Here, in a quiet and dusty room they lie,

Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,

Forlorn as ashes, shriveled, scentless, dry-

Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,

Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,

Though birds pass over, unremembering,

And no bee suck here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,

A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust

That will drink deeply of a century's streams,

These lilies shall maker summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,

Sealed in their shells a million trees leap;

Here I can grow a garden with my breath,

And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

MAN AND HIS MAKERS.

          1.





I am one of the wind's stories,

I am a fancy of the rain,--

A memory of the high noon's glories,

The hint the sunset had of pain.

          2.





They dreamed me as they dreamed all other;

Hawthorn and I, I and the grass,

With sister shade and phantom brother

Across their slumber glide and pass.

          3.





Twilight is in my blood, my being

Mingles with trees and ferns and stones;

Thunder and stars my lips are freeing,

And there is sea-rack in my bones.

          4.





Those that have dreamed me shall out-wake me,

But I go hence with flowers and weeds;

I am no more to those who make me

Than other drifting fruit and seeds.

          5.





And though I love them --mourn to leave them-

Sea, earth and sunset, stars and streams,

My tears, my passing do not grieve them . . .

Other dreams have they, other dreams.

THE NEW ASPASIA

If I have given myself to you, and you,

And if these pale hands are not virginal,

Nor these bright lips beneath your own lips true,

What matters it? I do not stand nor fall

By your old foolish judgments of desire:

If this were Helen's way it is not mine;

I bring you Beauty, but no Troys to fire:

The cup I hold brims not with Borgia's wine.

You, so sudden snared of brows and breasts,

Lightly you think upon these lips, this hair.

My thoughts are kinder: you are pity's guests:

Compassion's bed you share.

It was not lust delivered me to you;

I gave my wondering mouth for pity's sake,

For your strange, sighing lips I did but break

Many times this bread, and poured this wine anew.

My body's woven sweetness and kindling hair

Were given for heal of hurts unknown of me,

For something I could slake but could not share.

Sudden, and rough, and cruel I let you be,

I gave my body for what the world calls sin,

Even as for your souls the Nazarene

Gave once. Long years in pity I and He

Have served you-Jesus and the Magdalen.

As on the river in the fading light

A rust-red sail across the evening creeps,

Torching the gloom, and slowly sinks from sight,

The blood may rise to some old face at night,

Remembering old sins before it sleeps.

So might you hence recall me, were I true

To your sad violence. Were I not free

So me you might remember now; but you

Were no more loved by me than

Than clouds at sunset, or the wild bird going

About his pleasure on the apple tree,

Or wide-blown roses swelling to the bee;

No sweeter than flowers suddenly found growing

In frost-bound dells, or, on the bare, high hills,

The gold, unlaced, dew-drunken daffodils

Shouting the dawn, or the brown river flowing

Down quietly to the sea;

Or day in twilight's hair bound safe and dim,

Stirless in lavender, or the wind blowing,

Tumbling the poppy's turban after him.

I knew you as I knew these happy things,

Passing, unwept, on wide and tranquil wings

To their own place in nature; below, above

Transient passion with its stains and stings.

For this strange pity that you knew not of

Was neither lust nor love.

Do not repent, nor pity, nor regret.

I do not seek your pardon, nor give you mine.

Pass by, be silent, drop no tears, forget.

Return not, make no sign

When I am dead, nor turn your lips away

From Phyrne's silver limbs and Faustine's kiss.

I need no pity. No word of pity say.

I have given a new sweet name and crown to this

That served men's lust and was Aspasia.

A SONG FOR OLD LOVE.

There shall be a song for both of us that day

Though fools say you have long outlived your songs,

And when, perhaps, because your hair is grey,

You go unsung, to whom all praise belongs,

And no men kiss your hands--your fragile hands

Folded like empty shells on sea-spurned sands.

And you that were dawn whereat men shouted once

Are sunset now, but with one worshipper,

Then to your twilight heart this song shall be

Sweeter than those that did your youth announce

For your brave beautiful spirit is lovelier

Than once your lovely body was to me.

Your folded hands and your shut eyelids stir

A passion that Time has crowned with sanctity.

Young fools shall wonder why, your youth being over,

You are so sung still, but your heart will know

That he who loved your soul was your true lover

And the last song alone was worthy you.

SIC TRANSIT-

"What did she leave?" . . .

Only these hungry miser-words, poor heart!

Not "Did she love?" "Did she suffer?" "Was she sad

From this green, bright and tossing world to part?"

No word of "Do they miss her? do they grieve?"

Only this wolf-thought for the gold she had . . .

"What did she leave?"

MRS. EFFINGHAM'S SWAN SONG.

I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,

But I dare not let them know it now.

I have done the heart of youth a grievous wrong,

Danced it to dust, and drugged it with the rose,

Forced its reluctant lips to one more vow.

I have denied the lawful grey,

So kind, so wise, to settle in my hair;

I belong no more to April, but September has not taught me her repose.

I wish I had let myself grow old in the quiet way

That is so gracious . . . I wish I did not care.

My faded mouth will never flower again,

Under the paint, the wrinkles fret my eyes,

My hair is dull beneath its henna stain,

I have come to the last ramparts of disguise.

And now the day draws on of my defeat.

I shall not meet

The swift, male glance across the crowded room,

Where the chance contact of limbs in passing has

Its answer in some future fierce embrace.

I shall sit here in the corners looking on

With the older women, withered and overblown,

Who have grown old more graciously than I,

In a sort of safe and comfortable tomb

Knitting myself into Eternity.

And men will talk to me because they are kind,

Or as cunning or a courtesy demands;

There will be no hidden question in their eyes

And no subtle implication in their hands.

And I shall be so grateful who have been

So gracious, and so tyrannous, moving between

Denial and surrender. To-morrow I shall find

How women live who have no lovers and no answer for life's grey monotonies.

Upon my table will be no more flowers,

They will bring me no more flowers until I am dead;

There will be no violent, sweet, exciting hours,

No wild things done or said.

Yet sometimes I'm so tired of it all-

This everlasting battle with the flesh,

This pitiful slavery to the body's thrall-

And then I do not want to lure or charm,

I want to wear

Soft, easy things, be comfortable and warm;

I want to drowse at leisure in my chair.

I do not want to wear a veil with heavy mesh,

Or sit in shaded rooms afraid to face the light;

I do not want to go out every night,

And be bright and vivid and intense,

Nor be on the alert and the defense

With other women, fierce and afraid as I,

Drawing a knife unseen as each goes by.

I am so tired of men and making love,

For every one's the same.

There's nothing new in love under the sun;

All love can say or do has long been said and done:

I have eaten the fruit of knowledge long enough,

Been over-kissed, over-praised and over-won.

Why should I try to play still the old, foolish game?

Because I have played the rose's part too long.

Who plays the rose must pay the rose's price,

And be a rose or nothing till it dies.

And even then sometimes the blood will answer fierce and strong

To the old hunger, to the old dance, old tune;

I shall feel cruel and passionate and mad

Though I have lost the look of June.

The fever of the past will burn my hands

A men who live long in intemperate lands

Feel the old ague wring them, far removed

From the old dreadful glitter of seas and sands.

The rose dies hard in women who have had

Lovers all their lives, and have been much loved.

I am afraid to grow old now even if I would.

I have fought too well, too long, and what was once

A foolish trick to make the rose more strangely gay

Is now a close-locked, mortal conflict of brain and blood-

A feud too old to settle or renounce.

I shall grow too tired to struggle, and the fight will end,

And they will enter in at last-

Nature and Time, long thwarted of their prey,

Those old grey two, more cruel for the lips that said them "Nay,"

For the bitterest foe is he who in the past

Has been repulsed when he fain would be friend.

I am sorry for women who are growing old,

I do not blame them for holding youth with shameful hold,

Or doing desperate things to lips and eyes.

They have so pitifully short a flowering time,

So suddenly sweet a story so soon told.

They only strive to keep what men have taught them most to prize-

Men who have longer, fuller lives to live,

Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,

With their faces still to summer, men do not know

What Age says to a woman. They would not wait

To feel slip from their hands without a throe,

Without a struggle, futile and desperate,

All that has given them wealth and love and power

Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.

They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour

Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung

The widest rose, and kissed the keenest mouth

And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.

That bitter twilight which sun-worshipping Youth

Flies headlong keeps Age loitering on the hill,

Uneager to fold such greyness to his breast,

Knowing that none will thwart him of his will,

None be before him on that quest.

I am growing old.

I was not always kind when I was young

To women who were old, for Youth is blind-

A small, green, bitter thing beneath its fragrant rind,

And fanged against the old with boisterous tongue-

Those whose poor morning heads are touched with rime,

Walking before their misery like kings.

I did not feel that I should feel such stings,

Nor flinch beneath such arrows. But now I know.

One day I shall be stupid, and rather slow,

And easily cowed and troubled in my mind,

And tremulous, vaguely frightened, feeble and cold.

I am growing old. . . My God! how old! how old!. . .

I dare not tell them, but one day they will know. . .

I hope they will be kind.

ANNUNCIATION.

"The lord appeared in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed."-EXODOUS iii.2.

When to your virgin heart, unstirred, ungiven,

Upon the quiet mountainside untrod,

The sudden naked fire came down from heaven,

Burning you with the very breath of God,

Was the sun lost? Were all the sweet stars dim

While God raised round your head those walls of light?

Were you locked dumbly, terribly with Him,

Within that burning temple day and night?

What was it to have God there like a bird-

God like a great, gold flower upon your breast-

While He spake things that only one man heard,

Face down before that glory manifest?

When that strange flame went up the mountain side,

Were your forsaken lips so burned with gold

That the creatures of the wild stood off and cried,

And in your breast no blossom dared unfold?

Did you call back the startled birds to build,

And put forth all your simple buds again,

Forgetting how your branches once were filled,

In sweet embrace of passing sun and rain?

Or were all other birds forbidden sing

After those great, gold plumes had made their nest?

Was, in its strange and awful blossoming,

That great, gold flower the last upon your breast?

BOYS BATHING.

Round them a fierce, wide, crazy noon

Heaves with crushed lips and glowing sides

Against the huge and drowsy sun.

Beneath them turn the glittering tides

Where dizzy waters reel with gold,

And strange, rich trophies sink and rise

From decks of sunken argosies.

With shining arms they cleave the cold

Far reaches of the sea, and beat

The hissing foam with flash of feet

Into bright fangs, while breathlessly

Curls over them the amorous sea.

Naked they laugh and revel there.

One shakes the sea-drops from his hair,

Then, singing, takes the bubbles: one

Lies couched among the shells, the sands

Telling gold hours between his hands:

One floats like sea-wrack in the sun.

The gods of Youth, the lords of Love,

Greeks of eternal Thessaly,

Mocking the powers they know not of,

Naked and unembraced and free!

To whom the Siren sings in vain

To-day, to-morrow who shall be

The destined sport of gods and men.

Unseen, the immortal ones are here,

Remembering their mortal loves-

The strange, sweet flesh, the lips that were

Frail and most perishably fair.

Diana leaves her whispering groves,

And of Actaeon dreams and sighs,

And hears the hounds bay in the wood.

Oh, Cythera, the trembling blood

Upon one petal's paling mouth

Before thee and this noon must rise

While thou remember Adon's eyes!

One mournful and complaining shade

Beyond Avernus shakes his head,

Dreaming of one beloved youth

Borne from him, lost and dazed and dead,

Dragged by the nymphs avenging hair

Into the sea-bed oozing dim,

In that cold twilight unaware

Of each great sunrise over him.

.   .   .   .   .   .

One day, while still these waters run,

And noon still heaves beneath this sun,

You shall creep, unremembering,

Whom Life has humbled and subdued,

Ruined your bodies, tamed your blood,

No more the lords of anything.

But spent and racked with mortal pains,

The slow tide pushing through your veins,

Coldly you face this magic shore;

For you the dsenchanted noon

Scarce haunted is with ghosts that were

Once, and were you, and are no more.

Faltering against the wind and sun

That vainly seek your hair for gold,

Stubborned with habit, grey and old,

You know not why you wander here,

Nor what vague dream pursues you still,

For Life ahs taken fullest toll

Of all your beauty; on each soul

Love's hand has left his bitter mark,

Has had of you his utmost will,

And thrusts you headlong to the dark.

And colder than these waters are

The stream that takes your limbs at last:

Earth's vales and hills drift slowly past. . .

One shore far off, and one more far.

     On to the next poem.