make the heavens dance;
And if the enemy from aerial cars
Drops death, we'll share it vibrant with the stars!

HOW WRITE THE BEAT OF LOVE


How write the beat of love, the very throb,
The rhythm of our veins' deep eloquence?
How fix that darkness-rending final sob,
That perfect swoon of each united sense.

The full-sailed rising of your body's sweep
—Adrift and safe on joy's last tidal wave—
Will toss you on the silver sands of sleep,
Forgetful of the ecstacy you gave.

Your breath ebbs restful as the falling tide:
A sea becalmed!... Lay me in valleyed part
Of breasts whose undulating crests subside—
Ah how they marked the high beats of your heart!

A LA CAMPAGNE


The night, whose silences detach each sound,
The leaves, as whispering heralds in a wood,
Stir hopes of you about my solitude.
Was that a carriage wheel upon the ground?
—The grassy ground that brings the road uphill
Would muffle horses hoofs—I listen still—
A nervous motion at my heart: the bound
Of too responsive veins—a hush profound.

I hear a night bird call its mate?... a hound
Out on the farm bark at some peasant maid
Too tired with harvesting to feel afraid.
... Loosed, and now tied, scenting the sunny air,
All day she combed and tossed the fields' dim hair,
As some mute servant tending a fair queen
She works in beauty neither felt nor seen,
While I have nature, all the whole earth over,
For company. Yet anxious as a lover
Prisoned in sentiment, I watch and start.
Is it then just for you I live apart?
The moon, as milk caught in a pail, now flows
Over its rim, whit'ning the dark that glows—
I saw your absence less by day, and less
This summers brilliant, living emptiness.



II


Another day in flowered light comes through
The curtains of the room that waits for you.
I leave it so, to its Byronian gloom:
In vain red roses at your casements bloom.
The lyre-shaped clock that once struck hours of gold,
Has stopped, the prisoned summer air turns cold.
The mirrors that no longer see you pass,
Seem frames without their pictures, lengths of glass
Bored to reflect a house without expression.
Only my mind can image the procession
Of past realities, that flitter by
Invisible to all. These guides and I
Live a repeated life in which we follow
Through the deserted rooms, through tree-topped hollow
Roads, the joyful phantoms gone before.
The rhododendrons hedge-like corridor,
Must lead you, now and ever, back to me!
As often as our eyes have sought the sea,
I rest mine on this woodland resting-place.
Ah when again, the blossom of your face?
And, many times to aid the incantation,
Seeking some proof to fix my meditation,
I pause where the soft earth still bears the seals
Of your once-waiting and impatient heels!
And stoop, to find again the marks I found,
The little marks your feet leave on the ground!

A PILGRIMAGE


Is that your window with the moving shade
In pilgrimage I've come so far to see?
—The air may enter, you are not afraid
Of the «great air» that plays invisibly
About your neck, moving your opened hair
(That busy shadow is perhaps your maid?)
While I must wait, as near as I may be,
Upon the sands, wishing that I were made
Like Ariel to skip accross the sea
Bringing you kisses, in small waves that bear
The prostrate happy sun-flushed evening there,
And all unseen cover you every where:
To rise up with the tide and fall on you
With lips that moisten, cling, and sting like spray—
To want you, and so wanting turn away?
Or beat my way into that prisoned hue:
Now that your window is a golden square
Cut in the darkness? Must I homeward fare
With flapping cape against the wind to fight,
Or like a sea-gull wing towards your light?

D'une plage lointaine.

BACKWARD

"The predominacy of custom is every where visible, it sounds as a man would wonder to hear man profess, protest, engage, give great words, and then do just as they have done before, as though they were dead images and moved only by the wheels of custom."

Francis BACON.

My Hopes white-plumed, in valiant mail,
Have beaten at her heart grown pale
—Have failed, as all proud hopes must fail—
Lower the mast, fold up the sail.
In vain we faced the high-winged gale
And laughed as those whom Gods assail.
The reefs near port now crush our bark,
The jealous hounds of habit bark
On land. As children in the dark
My Lady shudders in the veil
Of her meek hair—shall naught prevail?
And only fears their echo find
Within her torn and timid mind?

Helplessly, my courage tears
To free her of the doubts she wears
Closer than Life.... Yet Time prepares
The end of all things.... Melt, my tears!
And flow as bitter as the sea
Over my drowning Love and me!

A SONNET


TO MY LADY WITH THE JAUNDICE.


Was not Titania golden? See these flowers
Are they for being yellowish less fair?
Apollo and the Godesses all share
In this most glorious hue. The jealous bowers

Of Kings are coloured thus, their reed of powers,
Their rings, their chains, the crowns that they must wear
Golden their mistress and their minion's hair
Golden the bannered sun above their towers!

Reflecting butter-cups amuses Puck
But flower-rubbed eye-lids, and complexions mend:
So fear not broken crystals long ill-luck

But look in this new mirror, lovely friend.
Both gods and fairies wait on lovers wills.
That jaundices be changed to daffodils!

EASTER DAY


Much longer than these lilies, you or I,
This book lives on mysterious memory
Of an enchanted place to which you lent
A fragrance that will render somnolent?
—Sweet poisons are narcotics for our tears!
Our ressurected past through dreams appears
An angel standing by an empty tomb.
What sadder thing may Time spin on her loom
Than words?—Return to that once petaled door
Through which Love passed—adding a few leaves more
To the strange book of life: open its covers
Only to the worn page where we were lovers
Lost in fair imageries, there to forget
Our hearts that weep as little children yet!

LINES TAKEN FROM POEMS
I SHALL NOT WRITE


Love, all our colours
Fade into shadows
—Shadows, but empty
Forms of the darkness?

Pale with the spring-time,
Wandering without you—
Sick with love-sickness!

To sigh upon this chill air of December,
To wonder why, and wondering why, remember!

As through the air
Her little fan-shaped feet

What beauty in the way the light