strain;
In tears our last farewell was taken,
    And now in tears we meet again.
No light of joy hath o'er thee broken,
    But, like those Harps whose heavenly skill
Of slavery, dark as thine, hath spoken,
    Thou hang'st upon the willows still.

And yet, since last thy chord resounded,
    An hour of peace and triumph came,
And many an ardent bosom bounded
    With hopes--that now art turned to shame.
Yet even then, while Peace was singing
    Her halcyon song o'er land and sea,
Tho' joy and hope to others bringing,
    She only brought new tears to thee.

Then, who can ask for notes of pleasure,
    My drooping Harp, from chords like thine?
Alas, the lark's gay morni...

(France -- Ancient Regime.)



I.

Go away!

Go away; I will not confess to you!

His black biretta clings like a hangman's cap; under his twitching fingers
the beads shiver and click,
As he mumbles in his corner, the shadow deepens upon him;
I will not confess!...

Is he there or is it intenser shadow?
Dark huddled coilings from the obscene depths,
Black, formless shadow,
Shadow.
Doors creak; from secret parts of the chateau come the scuffle and worry
of rats.

Orange light drips from the guttering candles,
Eddying over the vast embroideries of the bed
Stirring the monstrous tapestries,
Retreating before the sable impending gloom of the canopy
With a swift thrust and sparkle of gold,
Lipping my hands,

    And when I come to the dim trail-end,
    I who have been Life's rover,
    This is all I would ask, my friend,
    Over and over and over:

    A little space on a stony hill
    With never another near me,
    Sky o' the North that's vast and still,
    With a single star to cheer me;

    Star that gleams on a moss-grey stone
    Graven by those who love me -
    There would I lie alone, alone,
    With a single pine above me;

    Pine that the north wind whinneys through -
    Oh, I have been Life's lover!
    But there I'd lie and listen to
    Eternity passing over.

How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music?
Darling, I love you.
It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before,
Though your mouth is more alive than roses,
Roses singing softly
To green leaves after rain.
It is not your eyes, for I have dived often in eyes,
Though your eyes, even in the yellow glare of footlights,
Are windows into eternal dusk.
Nor is it the live white flashing of your feet,
Nor your gay hands, catching at motes in the spotlight;
Nor the abrupt thick music of your laughter,
When, against the hideous backdrop,
With all its crudities brilliantly lighted,
Suddenly you catch sight of your alarming shadow,
Whirling and contracting.
How is it, then, that I am so keenly aware,
So sensitive to the sur...