The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems, by Elizabeth Bibesco.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

*

I Have Only Myself to Blame
Balloons
The Fir and the Palm
The Whole Story

*

PLAYS

The Painted Swan
Points of View

*

IN PREPARATION

There is No Return

POEMS

*

E l i z a b e t h B i b e s c o

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1927

Made and Printed in Great Britain by
William Brendon & Son, Ltd., Plymouth

TO
MY BELOVED FATHER

{7}

Each ash is raised by some dead fire—
A monument
To our lost fevers of desire,
That now lie spent,
In the cold discipline of death,
Cooling their breath.

But you, my love, with your light tread
Of Ecstasy,
Will dance a measure to the dead,
Who only see
The slow encroaching mists of grey,
That make a spirit’s holiday.

Fire, the precursor of the ash,
The wastrel flame,
Fashioned the darkness with a flash
Until there came
Day’s reasoning economy
{8} To set light free.

But you, my love, will burn the night
With flickering eye,
Holding all darkness and all light
In jeopardy,
Who know that heart and blood and bone
And dusk and fire and ash are one.
{9}

II

A LETTER

I send you this daisy, whose petals enfold
The love, that I hid in the star that she stole,
When the daisy demanded a heart made of gold.

I send you this daisy aflame at the tips
Of her petals that blushed, when their virginal white
Was stained into love by the touch of my lips.

I send you this daisy, for you will discover,
That God when He fashioned His dust to a flower
Made a chalice to carry the love of a lover.
{10}

III

Oh, I will shut my eyes to see the moon,
Knowing that thus he ever will be there,
Insurgent senses, lock your magic up,
Seal up the visual world however fair.

Then I’ll see moons of silver, gold and white,
Dim fading moons escaping in thin mist,
Harsh moons, red hot, that burn into the night
Branding the dark with unforgiving light.

I’ll shut my ears to each enticing tune,
A bird may sing, or streams on pebbles play,
Then in my heart such harmonies will ring
As wash the music of the world away.

If I were crippled, deaf and dumb and blind,
And all the colours of the world turned out,
In the grey emptiness I then would find
The answer to the riddle: sight is doubt.
{11}

Had I no eyes, how clearly would I see,
Had I no ears, how deeply would I hear,
Freed of all proof at last myself I’d be,
Without confusion, phantasy or fear.
{12}

IV

WINTER

Inviolate winter, cold and still and white,
Give me a peace, that knows not joy or pain;
Banish the spring; let love call out in vain
For her dread toll of torment and delight.

Let no sweet warmth thaw me to life again;
Let not the darkness splinter into light;
Give me a dreamless sleep, a mornless night,
A silent earth that knows not sun or rain.

Defeat the tingling urgency of spring,
That wracks the earth with torture and desire,
Planting each breeze with fever and with fire,
Wantonly stirring life in everything.

Winter, incurious, aloof, apart,
You rape no secret and you tell no story.
Wrapped in your shroud I’ll scorn the summer’sglory
Of burning flowers, that flaunt death at their heart.
{13}

You lay a veil over the tired eyes
Of earth. Unsmiling and without a word
You draw the curtain, and you sheath the sword
Hopeless and fearless, passionless and wise.

You have no pain to spend, nor hope to borrow,
In whom both past and future miss their way.
Nor shall we grudge it that you steal to-morrow,
Who equally have stolen yesterday.
{14}

If you don’t love my love, my dear,
It is not there.
What you don’t love can never be
A thought of mine, a part of me.
And so, beware!
For every smile and every tear
Is born of hope and bred of fear;
Only despair
Is mine alone. And being mine
Can blot your image, lock your shrine.

In the still dust beneath your feet
I lie alone and incomplete,
But you,
Though you may pass me in disdain.
Will know the all-fulfilling pain.
And rue
The burning love that, liking not,
You fanned to flame and left to rot.

For it is not my love, my dear,
Has died,
But you; the glow-worms in your eyes,
The singing echoes of your sighs
That lied.
{15}

Where is the brightness of the glance
That taught my secret thoughts to dance?
Tell me
Where is the music in your voice
That made the nightingale rejoice?
I see
No more sweet hopes, no more sweet fears,
You’ve lost your smiles, you’ve lost my tears.
Yet how
Deep in your soul by day and night
My constant love gave warmth and light,
With many a bitter blast it fought
Blood of your heart, bone of your thought!
And now
My love you have extinguishèd
And you, my dear, not I, are dead.
{16}

But what is in your heart, my dear?
If every hope is spun of fear,
And each delight is called despair
By those who think and those who dare.

What good to you is blue and gold?
A love unlit, a tale untold,
A dream undreamt, which tries to keep
Secure within a fort of sleep?

What though your gleaming hair be spun
Out of the fabric of the sun?
What if the gentian in your eyes
Is stolen from the deepest skies?
The sun will set, the brightness fade,
Into a grey decline of shade.
Then, dearest, let it not be said
Your eyes were drowned in tears unshed,
Frightened you locked your love away
Into the cold and sure decay
Of unused things, that voiceless die
{17} Without a laugh, without a cry—
Is not all rapture wrought of pain?
Unweeping you rejoice in vain.
There is no smile without a tear;
There is no courage without fear.
Therefore, my love, if you would live
You first must lose and then must give,
You first must dream and then may sleep;
There is no wasting save to keep,—
So when the flowers in your eyes
Have proved by death that nothing dies,
Your gold forlorn has turned to grey,
Victorious you still shall say:
“I’ve known all torment, felt all bliss,
Each burning tear, each icy kiss,
And hopeless hope and fearless fear,
Reason enthronèd, thought austere.
Fashioned of folly, I am wise;
Out of my joys I’ve stolen sighs;
With broken bits I’ve built a heart.
There is no whole without a part.
Though tears and laughter dim my eyes
I’ve taught the setting sun to rise;
Though life be tired and love be old,
My dream is dreamt, my tale is told.”
{18}

VII

When I was young my beauty was unfurled,
A fluttering banner waving to the world,
Its brightness stolen by each errant eye
In brief indifference of larceny.

Were my eyes bright? Their brightness was no mine.
Bravely they shone as they were taught to shine,
Scattering sparks without a thought or care
That hearts may perish—can the fair be fair?

My smiling lips, did they belong to me?
When all the world stood on tiptoe to see
What they could capture, and if beauty can
Blossom imprisoned in the eyes of man.

My face was stolen every night and day,
Some snatched it roughly, and some slunk away
Taking a treasure they could not redeem,
{19} Locking my image in a secret dream—

Yet did I not, through all those golden days
Spangled with hopes dissolving into rays,
Silently weeping, crying out alone,
Beseech my loveliness to be my own.

For, my beloved, has it not ever been
My unsought beauty that has come between
Us—though I’ve prayed for a disfiguring stain
To blot my face, and give it back again.

For then, my dearest, as I proudly knew,
Unlovely, wrinkled, I’d belong to you;
There is no watcher for an unlit scene,
Though love be there, where loveliness has been.

Only, dear heart, you would not wait, but went
Before my alien loveliness was spent;
When you had left my beauty died away,
Slowly retreating before night and day.

Sitting without you, old and dim and plain,
Vainly I crave my beauty back again,
Looking about me silent and alone;
Only my ruins still are called my own.{20}
. . . . . .
When you are young, your beauty goes to others;
When you are old, your face comes back again.
Lovely, unloving, the world is full of lovers;
Age teaches love, but teaches love in vain.
{21}

VIII

THE TOKEN

You took my ribbon and you said to me:
“Only belovèd it will ever be
A part of you, a little secret sign
That what is yours is always doubly mine.”

I gave my ribbon and you said: “You see
While it was yours it still belonged to me.
Now it is mine, and therefore yours again.
So my beloved you’ve given it in vain.”
{22}

IX

TESTAMENT

When I am dead what shall I leave to you?
Some faint imaginings, a doubt or two,
And one great dream that never could come true.

When I am dead then I will leave to you
A legacy of little things we knew
When the sun shone, and when the sky was blue—

The dusty windings of a road in Spain,
A smile you left upon the window-pane,
The only tear you ever wept in vain.

Your tangled sweetnesses divinely grave,
The silent memories of you I have
Deep, timid secrets struggling to be brave.

For I will leave you no heroic thing,
No unguessed poverty of Pope or King,
{23} A ring of smoke, but not a ruby ring.

Proud as a beggar, lonely as the free,
What I gave you must still belong to me,
But what you gave is called eternity.
{24}

X

CONCEIT

A trembling leaf on an indifferent tree,
Defiant foam rebelling at the sea,
A drowsy flower surrendering to a bee—
I wonder which is you, and which is me?

The smallest leaf is life to every tree,
The furthest spray returneth to the sea,
The tightest bud must open to a bee.
If I am you, then, surely you are me?
{25}

XI

VISION

The days are gone when I could see your face—
When all your loveliness was in my eyes,
A phantom image, dancing into space,
Fleeing from certainty to seek surprise.

Your face is gone for you are with me here.
My eyes are shut; kneeling I ask for grace—
If I was blind with sight forgive me, dear.
The days are gone when I could see your face.
{26}

XII

TO-GETHER

Why in the word to-gether should there lie
The desolate separation that is life?
. . . .
Her image buried in unseeing sight,
His eyes alighted on unchosen spots,
Like lost ideas adventuring in a mind,
A tangled twilit wilderness of thought.
As she was ever folded in the peace
That lapped the deep seclusion of his heart,
How could he know her tortured doubting soul,
Craving for certainty, destroying faith,
Her fevered body vainly seeking rest
In the unconscious refuge of his arms.
For as he stroked her face, her arms, her hands,
His love was moored to some eternal coast
Some distant outpost of the absolute—
Yet while she sank, deep in the cool, rapt quiet
Of touch and sight and sound and certainty,
The foolish creature murmured to herself:
{27} “These happy moments let me hold them tight,
And let our love for ever merge and fuse,
And not be sometimes mine and sometimes his.
Oh God! I’m happy; let me not forget.”
So, in remembering, all the magic went,
While, battering down the ramparts of her peace,
Were silly fears and petty questionings
That clawed and tore and crumpled up her joy.
How could he know the anguish of the cry
Sheathed in a casual, charming, courteous voice,
“When shall I see you, when will you come again?”
“You must forgive me for my long, long stay.
When I am with you I forget the time;
But you, my dear, you think of everything.”
{28}

XIII

REVENGE

“Yes, she is dead
And what more can be said?”
Those were the words you left for me to use
But I refuse—
Proudly you ask to be
Kept in simplicity.
Only—revenge is mine—
I’ll kill you with a shrine,
Festooned with all the gleaming words that hide
Your meaning and offend your pride.
You see, I’m still your thief,
A beggar of belief.
And I can steal from you
A million lies made true.

She was so beautiful! If you must know
Her body darted, but her smile was slow,
Her eyes dissolved into a hidden glow,
A burning lining of eternal snow.
You who liked words untrimmed and stark and plain,
{29} Who really thought that vanities were vain,
Where is it now, your proud austerity?
Your frugal folly of virginity?
You are no longer free, for you belong
To every lilting cadence of my song.
You, who despised the fripperies of rhyme,
Who flouted space, and disregarded time,
Who thought each lovely folly was a crime—
Unlit, implacable and yet sublime!

Now that you’re dead, now I can warm you with
The glowing weavings of a gleaming myth;
Into your peace I’ll plunge a thousand swords
Of burning phantasies and coloured words.
I’ll show no mercy now that you are mine,
Your very self dissolved in my design.
{30}

XIV

An age ago I looked for you
In silver frost and rainbow dew,
In winter white and winter blue.

I peeped among the daffodils,
I searched the gloaming, when it stills
The clamour of a hundred trills.

Into the darkness I would pry,
Where discontented waters try
To capture moons from every sky.

But wisdom came, and then I tried
To find a place where you could hide.

A shaft of sun could be a screen,
For in the shimmer and the sheen
Your brightness might escape unseen.

The whitest rose would be a place
Where you could hope to hide your face,
{31} Protected by a double grace.

Or bathing naked in a stream
A man might see your body gleam,
And shut his eyes to keep the dream.

And, were you seeking alibis,
Delphinium pools and larkspur skies
Would offer shelter to your eyes.

Where can I search, when just for you
Gold will conspire with white and blue,
And suns turn water into dew?

I think I’ll wait until I see,
Released from beauty, wearily,
A woman coming back to me.

When suns go in, and petals fall,
And greyness slinks about us all,
Maybe you’ll find a different place
To shut your eyes and hide your face,
And in the heart you left behind
An everlasting refuge find.
{32}

XV

SIGHT

Why should we limit beauty with our eye,
Bolted within the prison of our sight,
Catching a tiny fragment of the sky,
Calling each flare of unseen sunrise, night?

Why should the fading primrose at our feet
Toll the dim curfew of a dying spring;
Why should each loveliness we know defeat
The ardent beauty of an unknown thing?

Why can we not see roses in the snow,
The roses burning crimson in the white?
Why does our vision, sensible and slow,
Instead of leading, dully follow sight?

When in the tumbling riot of September
The forest fires of colour sweep each wood,
Our dim entangled eyesight can remember
{33} No frozen beauty of a winter’s mood.

“The world is too much with us.” But which world?
The tiny, tidy suburb of our senses,
Where mysteries are carefully kept furled
Lest some strange guess should tug at our defences.

And up above the poor sun on his throne,
Who cannot know the solace of the night,
The smooth, soft dark denied to him alone,
Whose condemnation is continual light.

Were I to tell him of a star or moon
Why should he listen to such idle prattle?
He’s the all-seeing monarch of the noon
And tales of darkness, envy’s tittle-tattle.

Oh, my dear God, Thou who art unconfined
By all the frontiers Thou hast forced on me,
One boon I ask: since Thou hast made me blind,
Let me remember that I cannot see.
{34}

XVI

PRAYER

When I was young I told God what to do,
And called it prayer.
Even the questions that I asked of you
I let Him share.

There were so many things He might not see,
That was my fear—
I told him ways of secret ecstasy,
He would not hear.

Now that I’m old, I have been taught to see
The unspoilt sweetness that is yesterday.
Without a future man at last is free,
With nought to ask for I have learnt to pray.
{35}

XVII

In a pale rose the heart of summer lies;
A glow-worm breaks the blackness of the night;
On the still air a petal floats and dies;
One more pale flame is swallowed by the light.

A wanton bud is drinking up the rain,
Believing it will some day be a rose;
The fickle earth is fertile once again;
The lustful sun in crimson triumph glows.

I want the flower that was yesterday,
And gave its fading fragrance to the air;
I want the flame that flickered in the fray
And knew the blatant brightness of despair.

What do I care for this awakening?
God give me deafness lest I hear the shout,
The harsh, forgetful tumult of the spring;
My rose is withered and my fire is out.
{36}

XVIII

FIRST FEAR

There were those days when you would worship me
With the hushed silences of ecstasy,
Unsmiling lips and eyes too full to see.

With singing thoughts that climbed from trill to trill,
With waking dreams that sleeping could fulfil,
With that wild wisdom sense can never still.

When sometimes you would dream to hold me tight,
As a grey dawn enfolds a secret light
In silent homage to a dying night.

I was the fullness that to-morrows bring,
I was the glimmer of each unseen thing,
I was the taunting temptings of the spring.

I was fragility and I was fire,
I was your reverence and your desire,
{37} I was your laurel and I was your lyre.

Was I myself, or was I some small light
That lit the waiting furnace of your sight—
And thus became a symbol of delight?

What was I but the beauty of first love
Scattering flowers below and stars above?
For in that image you had made me, dear.
You did not know me, yet you taught me fear.
Irony faltered and I nearly flew;
Perhaps I showed you love, but I loved you.
{38}

XIX

BANISHMENT

Could you but walk but always you must fly;
I am so weary of your tireless wings.
Why must you make me perfect with a lie?
I am so hungry for imperfect things.

Why should I be this phantom of desire
Planted amidst the glitter of the stars?
I crave the smoky flicker of a fire,
And some small battle with its pride of scars.

You have condemned me to these unsought skies,
You who can worship but who cannot love,
Whose icy vision turns unseeing eyes
On all the mysteries that life can prove.

Must you adore me as if I were dead?
And all my cherished weaknesses were vain?
Why should you put a halo round my head
{39} When I have asked you for a daisy chain?

Give me one little folly that is mine!
Why should I be the captive of your art—
A flawless image prisoned in a shrine,
Far from the wanton tarnish of the heart.

You do not know the turmoil and the tangles
The tugging mysteries that living brings;
Your pure perfection stretches till it strangles
The stumbling loveliness of little things.

Could I but break your dream and make you see
A cloudy morning and a starless night,
Some splinters of a broken ecstasy
The many fragments that are called delight.

But your hard dream has conquered even fate!
I shall for ever sit upon my throne
Removed from hope or doubt, from love or hate—
A ghost of beauty that you call your own.
{40}

Sometimes you say to me “When I am dead——”
And then I smile—
As if you were just civil and well bred
And imbecile;
And saying something like “the pleasure’s mine——”
Or “Yes, I think to-morrow will be fine.”
But I last night, I dreamt that you were dead,
I did not weep;
True tears, alas! will always stay unshed,
They are too deep
To reach the smooth wet surface of the eye—
That shallow mirror, where all sorrows die.

It seemed to me I felt the frozen day
When I would wake,
With pain, itself benumbed, too tired to flay;
Nor could I take
A warm and living hour within my hands—
Despair itself had ceased to make demands.
And now your arms are round me once again;
{41} And one small tear
Marks the forgotten lesson of my pain.
I cannot hear
The foolish rumblings of mortality;
For you, my love, are Heaven and Hell to me.
{42}

XXI

The sky’s too full for mortal to discover
A little star that privately will shine.
If you are love, then I will be no lover
Taking from you the glory that was mine.

You took my secret but you did not know it.
—Secrets will die in alien custody—
If you are poetry I am no poet,
For I disdain your stolen melody.

A thief of suns and moons and stars, that dangles
Misleading glitter before empty minds.
Your greedy soul will grasp the golden spangles,
Lovers and poets scatter to the winds.

Yet you are poetry and love and passion,
And that fulfilment which is called despair,
The grinding force that still must fake and fashion
Each falling fancy, floating on the air.

For you are love and I, alas! I know it.
And you the poetry I could not smother.
And that, my love, is why I am no poet,
And that, my love, is why I am no lover.
{43}

XXII

The watchful stars locked up the sky,
And kept the secret of the night
Far from the pride of mortal eye,
The pride that seeks the infinite.

The silver current tugged the stream,
And would not let the waters be,
Both Heaven and Hell broke up my dream
With taunts of immortality.

The lily’s bells rung out the spring,
And banished every daffodil;
A siren heard a skylark sing,
And so decided to be still.

But when you came the darkness fell
To cloak you from each prying star;
For once united, Heaven and Hell
In seeing you forgot to spar.

The current ceased to nag the stream,
The water quietly took your face,
And held it mirrored in a dream,
{44} A drowning dream which left no trace.

And seeing you, the daffodils
Said to the lilies: “This is spring.”
The lilies murmured: “She fulfils
Summer’s eternal blossoming.”

And hearing you, a nightingale
Averred: “The song I now shall sing
Will curse the silences that fail
To herald your awakening.”

You came to me, I shut my eyes,
Begging that God might give me grace
Blindly to see the paradise
He had confided to your face.
{45}

XXIII

I would, beloved, that I knew a way
Misleading things to say.
I’d mint my love into some golden guesses,
And weave a web of pregnant prettinesses.
First I would lure you in, then catch you out,
Resolved to teach you doubt.

Is there a way to learn to hide our love,
And so ourselves disprove?
Can this great certainty be self-denied
And moulded to a plaything of our pride?
And can we practise wanton abstinence
Even in self-defence?

How could I dull my voice and dim my eye
Faced by your mockery?
How could I tame the tune and lull the light,
And steal a fear, for you, from my own fright?
When all the time you heard my thumping heart,
{46} Too wise to play a part?

I give you the great silences of love,
That no words can disprove.
The limelit loveliness, the lyric lilt,
The gold that’s tarnished, and the tune that’s spilt,
They have been conquered under the duress
Of love’s last emptiness.
{47}

XXIV

“Always I’ll love you!” Then you sigh:
With foolish white-faced misery
And tell me tales of loves that die.

You say: “I’m weary of the lie
That lovers call eternity
Giving to love an alibi.”

But ’tis most wanton to despise
The old-established verities,
That grant illusions to the wise.

In the tired darkness of your eyes
I’ve found my chosen paradise;
And if they lie—God give me lies!

My darling, what a goose you are
To plant a doubt in every star.
{48}

XXV

I would there were another name for love,
A name that did not tell such tales of pain,
Like a cracked bell that rings with broken dreams
And little hopes that lived and died in vain.

I would there were another name for love,
That did not tell of passions’ breakages,
And all the murdered beauties of the spring
And all the lost illusions of the ages.

I would there were another name for love,
An empty name unstained with prying eyes,
And pirate lips, and prowling certainties,
The plundered loot of a lost paradise.

I would there were another name for love,
An untouched name, where crumpled innocence,
Scorched by the hot indifference of lust,
Had not been branded by impermanence.

I would there were another name for love,
A timid name, aquiver and unsure,
A name for which no captain ever fought,
{49} A name unknown to any troubadour.

I want a name without a history,
A name that dies away before it rings
In mocking echoes through the caves of Time,
That falls asleep under my whisperings.

The name I want is nothing but a breath
That voiceless fades upon the dusky air,
A name that never sought to catch delight,
And never held the music of despair.

But I have found another name for love,
Though ’tis the name that all the lovers knew,
The oldest name that mortal ever spoke,
The other name for love is simply—you!
{50}

XXVI

Perfection came and whispered in your ear
“Listen, I’m here”;
You turned away and moaned to me: “My dear,
We must not hear.

“Let us be wise, my love, and be afraid—
Even though God made
The glory, yours and mine, that we have known,
’Tis best to fly before the glory’s flown.
Go, fly, my own.

“To-morrow I might come, aflame, athirst,
And take you first
Before you’d waked to love, and your dark eyes
Would close their lids upon my paradise.
And in my Hell
I’d break your dream and burn my soul as well.”

I said to you: “Oh man of little faith!
{51} It is no wraith
Of frightened loveliness I take to you,
No virgin avarice of white and blue,
But just my pain,
That, having given you, I must give again.”

Beauty, from out the madness of her bosom,
Spoke: “I will blossom
Though all the saints and cowards say ‘Be wise
And eschew Paradise.’
So from the folly of fear’s boundary
I’ll set perfection free.”

Wake up, my love, oh my dear love, Awake!
Lest when death comes he finds no life to take,
But sees a heap of sheaths that knew no swords.
An empty tomb embittered with the words—

“Here lies beauty,
But I lie
Further from Eternity.
For in choosing to be wise
I rejected Paradise.”
{52}

XXVII

No mortal ever knows
How to surrender to a rose;
But simply says: “Suppose
This flower should teach me how to die,
Where would I find Eternity?”

God in His wrath arose
And let his thunder peal the word: “Suppose!
Do not defile the rose.
Petal-light is the weight of My power;
And man in the dust shall kneel to a flower.”
{53}

XXVIII

You said: “Watch over me while you’re away.”
I hid you in my heart in still delight,
As some quiet shadow, folding up the day,
Denies her to the brilliance of the night.

You know, my love, the tiredness in my face
To sudden loveliness is always lit
Each time you look at me. You give to space
A further spaciousness, a holy writ.

While I’m away, my love, my old beguiling
Will slowly rust in chosen abstinence,
The smile you love will harden into smiling,
Some brittle trick of feminine defence.

The voice you love will lose its golden shadows
And ripple brightly at an even pace,
A tinkling rivulet of sunny shallows
A-glitter with an emptiness of grace.

The beauty that you gave my face will vanish
Masked by some easy prettiness that may,
Contenting others, give me time to banish
{54} The smallest trace of what you took away.

It is not difficult to hide the soul,
Man does not search for such a foolish thing
A secret substance, the incarnate symbol
Of a mysterious awakening.

While I’m away, my love, the world will see
A woman you would never recognize.
When I come back vainly they’ll look for me,
Unless they find the road to Paradise?
{55}

XXIX

My love, I do not ask an oath from you,
What are the words that you could say to me?
I want no lover swearing to be true
With broken liens on immortality.

My love, I do not want an oath from you
Robbing our silence of its sanctity.
Where could we put a word between us two?
A chain to clang the charm of liberty.

I would not make a prison of my soul.
How could I love you if you were not free
Even of my love? And you yourself the whole
Repudiation of the blasphemy

That stains with words the silences of love.
We will go out together and alone,
And to ourselves and to the whole world prove
{56} That a caged bird is just a bird that’s flown?

Yet I, my love, am but the lonely way
That your love trod. And should you wish to take
A different road, I will not bid you stay.
Some hearts must wander and some hearts must break.

But with my broken heart I still would bless
The beauty that you only could distil,
For I have given you that great emptiness,
A heart and soul that one man could fulfil.
{57}

XXX

Sometimes I wonder why we try to prove,
You with your silence and I with my speech,
That we have found a further faith than love.

Sometimes I wonder why we try to reach,
You with closed eyes and I with straining sight,
A deeper cavern, a more distant beach

Than those we knew before we sought a light
Too pale and stern for mortal fashioning,
Before we sought to find the infinite.

Sometimes I wonder why we do not bring
A smaller chain upon our spirits need
Than a rejection of life’s blossoming.

Sometimes I wonder why we do not heed
Our hearts’ disdained entanglements of song,
With banished beauty, singing through a reed

To show the loveliness where we belong;
Till in the strength of our recaptured weakness,
We burn the empty freedoms of the strong.
{58}

XXXI

With your first kiss you made me lonely, dear,
And all the knowledge in the world was mine
Held in the slow solution of a tear

Creeping relentlessly, too sure to spill,
The first and final tear that made me thine
And shaped a void that only you could fill.

I wonder, love, if you were really wise
To empty life of all the little things
That give to desolation alibis.

I wonder, love, if when you gave me wings
You knew you had condemned me to the air,
And to a faith beyond the questionings

That toy with hope and tamper with despair,
’Till I am stranded in the absolute
That you have made and only you can share.
{59}

XXXII

The furthest wind that ever blew
Blows but to prove
That I have made no cage for you
Out of my love.

No lock, no bolt, no key, no door,
The sky our roof, the sea our floor,
The air our scent, our cloak the light,
A liberty more free than flight,
A stillness that, outpacing pace,
Dismisses time and widens space,
A lamp of loneliness alight
In homage to the infinite—
So have I emptied in my pride
The world we knew,
Of all the colours that could hide
My love for you,
And the cold miracles that I denied
You have made true.
{60}

XXXIII

You who taught the sun his light
And rolled the darkness into night,
Who gave the air her liberty
And curled the currents of the sea;
You who turbaned gentian skies
With clouds of fleecy fineries,
Whose icy vision could impose
Her perfect transcience on a rose;
You who found a baby’s hue
For Heaven; and chose an empty blue
With which to save the infinite
From the bombardment of our sight;
You who taught music how to pry
Into a whisper’s melody,
And gave the sunbeams cause to claim
Shadow as the true home of flame;
You from whom I learnt to bless
The unencumbered loneliness
That love must give and love must take,
You who taught my heart to break
And to cry out, while it was breaking,
“This is not sleeping, this is waking,”
In a mood of mockery
One day you gave myself to me!
{61}

SONNET

Into the pitiless silver of the night
When all the world is powdered by the moon,
And day’s warm shadows, frozen into light,
Forget the drowsy comfort of the noon,
Into the pitiless white of the harsh flame
That you called love, well-knowing it was death,
With open eyes and arms outstretched I came,
Kneeling to know the blessing of your breath,
Icily blowing from the core of heat,
That was my spirit since it came from you.
It was my victory and the defeat
Of all the sweet evasions that I knew,
Through the ordeal of silver and of white
My soul has gained the freedom of the night.

POEMS

II A LETTER

IV WINTER

VIII THE TOKEN

IX TESTAMENT

X CONCEIT

XI VISION

XII TO-GETHER

XIII REVENGE

XV SIGHT

XVI PRAYER

XVIII FIRST FEAR

XIX BANISHMENT