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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by 
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems & Ballads (First Series)
+
+Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2011 [EBook #35402]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS & BALLADS (FIRST SERIES) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Poems and Ballads
+  First Series
+
+  By
+  Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+  Taken from
+  The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne--Vol I
+
+
+
+
+  SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS
+
+
+      I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series).
+
+     II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, and SONGS OF TWO NATIONS.
+
+    III. POEMS AND BALLADS (SECOND AND THIRD SERIES), and SONGS OF THE
+            SPRING-TIDES.
+
+     IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON,
+            ERECHTHEUS.
+
+      V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH
+            DRAMATIC POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC.
+
+     VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER
+            POEMS.
+
+
+  London: William Heinemann
+
+
+
+
+  POEMS & BALLADS
+  (FIRST SERIES)
+
+  By
+  Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+
+  1917
+  London: William Heinemann
+
+  _First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904
+  _Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12
+  (_Heinemann_), 1917
+  _London_: _William Heinemann_ 1917
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE
+
+
+To my best and dearest friend I dedicate the first collected edition of
+my poems, and to him I address what I have to say on the occasion.
+
+
+You will agree with me that it is impossible for any man to undertake
+the task of commentary, however brief and succinct, on anything he has
+done or tried to do, without incurring the charge of egoism. But there
+are two kinds of egoism, the furtive and the frank: and the outspoken
+and open-hearted candour of Milton and Wordsworth, Corneille and Hugo,
+is not the least or the lightest of their claims to the regard as well
+as the respect or the reverence of their readers. Even if I were worthy
+to claim kinship with the lowest or with the highest of these deathless
+names, I would not seek to shelter myself under the shadow of its
+authority. The question would still remain open on all sides. Whether it
+is worth while for any man to offer any remarks or for any other man to
+read his remarks on his own work, his own ambition, or his own attempts,
+he cannot of course determine. If there are great examples of abstinence
+from such a doubtful enterprise, there are likewise great examples to
+the contrary. As long as the writer can succeed in evading the kindred
+charges and the cognate risks of vanity and humility, there can be no
+reason why he should not undertake it. And when he has nothing to regret
+and nothing to recant, when he finds nothing that he could wish to
+cancel, to alter, or to unsay, in any page he has ever laid before his
+reader, he need not be seriously troubled by the inevitable
+consciousness that the work of his early youth is not and cannot be
+unnaturally unlike the work of a very young man. This would be no excuse
+for it, if it were in any sense bad work: if it be so, no apology would
+avail; and I certainly have none to offer.
+
+It is now thirty-six years since my first volume of miscellaneous verse,
+lyrical and dramatic and elegiac and generally heterogeneous, had as
+quaint a reception and as singular a fortune as I have ever heard or
+read of. I do not think you will differ from my opinion that what is
+best in it cannot be divided from what is not so good by any other line
+of division than that which marks off mature from immature execution--in
+other words, complete from incomplete conception. For its author the
+most amusing and satisfying result of the clatter aroused by it was the
+deep diversion of collating and comparing the variously inaccurate
+verdicts of the scornful or mournful censors who insisted on regarding
+all the studies of passion or sensation attempted or achieved in it as
+either confessions of positive fact or excursions of absolute fancy.
+There are photographs from life in the book; and there are sketches from
+imagination. Some which keen-sighted criticism has dismissed with a
+smile as ideal or imaginary were as real and actual as they well could
+be: others which have been taken for obvious transcripts from memory
+were utterly fantastic or dramatic. If the two kinds cannot be
+distinguished, it is surely rather a credit than a discredit to an
+artist whose medium or material has more in common with a musician's
+than with a sculptor's. Friendly and kindly critics, English and
+foreign, have detected ignorance of the subject in poems taken straight
+from the life, and have protested that they could not believe me were I
+to swear that poems entirely or mainly fanciful were not faithful
+expressions or transcriptions of the writer's actual experience and
+personal emotion. But I need not remind you that all I have to say about
+this book was said once for all in the year of its publication: I have
+nothing to add to my notes then taken, and I have nothing to retract
+from them. To parade or to disclaim experience of passion or of sorrow,
+of pleasure or of pain, is the habit and the sign of a school which has
+never found a disciple among the better sort of English poets, and which
+I know to be no less pitifully contemptible in your opinion than in
+mine.
+
+In my next work it should be superfluous to say that there is no touch
+of dramatic impersonation or imaginary emotion. The writer of 'Songs
+before Sunrise,' from the first line to the last, wrote simply in
+submissive obedience to Sir Philip Sidney's precept--'Look in thine
+heart, and write.' The dedication of these poems, and the fact that the
+dedication was accepted, must be sufficient evidence of this. They do
+not pretend and they were never intended to be merely the metrical
+echoes, or translations into lyric verse, of another man's doctrine.
+Mazzini was no more a Pope or a Dictator than I was a parasite or a
+papist. Dictation and inspiration are rather different things. These
+poems, and others which followed or preceded them in print, were
+inspired by such faith as is born of devotion and reverence: not by such
+faith, if faith it may be called, as is synonymous with servility or
+compatible with prostration of an abject or wavering spirit and a
+submissive or dethroned intelligence. You know that I never pretended to
+see eye to eye with my illustrious friends and masters, Victor Hugo and
+Giuseppe Mazzini, in regard to the positive and passionate confidence of
+their sublime and purified theology. Our betters ought to know better
+than we: they would be the last to wish that we should pretend to their
+knowledge, or assume a certitude which is theirs and is not ours. But on
+one point we surely cannot but be at one with them: that the spirit and
+the letter of all other than savage and barbarous religions are
+irreconcilably at variance, and that prayer or homage addressed to an
+image of our own or of other men's making, be that image avowedly
+material or conventionally spiritual, is the affirmation of idolatry
+with all its attendant atrocities, and the negation of all belief, all
+reverence, and all love, due to the noblest object of human worship that
+humanity can realise or conceive. Thus much the exercise of our common
+reason might naturally suffice to show us: but when its evidence is
+confirmed and fortified by the irrefragable and invariable evidence of
+history, there is no room for further dispute or fuller argument on a
+subject now visibly beyond reach and eternally beyond need of debate or
+demonstration. I know not whether it may or may not be worth while to
+add that every passing word I have since thought fit to utter on any
+national or political question has been as wholly consistent with the
+principles which I then did my best to proclaim and defend as any
+apostasy from the faith of all republicans in the fundamental and final
+principle of union, voluntary if possible and compulsory if not, would
+have been ludicrous in the impudence of its inconsistency with those
+simple and irreversible principles. Monarchists and anarchists may be
+advocates of national dissolution and reactionary division: republicans
+cannot be. The first and last article of their creed is unity: the most
+grinding and crushing tyranny of a convention, a directory, or a despot,
+is less incompatible with republican faith than the fissiparous
+democracy of disunionists or communalists.
+
+If the fortunes of my lyrical work were amusingly eccentric and
+accidental, the varieties of opinion which have saluted the appearance
+of my plays have been, or have seemed to my humility, even more
+diverting and curious. I have been told by reviewers of note and
+position that a single one of them is worth all my lyric and otherwise
+undramatic achievements or attempts: and I have been told on equal or
+similar authority that, whatever I may be in any other field, as a
+dramatist I am demonstrably nothing. My first if not my strongest
+ambition was to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a
+young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of
+Shakespeare, in the line of work which those three poets had left as a
+possibly unattainable example for ambitious Englishmen. And my first
+book, written while yet under academic or tutorial authority, bore
+evidence of that ambition in every line. I should be the last to deny
+that it also bore evidence of the fact that its writer had no more
+notion of dramatic or theatrical construction than the authors of
+'Tamburlaine the Great,' 'King Henry VI.,' and 'Sir Thomas Wyatt.' Not
+much more, you may possibly say, was discernible in 'Chastelard': a play
+also conceived and partly written by a youngster not yet emancipated
+from servitude to college rule. I fear that in the former volume there
+had been little if any promise of power to grapple with the realities
+and subtleties of character and of motive: that whatever may be in it of
+promise or of merit must be sought in the language and the style of such
+better passages as may perhaps be found in single and separable speeches
+of Catherine and of Rosamond. But in 'Chastelard' there are two figures
+and a sketch in which I certainly seem to see something of real and
+evident life. The sketch of Darnley was afterwards filled out and
+finished in the subsequent tragedy of 'Bothwell.' That ambitious,
+conscientious, and comprehensive piece of work is of course less
+properly definable as a tragedy than by the old Shakespearean term of a
+chronicle history. The radical difference between tragic history and
+tragedy of either the classic or the romantic order, and consequently
+between the laws which govern the one and the principles which guide the
+other, you have yourself made clear and familiar to all capable
+students. This play of mine was not, I think, inaccurately defined as an
+epic drama in the French verses of dedication which were acknowledged by
+the greatest of all French poets in a letter from which I dare only
+quote one line of Olympian judgment and godlike generosity. 'Occuper ces
+deux cimes, cela n'est donné qu'à vous.' Nor will I refrain from the
+confession that I cannot think it an epic or a play in which any one
+part is sacrificed to any other, any subordinate figure mishandled or
+neglected or distorted or effaced for the sake of the predominant and
+central person. And, though this has nothing or less than nothing to do
+with any question of poetic merit or demerit, of dramatic success or
+unsuccess, I will add that I took as much care and pains as though I had
+been writing or compiling a history of the period to do loyal justice to
+all the historic figures which came within the scope of my dramatic or
+poetic design. There is not one which I have designedly altered or
+intentionally modified: it is of course for others to decide whether
+there is one which is not the living likeness of an actual or imaginable
+man.
+
+The third part of this trilogy, as far as I know or remember, found
+favour only with the only man in England who could speak on the subject
+of historic drama with the authority of an expert and a master. The
+generally ungracious reception of 'Mary Stuart' gave me neither surprise
+nor disappointment: the cordial approbation or rather the generous
+applause of Sir Henry Taylor gave me all and more than all the
+satisfaction I could ever have looked for in recompense of as much
+painstaking and conscientious though interesting and enjoyable work as
+can ever, I should imagine, have been devoted to the completion of any
+comparable design. Private and personal appreciation I have always
+thought and often found more valuable and delightful than all possible
+or imaginable clamour of public praise. This preference will perhaps be
+supposed to influence my opinion if I avow that I think I have never
+written anything worthier of such reward than the closing tragedy which
+may or may not have deserved but which certainly received it.
+
+My first attempt to do something original in English which might in some
+degree reproduce for English readers the likeness of a Greek tragedy,
+with possibly something more of its true poetic life and charm than
+could have been expected from the authors of 'Caractacus' and 'Merope,'
+was perhaps too exuberant and effusive in its dialogue, as it certainly
+was too irregular in the occasional license of its choral verse, to
+accomplish the design or achieve the success which its author should
+have aimed at. It may or may not be too long as a poem: it is, I fear,
+too long for a poem of the kind to which it belongs or aims at
+belonging. Poetical and mathematical truth are so different that I
+doubt, however unwilling I may naturally be to doubt, whether it can
+truthfully be said of 'Atalanta in Calydon' that the whole is greater
+than any part of it. I hope it may be, and I can honestly say no more.
+Of 'Erechtheus' I venture to believe with somewhat more confidence that
+it can. Either poem, by the natural necessity of its kind and structure,
+has its crowning passage or passages which cannot, however much they may
+lose by detachment from their context, lose as much as the crowning
+scene or scenes of an English or Shakespearean play, as opposed to an
+Æschylean or Sophoclean tragedy, must lose and ought to lose by a
+similar separation. The two best things in these two Greek plays, the
+antiphonal lamentation for the dying Meleager and the choral
+presentation of stormy battle between the forces of land and sea, lose
+less by such division from the main body of the poem than would those
+scenes in 'Bothwell' which deal with the turning-point in the life of
+Mary Stuart on the central and conclusive day of Carberry Hill.
+
+It might be thought pedantic or pretentious in a modern poet to divide
+his poems after the old Roman fashion into sections and classes; I must
+confess that I should like to see this method applied, were it but by
+way of experiment in a single edition, to the work of the leading poets
+of our own country and century: to see, for instance, their lyrical and
+elegiac works ranged and registered apart, each kind in a class of its
+own, such as is usually reserved, I know not why, for sonnets only. The
+apparent formality of such an arrangement as would give us, for
+instance, the odes of Coleridge and Shelley collected into a distinct
+reservation or division might possibly be more than compensated to the
+more capable among students by the gain in ethical or spiritual symmetry
+and æsthetic or intellectual harmony. The ode or hymn--I need remind no
+probable reader that the terms are synonymous in the speech of
+Pindar--asserts its primacy or pre-eminence over other forms of poetry
+in the very name which defines or proclaims it as essentially the song;
+as something above all less pure and absolute kinds of song by the very
+nature and law of its being. The Greek form, with its regular
+arrangement of turn, return, and aftersong, is not to be imitated
+because it is Greek, but to be adopted because it is best: the very
+best, as a rule, that could be imagined for lyrical expression of the
+thing conceived or lyrical aspiration towards the aim imagined. The
+rhythmic reason of its rigid but not arbitrary law lies simply and
+solely in the charm of its regular variations. This can be given in
+English as clearly and fully, if not so sweetly and subtly, as in Greek;
+and should, therefore, be expected and required in an English poem of
+the same nature and proportion. The Sapphic or Alcaic ode, a simple
+sequence of identical stanzas, could be imitated or revived in Latin by
+translators or disciples: the scheme of it is exquisitely adequate and
+sufficient for comparatively short flights of passion or emotion, ardent
+or contemplative and personal or patriotic; but what can be done in
+English could not be attempted in Latin. It seems strange to me, our
+language being what it is, that our literature should be no richer than
+it is in examples of the higher or at least the more capacious and
+ambitious kind of ode. Not that the full Pindaric form of threefold or
+triune structure need be or should be always adopted: but without an
+accurately corresponsive or antiphonal scheme of music even the master
+of masters, who is Coleridge, could not produce, even through the superb
+and enchanting melodies of such a poem as his 'Dejection,' a fit and
+complete companion, a full and perfect rival, to such a poem as his ode
+on France.
+
+The title of ode may more properly and fairly be so extended as to cover
+all lyrical poems in stanzas or couplets than so strained as to include
+a lawless lyric of such irregular and uneven build as Coleridge only and
+hardly could make acceptable or admissible among more natural and lawful
+forms of poetry. Law, not lawlessness, is the natural condition of
+poetic life; but the law must itself be poetic and not pedantic, natural
+and not conventional. It would be a trivial precision or restriction
+which would refuse the title of ode to the stanzas of Milton or the
+heptameters of Aristophanes; that glorious form of lyric verse which a
+critic of our own day, as you may not impossibly remember, has likened
+with such magnificent felicity of comparison to the gallop of the horses
+of the sun. Nor, I presume, should this title be denied to a poem
+written in the more modest metre--more modest as being shorter by a
+foot--which was chosen for those twin poems of antiphonal correspondence
+in subject and in sound, the 'Hymn to Proserpine' and the 'Hymn of Man':
+the deathsong of spiritual decadence and the birthsong of spiritual
+renascence. Perhaps, too, my first stanzas addressed to Victor Hugo may
+be ranked as no less of an ode than that on the insurrection in Candia:
+a poem which attracted, whether or not it may have deserved, the notice
+and commendation of Mazzini: from whom I received, on the occasion of
+its appearance, a letter which was the beginning of my personal
+intercourse with the man whom I had always revered above all other men
+on earth. But for this happy accident I might not feel disposed to set
+much store by my first attempt at a regular ode of orthodox or
+legitimate construction; I doubt whether it quite succeeded in evading
+the criminal risk and the capital offence of formality; at least until
+the change of note in the closing epode gave fuller scope and freer play
+of wing to the musical expression. But in my later ode on Athens,
+absolutely faithful as it is in form to the strictest type and the most
+stringent law of Pindaric hymnology, I venture to believe that there is
+no more sign of this infirmity than in the less classically regulated
+poem on the Armada; which, though built on a new scheme, is nevertheless
+in its way, I think, a legitimate ode, by right of its regularity in
+general arrangement of corresponsive divisions. By the test of these two
+poems I am content that my claims should be decided and my station
+determined as a lyric poet in the higher sense of the term; a craftsman
+in the most ambitious line of his art that ever aroused or ever can
+arouse the emulous aspiration of his kind.
+
+Even had I ever felt the same impulse to attempt and the same ambition
+to achieve the enterprise of epic or narrative that I had always felt
+with regard to lyric or dramatic work, I could never have proposed to
+myself the lowly and unambitious aim of competition with the work of so
+notable a contemporary workman in the humbler branch of that line as
+William Morris. No conception could have been further from my mind when
+I undertook to rehandle the deathless legend of Tristram than that of so
+modest and preposterous a trial of rivalry. My aim was simply to present
+that story, not diluted and debased as it had been in our own time by
+other hands, but undefaced by improvement and undeformed by
+transformation, as it was known to the age of Dante wherever the
+chronicles of romance found hearing, from Ercildoune to Florence: and
+not in the epic or romantic form of sustained or continuous narrative,
+but mainly through a succession of dramatic scenes or pictures with
+descriptive settings or backgrounds: the scenes being of the simplest
+construction, duologue or monologue, without so much as the classically
+permissible intervention of a third or fourth person. It is only in our
+native northern form of narrative poetry, on the old and unrivalled
+model of the English ballad, that I can claim to have done any work of
+the kind worth reference: unless the story of Balen should be considered
+as something other than a series or sequence of ballads. A more
+plausible objection was brought to bear against 'Tristram of Lyonesse'
+than that of failure in an enterprise which I never thought of
+undertaking: the objection of an irreconcilable incongruity between the
+incidents of the old legend and the meditations on man and nature, life
+and death, chance and destiny, assigned to a typical hero of chivalrous
+romance. And this objection might be unanswerable if the slightest
+attempt had been made to treat the legend as in any possible sense
+historical or capable of either rational or ideal association with
+history, such as would assimilate the name and fame of Arthur to the
+name and fame of any actual and indisputable Alfred or Albert of the
+future. But the age when these romances actually lived and flourished
+side by side with the reviving legends of Thebes and Troy, not in the
+crude and bloodless forms of Celtic and archaic fancy but in the ampler
+and manlier developments of Teutonic and mediæval imagination, was the
+age of Dante and of Chaucer: an age in which men were only too prone to
+waste their time on the twin sciences of astrology and theology, to
+expend their energies in the jungle of pseudosophy or the morass of
+metaphysics. There is surely nothing more incongruous or anachronic in
+the soliloquy of Tristram after his separation from Iseult than in the
+lecture of Theseus after the obsequies of Arcite. Both heroes belong to
+the same impossible age of an imaginary world: and each has an equal
+right, should it so please his chronicler, to reason in the pauses of
+action and philosophise in the intervals of adventure. After all, the
+active men of the actual age of chivalry were not all of them mere
+muscular machines for martial or pacific exercise of their physical
+functions or abilities.
+
+You would agree, if the point were worth discussion, that it might
+savour somewhat of pretention, if not of affectation, to be over
+particular in arrangement of poems according to subject rather than
+form, spirit rather than method, or motive rather than execution: and
+yet there might be some excuse for the fancy or the pedantry of such a
+classification as should set apart, for example, poems inspired by the
+influence of places, whether seen but once or familiar for years or
+associated with the earliest memories within cognisance or record of the
+mind, and poems inspired by the emotions of regard or regret for the
+living or the dead; above all, by the rare and profound passion of
+reverence and love and faith which labours and rejoices to find
+utterance in some tributary sacrifice of song. Mere descriptive poetry
+of the prepense and formal kind is exceptionally if not proverbially
+liable to incur and to deserve the charge of dullness: it is unnecessary
+to emphasise or obtrude the personal note, the presence or the emotion
+of a spectator, but it is necessary to make it felt and keep it
+perceptible if the poem is to have life in it or even a right to live:
+felt as in Wordsworth's work it is always, perceptible as it is always
+in Shelley's. This note is more plain and positive than usual in the
+poem which attempts--at once a simple and an ambitious attempt--to
+render the contrast and the concord of night and day on Loch Torridon:
+it is, I think, duly sensible though implicitly subdued in four poems of
+the West Undercliff, born or begotten of sunset in the bay and moonlight
+on the cliffs, noon or morning in a living and shining garden, afternoon
+or twilight on one left flowerless and forsaken. Not to you or any other
+poet, nor indeed to the very humblest and simplest lover of poetry, will
+it seem incongruous or strange, suggestive of imperfect sympathy with
+life or deficient inspiration from nature, that the very words of Sappho
+should be heard and recognised in the notes of the nightingales, the
+glory of the presence of dead poets imagined in the presence of the
+glory of the sky, the lustre of their advent and their passage felt
+visible as in vision on the live and limpid floorwork of the cloudless
+and sunset-coloured sea. The half-brained creature to whom books are
+other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with
+the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life:
+those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that
+books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters
+or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the
+spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it
+possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, Æschylus and Sappho, do not for us live only on the dusty
+shelves of libraries.
+
+It is hardly probable that especial and familiar love of places should
+give any special value to verses written under the influence of their
+charm: no intimacy of years and no association with the past gave any
+colour of emotion to many other studies of English land and sea which
+certainly are no less faithful and possibly have no less spiritual or
+poetic life in them than the four to which I have just referred, whose
+localities lie all within the boundary of a mile or so. No contrast
+could be stronger than that between the majestic and exquisite glory of
+cliff and crag, lawn and woodland, garden and lea, to which I have done
+homage though assuredly I have not done justice in these four poems--'In
+the Bay,' 'On the Cliffs,' 'A Forsaken Garden,' the dedication of 'The
+Sisters'--and the dreary beauty, inhuman if not unearthly in its
+desolation, of the innumerable creeks and inlets, lined and paven with
+sea-flowers, which make of the salt marshes a fit and funereal setting,
+a fatal and appropriate foreground, for the supreme desolation of the
+relics of Dunwich; the beautiful and awful solitude of a wilderness on
+which the sea has forbidden man to build or live, overtopped and bounded
+by the tragic and ghastly solitude of a headland on which the sea has
+forbidden the works of human charity and piety to survive: between the
+dense and sand-encumbered tides which are eating the desecrated wreck
+and ruin of them all away, and the matchless magic, the ineffable
+fascination of the sea whose beauties and delights, whose translucent
+depths of water and divers-coloured banks of submarine foliage and
+flowerage, but faintly reflected in the stanzas of the little ode 'Off
+Shore,' complete the charm of the scenes as faintly sketched or shadowed
+forth in the poems just named, or the sterner and stranger magic of the
+seaboard to which tribute was paid in 'An Autumn Vision,' 'A Swimmer's
+Dream,' 'On the South Coast,' 'Neap-tide': or, again, between the
+sterile stretches and sad limitless outlook of the shore which faces a
+hitherto undetermined and interminable sea, and the joyful and fateful
+beauty of the seas off Bamborough and the seas about Sark and Guernsey.
+But if there is enough of the human or personal note to bring into touch
+the various poems which deal with these various impressions, there may
+perhaps be no less of it discernible in such as try to render the effect
+of inland or woodland solitude--the splendid oppression of nature at
+noon which found utterance of old in words of such singular and
+everlasting significance as panic and nympholepsy.
+
+The retrospect across many years over the many eulogistic and elegiac
+poems which I have inscribed or devoted to the commemoration or the
+panegyric of the living or the dead has this in it of pride and
+pleasure, that I find little to recant and nothing to repent on
+reconsideration of them all. If ever a word of tributary thanksgiving
+for the delight and the benefit of loyal admiration evoked in the spirit
+of a boy or aroused in the intelligence of a man may seem to exceed the
+limit of demonstrable accuracy, I have no apology to offer for any such
+aberration from the safe path of tepid praise or conventional applause.
+I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships:
+I might add if I cared, as he if he had cared might have added, that I
+have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends; and this,
+though by comparison a matter of ineffable insignificance, can hardly be
+to any rational and right-minded man a matter of positive indifference.
+Rather should it be always a subject for thankfulness and
+self-congratulation if a man can honestly and reasonably feel assured
+that his friends and foes alike have been always and at almost all
+points the very men he would have chosen, had choice and foresight been
+allowed him, at the very outset of his career in life. I should never,
+when a boy, have dared to dream that as a man I might possibly be
+admitted to the personal acquaintance of the three living gods, I do not
+say of my idolatry, for idolatry is a term inapplicable where the gods
+are real and true, but of my whole-souled and single-hearted worship:
+and yet, when writing of Landor, of Mazzini, and of Hugo, I write of men
+who have honoured me with the assurance and the evidence of their
+cordial and affectionate regard. However inadequate and unworthy may be
+my tribute to their glory when living and their memory when dead, it is
+that of one whose gratitude and devotion found unforgettable favour in
+their sight. And I must be allowed to add that the redeeming quality of
+entire and absolute sincerity may be claimed on behalf of every line I
+have written in honour of friends, acquaintances, or strangers. My
+tribute to Richard Burton was not more genuine in its expression than my
+tribute to Christina Rossetti. Two noble human creatures more utterly
+unlike each other it would be unspeakably impossible to conceive; but it
+was as simply natural for one who honoured them both to do honest
+homage, before and after they had left us, to the saintly and secluded
+poetess as to the adventurous and unsaintly hero. Wherever anything is
+worthy of honour and thanksgiving it is or it always should be as
+natural if not as delightful to give thanks and do honour to a stranger
+as to a friend, to a benefactor long since dead as to a benefactor still
+alive. To the kindred spirits of Philip Sidney and Aurelio Saffi it was
+almost as equal a pleasure to offer what tribute I could bring as if
+Sidney also could have honoured me with his personal friendship. To
+Tennyson and Browning it was no less fit that I should give honour than
+that I should do homage to the memory of Bruno, the martyred friend of
+Sidney. And I can hardly remember any task that I ever took more delight
+in discharging than I felt in the inadequate and partial payment of a
+lifelong debt to the marvellous and matchless succession of poets who
+made the glory of our country incomparable for ever by the work they did
+between the joyful date of the rout of the Armada and the woful date of
+the outbreak of civil war.
+
+Charles Lamb, as I need not remind you, wrote for antiquity: nor need
+you be assured that when I write plays it is with a view to their being
+acted at the Globe, the Red Bull, or the Black Friars. And whatever may
+be the dramatic or other defects of 'Marino Faliero' or 'Locrine,' they
+do certainly bear the same relation to previous plays or attempts at
+plays on the same subjects as 'King Henry V.' to 'The Famous
+Victories'--if not as 'King Lear,' a poem beyond comparison with all
+other works of man except possibly 'Prometheus' and 'Othello,' to the
+primitive and infantile scrawl or drivel of 'King Leir and his three
+daughters.' The fifth act of 'Marino Faliero,' hopelessly impossible as
+it is from the point of view of modern stagecraft, could hardly have
+been found too untheatrical, too utterly given over to talk without
+action, by the audiences which endured and applauded the magnificent
+monotony of Chapman's eloquence--the fervent and inexhaustible
+declamation which was offered and accepted as a substitute for study of
+character and interest of action when his two finest plays, if plays
+they can be called, found favour with an incredibly intelligent and an
+inconceivably tolerant audience. The metrical or executive experiment
+attempted and carried through in 'Locrine' would have been improper to
+any but a purely and wholly romantic play or poem: I do not think that
+the life of human character or the lifelikeness of dramatic dialogue has
+suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the
+exigence of metre. The tragedy of 'The Sisters,' however defective it
+may be in theatrical interest or progressive action, is the only modern
+English play I know in which realism in the reproduction of natural
+dialogue and accuracy in the representation of natural intercourse
+between men and women of gentle birth and breeding have been found or
+made compatible with expression in genuine if simple blank verse. It is
+not for me to decide whether anything in the figures which play their
+parts on my imaginary though realistic stage may be worthy of sympathy,
+attention, or interest: but I think they talk and act as they would have
+done in life without ever lapsing into platitude or breaking out of
+nature.
+
+In 'Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards,' I took up a subject long since
+mishandled by an English dramatist of all but the highest rank, and one
+which in later days Alfieri had commemorated in a magnificent passage of
+a wholly unhistoric and somewhat unsatisfactory play. The comparatively
+slight deviation from historic records in the final catastrophe or
+consummation of mine is not, I think, to say the least, injurious to the
+tragic effect or the moral interest of the story.
+
+A writer conscious of any natural command over the musical resources of
+his language can hardly fail to take such pleasure in the enjoyment of
+this gift or instinct as the greatest writer and the greatest versifier
+of our age must have felt at its highest possible degree when composing
+a musical exercise of such incomparable scope and fullness as 'Les
+Djinns.' But if he be a poet after the order of Hugo or Coleridge or
+Shelley, the result will be something very much more than a musical
+exercise; though indeed, except to such ears as should always be kept
+closed against poetry, there is no music in verse which has not in it
+sufficient fullness and ripeness of meaning, sufficient adequacy of
+emotion or of thought, to abide the analysis of any other than the
+purblind scrutiny of prepossession or the squint-eyed inspection of
+malignity. There may perhaps be somewhat more depth and variety of
+feeling or reflection condensed into the narrow frame of the poems which
+compose 'A Century of Roundels' than would be needed to fulfil the epic
+vacuity of a Choerilus or a Coluthus. And the form chosen for my only
+narrative poem was chosen as a test of the truth of my conviction that
+such work could be done better on the straitest and the strictest
+principles of verse than on the looser and more slippery lines of
+mediæval or modern improvisation. The impulsive and irregular verse
+which had been held sufficient for the stanza selected or accepted by
+Thornton and by Tennyson seemed capable of improvement and invigoration
+as a vehicle or a medium for poetic narrative. And I think it has not
+been found unfit to give something of dignity as well as facility to a
+narrative which recasts in modern English verse one of the noblest and
+loveliest old English legends. There is no episode in the cycle of
+Arthurian romance more genuinely Homeric in its sublime simplicity and
+its pathetic sublimity of submission to the masterdom of fate than that
+which I have rather reproduced than recast in 'The Tale of Balen': and
+impossible as it is to render the text or express the spirit of the
+Iliad in English prose or rhyme--above all, in English blank verse--it
+is possible, in such a metre as was chosen and refashioned for this
+poem, to give some sense of the rage and rapture of battle for which
+Homer himself could only find fit and full expression by similitudes
+drawn like mine from the revels and the terrors and the glories of the
+sea.
+
+It is nothing to me that what I write should find immediate or general
+acceptance: it is much to know that on the whole it has won for me the
+right to address this dedication and inscribe this edition to you.
+
+                                         ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FRIEND
+
+EDWARD BURNE JONES
+
+THESE POEMS
+
+ARE AFFECTIONATELY AND ADMIRINGLY
+
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS
+
+
+                                            PAGE
+    A BALLAD OF LIFE                           1
+    A BALLAD OF DEATH                          4
+    LAUS VENERIS                              11
+    PHÆDRA                                    27
+    THE TRIUMPH OF TIME                       34
+    LES NOYADES                               48
+    A LEAVE-TAKING                            52
+    ITYLUS                                    54
+    ANACTORIA                                 57
+    HYMN TO PROSERPINE                        67
+    ILICET                                    74
+    HERMAPHRODITUS                            79
+    FRAGOLETTA                                82
+    RONDEL                                    85
+    SATIA TE SANGUINE                         87
+    A LITANY                                  89
+    A LAMENTATION                             95
+    ANIMA ANCEPS                             100
+    IN THE ORCHARD                           102
+    A MATCH                                  104
+    FAUSTINE                                 106
+    A CAMEO                                  113
+    SONG BEFORE DEATH                        114
+    ROCOCO                                   115
+    STAGE LOVE                               118
+    THE LEPER                                119
+    A BALLAD OF BURDENS                      125
+    RONDEL                                   128
+    BEFORE THE MIRROR                        129
+    EROTION                                  132
+    IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR        134
+    A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER. 1852            137
+    A SONG IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. 1860.      140
+    TO VICTOR HUGO                           144
+    BEFORE DAWN                              151
+    DOLORES                                  154
+    THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE                 169
+    HESPERIA                                 173
+    LOVE AT SEA                              179
+    APRIL                                    181
+    BEFORE PARTING                           184
+    THE SUNDEW                               186
+    FÉLISE                                   188
+    AN INTERLUDE                             199
+    HENDECASYLLABICS                         202
+    SAPPHICS                                 204
+    AT ELEUSIS                               208
+    AUGUST                                   215
+    A CHRISTMAS CAROL                        218
+    THE MASQUE OF QUEEN BERSABE              221
+    ST. DOROTHY                              237
+    THE TWO DREAMS                           252
+    AHOLIBAH                                 266
+    LOVE AND SLEEP                           272
+    MADONNA MIA                              273
+    THE KING'S DAUGHTER                      276
+    AFTER DEATH                              279
+    MAY JANET                                282
+    THE BLOODY SON                           284
+    THE SEA-SWALLOWS                         288
+    THE YEAR OF LOVE                         291
+    DEDICATION, 1865                         293
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF LIFE
+
+
+  I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
+    Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
+    In midst whereof there was
+  A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
+  Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,
+    Made my blood burn and swoon
+      Like a flame rained upon.
+  Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue,
+  And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through
+      Seemed sad with glad things gone.
+
+  She held a little cithern by the strings,
+    Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair
+    Of some dead lute-player
+  That in dead years had done delicious things.
+  The seven strings were named accordingly;
+    The first string charity,
+      The second tenderness,
+  The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,
+  And loving-kindness, that is pity's kin
+      And is most pitiless.
+
+  There were three men with her, each garmented
+    With gold and shod with gold upon the feet;
+    And with plucked ears of wheat
+  The first man's hair was wound upon his head:
+  His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad;
+    All his gold garment had
+      Pale stains of dust and rust.
+  A riven hood was pulled across his eyes;
+  The token of him being upon this wise
+      Made for a sign of Lust.
+
+  The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face
+    Coloured like green wood when flame kindles it.
+    He hath such feeble feet
+  They may not well endure in any place.
+  His face was full of grey old miseries,
+    And all his blood's increase
+      Was even increase of pain.
+  The last was Fear, that is akin to Death;
+  He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith
+      Fear answers him again.
+
+  My soul said in me; This is marvellous,
+    Seeing the air's face is not so delicate
+    Nor the sun's grace so great,
+  If sin and she be kin or amorous.
+  And seeing where maidens served her on their knees,
+    I bade one crave of these
+      To know the cause thereof.
+  Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead.
+  And Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted.
+      And Lust said: I am Love.
+
+  Thereat her hands began a lute-playing
+    And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue;
+    And all the while she sung
+  There was no sound but long tears following
+  Long tears upon men's faces, waxen white
+    With extreme sad delight.
+      But those three following men
+  Became as men raised up among the dead;
+  Great glad mouths open and fair cheeks made red
+      With child's blood come again.
+
+  Then I said: Now assuredly I see
+    My lady is perfect, and transfigureth
+    All sin and sorrow and death,
+  Making them fair as her own eyelids be,
+  Or lips wherein my whole soul's life abides;
+    Or as her sweet white sides
+      And bosom carved to kiss.
+  Now therefore, if her pity further me,
+  Doubtless for her sake all my days shall be
+      As righteous as she is.
+
+  Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms,
+    Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat
+  Where the least thornprick harms;
+    And girdled in thy golden singing-coat,
+  Come thou before my lady and say this;
+    Borgia, thy gold hair's colour burns in me,
+      Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes;
+    Therefore so many as these roses be,
+      Kiss me so many times.
+  Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is,
+    That she will stoop herself none otherwise
+      Than a blown vine-branch doth,
+    And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes,
+      Ballad, and on thy mouth.
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF DEATH
+
+
+  Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
+  Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
+  Upon the sides of mirth,
+  Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
+  Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
+  Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
+  Upon the flesh to cleave,
+  Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
+  And many sorrows after each his wise
+  For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.
+
+  O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
+  Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
+  O Love and Time and Sin,
+  Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
+  Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;
+  O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
+  Came softer with her praise;
+  Abide a little for our lady's love.
+  The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,
+  And more than peace the passage of her days.
+
+  O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.
+  O Time, thou shalt not find in any land
+  Till, cast out of thine hand,
+  The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,
+  Another woman fashioned like as this.
+  O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her
+  Was made a goodly thing;
+  Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
+  With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
+  Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.
+
+  By night there stood over against my bed
+  Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
+  Both sides drawn fully back
+  From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,
+  And temples drained of purple and full of death.
+  Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water
+  And the sea's gold in it.
+  Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.
+  Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,
+  And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.
+
+  Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline
+  Were painted all the secret ways of love
+  And covered things thereof,
+  That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;
+  Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,
+  And brides that kept within the bride-chamber
+  Their garment of soft shame,
+  And weeping faces of the wearied loves
+  That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,
+  With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.
+
+  The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
+  Made mine own bitter where they ran between
+  As blood had fallen therein,
+  She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
+  If any glad thing be or any good
+  Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
+  Even she to whom all praise
+  Was as one flower in a great multitude,
+  One glorious flower of many and glorious,
+  One day found gracious among many days:
+
+  Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom
+  At kissing times across her stateliest bed
+  Kings bowed themselves and shed
+  Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,
+  And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;
+  Even she between whose lips the kiss became
+  As fire and frankincense;
+  Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
+  Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
+  Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.
+
+  Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
+  My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
+  Sweet still, but now not red,
+  Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
+  And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
+  The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
+  And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
+  The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
+  And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
+  The body that was clothed with love of old.
+
+  Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
+  And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
+  Ah! that my tears ran down
+  Even to the place where many kisses were,
+  Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
+  Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
+  Ah! the flowers cleave apart
+  And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
+  Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
+  Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.
+
+  Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
+  Each part about her was a righteous thing;
+  Her mouth an almsgiving,
+  The glory of her garments charity,
+  The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
+  In the good days when God kept sight of us;
+  Love lay upon her eyes,
+  And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
+  And all her body was more virtuous
+  Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.
+
+  Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
+  And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
+  Rain-rotten in rank lands,
+  Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
+  And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
+  And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
+  Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
+  And say "My master that was thrall to Love
+  Is become thrall to Death."
+  Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan,
+  But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
+  For haply it may be
+  That when thy feet return at evening
+  Death shall come in with thee.
+
+
+
+
+LAUS VENERIS
+
+
+Lors dit en plourant; Hélas trop malheureux homme et mauldict pescheur,
+oncques ne verrai-je clémence et miséricorde de Dieu. Ores m'en irai-je
+d'icy et me cacherai dedans le mont Horsel, en requérant de faveur et
+d'amoureuse merci ma doulce dame Vénus, car pour son amour serai-je bien
+à tout jamais damné en enfer. Voicy la fin de tous mes faicts d'armes et
+de toutes mes belles chansons. Hélas, trop belle estoyt la face de ma
+dame et ses yeulx, et en mauvais jour je vis ces chouses-là. Lors s'en
+alla tout en gémissant et se retourna chez elle, et là vescut tristement
+en grand amour près de sa dame. Puis après advint que le pape vit un
+jour esclater sur son baston force belles fleurs rouges et blanches et
+maints boutons de feuilles, et ainsi vit-il reverdir toute l'escorce. Ce
+dont il eut grande crainte et moult s'en esmut, et grande pitié lui prit
+de ce chevalier qui s'en estoyt départi sans espoir comme un homme
+misérable et damné. Doncques envoya force messaigers devers luy pour le
+ramener, disant qu'il aurait de Dieu grace et bonne absolution de son
+grand pesché d'amour. Mais oncques plus ne le virent; car toujours
+demeura ce pauvre chevalier auprès de Vénus la haulte et forte déesse ès
+flancs de la montagne amoureuse.
+
+                 _Livre des grandes merveilles d'amour, escript en latin
+                      et en françoys par Maistre Antoine Gaget._ 1530.
+
+
+LAUS VENERIS
+
+
+  Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,
+  Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck
+    Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
+  Soft, and stung softly--fairer for a fleck.
+
+  But though my lips shut sucking on the place,
+  There is no vein at work upon her face;
+    Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt
+  Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.
+
+  Lo, this is she that was the world's delight;
+  The old grey years were parcels of her might;
+    The strewings of the ways wherein she trod
+  Were the twain seasons of the day and night.
+
+  Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed
+  All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,
+    Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God,
+  The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.
+
+  Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.
+  But lo her wonderfully woven hair!
+    And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss;
+  But see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.
+
+  She is right fair; what hath she done to thee?
+  Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;
+    Had now thy mother such a lip--like this?
+  Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.
+
+  Inside the Horsel here the air is hot;
+  Right little peace one hath for it, God wot;
+    The scented dusty daylight burns the air,
+  And my heart chokes me till I hear it not.
+
+  Behold, my Venus, my soul's body, lies
+  With my love laid upon her garment-wise,
+    Feeling my love in all her limbs and hair
+  And shed between her eyelids through her eyes.
+
+  She holds my heart in her sweet open hands
+  Hanging asleep; hard by her head there stands,
+    Crowned with gilt thorns and clothed with flesh like fire,
+  Love, wan as foam blown up the salt burnt sands--
+
+  Hot as the brackish waifs of yellow spume
+  That shift and steam--loose clots of arid fume
+    From the sea's panting mouth of dry desire;
+  There stands he, like one labouring at a loom.
+
+  The warp holds fast across; and every thread
+  That makes the woof up has dry specks of red;
+    Always the shuttle cleaves clean through, and he
+  Weaves with the hair of many a ruined head.
+
+  Love is not glad nor sorry, as I deem;
+  Labouring he dreams, and labours in the dream,
+    Till when the spool is finished, lo I see
+  His web, reeled off, curls and goes out like steam.
+
+  Night falls like fire; the heavy lights run low,
+  And as they drop, my blood and body so
+    Shake as the flame shakes, full of days and hours
+  That sleep not neither weep they as they go.
+
+  Ah yet would God this flesh of mine might be
+  Where air might wash and long leaves cover me,
+    Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
+  Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.
+
+  Ah yet would God that stems and roots were bred
+  Out of my weary body and my head,
+    That sleep were sealed upon me with a seal,
+  And I were as the least of all his dead.
+
+  Would God my blood were dew to feed the grass,
+  Mine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass,
+    My body broken as a turning wheel,
+  And my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas!
+
+  Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame,
+  That life were as the naming of a name,
+    That death were not more pitiful than desire,
+  That these things were not one thing and the same!
+
+  Behold now, surely somewhere there is death:
+  For each man hath some space of years, he saith,
+    A little space of time ere time expire,
+  A little day, a little way of breath.
+
+  And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,
+  His day's work and his night's work are undone;
+    And lo, between the nightfall and the light,
+  He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.
+
+  Ah God, that I were as all souls that be,
+  As any herb or leaf of any tree,
+    As men that toil through hours of labouring night,
+  As bones of men under the deep sharp sea.
+
+  Outside it must be winter among men;
+  For at the gold bars of the gates again
+    I heard all night and all the hours of it
+  The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain.
+
+  Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know
+  The ways and woods are strangled with the snow;
+    And with short song the maidens spin and sit
+  Until Christ's birthnight, lily-like, arow.
+
+  The scent and shadow shed about me make
+  The very soul in all my senses ache;
+    The hot hard night is fed upon my breath,
+  And sleep beholds me from afar awake.
+
+  Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep,
+  Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep,
+    Or in strange places somewhere there is death,
+  And on death's face the scattered hair of sleep.
+
+  There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet
+  They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat;
+    But me the hot and hungry days devour,
+  And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet.
+
+  No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire,
+  For her love's sake whose lips through mine respire;
+    Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower,
+  Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire.
+
+  So lie we, not as sleep that lies by death,
+  With heavy kisses and with happy breath;
+    Not as man lies by woman, when the bride
+  Laughs low for love's sake and the words he saith.
+
+  For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies
+  And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs,
+    To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied,
+  And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes.
+
+  Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were
+  Slain in the old time, having found her fair;
+    Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes,
+  Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair.
+
+  Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain:
+  She casts them forth and gathers them again;
+    With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies
+  Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.
+
+  Her little chambers drip with flower-like red,
+  Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head,
+    Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet
+  She tramples all that winepress of the dead.
+
+  Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires,
+  With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires;
+    Between her lips the steam of them is sweet,
+  The languor in her ears of many lyres.
+
+  Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound,
+  Her doors are made with music, and barred round
+    With sighing and with laughter and with tears,
+  With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound.
+
+  There is the knight Adonis that was slain;
+  With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain;
+    The body and the spirit in her ears
+  Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein.
+
+  Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me;
+  Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee
+    Till the ending of the days and ways of earth,
+  The shaking of the sources of the sea.
+
+  Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell;
+  Me, satiated with things insatiable;
+    Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,
+  Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.
+
+  Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth's sweet sake
+  My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake
+    As water, as the flesh of men that weep,
+  As their heart's vein whose heart goes nigh to break.
+
+  Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips
+  Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips;
+    Ah God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep
+  And wring their juice upon me as it drips.
+
+  There is no change of cheer for many days,
+  But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways
+    Rung by the running fingers of the wind;
+  And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways.
+
+  Day smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night,
+  And on mine eyes the dark sits as the light;
+    Yea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned,
+  If heaven be clean or unclean in thy sight.
+
+  Yea, as if earth were sprinkled over me,
+  Such chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea,
+    Each pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof
+  Gasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily,
+
+  There is a feverish famine in my veins;
+  Below her bosom, where a crushed grape stains
+    The white and blue, there my lips caught and clove
+  An hour since, and what mark of me remains?
+
+  I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss
+  Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,
+    Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;
+  Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.
+
+  Sin, is it sin whereby men's souls are thrust
+  Into the pit? yet had I a good trust
+    To save my soul before it slipped therein,
+  Trod under by the fire-shod feet of lust.
+
+  For if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath,
+  I look between the iron sides of death
+    Into sad hell where all sweet love hath end,
+  All but the pain that never finisheth.
+
+  There are the naked faces of great kings,
+  The singing folk with all their lute-playings;
+    There when one cometh he shall have to friend
+  The grave that covets and the worm that clings.
+
+  There sit the knights that were so great of hand,
+  The ladies that were queens of fair green land,
+    Grown grey and black now, brought unto the dust,
+  Soiled, without raiment, clad about with sand.
+
+  There is one end for all of them; they sit
+  Naked and sad, they drink the dregs of it,
+    Trodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust.
+  Trampled and trodden by the fiery feet.
+
+  I see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell
+  Cities and people whom the gods loved well,
+    Yet for her sake on them the fire gat hold,
+  And for their sakes on her the fire of hell.
+
+  And softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is,
+  The queen whose face was worth the world to kiss,
+    Wearing at breast a suckling snake of gold;
+  And large pale lips of strong Semiramis,
+
+  Curled like a tiger's that curl back to feed;
+  Red only where the last kiss made them bleed;
+    Her hair most thick with many a carven gem,
+  Deep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed.
+
+  Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine;
+  But in all these there was no sin like mine;
+    No, not in all the strange great sins of them
+  That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine.
+
+  For I was of Christ's choosing, I God's knight,
+  No blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light;
+    I can well see, for all the dusty days
+  Gone past, the clean great time of goodly fight.
+
+  I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows,
+  With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows;
+    The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways,
+  Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows
+
+  Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips,
+  Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips
+    Sharp from the beautifully bending head,
+  With all its gracious body lithe as lips
+
+  That curl in touching you; right in this wise
+  My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes,
+    Leaving all colours in them brown and red
+  And flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs,
+
+  The caught-up choked dry laughters following them,
+  When all the fighting face is grown a flame
+    For pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears,
+  And the heart's gladness of the goodly game.
+
+  Let me think yet a little; I do know
+  These things were sweet, but sweet such years ago,
+    Their savour is all turned now into tears;
+  Yea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow,
+
+  The blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine,
+  I felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine
+    Touch my blood too, and sting me with delight
+  Through all this waste and weary body of mine
+
+  That never feels clear air; right gladly then
+  I rode alone, a great way off my men,
+    And heard the chiming bridle smite and smite,
+  And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again,
+
+  Till my song shifted to that iron one;
+  Seeing there rode up between me and the sun
+    Some certain of my foe's men, for his three
+  White wolves across their painted coats did run.
+
+  The first red-bearded, with square cheeks--alack,
+  I made my knave's blood turn his beard to black;
+    The slaying of him was a joy to see:
+  Perchance too, when at night he came not back,
+
+  Some woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief
+  Would beat when he had drunken; yet small grief
+    Hath any for the ridding of such knaves;
+  Yea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief.
+
+  This bitter love is sorrow in all lands,
+  Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,
+    Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves;
+  A sign across the head of the world he stands,
+
+  An one that hath a plague-mark on his brows;
+  Dust and spilt blood do track him to his house
+    Down under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek,
+  Like a sweet snake's breath made more poisonous
+
+  With chewing of some perfumed deadly grass,
+  Are shed all round his passage if he pass,
+    And their quenched savour leaves the whole soul weak,
+  Sick with keen guessing whence the perfume was.
+
+  As one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds
+  Smells the rare scent made where a panther feeds,
+    And tracking ever slotwise the warm smell
+  Is snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds,
+
+  His head far down the hot sweet throat of her--
+  So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier,
+    And lo, one springe and you are fast in hell,
+  Fast as the gin's grip of a wayfarer.
+
+  I think now, as the heavy hours decease
+  One after one, and bitter thoughts increase
+    One upon one, of all sweet finished things;
+  The breaking of the battle; the long peace
+
+  Wherein we sat clothed softly, each man's hair
+  Crowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of vair;
+    The sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings,
+  And noise of singing in the late sweet air.
+
+  I sang of love too, knowing nought thereof;
+  "Sweeter," I said, "the little laugh of love
+    Than tears out of the eyes of Magdalen,
+  Or any fallen feather of the Dove.
+
+  "The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,
+  The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss
+    Of blinded eyelids that expand again--
+  Love draws them open with those lips of his,
+
+  "Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown
+  Of one same fire and colour with their own;
+    Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,
+  Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone."
+
+  I sang these things long since and knew them not;
+  "Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot,
+    This man and that finds favour in his eyes,"
+  I said, "but I, what guerdon have I got?
+
+  "The dust of praise that is blown everywhere
+  In all men's faces with the common air;
+    The bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet
+  Before they wind it in a singer's hair."
+
+  So that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing;
+  I had no hope but of some evil thing,
+    And so rode slowly past the windy wheat
+  And past the vineyard and the water-spring,
+
+  Up to the Horsel. A great elder-tree
+  Held back its heaps of flowers to let me see
+    The ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein,
+  Naked, with hair shed over to the knee.
+
+  She walked between the blossom and the grass;
+  I knew the beauty of her, what she was,
+    The beauty of her body and her sin,
+  And in my flesh the sin of hers, alas!
+
+  Alas! for sorrow is all the end of this.
+  O sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is!
+    O breast whereat some suckling sorrow clings,
+  Red with the bitter blossom of a kiss!
+
+  Ah, with blind lips I felt for you, and found
+  About my neck your hands and hair enwound,
+    The hands that stifle and the hair that stings,
+  I felt them fasten sharply without sound.
+
+  Yea, for my sin I had great store of bliss:
+  Rise up, make answer for me, let thy kiss
+    Seal my lips hard from speaking of my sin,
+  Lest one go mad to hear how sweet it is.
+
+  Yet I waxed faint with fume of barren bowers,
+  And murmuring of the heavy-headed hours;
+    And let the dove's beak fret and peck within
+  My lips in vain, and Love shed fruitless flowers.
+
+  So that God looked upon me when your hands
+  Were hot about me; yea, God brake my bands
+    To save my soul alive, and I came forth
+  Like a man blind and naked in strange lands
+
+  That hears men laugh and weep, and knows not whence
+  Nor wherefore, but is broken in his sense;
+    Howbeit I met folk riding from the north
+  Towards Rome, to purge them of their souls' offence,
+
+  And rode with them, and spake to none; the day
+  Stunned me like lights upon some wizard way,
+    And ate like fire mine eyes and mine eyesight;
+  So rode I, hearing all these chant and pray,
+
+  And marvelled; till before us rose and fell
+  White cursed hills, like outer skirts of hell
+    Seen where men's eyes look through the day to night,
+  Like a jagged shell's lips, harsh, untunable,
+
+  Blown in between by devils' wrangling breath;
+  Nathless we won well past that hell and death,
+    Down to the sweet land where all airs are good,
+  Even unto Rome where God's grace tarrieth.
+
+  Then came each man and worshipped at his knees
+  Who in the Lord God's likeness bears the keys
+    To bind or loose, and called on Christ's shed blood,
+  And so the sweet-souled father gave him ease.
+
+  But when I came I fell down at his feet,
+  Saying, "Father, though the Lord's blood be right sweet,
+    The spot it takes not off the panther's skin,
+  Nor shall an Ethiop's stain be bleached with it.
+
+  "Lo, I have sinned and have spat out at God,
+  Wherefore his hand is heavier and his rod
+    More sharp because of mine exceeding sin,
+  And all his raiment redder than bright blood
+
+  "Before mine eyes; yea, for my sake I wot
+  The heat of hell is waxen seven times hot
+    Through my great sin." Then spake he some sweet word,
+  Giving me cheer; which thing availed me not;
+
+  Yea, scarce I wist if such indeed were said;
+  For when I ceased--lo, as one newly dead
+    Who hears a great cry out of hell, I heard
+  The crying of his voice across my head.
+
+  "Until this dry shred staff, that hath no whit
+  Of leaf nor bark, bear blossom and smell sweet,
+    Seek thou not any mercy in God's sight,
+  For so long shalt thou be cast out from it."
+
+  Yea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green,
+  Shall that thing be which is not nor has been?
+    Yea, what if sapless bark wax green and white,
+  Shall any good fruit grow upon my sin?
+
+  Nay, though sweet fruit were plucked of a dry tree,
+  And though men drew sweet waters of the sea,
+    There should not grow sweet leaves on this dead stem,
+  This waste wan body and shaken soul of me.
+
+  Yea, though God search it warily enough,
+  There is not one sound thing in all thereof;
+    Though he search all my veins through, searching them
+  He shall find nothing whole therein but love.
+
+  For I came home right heavy, with small cheer,
+  And lo my love, mine own soul's heart, more dear
+    Than mine own soul, more beautiful than God,
+  Who hath my being between the hands of her--
+
+  Fair still, but fair for no man saving me,
+  As when she came out of the naked sea
+    Making the foam as fire whereon she trod,
+  And as the inner flower of fire was she.
+
+  Yea, she laid hold upon me, and her mouth
+  Clove unto mine as soul to body doth,
+    And, laughing, made her lips luxurious;
+  Her hair had smells of all the sunburnt south,
+
+  Strange spice and flower, strange savour of crushed fruit,
+  And perfume the swart kings tread underfoot
+    For pleasure when their minds wax amorous,
+  Charred frankincense and grated sandal-root.
+
+  And I forgot fear and all weary things,
+  All ended prayers and perished thanksgivings,
+    Feeling her face with all her eager hair
+  Cleave to me, clinging as a fire that clings
+
+  To the body and to the raiment, burning them;
+  As after death I know that such-like flame
+    Shall cleave to me for ever; yea, what care,
+  Albeit I burn then, having felt the same?
+
+  Ah love, there is no better life than this;
+  To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,
+    And afterward be cast out of God's sight;
+  Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss
+
+  High up in barren heaven before his face
+  As we twain in the heavy-hearted place,
+    Remembering love and all the dead delight,
+  And all that time was sweet with for a space?
+
+  For till the thunder in the trumpet be,
+  Soul may divide from body, but not we
+    One from another; I hold thee with my hand,
+  I let mine eyes have all their will of thee,
+
+  I seal myself upon thee with my might,
+  Abiding alway out of all men's sight
+    Until God loosen over sea and land
+  The thunder of the trumpets of the night.
+
+                      EXPLICIT LAUS VENERIS.
+
+
+
+
+PHÆDRA
+
+HIPPOLYTUS; PHÆDRA; CHORUS OF TROEZENIAN WOMEN
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Lay not thine hand upon me; let me go;
+  Take off thine eyes that put the gods to shame;
+  What, wilt thou turn my loathing to thy death?
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  Nay, I will never loosen hold nor breathe
+  Till thou have slain me; godlike for great brows
+  Thou art, and thewed as gods are, with clear hair:
+  Draw now thy sword and smite me as thou art god,
+  For verily I am smitten of other gods,
+  Why not of thee?
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+                    O queen, take heed of words;
+  Why wilt thou eat the husk of evil speech?
+  Wear wisdom for that veil about thy head
+  And goodness for the binding of thy brows.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  Nay, but this god hath cause enow to smite;
+  If he will slay me, baring breast and throat,
+  I lean toward the stroke with silent mouth
+  And a great heart. Come, take thy sword and slay;
+  Let me not starve between desire and death,
+  But send me on my way with glad wet lips;
+  For in the vein-drawn ashen-coloured palm
+  Death's hollow hand holds water of sweet draught
+  To dip and slake dried mouths at, as a deer
+  Specked red from thorns laps deep and loses pain.
+  Yea, if mine own blood ran upon my mouth,
+  I would drink that. Nay, but be swift with me;
+  Set thy sword here between the girdle and breast,
+  For I shall grow a poison if I live.
+  Are not my cheeks as grass, my body pale,
+  And my breath like a dying poisoned man's?
+  O whatsoever of godlike names thou be,
+  By thy chief name I charge thee, thou strong god,
+  And bid thee slay me. Strike, up to the gold,
+  Up to the hand-grip of the hilt; strike here;
+  For I am Cretan of my birth; strike now;
+  For I am Theseus' wife; stab up to the rims,
+  I am born daughter to Pasiphae.
+  See thou spare not for greatness of my blood,
+  Nor for the shining letters of my name:
+  Make thy sword sure inside thine hand and smite,
+  For the bright writing of my name is black,
+  And I am sick with hating the sweet sun.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Let not this woman wail and cleave to me,
+  That am no part of the gods' wrath with her;
+  Loose ye her hands from me lest she take hurt.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Lady, this speech and majesty are twain;
+  Pure shame is of one counsel with the gods.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Man is as beast when shame stands off from him.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  Man, what have I to do with shame or thee?
+  I am not of one counsel with the gods.
+  I am their kin, I have strange blood in me,
+  I am not of their likeness nor of thine:
+  My veins are mixed, and therefore am I mad,
+  Yea therefore chafe and turn on mine own flesh,
+  Half of a woman made with half a god.
+  But thou wast hewn out of an iron womb
+  And fed with molten mother-snow for milk.
+  A sword was nurse of thine; Hippolyta,
+  That had the spear to father, and the axe
+  To bridesman, and wet blood of sword-slain men
+  For wedding-water out of a noble well,
+  Even she did bear thee, thinking of a sword,
+  And thou wast made a man mistakingly.
+  Nay, for I love thee, I will have thy hands,
+  Nay, for I will not loose thee, thou art sweet,
+  Thou art my son, I am thy father's wife,
+  I ache toward thee with a bridal blood,
+  The pulse is heavy in all my married veins,
+  My whole face beats, I will feed full of thee,
+  My body is empty of ease, I will be fed,
+  I am burnt to the bone with love, thou shalt not go,
+  I am heartsick, and mine eyelids prick mine eyes,
+  Thou shalt not sleep nor eat nor say a word
+  Till thou hast slain me. I am not good to live.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  This is an evil born with all its teeth,
+  When love is cast out of the bound of love.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  There is no hate that is so hateworthy.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  I pray thee turn that hate of thine my way,
+  I hate not it nor anything of thine.
+  Lo, maidens, how he burns about the brow,
+  And draws the chafing sword-strap down his hand.
+  What wilt thou do? wilt thou be worse than death?
+  Be but as sweet as is the bitterest,
+  The most dispiteous out of all the gods,
+  I am well pleased. Lo, do I crave so much?
+  I do but bid thee be unmerciful,
+  Even the one thing thou art. Pity me not:
+  Thou wert not quick to pity. Think of me
+  As of a thing thy hounds are keen upon
+  In the wet woods between the windy ways,
+  And slay me for a spoil. This body of mine
+  Is worth a wild beast's fell or hide of hair,
+  And spotted deeper than a panther's grain.
+  I were but dead if thou wert pure indeed;
+  I pray thee by thy cold green holy crown
+  And by the fillet-leaves of Artemis.
+  Nay, but thou wilt not. Death is not like thee.
+  Albeit men hold him worst of all the gods.
+  For of all gods Death only loves not gifts,[1]
+  Nor with burnt-offering nor blood-sacrifice
+  Shalt thou do aught to get thee grace of him;
+  He will have nought of altar and altar-song,
+  And from him only of all the lords in heaven
+  Persuasion turns a sweet averted mouth.
+  But thou art worse: from thee with baffled breath
+  Back on my lips my prayer falls like a blow,
+  And beats upon them, dumb. What shall I say?
+  There is no word I can compel thee with
+  To do me good and slay me. But take heed;
+  I say, be wary; look between thy feet,
+  Lest a snare take them though the ground be good.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Shame may do most where fear is found most weak;
+  That which for shame's sake yet I have not done,
+  Shall it be done for fear's? Take thine own way;
+  Better the foot slip than the whole soul swerve.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  The man is choice and exquisite of mouth;
+  Yet in the end a curse shall curdle it.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  He goes with cloak upgathered to the lip,
+  Holding his eye as with some ill in sight.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  A bitter ill he hath i' the way thereof,
+  And it shall burn the sight out as with fire.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Speak no such word whereto mischance is kin.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  Out of my heart and by fate's leave I speak.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Set not thy heart to follow after fate.
+
+
+  PHÆDRA.
+
+  O women, O sweet people of this land,
+  O goodly city and pleasant ways thereof,
+  And woods with pasturing grass and great well-heads,
+  And hills with light and night between your leaves,
+  And winds with sound and silence in your lips,
+  And earth and water and all immortal things,
+  I take you to my witness what I am.
+  There is a god about me like as fire,
+  Sprung whence, who knoweth, or who hath heart to say?
+  A god more strong than whom slain beasts can soothe,
+  Or honey, or any spilth of blood-like wine,
+  Nor shall one please him with a whitened brow
+  Nor wheat nor wool nor aught of plaited leaf.
+  For like my mother am I stung and slain,
+  And round my cheeks have such red malady
+  And on my lips such fire and foam as hers.
+  This is that Ate out of Amathus
+  That breeds up death and gives it one for love.
+  She hath slain mercy, and for dead mercy's sake
+  (Being frighted with this sister that was slain)
+  Flees from before her fearful-footed shame,
+  And will not bear the bending of her brows
+  And long soft arrows flown from under them
+  As from bows bent. Desire flows out of her
+  As out of lips doth speech: and over her
+  Shines fire, and round her and beneath her fire.
+  She hath sown pain and plague in all our house,
+  Love loathed of love, and mates unmatchable,
+  Wild wedlock, and the lusts that bleat or low,
+  And marriage-fodder snuffed about of kine.
+  Lo how the heifer runs with leaping flank
+  Sleek under shaggy and speckled lies of hair,
+  And chews a horrible lip, and with harsh tongue
+  Laps alien froth and licks a loathlier mouth.
+  Alas, a foul first steam of trodden tares,
+  And fouler of these late grapes underfoot.
+  A bitter way of waves and clean-cut foam
+  Over the sad road of sonorous sea
+  The high gods gave king Theseus for no love,
+  Nay, but for love, yet to no loving end.
+  Alas the long thwarts and the fervent oars,
+  And blown hard sails that straightened the scant rope!
+  There were no strong pools in the hollow sea
+  To drag at them and suck down side and beak,
+  No wind to catch them in the teeth and hair,
+  No shoal, no shallow among the roaring reefs,
+  No gulf whereout the straining tides throw spars,
+  No surf where white bones twist like whirled white fire.
+  But like to death he came with death, and sought
+  And slew and spoiled and gat him that he would.
+  For death, for marriage, and for child-getting,
+  I set my curse against him as a sword;
+  Yea, and the severed half thereof I leave
+  Pittheus, because he slew not (when that face
+  Was tender, and the life still soft in it)
+  The small swathed child, but bred him for my fate.
+  I would I had been the first that took her death
+  Out from between wet hoofs and reddened teeth,
+  Splashed horns, fierce fetlocks of the brother bull?
+  For now shall I take death a deadlier way,
+  Gathering it up between the feet of love
+  Or off the knees of murder reaching it.
+
+    [1] Æsch. Fr. Niobe:--
+          [Greek: monos theôn gar Thanatos ou dôrôn era, k.t.l.]
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
+
+
+  Before our lives divide for ever,
+    While time is with us and hands are free,
+  (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
+    Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
+  I will say no word that a man might say
+  Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
+  For this could never have been; and never,
+    Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
+
+  Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
+    To think of things that are well outworn?
+  Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
+    The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
+  Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
+  Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
+  Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
+    But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.
+
+  It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,
+    Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.
+  The singing seasons divide and depart,
+    Winter and summer depart in twain.
+  It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,
+  The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;
+  Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,
+    With sullen savour of poisonous pain.
+
+  I have given no man of my fruit to eat;
+    I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.
+  Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,
+    This wild new growth of the corn and vine,
+  This wine and bread without lees or leaven,
+  We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,
+  Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,
+    One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.
+
+  In the change of years, in the coil of things,
+    In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
+  We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
+    Covered with love as a covering tree,
+  We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
+  Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
+  Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
+    O love, my love, had you loved but me!
+
+  We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
+    As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
+  Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
+    Death consume as a thing unclean.
+  Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
+  Soul to soul while the years fell past;
+  Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
+    Had the chance been with us that has not been.
+
+  I have put my days and dreams out of mind,
+    Days that are over, dreams that are done.
+  Though we seek life through, we shall surely find
+    There is none of them clear to us now, not one.
+  But clear are these things; the grass and the sand,
+  Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand,
+  With lips wide open and face burnt blind,
+    The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun.
+
+  The low downs lean to the sea; the stream,
+    One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein,
+  Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream,
+    Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain;
+  No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers;
+  The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours,
+  Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam,
+    Turning her smile to a fugitive pain.
+
+  Mother of loves that are swift to fade,
+    Mother of mutable winds and hours.
+  A barren mother, a mother-maid,
+    Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers.
+  I would we twain were even as she,
+  Lost in the night and the light of the sea,
+  Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade,
+    Break, and are broken, and shed into showers.
+
+  The loves and hours of the life of a man,
+    They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
+  Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
+    Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
+  Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
+  Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
+  I lose what I long for, save what I can,
+    My love, my love, and no love for me!
+
+  It is not much that a man can save
+    On the sands of life, in the straits of time,
+  Who swims in sight of the great third wave
+    That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
+  Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
+  That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;
+  Weed from the water, grass from a grave,
+    A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.
+
+  There will no man do for your sake, I think,
+    What I would have done for the least word said.
+  I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,
+    Broken it up for your daily bread:
+  Body for body and blood for blood,
+  As the flow of the full sea risen to flood
+  That yearns and trembles before it sink,
+    I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.
+
+  Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit,
+    And time at fullest and all his dower,
+  I had given you surely, and life to boot,
+    Were we once made one for a single hour.
+  But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,
+  Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;
+  And deep in one is the bitter root,
+    And sweet for one is the lifelong flower.
+
+  To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung
+    To my life if you bade me, played my part
+  As it pleased you--these were the thoughts that stung,
+    The dreams that smote with a keener dart
+  Than shafts of love or arrows of death;
+  These were but as fire is, dust, or breath,
+  Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue
+    Of the little snakes that eat my heart.
+
+  I wish we were dead together to-day,
+    Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
+  Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
+    Out of the world's way, out of the light,
+  Out of the ages of worldly weather,
+  Forgotten of all men altogether,
+  As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,
+    Made one with death, filled full of the night.
+
+  How we should slumber, how we should sleep,
+    Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews!
+  And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep,
+    Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse;
+  Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,
+  Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem
+  Alive as of old to the lips, and leap
+    Spirit to spirit as lovers use.
+
+  Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight;
+    For what shall it profit when men are dead
+  To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's might,
+    To have looked for day when the day was fled?
+  Let come what will, there is one thing worth,
+  To have had fair love in the life upon earth:
+  To have held love safe till the day grew night,
+    While skies had colour and lips were red.
+
+  Would I lose you now? would I take you then,
+    If I lose you now that my heart has need?
+  And come what may after death to men,
+    What thing worth this will the dead years breed?
+  Lose life, lose all; but at least I know,
+  O sweet life's love, having loved you so,
+  Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,
+    In death nor life, nor in dream or deed.
+
+  Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine,
+    Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath,
+  Mixed into me as honey in wine,
+    Not time, that sayeth and gainsayeth,
+  Nor all strong things had severed us then;
+  Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men,
+  Nor all things earthly, nor all divine,
+    Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death.
+
+  I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
+    You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
+  But none shall triumph a whole life through:
+    For death is one, and the fates are three.
+  At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
+  There are worse things waiting for men than death;
+  Death could not sever my soul and you,
+    As these have severed your soul from me.
+
+  You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
+    Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
+  But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
+    Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
+  Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
+  Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
+  And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
+    The gate is strait; I shall not be there.
+
+  But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand,
+    Had you seen good such a thing were done,
+  I too might have stood with the souls that stand
+    In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun;
+  But who now on earth need care how I live?
+  Have the high gods anything left to give,
+  Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?
+    Which gifts are goodly; but I will none.
+
+  O all fair lovers about the world,
+    There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.
+  My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled
+    Round and round in a gulf of the sea;
+  And still, through the sound and the straining stream,
+  Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,
+  The bright fine lips so cruelly curled,
+    And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.
+
+  Free, without pity, withheld from woe,
+    Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair.
+  Would I have you change now, change at a blow,
+    Startled and stricken, awake and aware?
+  Yea, if I could, would I have you see
+  My very love of you filling me,
+  And know my soul to the quick, as I know
+    The likeness and look of your throat and hair?
+
+  I shall not change you. Nay, though I might,
+    Would I change my sweet one love with a word?
+  I had rather your hair should change in a night,
+    Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird;
+  Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey,
+  Die as a leaf that dies in a day.
+  I will keep my soul in a place out of sight,
+    Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.
+
+  Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space,
+    Full of the sound of the sorrow of years.
+  I have woven a veil for the weeping face,
+    Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears;
+  I have found a way for the failing feet,
+  A place for slumber and sorrow to meet;
+  There is no rumour about the place,
+    Nor light, nor any that sees or hears.
+
+  I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said
+    "Let none take pity upon thee, none
+  Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead,
+    Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sun.
+  Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought
+  Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought,
+  With soft spun verses and tears unshed,
+    And sweet light visions of things undone?
+
+  "I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh,
+    And gold, and beautiful burial things.
+  But thou, be at peace now, make no stir;
+    Is not thy grave as a royal king's?
+  Fret not thyself though the end were sore;
+  Sleep, be patient, vex me no more.
+  Sleep; what hast thou to do with her?
+    The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?"
+
+  Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,
+    The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,
+  The misconceived and the misbegotten,
+    I would find a sin to do ere I die,
+  Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through,
+  That would set you higher in heaven, serve you
+  And leave you happy, when clean forgotten,
+    As a dead man out of mind, am I.
+
+  Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me,
+    I am swift to follow you, keen to see;
+  But love lacks might to redeem or undo me;
+    As I have been, I know I shall surely be;
+  "What should such fellows as I do?" Nay,
+  My part were worse if I chose to play;
+  For the worst is this after all; if they knew me,
+    Not a soul upon earth would pity me.
+
+  And I play not for pity of these; but you,
+    If you saw with your soul what man am I,
+  You would praise me at least that my soul all through
+    Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie;
+  The souls and lips that are bought and sold,
+  The smiles of silver and kisses of gold,
+  The lapdog loves that whine as they chew,
+    The little lovers that curse and cry.
+
+  There are fairer women, I hear; that may be;
+    But I, that I love you and find you fair,
+  Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be,
+    Do the high gods know or the great gods care?
+  Though the swords in my heart for one were seven,
+  Would the iron hollow of doubtful heaven,
+  That knows not itself whether night-time or day be,
+    Reverberate words and a foolish prayer?
+
+  I will go back to the great sweet mother,
+    Mother and lover of men, the sea.
+  I will go down to her, I and none other,
+    Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me;
+  Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast:
+  O fair white mother, in days long past
+  Born without sister, born without brother,
+    Set free my soul as thy soul is free.
+
+  O fair green-girdled mother of mine,
+    Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,
+  Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,
+    Thy large embraces are keen like pain.
+  Save me and hide me with all thy waves,
+  Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,
+  Those pure cold populous graves of thine
+    Wrought without hand in a world without stain.
+
+  I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
+    Change as the winds change, veer in the tide;
+  My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,
+    I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;
+  Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were,
+  Filled full with life to the eyes and hair,
+  As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips
+    With splendid summer and perfume and pride.
+
+  This woven raiment of nights and days,
+    Were it once cast off and unwound from me,
+  Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,
+    Alive and aware of thy ways and thee;
+  Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,
+  Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam,
+  A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
+    A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.
+
+  Fair mother, fed with the lives of men,
+    Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say.
+  Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again;
+    Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.
+  But death is the worst that comes of thee;
+  Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,
+  But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,
+    Having given us love, hast thou taken away?
+
+  O tender-hearted, O perfect lover,
+    Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.
+  The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,
+    Shall they not vanish away and apart?
+  But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;
+  Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;
+  Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;
+    From the first thou wert; in the end thou art.
+
+  And grief shall endure not for ever, I know.
+    As things that are not shall these things be;
+  We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow,
+    And none be grievous as this to me.
+  We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears,
+  The sound of time, the rhyme of the years;
+  Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow
+    As tender things of a spring-tide sea.
+
+  Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss,
+    Drowned gold and purple and royal rings.
+  And all time past, was it all for this?
+    Times unforgotten, and treasures of things?
+  Swift years of liking and sweet long laughter,
+  That wist not well of the years thereafter
+  Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss,
+    With lips that trembled and trailing wings?
+
+  There lived a singer in France of old
+    By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
+  In a land of sand and ruin and gold
+    There shone one woman, and none but she.
+  And finding life for her love's sake fail,
+  Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,
+  Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,
+    And praised God, seeing; and so died he.
+
+  Died, praising God for his gift and grace:
+    For she bowed down to him weeping, and said
+  "Live;" and her tears were shed on his face
+    Or ever the life in his face was shed.
+  The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung
+  Once, and her close lips touched him and clung
+  Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;
+    And so drew back, and the man was dead.
+
+  O brother, the gods were good to you.
+    Sleep, and be glad while the world endures.
+  Be well content as the years wear through;
+    Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures;
+  Give thanks for life, O brother, and death,
+  For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath,
+  For gifts she gave you, gracious and few,
+    Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.
+
+  Rest, and be glad of the gods; but I,
+    How shall I praise them, or how take rest?
+  There is not room under all the sky
+    For me that know not of worst or best,
+  Dream or desire of the days before,
+  Sweet things or bitterness, any more.
+  Love will not come to me now though I die,
+    As love came close to you, breast to breast.
+
+  I shall never be friends again with roses;
+    I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
+  Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
+    As a wave of the sea turned back by song.
+  There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,
+  Face to face with its own desire;
+  A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;
+   I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.
+
+  The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
+   The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
+  The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
+   The music burning at heart like wine,
+  An armed archangel whose hands raise up
+  All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
+  Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder--
+    These things are over, and no more mine.
+
+  These were a part of the playing I heard
+    Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
+  Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
+    Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
+  Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
+  Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
+  Now time has done with his one sweet word,
+    The wine and leaven of lovely life.
+
+  I shall go my ways, tread out my measure,
+    Fill the days of my daily breath
+  With fugitive things not good to treasure,
+    Do as the world doth, say as it saith;
+  But if we had loved each other--O sweet,
+  Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet,
+  The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure
+    To feel you tread it to dust and death--
+
+  Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
+    All that life gives and the years let go,
+  The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,
+    The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?
+  Come life, come death, not a word be said;
+  Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?
+  I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,
+    If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?
+
+
+
+
+LES NOYADES
+
+
+  Whatever a man of the sons of men
+    Shall say to his heart of the lords above,
+  They have shown man verily, once and again,
+    Marvellous mercies and infinite love.
+
+  In the wild fifth year of the change of things,
+    When France was glorious and blood-red, fair
+  With dust of battle and deaths of kings,
+    A queen of men, with helmeted hair,
+
+  Carrier came down to the Loire and slew,
+    Till all the ways and the waves waxed red:
+  Bound and drowned, slaying two by two,
+    Maidens and young men, naked and wed.
+
+  They brought on a day to his judgment-place
+    One rough with labour and red with fight,
+  And a lady noble by name and face,
+    Faultless, a maiden, wonderful, white.
+
+  She knew not, being for shame's sake blind,
+    If his eyes were hot on her face hard by.
+  And the judge bade strip and ship them, and bind
+    Bosom to bosom, to drown and die.
+
+  The white girl winced and whitened; but he
+    Caught fire, waxed bright as a great bright flame
+  Seen with thunder far out on the sea,
+    Laughed hard as the glad blood went and came.
+
+  Twice his lips quailed with delight, then said,
+    "I have but a word to you all, one word;
+  Bear with me; surely I am but dead;"
+    And all they laughed and mocked him and heard.
+
+  "Judge, when they open the judgment-roll,
+    I will stand upright before God and pray:
+  'Lord God, have mercy on one man's soul,
+    For his mercy was great upon earth, I say.
+
+  "'Lord, if I loved thee--Lord, if I served--
+    If these who darkened thy fair Son's face
+  I fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved
+    A hand's-breadth, Lord, in the perilous place--
+
+  "'I pray thee say to this man, O Lord,
+    _Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne_.
+  I will face thy wrath, though it bite as a sword,
+    And my soul shall burn for his soul, and atone.
+
+  "'For, Lord, thou knowest, O God most wise,
+    How gracious on earth were his deeds towards me.
+  Shall this be a small thing in thine eyes,
+    That is greater in mine than the whole great sea?'
+
+  "I have loved this woman my whole life long,
+    And even for love's sake when have I said
+  'I love you'? when have I done you wrong,
+    Living? but now I shall have you dead.
+
+  "Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love?
+    Love me or loathe, we are one not twain.
+  But God be praised in his heaven above
+    For this my pleasure and that my pain!
+
+  "For never a man, being mean like me,
+    Shall die like me till the whole world dies.
+  I shall drown with her, laughing for love; and she
+    Mix with me, touching me, lips and eyes.
+
+  "Shall she not know me and see me all through,
+    Me, on whose heart as a worm she trod?
+  You have given me, God requite it you,
+    What man yet never was given of God."
+
+  O sweet one love, O my life's delight,
+    Dear, though the days have divided us,
+  Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,
+    Not twice in the world shall the gods do thus.
+
+  Had it been so hard for my love? but I,
+    Though the gods gave all that a god can give,
+  I had chosen rather the gift to die,
+    Cease, and be glad above all that live.
+
+  For the Loire would have driven us down to the sea,
+    And the sea would have pitched us from shoal to shoal;
+  And I should have held you, and you held me,
+    As flesh holds flesh, and the soul the soul.
+
+  Could I change you, help you to love me, sweet,
+    Could I give you the love that would sweeten death,
+  We should yield, go down, locked hands and feet,
+    Die, drown together, and breath catch breath;
+
+  But you would have felt my soul in a kiss,
+    And known that once if I loved you well;
+  And I would have given my soul for this
+    To burn for ever in burning hell.
+
+
+
+
+A LEAVE-TAKING
+
+
+  Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
+  Let us go hence together without fear;
+  Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
+  And over all old things and all things dear.
+  She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
+  Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
+        She would not hear.
+
+  Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
+  Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
+  Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
+  There is no help, for all these things are so,
+  And all the world is bitter as a tear.
+  And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
+        She would not know.
+
+  Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
+  We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
+  Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
+  Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
+  All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
+  And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
+        She would not weep.
+
+  Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
+  She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
+  Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
+  Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
+  Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
+  And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
+        She would not love.
+
+  Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
+  Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
+  And the sea moving saw before it move
+  One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
+  Though all those waves went over us, and drove
+  Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
+        She would not care.
+
+  Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
+  Sing all once more together; surely she,
+  She too, remembering days and words that were,
+  Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
+  We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
+  Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
+        She would not see.
+
+
+
+
+ITYLUS
+
+
+  Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
+    How can thine heart be full of the spring?
+      A thousand summers are over and dead.
+  What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
+    What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
+      What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
+
+  O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
+    Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
+      The soft south whither thine heart is set?
+  Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
+    Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
+      Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
+
+  Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
+    Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
+      But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire,
+  Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
+    From tawny body and sweet small mouth
+      Feed the heart of the night with fire.
+
+  I the nightingale all spring through,
+    O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
+      All spring through till the spring be done,
+  Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
+    Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
+      Take flight and follow and find the sun.
+
+  Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
+    Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber,
+      How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
+  For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
+    Till life forget and death remember,
+      Till thou remember and I forget.
+
+  Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
+    I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
+      Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
+  Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
+    And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
+      But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?
+
+  O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
+    My heart in me is a molten ember
+      And over my head the waves have met.
+  But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow,
+    Could I forget or thou remember,
+      Couldst thou remember and I forget.
+
+  O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
+    The heart's division divideth us.
+      Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
+  But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
+    To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
+      The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.
+
+  O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
+    I pray thee sing not a little space.
+      Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
+  The woven web that was plain to follow,
+    The small slain body, the flowerlike face,
+      Can I remember if thou forget?
+
+  O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
+    The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
+      The voice of the child's blood crying yet
+  _Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?_
+    Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
+      But the world shall end when I forget.
+
+
+
+
+ANACTORIA
+
+            [Greek: tinos au ty peithoi
+            maps sagêneusas philotata?]
+                                    SAPPHO.
+
+
+  My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
+  Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
+  Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,
+  And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.
+  I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;
+  Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.
+  I would the sea had hidden us, the fire
+  (Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)
+  Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,
+  And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.
+  I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain
+  Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.
+  Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,
+  Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.
+  Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine
+  Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?
+  I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet
+  To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,
+  I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,
+  Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss.
+  Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove,
+  Erotion or Erinna to my love.
+  I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated
+  With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.
+  I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,
+  And no mouth but some serpent's found thee sweet.
+  I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,
+  Intense device, and superflux of pain;
+  Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake
+  Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;
+  Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill,
+  Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill;
+  Relapse and reluctation of the breath,
+  Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death.
+  I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,
+  Of all love's fiery nights and all his days,
+  And all the broken kisses salt as brine
+  That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine,
+  And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours
+  That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers,
+  Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through,
+  But all the flowerlike white stained round with blue;
+  The fervent underlid, and that above
+  Lifted with laughter or abashed with love;
+  Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair,
+  And leavings of the lilies in thine hair.
+  Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways,
+  And all the fruit of nights and flower of days,
+  And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine
+  That Love was born of burns and foams like wine,
+  And eyes insatiable of amorous hours,
+  Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers,
+  Coloured like night at heart, but cloven through
+  Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue,
+  Clothed with deep eyelids under and above--
+  Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love;
+  Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair,
+  And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair.
+  Ah, take no thought for Love's sake; shall this be,
+  And she who loves thy lover not love thee?
+  Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives,
+  Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives.
+  For I beheld in sleep the light that is
+  In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss
+  Of body and soul that mix with eager tears
+  And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears;
+  Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,
+  Imperishable, upon her storied seat;
+  Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,
+  A mind of many colours, and a mouth
+  Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,
+  With all her subtle face laughing aloud,
+  Bowed down upon me, saying, "Who doth thee wrong,
+  Sappho?" but thou--thy body is the song,
+  Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,
+  Though my voice die not till the whole world die;
+  Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,
+  Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.
+  Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?
+  Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:
+  "Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,
+  And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,
+  Shall kiss that would not kiss thee" (yea, kiss me)
+  "When thou wouldst not"--when I would not kiss thee!
+  Ah, more to me than all men as thou art,
+  Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart?
+  Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death,
+  Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath?
+  Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she
+  Made earth and all the centuries of the sea,
+  Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine
+  The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine,
+  Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods,
+  The young men and the maidens and the gods?
+  Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears,
+  And summer and flower of women and of years?
+  Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon
+  Sunlight, and exaltation of the moon;
+  Waters that answer waters, fields that wear
+  Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air?
+  Beyond those flying feet of fluttered doves,
+  Are there not other gods for other loves?
+  Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake,
+  Blossom not thorns and flowers not blood should break.
+  Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed
+  To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast!
+  Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed
+  On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!
+  That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste
+  The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!
+  That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat
+  Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet
+  Thy body were abolished and consumed,
+  And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!
+  Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
+  Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
+  Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,
+  The paces and the pauses of thy feet!
+  Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air
+  The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!
+  Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,
+  Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;
+  Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,
+  And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
+  As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
+  With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells
+  And blood like purple blossom at the tips
+  Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
+  For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I
+  Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,
+  Die of thy pain and my delight, and be
+  Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!
+  Would I not plague thee dying overmuch?
+  Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch
+  Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright
+  Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light?
+  Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,
+  Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,
+  Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these
+  A lyre of many faultless agonies?
+  Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth,
+  With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth,
+  Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh,
+  And wring thy very spirit through the flesh?
+  Cruel? but love makes all that love him well
+  As wise as heaven and crueller than hell.
+  Me hath love made more bitter toward thee
+  Than death toward man; but were I made as he
+  Who hath made all things to break them one by one,
+  If my feet trod upon the stars and sun
+  And souls of men as his have alway trod,
+  God knows I might be crueller than God.
+  For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings
+  The mystery of the cruelty of things?
+  Or say what God above all gods and years
+  With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears,
+  With lamentation from strange lands, from graves
+  Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,
+  From prison, and from plunging prows of ships
+  Through flamelike foam of the sea's closing lips--
+  With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair
+  Of comets, desolating the dim air,
+  When darkness is made fast with seals and bars,
+  And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars,
+  Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings
+  Darkening, and blind inexpiable things--
+  With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light
+  And travail of the planets of the night,
+  And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven,
+  Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven?
+  Is not his incense bitterness, his meat
+  Murder? his hidden face and iron feet
+  Hath not man known, and felt them on their way
+  Threaten and trample all things and every day?
+  Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed
+  Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst
+  Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed
+  The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed,
+  Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire,
+  Pain animate the dust of dead desire,
+  And life yield up her flower to violent fate?
+  Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,
+  Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,
+  And mix his immortality with death.
+  Why hath he made us? what had all we done
+  That we should live and loathe the sterile sun,
+  And with the moon wax paler as she wanes,
+  And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins?
+  Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be
+  As the rose born of one same blood with thee,
+  As a song sung, as a word said, and fall
+  Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,
+  Nor any memory of thee anywhere;
+  For never Muse has bound above thine hair
+  The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows
+  All summer kinship of the mortal rose
+  And colour of deciduous days, nor shed
+  Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head,
+  Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief
+  With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf.
+  Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,
+  Except these kisses of my lips on thine
+  Brand them with immortality; but me--
+  Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,
+  Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold
+  Cast forth of heaven, with feet of awful gold
+  And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,
+  Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind
+  Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown,
+  But in the light and laughter, in the moan
+  And music, and in grasp of lip and hand
+  And shudder of water that makes felt on land
+  The immeasurable tremor of all the sea,
+  Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.
+  Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night,
+  When all the winds of the world for pure delight
+  Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache;
+  When nightingales are louder for love's sake,
+  And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire;
+  Like me the one star swooning with desire
+  Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon,
+  As I at thine; like me the waste white noon,
+  Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me
+  The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea.
+  I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow,
+  And by the yearning in my veins I know
+  The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes
+  Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies
+  With troubled stars and travailing things of flame;
+  And in my heart the grief consuming them
+  Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these,
+  And all the summer travail of the trees
+  And all the winter sickness; and the earth,
+  Filled full with deadly works of death and birth,
+  Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death,
+  Has pain like mine in her divided breath;
+  Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit
+  Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root
+  Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath
+  Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth
+  Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead,
+  And wild birds rend her branches overhead.
+  These, woven as raiment for his word and thought,
+  These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought
+  Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me
+  Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee.
+  As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I--
+  Lo, earth may labour, men live long and die,
+  Years change and stars, and the high God devise
+  New things, and old things wane before his eyes
+  Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than they--
+  But, having made me, me he shall not slay.
+  Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his
+  Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss
+  Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet,
+  And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet,
+  Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees--
+  And all these end; he hath his will of these.
+  Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me--
+  Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea
+  And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease
+  This soul of mine as any soul of these,
+  And give me water and great sweet waves, and make
+  The very sea's name lordlier for my sake,
+  The whole sea sweeter--albeit I die indeed
+  And hide myself and sleep and no man heed,
+  Of me the high God hath not all his will.
+  Blossom of branches, and on each high hill
+  Clear air and wind, and under in clamorous vales
+  Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales,
+  Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire,
+  The wan washed sand and the waves' vain desire,
+  Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words
+  That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds
+  Violently singing till the whole world sings--
+  I Sappho shall be one with all these things,
+  With all high things for ever; and my face
+  Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,
+  Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof
+  With gladness and much sadness and long love.
+  Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain
+  New things, and never this best thing again;
+  Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,
+  Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.
+  And they shall know me as ye who have known me here,
+  Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year
+  When I love thee; and they shall praise me, and say
+  "She hath all time as all we have our day,
+  Shall she not live and have her will"--even I?
+  Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die.
+  For these shall give me of their souls, shall give
+  Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live,
+  Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath,
+  Save me and serve me, strive for me with death.
+  Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew
+  Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through,
+  Assuage me nor allay me nor appease,
+  Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease;
+  Till time wax faint in all his periods;
+  Till fate undo the bondage of the gods,
+  And lay, to slake and satiate me all through,
+  Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew,
+  And shed around and over and under me
+  Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN TO PROSERPINE
+
+(AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)
+
+_Vicisti, Galilæe._
+
+
+  I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an
+      end;
+  Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
+  Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or
+      that weep;
+  For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
+  Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
+  But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
+  Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
+  A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
+  I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
+  To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
+  For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
+  We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
+  O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!
+  From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men
+      say.
+  New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
+  They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
+  But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
+  Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
+  Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
+  Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
+  I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
+  Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
+  Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
+  The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breasts of the nymphs in the
+      brake;
+  Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
+  And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
+  All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
+  Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
+  More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
+  Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
+  A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
+  For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
+  And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
+  Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?
+  Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from
+      thy breath;
+  We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
+  Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
+  But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
+  Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the
+      end;
+  For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
+  Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
+  But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the
+      tides.
+  O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
+  O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
+  Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
+  I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
+  All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
+  Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the
+      past:
+  Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
+  Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
+  Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with
+      wings,
+  And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
+  White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
+  Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
+  The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
+  In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
+  In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's
+      tears;
+  With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
+  With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
+  And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that
+      devour:
+  And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
+  And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of
+      the sea:
+  And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the
+      air:
+  And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is
+      made bare.
+  Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea
+      with rods?
+  Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye
+      Gods?
+  All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
+  Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at
+      last.
+  In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
+      things,
+  Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you
+      for kings.
+  Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our
+      forefathers trod,
+  Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
+  Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her
+      head,
+  Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee
+      dead.
+  Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
+  Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she
+      is crowned.
+  Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
+  Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering
+      seas,
+  Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the
+      foam,
+  And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
+  For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
+  Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
+  White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
+  Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her
+      name.
+  For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
+  Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the
+      sea.
+  And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
+  And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
+  Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not
+      fall.
+  Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
+  But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the
+      end;
+  Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
+  O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
+  I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
+  In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night
+      where thou art,
+  Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from
+      the heart,
+  Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose
+      is white,
+  And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of
+      the night,
+  And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
+  Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
+  In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
+  Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and
+      undone.
+  Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal
+      breath:
+  For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
+  Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
+  I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
+  For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
+  A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.[2]
+  So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
+  For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
+
+    [2] [Greek: psycharion ei bastazon nekron].
+                                          EPICTETUS.
+
+
+
+
+ILICET
+
+
+  There is an end of joy and sorrow;
+  Peace all day long, all night, all morrow,
+    But never a time to laugh or weep.
+  The end is come of pleasant places,
+  The end of tender words and faces,
+    The end of all, the poppied sleep.
+
+  No place for sound within their hearing,
+  No room to hope, no time for fearing,
+    No lips to laugh, no lids for tears.
+  The old years have run out all their measure;
+  No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,
+    No fragment of the broken years.
+
+  Outside of all the worlds and ages,
+  There where the fool is as the sage is,
+    There where the slayer is clean of blood,
+  No end, no passage, no beginning,
+  There where the sinner leaves off sinning,
+    There where the good man is not good.
+
+  There is not one thing with another,
+  But Evil saith to Good: My brother,
+    My brother, I am one with thee:
+  They shall not strive nor cry for ever:
+  No man shall choose between them: never
+    Shall this thing end and that thing be.
+
+  Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken
+  Shall shake them, and they shall not waken;
+    None that has lain down shall arise;
+  The stones are sealed across their places;
+  One shadow is shed on all their faces,
+    One blindness cast on all their eyes.
+
+  Sleep, is it sleep perchance that covers
+  Each face, as each face were his lover's?
+    Farewell; as men that sleep fare well.
+  The grave's mouth laughs unto derision
+  Desire and dread and dream and vision,
+    Delight of heaven and sorrow of hell.
+
+  No soul shall tell nor lip shall number
+  The names and tribes of you that slumber;
+    No memory, no memorial.
+  "Thou knowest"--who shall say thou knowest?
+  There is none highest and none lowest:
+    An end, an end, an end of all.
+
+  Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow
+  To these that shall not have good morrow;
+    The gods be gentle to all these.
+  Nay, if death be not, how shall they be?
+  Nay, is there help in heaven? it may be
+    All things and lords of things shall cease.
+
+  The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes;
+  The bronzèd brims are deep in ashes;
+    The pale old lips of death are fed.
+  Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter?
+  Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter,
+    At sight of all these poor old dead?
+
+  Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it;
+  Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit,
+    Thy laughter shall not give thee ease;
+  Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying,
+  Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing,
+    Thou shalt not raise up one of these.
+
+  Burnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses,
+  The breathing flame's mouth curls and kisses
+    The small dried rows of frankincense;
+  All round the sad red blossoms smoulder,
+  Flowers coloured like the fire, but colder,
+    In sign of sweet things taken hence;
+
+  Yea, for their sake and in death's favour
+  Things of sweet shape and of sweet savour
+    We yield them, spice and flower and wine;
+  Yea, costlier things than wine or spices,
+  Whereof none knoweth how great the price is,
+    And fruit that comes not of the vine.
+
+  From boy's pierced throat and girl's pierced bosom
+  Drips, reddening round the blood-red blossom,
+    The slow delicious bright soft blood,
+  Bathing the spices and the pyre,
+  Bathing the flowers and fallen fire,
+    Bathing the blossom by the bud.
+
+  Roses whose lips the flame has deadened
+  Drink till the lapping leaves are reddened
+    And warm wet inner petals weep;
+  The flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure,
+  Barren of balm and purple pleasure,
+    Fumes with no native steam of sleep.
+
+  Why will ye weep? what do ye weeping?
+  For waking folk and people sleeping,
+    And sands that fill and sands that fall,
+  The days rose-red, the poppied hours,
+  Blood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers,
+    There is one end of one and all.
+
+  Shall such an one lend love or borrow?
+  Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow?
+    Shall these give thanks for words or breath?
+  Their hate is as their loving-kindness;
+  The frontlet of their brows is blindness,
+    The armlet of their arms is death.
+
+  Lo, for no noise or light of thunder
+  Shall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder;
+    He that hath taken, shall he give?
+  He hath rent them: shall he bind together?
+  He hath bound them: shall he break the tether?
+    He hath slain them: shall he bid them live?
+
+  A little sorrow, a little pleasure,
+  Fate metes us from the dusty measure
+    That holds the date of all of us;
+  We are born with travail and strong crying,
+  And from the birth-day to the dying
+    The likeness of our life is thus.
+
+  One girds himself to serve another,
+  Whose father was the dust, whose mother
+    The little dead red worm therein;
+  They find no fruit of things they cherish;
+  The goodness of a man shall perish,
+    It shall be one thing with his sin.
+
+  In deep wet ways by grey old gardens
+  Fed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens;
+    They know not what fruits wane or grow;
+  Red summer burns to the utmost ember;
+  They know not, neither can remember,
+    The old years and flowers they used to know.
+
+  Ah, for their sakes, so trapped and taken,
+  For theirs, forgotten and forsaken,
+    Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer.
+  Nay, where the heart of wrath is broken,
+  Where long love ends as a thing spoken,
+    How shall thy crying enter there?
+
+  Though the iron sides of the old world falter,
+  The likeness of them shall not alter
+    For all the rumour of periods,
+  The stars and seasons that come after,
+  The tears of latter men, the laughter
+    Of the old unalterable gods.
+
+  Far up above the years and nations,
+  The high gods, clothed and crowned with patience,
+    Endure through days of deathlike date;
+  They bear the witness of things hidden;
+  Before their eyes all life stands chidden,
+    As they before the eyes of Fate.
+
+  Not for their love shall Fate retire,
+  Nor they relent for our desire,
+    Nor the graves open for their call.
+  The end is more than joy and anguish,
+  Than lives that laugh and lives that languish,
+    The poppied sleep, the end of all.
+
+
+
+
+HERMAPHRODITUS
+
+
+  I
+
+  Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,
+    Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;
+    Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,
+  Save the long smile that they are wearied of.
+  Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,
+    Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;
+    Two loves at either blossom of thy breast
+  Strive until one be under and one above.
+  Their breath is fire upon the amorous air,
+    Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire:
+  And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,
+    Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;
+  A strong desire begot on great despair,
+    A great despair cast out by strong desire.
+
+
+  II
+
+  Where between sleep and life some brief space is,
+    With love like gold bound round about the head,
+    Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,
+  Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his
+  To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;
+    Yet from them something like as fire is shed
+    That shall not be assuaged till death be dead,
+  Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.
+  Love made himself of flesh that perisheth
+    A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;
+  But on the one side sat a man like death,
+    And on the other a woman sat like sin.
+  So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
+    Love turned himself and would not enter in.
+
+
+  III
+
+  Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light
+    That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes?
+    Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies,
+  Or like the night's dew laid upon the night.
+  Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right,
+  Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise
+    Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,
+    Or make thee woman for a man's delight.
+  To what strange end hath some strange god made fair
+    The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?
+  Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair,
+    Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers,
+  Given all the gold that all the seasons wear
+    To thee that art a thing of barren hours?
+
+
+  IV
+
+  Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear.
+    Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know;
+    Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow
+  So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear
+  Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear--
+    Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,
+    Though love and life and death should come and go,
+  So dreadful, so desirable, so dear?
+  Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise
+    Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
+    Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
+  And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
+  And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs;
+    But Love being blind, how should he know of this?
+
+    _Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863._
+
+
+
+
+FRAGOLETTA
+
+
+  O Love! what shall be said of thee?
+  The son of grief begot by joy?
+  Being sightless, wilt thou see?
+  Being sexless, wilt thou be
+  Maiden or boy?
+
+  I dreamed of strange lips yesterday
+  And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood
+  Was like a rose's--yea,
+  A rose's when it lay
+  Within the bud.
+
+  What fields have bred thee, or what groves
+  Concealed thee, O mysterious flower,
+  O double rose of Love's,
+  With leaves that lure the doves
+  From bud to bower?
+
+  I dare not kiss it, lest my lip
+  Press harder than an indrawn breath,
+  And all the sweet life slip
+  Forth, and the sweet leaves drip,
+  Bloodlike, in death.
+
+  O sole desire of my delight!
+  O sole delight of my desire!
+  Mine eyelids and eyesight
+  Feed on thee day and night
+  Like lips of fire.
+
+  Lean back thy throat of carven pearl,
+  Let thy mouth murmur like the dove's;
+  Say, Venus hath no girl,
+  No front of female curl,
+  Among her Loves.
+
+  Thy sweet low bosom, thy close hair,
+  Thy strait soft flanks and slenderer feet,
+  Thy virginal strange air,
+  Are these not over fair
+  For Love to greet?
+
+  How should he greet thee? what new name,
+  Fit to move all men's hearts, could move
+  Thee, deaf to love or shame,
+  Love's sister, by the same
+  Mother as Love?
+
+  Ah sweet, the maiden's mouth is cold,
+  Her breast-blossoms are simply red,
+  Her hair mere brown or gold,
+  Fold over simple fold
+  Binding her head.
+
+  Thy mouth is made of fire and wine,
+  Thy barren bosom takes my kiss
+  And turns my soul to thine
+  And turns thy lip to mine,
+  And mine it is.
+
+  Thou hast a serpent in thine hair,
+  In all the curls that close and cling;
+  And ah, thy breast-flower!
+  Ah love, thy mouth too fair
+  To kiss and sting!
+
+  Cleave to me, love me, kiss mine eyes,
+  Satiate thy lips with loving me;
+  Nay, for thou shalt not rise;
+  Lie still as Love that dies
+  For love of thee.
+
+  Mine arms are close about thine head,
+  My lips are fervent on thy face,
+  And where my kiss hath fed
+  Thy flower-like blood leaps red
+  To the kissed place.
+
+  O bitterness of things too sweet!
+  O broken singing of the dove!
+  Love's wings are over fleet,
+  And like the panther's feet
+  The feet of Love.
+
+
+
+
+RONDEL
+
+
+  These many years since we began to be,
+  What have the gods done with us? what with me,
+  What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears,
+  Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea,
+  Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers,
+    These many years.
+
+  With her, my love, with her have they done well?
+  But who shall answer for her? who shall tell
+  Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears?
+  May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell,
+  From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres
+    These many years!
+
+  But if tears ever touched, for any grief,
+  Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf,
+  Deep double shells wherethrough the eye-flower peers,
+  Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief,
+  Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears
+    These many years.
+
+
+
+
+SATIA TE SANGUINE
+
+
+  If you loved me ever so little,
+    I could bear the bonds that gall,
+  I could dream the bonds were brittle;
+    You do not love me at all.
+
+  O beautiful lips, O bosom
+    More white than the moon's and warm,
+  A sterile, a ruinous blossom
+    Is blown your way in a storm.
+
+  As the lost white feverish limbs
+    Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
+  In foam where the sea-weed swims,
+    Swam loose for the streams to lift,
+
+  My heart swims blind in a sea
+    That stuns me; swims to and fro,
+  And gathers to windward and lee
+    Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
+
+  A broken, an emptied boat,
+    Sea saps it, winds blow apart,
+  Sick and adrift and afloat,
+    The barren waif of a heart.
+
+  Where, when the gods would be cruel,
+    Do they go for a torture? where
+  Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?
+    Ah, not in the flesh, not there!
+
+  The racks of earth and the rods
+    Are weak as foam on the sands;
+  In the heart is the prey for gods,
+    Who crucify hearts, not hands.
+
+  Mere pangs corrode and consume,
+    Dead when life dies in the brain;
+  In the infinite spirit is room
+    For the pulse of an infinite pain.
+
+  I wish you were dead, my dear;
+    I would give you, had I to give
+  Some death too bitter to fear;
+    It is better to die than live.
+
+  I wish you were stricken of thunder
+    And burnt with a bright flame through,
+  Consumed and cloven in sunder,
+    I dead at your feet like you.
+
+  If I could but know after all,
+    I might cease to hunger and ache,
+  Though your heart were ever so small,
+    If it were not a stone or a snake.
+
+  You are crueller, you that we love,
+    Than hatred, hunger, or death;
+  You have eyes and breasts like a dove,
+    And you kill men's hearts with a breath
+
+  As plague in a poisonous city
+    Insults and exults on her dead,
+  So you, when pallid for pity
+    Comes love, and fawns to be fed.
+
+  As a tame beast writhes and wheedles,
+    He fawns to be fed with wiles;
+  You carve him a cross of needles,
+    And whet them sharp as your smiles.
+
+  He is patient of thorn and whip,
+    He is dumb under axe or dart;
+  You suck with a sleepy red lip
+    The wet red wounds in his heart.
+
+  You thrill as his pulses dwindle,
+    You brighten and warm as he bleeds,
+  With insatiable eyes that kindle
+    And insatiable mouth that feeds.
+
+  Your hands nailed love to the tree,
+    You stript him, scourged him with rods,
+  And drowned him deep in the sea
+    That hides the dead and their gods.
+
+  And for all this, die will he not;
+    There is no man sees him but I;
+  You came and went and forgot;
+    I hope he will some day die.
+
+
+
+
+A LITANY
+
+  [Greek: en ouranô phaennas
+  krypsô par' hymin augas,
+  mias pro nyktos hepta nyktas hexete, k.t.l.]
+                                       _Anth. Sac._
+
+
+  FIRST ANTIPHONE
+
+  All the bright lights of heaven
+      I will make dark over thee;
+  One night shall be as seven
+      That its skirts may cover thee;
+  I will send on thy strong men a sword,
+      On thy remnant a rod;
+  Ye shall know that I am the Lord,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  SECOND ANTIPHONE
+
+  All the bright lights of heaven
+      Thou hast made dark over us;
+  One night has been as seven
+      That its skirt might cover us;
+  Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword,
+      On our remnant a rod;
+  We know that thou art the Lord,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+  THIRD ANTIPHONE
+
+  As the tresses and wings of the wind
+      Are scattered and shaken,
+  I will scatter all them that have sinned,
+      There shall none be taken;
+  As a sower that scattereth seed,
+      So will I scatter them;
+  As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,
+      I will break and shatter them.
+
+
+  FOURTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  As the wings and the locks of the wind
+      Are scattered and shaken,
+  Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned,
+      There was no man taken;
+  As a sower that scattereth seed,
+      So hast thou scattered us;
+  As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,
+      Thou hast broken and shattered us.
+
+
+  FIFTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  From all thy lovers that love thee
+      I God will sunder thee;
+  I will make darkness above thee,
+      And thick darkness under thee;
+  Before me goeth a light,
+      Behind me a sword;
+  Shall a remnant find grace in my sight?
+      I am the Lord.
+
+
+  SIXTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  From all our lovers that love us
+      Thou God didst sunder us;
+  Thou madest darkness above us,
+      And thick darkness under us;
+  Thou hast kindled thy wrath for a light,
+      And made ready thy sword;
+  Let a remnant find grace in thy sight,
+      We beseech thee, O Lord.
+
+
+  SEVENTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  Wilt thou bring fine gold for a payment
+      For sins on this wise?
+  For the glittering of raiment
+      And the shining of eyes,
+  For the painting of faces
+      And the sundering of trust,
+  For the sins of thine high places
+      And delight of thy lust?
+
+  For your high things ye shall have lowly,
+      Lamentation for song;
+  For, behold, I God am holy,
+      I the Lord am strong;
+  Ye shall seek me and shall not reach me
+      Till the wine-press be trod;
+  In that hour ye shall turn and beseech me,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  EIGHTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  Not with fine gold for a payment,
+      But with coin of sighs,
+  But with rending of raiment
+      And with weeping of eyes,
+  But with shame of stricken faces
+      And with strewing of dust,
+  For the sin of stately places
+      And lordship of lust;
+
+  With voices of men made lowly,
+      Made empty of song,
+  O Lord God most holy,
+      O God most strong,
+  We reach out hands to reach thee
+      Ere the wine-press be trod;
+  We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+  NINTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  In that hour thou shalt say to the night,
+      Come down and cover us;
+  To the cloud on thy left and thy right,
+      Be thou spread over us;
+  A snare shall be as thy mother,
+      And a curse thy bride;
+  Thou shalt put her away, and another
+      Shall lie by thy side.
+
+  Thou shalt neither rise up by day
+      Nor lie down by night;
+  Would God it were dark! thou shalt say;
+      Would God it were light!
+  And the sight of thine eyes shall be made
+      As the burning of fire;
+  And thy soul shall be sorely afraid
+      For thy soul's desire.
+
+  Ye whom your lords loved well,
+      Putting silver and gold on you,
+  The inevitable hell
+      Shall surely take hold on you;
+  Your gold shall be for a token,
+      Your staff for a rod;
+  With the breaking of bands ye are broken,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  TENTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  In our sorrow we said to the night,
+      Fall down and cover us;
+  To the darkness at left and at right,
+      Be thou shed over us;
+  We had breaking of spirit to mother
+      And cursing to bride;
+  And one was slain, and another
+      Stood up at our side.
+
+  We could not arise by day,
+      Nor lie down by night;
+  Thy sword was sharp in our way,
+      Thy word in our sight;
+  The delight of our eyelids was made
+      As the burning of fire;
+  And our souls became sorely afraid
+      For our soul's desire.
+
+  We whom the world loved well,
+      Laying silver and gold on us,
+  The kingdom of death and of hell
+      Riseth up to take hold on us;
+  Our gold is turned to a token,
+      Our staff to a rod;
+  Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+
+
+A LAMENTATION
+
+
+  I
+
+  Who hath known the ways of time
+    Or trodden behind his feet?
+      There is no such man among men.
+  For chance overcomes him, or crime
+    Changes; for all things sweet
+      In time wax bitter again.
+  Who shall give sorrow enough,
+    Or who the abundance of tears?
+  Mine eyes are heavy with love
+    And a sword gone thorough mine ears,
+      A sound like a sword and fire,
+      For pity, for great desire;
+  Who shall ensure me thereof,
+    Lest I die, being full of my fears?
+
+  Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
+    The sleepless spirit, the root
+      And blossom of evil will,
+        The divine device of a god?
+  Who shall behold it or hath?
+    The twice-tongued prophets are mute,
+      The many speakers are still;
+        No foot has travelled or trod,
+  No hand has meted, his path.
+    Man's fate is a blood-red fruit,
+      And the mighty gods have their fill
+        And relax not the rein, or the rod.
+
+  Ye were mighty in heart from of old,
+    Ye slew with the spear, and are slain.
+  Keen after heat is the cold,
+    Sore after summer is rain,
+  And melteth man to the bone.
+    As water he weareth away,
+    As a flower, as an hour in a day,
+  Fallen from laughter to moan.
+  But my spirit is shaken with fear
+    Lest an evil thing begin,
+  New-born, a spear for a spear,
+    And one for another sin.
+  Or ever our tears began,
+    It was known from of old and said;
+  One law for a living man,
+    And another law for the dead.
+  For these are fearful and sad,
+    Vain, and things without breath;
+      While he lives let a man be glad,
+        For none hath joy of his death.
+
+
+  II
+
+  Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,
+    Or all the travail of the sea,
+  The many ways and waves, the birth
+  Fruitless, the labour nothing worth?
+    Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.
+  There is none shall say he hath seen,
+    There is none he hath known.
+  Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,
+    I have reaped and sown;
+  I have seen the desire of mine eyes,
+    The beginning of love,
+  The season of kisses and sighs
+    And the end thereof.
+  I have known the ways of the sea,
+    All the perilous ways,
+  Strange winds have spoken with me,
+    And the tongues of strange days.
+  I have hewn the pine for ships;
+    Where steeds run arow,
+  I have seen from their bridled lips
+    Foam blown as the snow.
+  With snapping of chariot-poles
+    And with straining of oars
+  I have grazed in the race the goals,
+    In the storm the shores;
+  As a greave is cleft with an arrow
+    At the joint of the knee,
+  I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow
+    To the heart of the sea.
+  When air was smitten in sunder
+    I have watched on high
+  The ways of the stars and the thunder
+    In the night of the sky;
+  Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,
+    As from lips that dissever;
+  One abideth the space of an hour,
+    One endureth for ever.
+  Lo, what hath he seen or known,
+    Of the way and the wave
+  Unbeholden, unsailed on, unsown,
+    From the breast to the grave?
+
+  Or ever the stars were made, or skies,
+    Grief was born, and the kinless night,
+      Mother of gods without form or name.
+  And light is born out of heaven and dies,
+    And one day knows not another's light,
+      But night is one, and her shape the same.
+
+  But dumb the goddesses underground
+    Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet
+      Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;
+  Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;
+    And sift in scales and winnow as wheat
+      Men's souls, and sorrow of manifold things.
+
+
+  III
+
+  Nor less of grief than ours
+    The gods wrought long ago
+      To bruise men one by one;
+  But with the incessant hours
+    Fresh grief and greener woe
+      Spring, as the sudden sun
+  Year after year makes flowers;
+    And these die down and grow,
+      And the next year lacks none.
+
+  As these men sleep, have slept
+    The old heroes in time fled,
+      No dream-divided sleep;
+  And holier eyes have wept
+    Than ours, when on her dead
+      Gods have seen Thetis weep,
+  With heavenly hair far-swept
+    Back, heavenly hands outspread
+      Round what she could not keep,
+
+  Could not one day withhold,
+    One night; and like as these
+      White ashes of no weight,
+  Held not his urn the cold
+    Ashes of Heracles?
+      For all things born one gate
+  Opens, no gate of gold;
+    Opens; and no man sees
+      Beyond the gods and fate.
+
+
+
+
+ANIMA ANCEPS
+
+
+  Till death have broken
+  Sweet life's love-token,
+  Till all be spoken
+    That shall be said,
+  What dost thou praying,
+  O soul, and playing
+  With song and saying,
+    Things flown and fled?
+  For this we know not--
+  That fresh springs flow not
+  And fresh griefs grow not
+    When men are dead;
+  When strange years cover
+  Lover and lover,
+  And joys are over
+    And tears are shed.
+
+  If one day's sorrow
+  Mar the day's morrow--
+  If man's life borrow
+    And man's death pay--
+  If souls once taken,
+  If lives once shaken,
+  Arise, awaken,
+    By night, by day--
+  Why with strong crying
+  And years of sighing,
+  Living and dying,
+    Fast ye and pray?
+  For all your weeping,
+  Waking and sleeping,
+  Death comes to reaping
+    And takes away.
+
+  Though time rend after
+  Roof-tree from rafter,
+  A little laughter
+    Is much more worth
+  Than thus to measure
+  The hour, the treasure,
+  The pain, the pleasure,
+    The death, the birth;
+  Grief, when days alter,
+  Like joy shall falter;
+  Song-book and psalter,
+    Mourning and mirth.
+  Live like the swallow;
+  Seek not to follow
+  Where earth is hollow
+    Under the earth.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE ORCHARD
+
+(PROVENÇAL BURDEN)
+
+
+  Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;
+  Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;
+  Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon
+  Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie.
+  Kissed upon either cheek and either eye,
+  I turn to thee as some green afternoon
+  Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Lie closer, lean your face upon my side,
+  Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,
+  Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;
+  The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  O my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:
+  Is it not sweeter than a foolish kiss?
+  Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June,
+  My rose, so like a tender mouth it is:
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire,
+  Dividing my delight and my desire,
+  The crescent life and love the plenilune,
+  Love me though dusk begin and dark retire;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Ah, my heart fails, my blood draws back; I know,
+  When life runs over, life is near to go;
+  And with the slain of love love's ways are strewn,
+  And with their blood, if love will have it so;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Ah, do thy will now; slay me if thou wilt;
+  There is no building now the walls are built,
+  No quarrying now the corner-stone is hewn,
+  No drinking now the vine's whole blood is spilt;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain;
+  Pluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain,
+  Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune,
+  Slay me ere day can slay desire again;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Yea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea,
+  Take life and all, for I will die, I say;
+  Love, I gave love, is life a better boon?
+  For sweet night's sake I will not live till day;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Nay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go.
+  Ah sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know
+  Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune;
+  Hold my hair fast, and kiss me through it so.
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+
+
+
+A MATCH
+
+
+  If love were what the rose is,
+    And I were like the leaf,
+  Our lives would grow together
+  In sad or singing weather,
+  Blown fields or flowerful closes,
+    Green pleasure or grey grief;
+  If love were what the rose is,
+    And I were like the leaf.
+
+  If I were what the words are,
+    And love were like the tune,
+  With double sound and single
+  Delight our lips would mingle,
+  With kisses glad as birds are
+    That get sweet rain at noon;
+  If I were what the words are,
+    And love were like the tune.
+
+  If you were life, my darling,
+    And I your love were death,
+  We'd shine and snow together
+  Ere March made sweet the weather
+  With daffodil and starling
+    And hours of fruitful breath;
+  If you were life, my darling,
+    And I your love were death.
+
+  If you were thrall to sorrow,
+    And I were page to joy,
+  We'd play for lives and seasons
+  With loving looks and treasons
+  And tears of night and morrow
+    And laughs of maid and boy;
+  If you were thrall to sorrow,
+    And I were page to joy.
+
+  If you were April's lady,
+    And I were lord in May,
+  We'd throw with leaves for hours
+  And draw for days with flowers,
+  Till day like night were shady
+    And night were bright like day;
+  If you were April's lady,
+    And I were lord in May.
+
+  If you were queen of pleasure,
+    And I were king of pain,
+  We'd hunt down love together,
+  Pluck out his flying-feather,
+  And teach his feet a measure,
+    And find his mouth a rein;
+  If you were queen of pleasure,
+    And I were king of pain.
+
+
+
+
+FAUSTINE
+
+_Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant._
+
+
+  Lean back, and get some minutes' peace;
+    Let your head lean
+  Back to the shoulder with its fleece
+    Of locks, Faustine.
+
+  The shapely silver shoulder stoops,
+    Weighed over clean
+  With state of splendid hair that droops
+    Each side, Faustine.
+
+  Let me go over your good gifts
+    That crown you queen;
+  A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts
+    Each week, Faustine.
+
+  Bright heavy brows well gathered up:
+    White gloss and sheen;
+  Carved lips that make my lips a cup
+    To drink, Faustine,
+
+  Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,
+    Being mixed therein
+  Since first the devil threw dice with God
+    For you, Faustine.
+
+  Your naked new-born soul, their stake,
+    Stood blind between;
+  God said "let him that wins her take
+    And keep Faustine."
+
+  But this time Satan throve, no doubt;
+    Long since, I ween,
+  God's part in you was battered out;
+    Long since, Faustine.
+
+  The die rang sideways as it fell,
+    Rang cracked and thin,
+  Like a man's laughter heard in hell
+    Far down, Faustine,
+
+  A shadow of laughter like a sigh,
+    Dead sorrow's kin;
+  So rang, thrown down, the devil's die
+    That won Faustine.
+
+  A suckling of his breed you were,
+    One hard to wean;
+  But God, who lost you, left you fair,
+    We see, Faustine.
+
+  You have the face that suits a woman
+    For her soul's screen--
+  The sort of beauty that's called human
+    In hell, Faustine.
+
+  You could do all things but be good
+    Or chaste of mien;
+  And that you would not if you could,
+    We know, Faustine.
+
+  Even he who cast seven devils out
+    Of Magdalene
+  Could hardly do as much, I doubt,
+    For you, Faustine.
+
+  Did Satan make you to spite God?
+    Or did God mean
+  To scourge with scorpions for a rod
+    Our sins, Faustine?
+
+  I know what queen at first you were,
+    As though I had seen
+  Red gold and black imperious hair
+    Twice crown Faustine.
+
+  As if your fed sarcophagus
+    Spared flesh and skin,
+  You come back face to face with us,
+    The same Faustine.
+
+  She loved the games men played with death,
+    Where death must win;
+  As though the slain man's blood and breath
+    Revived Faustine.
+
+  Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net;
+    Lithe limbs and lean
+  From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat
+    To soothe Faustine.
+
+  She drank the steaming drift and dust
+    Blown off the scene;
+  Blood could not ease the bitter lust
+    That galled Faustine.
+
+  All round the foul fat furrows reeked,
+    Where blood sank in;
+  The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked
+    All round Faustine.
+
+  But these are gone now: years entomb
+    The dust and din;
+  Yea, even the bath's fierce reek and fume
+    That slew Faustine.
+
+  Was life worth living then? and now
+    Is life worth sin?
+  Where are the imperial years? and how
+    Are you Faustine?
+
+  Your soul forgot her joys, forgot
+    Her times of teen;
+  Yea, this life likewise will you not
+    Forget, Faustine?
+
+  For in the time we know not of
+    Did fate begin
+  Weaving the web of days that wove
+    Your doom, Faustine.
+
+  The threads were wet with wine, and all
+    Were smooth to spin;
+  They wove you like a Bacchanal,
+    The first Faustine.
+
+  And Bacchus cast your mates and you
+    Wild grapes to glean;
+  Your flower-like lips were dashed with dew
+    From his, Faustine.
+
+  Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold
+    The vine's wet green,
+  Long ere they coined in Roman gold
+    Your face, Faustine.
+
+  Then after change of soaring feather
+    And winnowing fin,
+  You woke in weeks of feverish weather,
+    A new Faustine.
+
+  A star upon your birthday burned,
+    Whose fierce serene
+  Red pulseless planet never yearned
+    In heaven, Faustine.
+
+  Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew
+    Through Mitylene
+  Shook the fierce quivering blood in you
+    By night, Faustine.
+
+  The shameless nameless love that makes
+    Hell's iron gin
+  Shut on you like a trap that breaks
+    The soul, Faustine.
+
+  And when your veins were void and dead,
+    What ghosts unclean
+  Swarmed round the straitened barren bed
+    That hid Faustine?
+
+  What sterile growths of sexless root
+    Or epicene?
+  What flower of kisses without fruit
+    Of love, Faustine?
+
+  What adders came to shed their coats?
+    What coiled obscene
+  Small serpents with soft stretching throats
+    Caressed Faustine?
+
+  But the time came of famished hours,
+    Maimed loves and mean,
+  This ghastly thin-faced time of ours,
+    To spoil Faustine.
+
+  You seem a thing that hinges hold,
+    A love-machine
+  With clockwork joints of supple gold--
+    No more, Faustine.
+
+  Not godless, for you serve one God,
+    The Lampsacene,
+  Who metes the gardens with his rod;
+    Your lord, Faustine.
+
+  If one should love you with real love
+    (Such things have been,
+  Things your fair face knows nothing of,
+    It seems, Faustine);
+
+  That clear hair heavily bound back,
+    The lights wherein
+  Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black;
+    Your throat, Faustine,
+
+  Strong, heavy, throwing out the face
+    And hard bright chin
+  And shameful scornful lips that grace
+    Their shame, Faustine,
+
+  Curled lips, long-since half kissed away,
+    Still sweet and keen;
+  You'd give him--poison shall we say?
+    Or what, Faustine?
+
+
+
+
+A CAMEO
+
+
+  There was a graven image of Desire
+      Painted with red blood on a ground of gold
+      Passing between the young men and the old,
+  And by him Pain, whose body shone like fire,
+  And Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.
+      Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold,
+      The insatiable Satiety kept hold,
+  Walking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.
+  The senses and the sorrows and the sins,
+      And the strange loves that suck the breasts of Hate
+  Till lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture,
+  Followed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.
+      Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate,
+  Upon whose lock was written _Peradventure_.
+
+
+
+
+SONG BEFORE DEATH
+
+(FROM THE FRENCH)
+
+1795
+
+
+  Sweet mother, in a minute's span
+    Death parts thee and my love of thee;
+  Sweet love, that yet art living man,
+    Come back, true love, to comfort me.
+  Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!
+  But my love comes not any day.
+
+  As roses, when the warm West blows,
+    Break to full flower and sweeten spring,
+  My soul would break to a glorious rose
+    In such wise at his whispering.
+  In vain I listen; wellaway!
+  My love says nothing any day.
+
+  You that will weep for pity of love
+    On the low place where I am lain,
+  I pray you, having wept enough,
+    Tell him for whom I bore such pain
+  That he was yet, ah! wellaway!
+  My true love to my dying day.
+
+
+
+
+ROCOCO
+
+
+  Take hands and part with laughter;
+    Touch lips and part with tears;
+  Once more and no more after,
+    Whatever comes with years.
+  We twain shall not remeasure
+    The ways that left us twain;
+  Nor crush the lees of pleasure
+    From sanguine grapes of pain.
+
+  We twain once well in sunder,
+    What will the mad gods do
+  For hate with me, I wonder,
+    Or what for love with you?
+  Forget them till November,
+    And dream there's April yet;
+  Forget that I remember,
+    And dream that I forget.
+
+  Time found our tired love sleeping,
+    And kissed away his breath;
+  But what should we do weeping,
+    Though light love sleep to death?
+  We have drained his lips at leisure,
+    Till there's not left to drain
+  A single sob of pleasure,
+    A single pulse of pain.
+
+  Dream that the lips once breathless
+    Might quicken if they would;
+  Say that the soul is deathless;
+    Dream that the gods are good;
+  Say March may wed September,
+    And time divorce regret;
+  But not that you remember,
+    And not that I forget.
+
+  We have heard from hidden places
+    What love scarce lives and hears:
+  We have seen on fervent faces
+    The pallor of strange tears:
+  We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,
+    Whence, ripe to steam and stain,
+  Foams round the feet of pleasure
+    The blood-red must of pain.
+
+  Remembrance may recover
+    And time bring back to time
+  The name of your first lover,
+    The ring of my first rhyme;
+  But rose-leaves of December
+    The frosts of June shall fret,
+  The day that you remember,
+    The day that I forget.
+
+  The snake that hides and hisses
+    In heaven we twain have known;
+  The grief of cruel kisses,
+    The joy whose mouth makes moan;
+  The pulse's pause and measure,
+    Where in one furtive vein
+  Throbs through the heart of pleasure
+    The purpler blood of pain.
+
+  We have done with tears and treasons
+    And love for treason's sake;
+  Room for the swift new seasons,
+    The years that burn and break,
+  Dismantle and dismember
+    Men's days and dreams, Juliette;
+  For love may not remember,
+    But time will not forget.
+
+  Life treads down love in flying,
+    Time withers him at root;
+  Bring all dead things and dying,
+    Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,
+  Where, crushed by three days' pressure,
+    Our three days' love lies slain;
+  And earlier leaf of pleasure,
+    And latter flower of pain.
+
+  Breathe close upon the ashes,
+    It may be flame will leap;
+  Unclose the soft close lashes,
+    Lift up the lids, and weep.
+  Light love's extinguished ember,
+    Let one tear leave it wet
+  For one that you remember
+    And ten that you forget.
+
+
+
+
+STAGE LOVE
+
+
+  When the game began between them for a jest,
+  He played king and she played queen to match the best;
+  Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,
+  These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.
+
+  Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night;
+  All the sting and all the stain of long delight;
+  These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her,
+  When she played at half a love with half a lover.
+
+  Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry;
+  They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
+  Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
+  Till he died for good in play, and rose in sorrow.
+
+  What the years mean; how time dies and is not slain;
+  How love grows and laughs and cries and wanes again;
+  These were things she came to know, and take their measure,
+  When the play was played out so for one man's pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEPER
+
+
+  Nothing is better, I well think,
+    Than love; the hidden well-water
+  Is not so delicate to drink:
+    This was well seen of me and her.
+
+  I served her in a royal house;
+    I served her wine and curious meat.
+  For will to kiss between her brows,
+    I had no heart to sleep or eat.
+
+  Mere scorn God knows she had of me,
+    A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,
+  Who plucked his clerk's hood back to see
+    Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.
+
+  I vex my head with thinking this.
+    Yea, though God always hated me,
+  And hates me now that I can kiss
+    Her eyes, plait up her hair to see
+
+  How she then wore it on the brows,
+    Yet am I glad to have her dead
+  Here in this wretched wattled house
+    Where I can kiss her eyes and head.
+
+  Nothing is better, I well know,
+    Than love; no amber in cold sea
+  Or gathered berries under snow:
+    That is well seen of her and me.
+
+  Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:
+    First I take heart and think of this:
+  That knight's gold hair she chose to love,
+    His mouth she had such will to kiss.
+
+  Then I remember that sundawn
+    I brought him by a privy way
+  Out at her lattice, and thereon
+    What gracious words she found to say.
+
+  (Cold rushes for such little feet--
+    Both feet could lie into my hand.
+  A marvel was it of my sweet
+    Her upright body could so stand.)
+
+  "Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;
+    Now am I clean and whole of shame,
+  Nor shall men burn me in the face
+    For my sweet fault that scandals them."
+
+  I tell you over word by word.
+    She, sitting edgewise on her bed,
+  Holding her feet, said thus. The third,
+    A sweeter thing than these, I said.
+
+  God, that makes time and ruins it
+    And alters not, abiding God,
+  Changed with disease her body sweet,
+    The body of love wherein she abode.
+
+  Love is more sweet and comelier
+    Than a dove's throat strained out to sing.
+  All they spat out and cursed at her
+    And cast her forth for a base thing.
+
+  They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought
+    This curse to plague her, a curse of his.
+  Fools were they surely, seeing not
+    How sweeter than all sweet she is.
+
+  He that had held her by the hair,
+    With kissing lips blinding her eyes,
+  Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,
+    Sigh under him, with short mad cries
+
+  Out of her throat and sobbing mouth
+    And body broken up with love,
+  With sweet hot tears his lips were loth
+    Her own should taste the savour of,
+
+  Yea, he inside whose grasp all night
+    Her fervent body leapt or lay,
+  Stained with sharp kisses red and white,
+    Found her a plague to spurn away.
+
+  I hid her in this wattled house,
+    I served her water and poor bread.
+  For joy to kiss between her brows
+    Time upon time I was nigh dead.
+
+  Bread failed; we got but well-water
+    And gathered grass with dropping seed.
+  I had such joy of kissing her,
+    I had small care to sleep or feed.
+
+  Sometimes when service made me glad
+    The sharp tears leapt between my lids,
+  Falling on her, such joy I had
+    To do the service God forbids.
+
+  "I pray you let me be at peace,
+    Get hence, make room for me to die."
+  She said that: her poor lip would cease,
+    Put up to mine, and turn to cry.
+
+  I said, "Bethink yourself how love
+    Fared in us twain, what either did;
+  Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?
+    That I should do this, God forbid."
+
+  Yea, though God hateth us, he knows
+    That hardly in a little thing
+  Love faileth of the work it does
+    Till it grow ripe for gathering.
+
+  Six months, and now my sweet is dead
+    A trouble takes me; I know not
+  If all were done well, all well said,
+    No word or tender deed forgot.
+
+  Too sweet, for the least part in her,
+    To have shed life out by fragments; yet,
+  Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,
+    I might see something I forget.
+
+  Six months, and I sit still and hold
+    In two cold palms her cold two feet.
+  Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,
+    Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.
+
+  Love bites and stings me through, to see
+    Her keen face made of sunken bones.
+  Her worn-off eyelids madden me,
+    That were shot through with purple once.
+
+  She said, "Be good with me; I grow
+    So tired for shame's sake, I shall die
+  If you say nothing:" even so.
+    And she is dead now, and shame put by.
+
+  Yea, and the scorn she had of me
+    In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.
+  I never should have kissed her. See
+    What fools God's anger makes of men!
+
+  She might have loved me a little too,
+    Had I been humbler for her sake.
+  But that new shame could make love new
+    She saw not--yet her shame did make.
+
+  I took too much upon my love,
+    Having for such mean service done
+  Her beauty and all the ways thereof,
+    Her face and all the sweet thereon.
+
+  Yea, all this while I tended her,
+    I know the old love held fast his part:
+  I know the old scorn waxed heavier,
+    Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.
+
+  It may be all my love went wrong--
+    A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,
+  Scrawled after the blind evensong--
+    Spoilt music with no perfect word.
+
+  But surely I would fain have done
+    All things the best I could. Perchance
+  Because I failed, came short of one,
+    She kept at heart that other man's.
+
+  I am grown blind with all these things:
+    It may be now she hath in sight
+  Some better knowledge; still there clings
+    The old question. Will not God do right?[3]
+
+    [3] En ce temps-là estoyt dans ce pays grand nombre de ladres et
+    de meseaulx, ce dont le roy eut grand desplaisir, veu que Dieu
+    dust en estre moult griefvement courroucé. Ores il advint qu'une
+    noble damoyselle appelée Yolande de Sallières estant atteincte et
+    touste guastée de ce vilain mal, tous ses amys et ses parens ayant
+    devant leurs yeux la paour de Dieu la firent issir fors de leurs
+    maisons et oncques ne voulurent recepvoir ni reconforter chose
+    mauldicte de Dieu et à tous les hommes puante et abhominable.
+    Ceste dame avoyt esté moult belle et gracieuse de formes, et de
+    son corps elle estoyt large et de vie lascive. Pourtant nul des
+    amans qui l'avoyent souventesfois accollée et baisée moult
+    tendrement ne voulust plus héberger si laide femme et si
+    détestable pescheresse. Ung seul clerc qui feut premièrement son
+    lacquays et son entremetteur en matière d'amour la reçut chez luy
+    et la récéla dans une petite cabane. Là mourut la meschinette de
+    grande misère et de male mort: et après elle décéda ledist clerc
+    qui pour grand amour l'avoyt six mois durant soignée, lavée,
+    habillée et deshabillée tous les jours de ses mains propres. Mesme
+    dist-on que ce meschant homme et mauldict clerc se remémourant de
+    la grande beauté passée et guastée de ceste femme se délectoyt
+    maintesfois à la baiser sur sa bouche orde et lépreuse et
+    l'accoller doulcement de ses mains amoureuses. Aussy est-il mort
+    de ceste mesme maladie abhominable. Cecy advint près
+    Fontainebellant en Gastinois. Et quand ouyt le roy Philippe ceste
+    adventure moult en estoyt esmerveillé.
+
+                                 _Grandes Chroniques de France, 1505._
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF BURDENS
+
+
+  The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
+    And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
+  And sorrowful old age that comes by night
+    As a thief comes that has no heart by day,
+    And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,
+  And weariness that keeps awake for hire,
+    And grief that says what pleasure used to say;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of bought kisses. This is sore,
+    A burden without fruit in childbearing;
+  Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore,
+    Threescore between the dawn and evening.
+    The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering
+  In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,
+    Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing,
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,
+    Cover thy head, and weep; for verily
+  These market-men that buy thy white and brown
+    In the last days shall take no thought for thee.
+    In the last days like earth thy face shall be,
+  Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,
+    Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea.
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear
+    Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;
+  And say at night "Would God the day were here,"
+    And say at dawn "Would God the day were dead."
+    With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,
+  And wear remorse of heart for thine attire,
+    Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see
+    Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green;
+  And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,
+    And no more as the thing beforetime seen.
+    And thou shalt say of mercy "It hath been,"
+  And living, watch the old lips and loves expire,
+    And talking, tears shall take thy breath between;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of sad sayings. In that day
+    Thou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell
+  Thy times and ways and words of love, and say
+    How one was dear and one desirable,
+    And sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell,
+  But now with lights reverse the old hours retire
+    And the last hour is shod with fire from hell;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,
+    White rain and wind among the tender trees;
+  A summer of green sorrows gathering,
+    Rank autumn in a mist of miseries,
+    With sad face set towards the year, that sees
+  The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,
+    And winter wan with many maladies;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of dead faces. Out of sight
+    And out of love, beyond the reach of hands,
+  Changed in the changing of the dark and light,
+    They walk and weep about the barren lands
+    Where no seed is nor any garner stands,
+  Where in short breaths the doubtful days respire,
+    And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of much gladness. Life and lust
+    Forsake thee, and the face of thy delight;
+  And underfoot the heavy hour strews dust,
+    And overhead strange weathers burn and bite;
+    And where the red was, lo the bloodless white,
+  And where truth was, the likeness of a liar,
+    And where day was, the likeness of the night;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+
+  L'ENVOY
+
+  Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,
+    Heed well this rhyme before your pleasure tire;
+  For life is sweet, but after life is death.
+    This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+
+
+
+RONDEL
+
+
+  Kissing her hair I sat against her feet,
+  Wove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;
+  Made fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,
+  Deep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;
+  With her own tresses bound and found her fair,
+      Kissing her hair.
+
+  Sleep were no sweeter than her face to me,
+  Sleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;
+  What pain could get between my face and hers?
+  What new sweet thing would love not relish worse?
+  Unless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,
+      Kissing her hair?
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE THE MIRROR
+
+(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE)
+
+INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER
+
+
+  I
+
+  White rose in red rose-garden
+    Is not so white;
+  Snowdrops that plead for pardon
+    And pine for fright
+  Because the hard East blows
+  Over their maiden rows
+    Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.
+
+  Behind the veil, forbidden,
+    Shut up from sight,
+  Love, is there sorrow hidden,
+    Is there delight?
+  Is joy thy dower or grief,
+  White rose of weary leaf,
+    Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?
+
+  Soft snows that hard winds harden
+    Till each flake bite
+  Fill all the flowerless garden
+    Whose flowers took flight
+  Long since when summer ceased,
+  And men rose up from feast,
+    And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.
+
+
+  II
+
+  "Come snow, come wind or thunder
+    High up in air,
+  I watch my face, and wonder
+    At my bright hair;
+  Nought else exalts or grieves
+  The rose at heart, that heaves
+    With love of her own leaves and lips that pair.
+
+  "She knows not loves that kissed her
+    She knows not where.
+  Art thou the ghost, my sister,
+    White sister there,
+  Am I the ghost, who knows?
+  My hand, a fallen rose,
+    Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.
+
+  "I cannot see what pleasures
+    Or what pains were;
+  What pale new loves and treasures
+    New years will bear;
+  What beam will fall, what shower,
+  What grief or joy for dower;
+    But one thing-knows the flower; the flower is fair."
+
+
+  III
+
+  Glad, but not flushed with gladness,
+    Since joys go by;
+  Sad, but not bent with sadness,
+    Since sorrows die;
+  Deep in the gleaming glass
+  She sees all past things pass,
+    And all sweet life that was lie down and lie.
+
+  There glowing ghosts of flowers
+    Draw down, draw nigh;
+  And wings of swift spent hours
+    Take flight and fly;
+  She sees by formless gleams,
+  She hears across cold streams,
+    Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh.
+
+  Face fallen and white throat lifted,
+    With sleepless eye
+  She sees old loves that drifted,
+    She knew not why,
+  Old loves and faded fears
+  Float down a stream that hears
+    The flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky.
+
+
+
+
+EROTION
+
+
+  Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,
+  O love, to lay down fear at love's fair feet;
+  Shall not some fiery memory of his breath
+  Lie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?
+  Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;
+  Love me no more, but love my love of thee.
+  Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,
+  One thing I can, and one love cannot--die.
+  Pass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,
+  Feed my desire and deaden my despair.
+  Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheek
+  Whiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,
+  Yet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;
+  Keep other hours for others, save me this.
+  Yea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,
+  Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.
+  Sweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong:
+  I shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long.
+  Hast thou not given me above all that live
+  Joy, and a little sorrow shalt not give?
+  What even though fairer fingers of strange girls
+  Pass nestling through thy beautiful boy's curls
+  As mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thine
+  Meet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine;
+  And though I were not, though I be not, best,
+  I have loved and love thee more than all the rest.
+  O love, O lover, loose or hold me fast,
+  I had thee first, whoever have thee last;
+  Fairer or not, what need I know, what care?
+  To thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair.
+  Why am I fair at all before thee, why
+  At all desired? seeing thou art fair, not I.
+  I shall be glad of thee, O fairest head,
+  Alive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead;
+  I shall remember while the light lives yet,
+  And in the night-time I shall not forget.
+  Though (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave,
+  I will not, for thy love I will not, grieve;
+  Not as they use who love not more than I,
+  Who love not as I love thee though I die;
+  And though thy lips, once mine, be oftener prest
+  To many another brow and balmier breast,
+  And sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind,
+  Lull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find.
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+  Back to the flower-town, side by side,
+      The bright months bring,
+  New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
+      Freedom and spring.
+
+  The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
+      Filled full of sun;
+  All things come back to her, being free;
+      All things but one.
+
+  In many a tender wheaten plot
+      Flowers that were dead
+  Live, and old suns revive; but not
+      That holier head.
+
+  By this white wandering waste of sea,
+      Far north, I hear
+  One face shall never turn to me
+      As once this year:
+
+  Shall never smile and turn and rest
+      On mine as there,
+  Nor one most sacred hand be prest
+      Upon my hair.
+
+  I came as one whose thoughts half linger,
+      Half run before;
+  The youngest to the oldest singer
+      That England bore.
+
+  I found him whom I shall not find
+      Till all grief end,
+  In holiest age our mightiest mind,
+      Father and friend.
+
+  But thou, if anything endure,
+      If hope there be,
+  O spirit that man's life left pure,
+      Man's death set free,
+
+  Not with disdain of days that were
+      Look earthward now;
+  Let dreams revive the reverend hair,
+      The imperial brow;
+
+  Come back in sleep, for in the life
+      Where thou art not
+  We find none like thee. Time and strife
+      And the world's lot
+
+  Move thee no more; but love at least
+      And reverent heart
+  May move thee, royal and released,
+      Soul, as thou art.
+
+  And thou, his Florence, to thy trust
+      Receive and keep,
+  Keep safe his dedicated dust,
+      His sacred sleep.
+
+  So shall thy lovers, come from far,
+      Mix with thy name
+  As morning-star with evening-star
+      His faultless fame
+
+
+
+
+A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER. 1852
+
+
+  Push hard across the sand,
+      For the salt wind gathers breath;
+  Shoulder and wrist and hand,
+      Push hard as the push of death.
+
+  The wind is as iron that rings,
+      The foam-heads loosen and flee;
+  It swells and welters and swings,
+      The pulse of the tide of the sea.
+
+  And up on the yellow cliff
+      The long corn flickers and shakes;
+  Push, for the wind holds stiff,
+      And the gunwale dips and rakes.
+
+  Good hap to the fresh fierce weather,
+      The quiver and beat of the sea!
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  Out to the sea with her there,
+      Out with her over the sand;
+  Let the kings keep the earth for their share!
+      We have done with the sharers of land.
+
+  They have tied the world in a tether,
+      They have bought over God with a fee;
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  We have done with the kisses that sting,
+      The thief's mouth red from the feast,
+  The blood on the hands of the king
+      And the lie at the lips of the priest.
+
+  Will they tie the winds in a tether,
+      Put a bit in the jaws of the sea?
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  Let our flag run out straight in the wind!
+      The old red shall be floated again
+  When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned,
+      When the names that were twenty are ten;
+
+  When the devil's riddle is mastered
+      And the galley-bench creaks with a Pope,
+  We shall see Buonaparte the bastard
+      Kick heels with his throat in a rope.
+
+  While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep
+      And the emperor halters his kine,
+  While Shame is a watchman asleep
+      And Faith is a keeper of swine,
+
+  Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
+      Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  All the world has its burdens to bear,
+      From Cayenne to the Austrian whips;
+  Forth, with the rain in our hair
+      And the salt sweet foam in our lips;
+
+  In the teeth of the hard glad weather,
+      In the blown wet face of the sea;
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+
+
+
+A SONG IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. 1860
+
+
+  The heart of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
+  For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the
+      dead.
+
+  The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:
+  Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of
+      their feet.
+
+  The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:
+  The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like
+      reeds.
+
+  The high-priest sick from qualms, with his raiment bloodily dashed;
+  The thief with branded palms, and the liar with cheeks abashed.
+
+  They are smitten, they tremble greatly, they are pained for their
+      pleasant things:
+  For the house of the priests made stately, and the might in the mouth
+      of the kings.
+
+  They are grieved and greatly afraid; they are taken, they shall not
+      flee:
+  For the heart of the nations is made as the strength of the springs of
+      the sea.
+
+  They were fair in the grace of gold, they walked with delicate feet:
+  They were clothed with the cunning of old, and the smell of their
+      garments was sweet.
+
+  For the breaking of gold in their hair they halt as a man made lame:
+  They are utterly naked and bare; their mouths are bitter with shame.
+
+  Wilt thou judge thy people now, O king that wast found most wise?
+  Wilt thou lie any more, O thou whose mouth is emptied of lies?
+
+  Shall God make a pact with thee, till his hook be found in thy sides?
+  Wilt thou put back the time of the sea, or the place of the season of
+      tides?
+
+  Set a word in thy lips, to stand before God with a word in thy mouth:
+  That "the rain shall return in the land, and the tender dew after
+      drouth."
+
+  But the arm of the elders is broken, their strength is unbound and
+      undone:
+  They wait for a sign of a token; they cry, and there cometh none.
+
+  Their moan is in every place, the cry of them filleth the land:
+  There is shame in the sight of their face, there is fear in the thews
+      of their hand.
+
+  They are girdled about the reins with a curse for the girdle thereon:
+  For the noise of the rending of chains the face of their colour is
+      gone.
+
+  For the sound of the shouting of men they are grievously stricken at
+      heart:
+  They are smitten asunder with pain, their bones are smitten apart.
+
+  There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for
+      breath;
+  They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of
+      death.
+
+  The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;
+  As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the
+      earth.
+
+  The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;
+  The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the
+      south.
+
+  The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,
+  In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness
+      of death;
+
+  Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,
+  The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun:
+
+  Where the waters are emptied and broken, the waves of the waters are
+      stayed;
+  Where God has bound for a token the darkness that maketh afraid;
+
+  Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its
+      side,
+  A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:
+
+  The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall be
+      red,
+  For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of
+      the dead.
+
+
+
+
+TO VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+    In the fair days when God
+    By man as godlike trod,
+  And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
+    God's lightning spared, they said,
+    Alone the happier head
+  Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
+    To whom the high gods gave of right
+  Their thunders and their laurels and their light.
+
+    Sunbeams and bays before
+    Our master's servants wore,
+  For these Apollo left in all men's lands;
+    But far from these ere now
+    And watched with jealous brow
+  Lay the blind lightnings shut between God's hands,
+    And only loosed on slaves and kings
+  The terror of the tempest of their wings.
+
+    Born in those younger years
+    That shone with storms of spears
+  And shook in the wind blown from a dead world's pyre,
+    When by her back-blown hair
+    Napoleon caught the fair
+  And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,
+    And stayed with iron words and hands
+  Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:
+
+    Thou sawest the tides of things
+    Close over heads of kings,
+  And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee
+    Laurels and lightnings were
+    As sunbeams and soft air
+  Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea
+    Mixed, or as memory with desire,
+  Or the lute's pulses with the louder lyre.
+
+    For thee man's spirit stood
+    Disrobed of flesh and blood,
+  And bare the heart of the most secret hours;
+    And to thine hand more tame
+    Than birds in winter came
+  High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,
+    And from thy table fed, and sang
+  Till with the tune men's ears took fire and rang.
+
+    Even all men's eyes and ears
+    With fiery sound and tears
+  Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelid light,
+    At those high songs of thine
+    That stung the sense like wine,
+  Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,
+    Or wailed as in some flooded cave
+  Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.
+
+    But we, our master, we
+    Whose hearts, uplift to thee,
+  Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,
+    We ask not nor await
+    From the clenched hands of fate,
+  As thou, remission of the world's old wrong;
+    Respite we ask not, nor release;
+  Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.
+
+    Though thy most fiery hope
+    Storm heaven, to set wide ope
+  The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars
+    All feet of men, all eyes--
+    The old night resumes her skies,
+  Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,
+    Where nought save these is sure in sight;
+  And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.
+
+    One thing we can; to be
+    Awhile, as men may, free;
+  But not by hope or pleasure the most stern
+    Goddess, most awful-eyed,
+    Sits, but on either side
+  Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,
+    Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,
+  And memory grey with many a flowerless year.
+
+    Not that in stranger's wise
+    I lift not loving eyes
+  To the fair foster-mother France, that gave
+    Beyond the pale fleet foam
+    Help to my sires and home,
+  Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save
+    Whom from her nursing breasts and hands
+  Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.
+
+    Not without thoughts that ache
+    For theirs and for thy sake,
+  I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;
+    I whose young song took flight
+    Toward the great heat and light
+  On me a child from thy far splendour shed,
+    From thine high place of soul and song,
+  Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.
+
+    Ah, not with lessening love
+    For memories born hereof,
+  I look to that sweet mother-land, and see
+    The old fields and fair full streams,
+    And skies, but fled like dreams
+  The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;
+    And all between the skies and graves
+  The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.
+
+    She, killed with noisome air,
+    Even she! and still so fair,
+  Who said "Let there be freedom," and there was
+    Freedom; and as a lance
+    The fiery eyes of France
+  Touched the world's sleep and as a sleep made pass
+    Forth of men's heavier ears and eyes
+  Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.
+
+    Are they men's friends indeed
+    Who watch them weep and bleed?
+  Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?
+    Thou, first of men and friend,
+    Seest thou, even thou, the end?
+  Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?
+    Evils may pass and hopes endure;
+  But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.
+
+    O nursed in airs apart,
+    O poet highest of heart,
+  Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?
+    Are not the years more wise,
+    More sad than keenest eyes,
+  The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?
+    Passing we hear them not, but past
+  The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.
+
+    Thou art chief of us, and lord;
+    Thy song is as a sword
+  Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;
+    Thou art lord and king; but we
+    Lift younger eyes, and see
+  Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;
+    Hours that have borne men down so long,
+  Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.
+
+    But thine imperial soul,
+    As years and ruins roll
+  To the same end, and all things and all dreams
+    With the same wreck and roar
+    Drift on the dim same shore,
+  Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams
+    Tracks the fresh water-spring to be
+  And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.
+
+    As once the high God bound
+    With many a rivet round
+  Man's saviour, and with iron nailed him through,
+    At the wild end of things,
+    Where even his own bird's wings
+  Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,
+    From Caucasus beheld below
+  Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;
+
+    So the strong God, the chance
+    Central of circumstance,
+  Still shows him exile who will not be slave;
+    All thy great fame and thee
+    Girt by the dim strait sea
+  With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;
+    Shows us our greatest from his throne
+  Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.
+
+    Yea, he is strong, thou say'st,
+    A mystery many-faced,
+  The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
+    The blind night sees him, death
+    Shrinks beaten at his breath,
+  And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
+    We know he hath made us, and is king;
+  We know not if he care for anything.
+
+    Thus much, no more, we know;
+    He bade what is be so,
+  Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;
+    Bade hope and fear, bade ill
+    And good redeem and kill,
+  Till all men be aweary of the sun
+    And his world burn in its own flame
+  And bear no witness longer of his name.
+
+    Yet though all this be thus,
+    Be those men praised of us
+  Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned
+    For fame or fear or gold,
+    Nor waxed for winter cold,
+  Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;
+    Praised above men of men be these,
+  Till this one world and work we know shall cease.
+
+    Yea, one thing more than this,
+    We know that one thing is,
+  The splendour of a spirit without blame,
+    That not the labouring years
+    Blind-born, nor any fears,
+  Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;
+    But purer power with fiery breath
+  Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.
+
+    Praised above men be thou,
+    Whose laurel-laden brow,
+  Made for the morning, droops not in the night;
+    Praised and beloved, that none
+    Of all thy great things done
+  Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight;
+    Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend
+  Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end.
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE DAWN
+
+
+  Sweet life, if life were stronger,
+  Earth clear of years that wrong her,
+  Then two things might live longer,
+    Two sweeter things than they;
+  Delight, the rootless flower,
+  And love, the bloomless bower;
+  Delight that lives an hour,
+    And love that lives a day.
+
+  From evensong to daytime,
+  When April melts in Maytime,
+  Love lengthens out his playtime,
+    Love lessens breath by breath,
+  And kiss by kiss grows older
+  On listless throat or shoulder
+  Turned sideways now, turned colder
+    Than life that dreams of death.
+
+  This one thing once worth giving
+  Life gave, and seemed worth living;
+  Sin sweet beyond forgiving
+    And brief beyond regret:
+  To laugh and love together
+  And weave with foam and feather
+  And wind and words the tether
+    Our memories play with yet.
+
+  Ah, one thing worth beginning,
+  One thread in life worth spinning,
+  Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning
+    With all the whole soul's will;
+  To lull you till one stilled you,
+  To kiss you till one killed you,
+  To feed you till one filled you,
+    Sweet lips, if love could fill;
+
+  To hunt sweet Love and lose him
+  Between white arms and bosom,
+  Between the bud and blossom,
+    Between your throat and chin;
+  To say of shame--what is it?
+  Of virtue--we can miss it,
+  Of sin--we can but kiss it,
+    And it's no longer sin:
+
+  To feel the strong soul, stricken
+  Through fleshly pulses, quicken
+  Beneath swift sighs that thicken,
+    Soft hands and lips that smite;
+  Lips that no love can tire,
+  With hands that sting like fire,
+  Weaving the web Desire
+    To snare the bird Delight.
+
+  But love so lightly plighted,
+  Our love with torch unlighted,
+  Paused near us unaffrighted,
+    Who found and left him free;
+  None, seeing us cloven in sunder,
+  Will weep or laugh or wonder;
+  Light love stands clear of thunder,
+    And safe from winds at sea.
+
+  As, when late larks give warning
+  Of dying lights and dawning,
+  Night murmurs to the morning,
+    "Lie still, O love, lie still;"
+  And half her dark limbs cover
+  The white limbs of her lover,
+  With amorous plumes that hover
+    And fervent lips that chill;
+
+  As scornful day represses
+  Night's void and vain caresses,
+  And from her cloudier tresses
+    Unwinds the gold of his,
+  With limbs from limbs dividing
+  And breath by breath subsiding;
+  For love has no abiding,
+    But dies before the kiss;
+
+  So hath it been, so be it;
+  For who shall live and flee it?
+  But look that no man see it
+    Or hear it unaware;
+  Lest all who love and choose him
+  See Love, and so refuse him;
+  For all who find him lose him,
+    But all have found him fair.
+
+
+
+
+DOLORES
+
+(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS)
+
+
+  Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
+    Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
+  The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
+    Red mouth like a venomous flower;
+  When these are gone by with their glories,
+    What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
+  O mystic and sombre Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain?
+
+  Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
+    But thy sins, which are seventy times seven,
+  Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,
+    And then they would haunt thee in heaven:
+  Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
+    And the loves that complete and control
+  All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
+    That wear out the soul.
+
+  O garment not golden but gilded,
+    O garden where all men may dwell,
+  O tower not of ivory, but builded
+    By hands that reach heaven from hell;
+  O mystical rose of the mire,
+    O house not of gold but of gain,
+  O house of unquenchable fire,
+    Our Lady of Pain!
+
+  O lips full of lust and of laughter,
+    Curled snakes that are fed from my breast,
+  Bite hard, lest remembrance come after
+    And press with new lips where you pressed.
+  For my heart too springs up at the pressure,
+    Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;
+  Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,
+    Ere pain come in turn.
+
+  In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,
+    Out of sight though they lie of to-day,
+  There have been and there yet shall be sorrows
+    That smite not and bite not in play.
+  The life and the love thou despisest,
+    These hurt us indeed, and in vain,
+  O wise among women, and wisest,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories
+    That stung thee, what visions that smote?
+  Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,
+    When desire took thee first by the throat?
+  What bud was the shell of a blossom
+    That all men may smell to and pluck?
+  What milk fed thee first at what bosom?
+    What sins gave thee suck?
+
+  We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
+    Thou art noble and nude and antique;
+  Libitina thy mother, Priapus
+    Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
+  We play with light loves in the portal,
+    And wince and relent and refrain;
+  Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
+    Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
+  And alive after infinite changes,
+    And fresh from the kisses of death;
+  Of languors rekindled and rallied,
+    Of barren delights and unclean,
+  Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
+    And poisonous queen.
+
+  Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
+    Men touch them, and change in a trice
+  The lilies and languors of virtue
+    For the raptures and roses of vice;
+  Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
+    These crown and caress thee and chain,
+  O splendid and sterile Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  There are sins it may be to discover,
+    There are deeds it may be to delight.
+  What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
+    What new passions for daytime or night?
+  What spells that they know not a word of
+    Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
+  What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
+    Unwritten, unknown?
+
+  Ah beautiful passionate body
+    That never has ached with a heart!
+  On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,
+    Though they sting till it shudder and smart,
+  More kind than the love we adore is,
+    They hurt not the heart or the brain,
+  O bitter and tender Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  As our kisses relax and redouble,
+    From the lips and the foam and the fangs
+  Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,
+    No dream of impossible pangs?
+  With the sweet of the sins of old ages
+    Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
+  Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,
+    Too bitter the core.
+
+  Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,
+    And bared all thy beauties to one?
+  Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,
+    If the worst that can be has been done?
+  But sweet as the rind was the core is;
+    We are fain of thee still, we are fain,
+  O sanguine and subtle Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  By the hunger of change and emotion,
+    By the thirst of unbearable things,
+  By despair, the twin-born of devotion,
+    By the pleasure that winces and stings,
+  The delight that consumes the desire,
+    The desire that outruns the delight,
+  By the cruelty deaf as a fire
+    And blind as the night,
+
+  By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
+    Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
+  By the lips intertwisted and bitten
+    Till the foam has a savour of blood,
+  By the pulse as it rises and falters,
+    By the hands as they slacken and strain,
+  I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
+    The light fire in the veins of a boy?
+  But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,
+    Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;
+  Less careful of labour and glory
+    Than the elders whose hair has uncurled;
+  And young, but with fancies as hoary
+    And grey as the world.
+
+  I have passed from the outermost portal
+    To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
+  What care though the service be mortal?
+    O our Lady of Torture, what care?
+  All thine the last wine that I pour is,
+    The last in the chalice we drain,
+  O fierce and luxurious Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  All thine the new wine of desire,
+    The fruit of four lips as they clung
+  Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,
+    The foam of a serpentine tongue,
+  The froth of the serpents of pleasure,
+    More salt than the foam of the sea,
+  Now felt as a flame, now at leisure
+    As wine shed for me.
+
+  Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,
+    Marked cross from the womb and perverse!
+  They have found out the secret to cozen
+    The gods that constrain us and curse;
+  They alone, they are wise, and none other;
+    Give me place, even me, in their train,
+  O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  For the crown of our life as it closes
+    Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
+  No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
+    And love is more cruel than lust.
+  Time turns the old days to derision,
+    Our loves into corpses or wives;
+  And marriage and death and division
+    Make barren our lives.
+
+  And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
+    And satiate with comfortless hours;
+  And we know thee, how all men belie thee,
+    And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
+  The passion that slays and recovers,
+    The pangs and the kisses that rain
+  On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  The desire of thy furious embraces
+    Is more than the wisdom of years,
+  On the blossom though blood lie in traces,
+    Though the foliage be sodden with tears.
+  For the lords in whose keeping the door is
+    That opens on all who draw breath
+  Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,
+    The myrtle to death.
+
+  And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
+    And they mixed and made peace after strife;
+  Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
+    Death tingled with blood, and was life.
+  Like lovers they melted and tingled,
+    In the dusk of thine innermost fane;
+  In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  In a twilight where virtues are vices,
+    In thy chapels, unknown of the sun,
+  To a tune that enthralls and entices,
+    They were wed, and the twain were as one.
+  For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
+    Since God bade the world's work begin,
+  And the fume of thine incense abounded,
+    To sweeten the sin.
+
+  Love listens, and paler than ashes,
+    Through his curls as the crown on them slips,
+  Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
+    And laughs with insatiable lips.
+  Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
+    With music that scares the profane;
+  Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,
+    Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
+  In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,
+    In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
+  In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
+    In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;
+  Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
+    Asleep and awake.
+
+  Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses
+    With juice not of fruit nor of bud;
+  When the sense in the spirit reposes,
+    Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.
+  Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,
+    Who would live and not languish or feign,
+  O sleepless and deadly Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
+    In a lull of the fires of thy life,
+  Of the days without name, without number,
+    When thy will stung the world into strife;
+  When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion
+    Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;
+  And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,
+    Foam-white, from the foam?
+
+  When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
+    When the city lay red from thy rods,
+  And thine hands were as arrows to scatter
+    The children of change and their gods;
+  When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
+    A sand never moist from the main,
+  As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  On sands by the storm never shaken,
+    Nor wet from the washing of tides;
+  Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,
+    Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;
+  But red from the print of thy paces,
+    Made smooth for the world and its lords,
+  Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,
+    And splendid with swords.
+
+  There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
+    Drew bitter and perilous breath;
+  There torments laid hold on the treasure
+    Of limbs too delicious for death;
+  When thy gardens were lit with live torches;
+    When the world was a steed for thy rein;
+  When the nations lay prone in thy porches,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  When, with flame all around him aspirant,
+    Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
+  The implacable beautiful tyrant,
+    Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;
+  And a sound as the sound of loud water
+    Smote far through the flight of the fires,
+  And mixed with the lightning of slaughter
+   A thunder of lyres.
+
+  Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,
+    The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
+  Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,
+    For these, in a world of new things?
+  But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
+    No hunger compel to complain
+  Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
+    Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
+  The white wealth of thy body made whiter
+    By the blushes of amorous blows,
+  And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
+    And branded by kisses that bruise;
+  When all shall be gone that now lingers,
+    Ah, what shall we lose?
+
+  Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,
+    And thy limbs are as melodies yet,
+  And move to the music of passion
+    With lithe and lascivious regret.
+  What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
+    For creeds that refuse and restrain?
+  Come down and redeem us from virtue,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,
+    But the flame has not fallen from this;
+  Though obscure be the god, and though nameless
+    The eyes and the hair that we kiss;
+  Low fires that love sits by and forges
+    Fresh heads for his arrows and thine;
+  Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies
+    With kisses and wine.
+
+  Thy skin changes country and colour,
+    And shrivels or swells to a snake's.
+  Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,
+    We know it, the flames and the flakes,
+  Red brands on it smitten and bitten,
+    Round skies where a star is a stain,
+  And the leaves with thy litanies written,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
+    There are none such as knew it of old.
+  Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
+    Male ringlets or feminine gold,
+  That thy lips met with under the statue,
+    Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
+  From the eyes of the garden-god at you
+    Across the fig-leaves?
+
+  Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
+    One god had a wreath to his shrine;
+  Then love was the pearl of his oyster,[4]
+    And Venus rose red out of wine.
+  We have all done amiss, choosing rather
+    Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
+  Intercede for us thou with thy father,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  In spring he had crowns of his garden,
+    Red corn in the heat of the year,
+  Then hoary green olives that harden
+    When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
+  And milk-budded myrtles with Venus
+    And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
+  And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,
+    A visible God."
+
+  What broke off the garlands that girt you?
+    What sundered you spirit and clay?
+  Weak sins yet alive are as virtue
+    To the strength of the sins of that day.
+  For dried is the blood of thy lover,
+    Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;
+  Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,
+    Our Lady of Pain?"
+
+  Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:
+    Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
+  And rears not the bountiful token
+    And spreads not the fatherly feast.
+  From the midmost of Ida, from shady
+    Recesses that murmur at morn,
+  They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,
+    A goddess new-born.
+
+  And the chaplets of old are above us,
+    And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
+  Old poets outsing and outlove us,
+    And Catullus makes mouths at our speech.
+  Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,
+    With such lips as he sang with, again?
+  Intercede for us all of thy pity,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Out of Dindymus heavily laden
+    Her lions draw bound and unfed
+  A mother, a mortal, a maiden,
+    A queen over death and the dead.
+  She is cold, and her habit is lowly,
+    Her temple of branches and sods;
+  Most fruitful and virginal, holy,
+    A mother of gods.
+
+  She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
+    She hath hidden and marred and made sad
+  The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
+    Of gods that were goodly and glad.
+  She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
+    She moves as a moon in the wane,
+  White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  They shall pass and their places be taken,
+    The gods and the priests that are pure.
+  They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?
+    They shall perish, and shalt thou endure?
+  Death laughs, breathing close and relentless
+    In the nostrils and eyelids of lust,
+  With a pinch in his fingers of scentless
+    And delicate dust.
+
+  But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;
+    Thou shalt change and transmute as a god,
+  As the rod to a serpent that hisses,
+    As the serpent again to a rod.
+  Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
+    Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
+  And good shall die first, said thy prophet,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,
+    Now he lies out of reach, out of breath,
+  Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
+    Sin's child by incestuous Death?
+  Did he find out in fire at his waking,
+    Or discern as his eyelids lost light,
+  When the bands of the body were breaking
+    And all came in sight?
+
+  Who has known all the evil before us,
+    Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
+  Though we match not the dead men that bore us
+    At a song, at a kiss, at a crime--
+  Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
+    And our lives and our longings are twain--
+  Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
+    With spices and savours of song?
+  What is time, that his children should face thee?
+    What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
+  I could hurt thee--but pain would delight thee;
+    Or caress thee--but love would repel;
+  And the lovers whose lips would excite thee
+    Are serpents in hell.
+
+  Who now shall content thee as they did,
+    Thy lovers, when temples were built
+  And the hair of the sacrifice braided
+    And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
+  In Lampsacus fervent with faces,
+    In Aphaca red from thy reign,
+  Who embraced thee with awful embraces,
+    Our Lady of Pain?
+
+  Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,
+    Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
+  Do their hands as we touch come between us?
+    Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
+  From their lips have thy lips taken fever,
+    With the blood of their bodies grown red?
+  Hast thou left upon earth a believer
+    If these men are dead?
+
+  They were purple of raiment and golden,
+    Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,
+  Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,
+    In marvellous chambers of thine.
+  They are fled, and their footprints escape us,
+    Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
+  O daughter of Death and Priapus,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  What ails us to fear overmeasure,
+    To praise thee with timorous breath,
+  O mistress and mother of pleasure,
+    The one thing as certain as death?
+  We shall change as the things that we cherish,
+    Shall fade as they faded before,
+  As foam upon water shall perish,
+    As sand upon shore.
+
+  We shall know what the darkness discovers,
+    If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
+  And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
+    We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
+  We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
+    Find out whether tares be not grain,
+  And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+    [4] Nam te præcipuè in suis urbibus colit ora
+        Hellespontia, cæteris ostreosior oris.
+                                      CATULL. _Carm._ xviii.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
+
+
+  Here, where the world is quiet;
+    Here, where all trouble seems
+  Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
+    In doubtful dreams of dreams;
+  I watch the green field growing
+    For reaping folk and sowing,
+  For harvest-time and mowing,
+    A sleepy world of streams.
+
+  I am tired of tears and laughter,
+    And men that laugh and weep;
+  Of what may come hereafter
+    For men that sow to reap:
+  I am weary of days and hours,
+    Blown buds of barren flowers,
+  Desires and dreams and powers
+    And everything but sleep.
+
+  Here life has death for neighbour,
+    And far from eye or ear
+  Wan waves and wet winds labour,
+    Weak ships and spirits steer;
+  They drive adrift, and whither
+    They wot not who make thither;
+  But no such winds blow hither,
+    And no such things grow here.
+
+  No growth of moor or coppice,
+    No heather-flower or vine,
+  But bloomless buds of poppies,
+    Green grapes of Proserpine,
+  Pale beds of blowing rushes
+  Where no leaf blooms or blushes
+  Save this whereout she crushes
+    For dead men deadly wine.
+
+  Pale, without name or number,
+    In fruitless fields of corn,
+  They bow themselves and slumber
+    All night till light is born;
+  And like a soul belated,
+  In hell and heaven unmated,
+  By cloud and mist abated
+    Comes out of darkness morn.
+
+  Though one were strong as seven,
+    He too with death shall dwell,
+  Nor wake with wings in heaven,
+    Nor weep for pains in hell;
+  Though one were fair as roses,
+  His beauty clouds and closes;
+  And well though love reposes,
+    In the end it is not well.
+
+  Pale, beyond porch and portal,
+    Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
+  Who gathers all things mortal
+    With cold immortal hands;
+  Her languid lips are sweeter
+  Than love's who fears to greet her
+  To men that mix and meet her
+    From many times and lands.
+
+  She waits for each and other,
+    She waits for all men born;
+  Forgets the earth her mother,
+    The life of fruits and corn;
+  And spring and seed and swallow
+  Take wing for her and follow
+  Where summer song rings hollow
+    And flowers are put to scorn.
+
+  There go the loves that wither,
+    The old loves with wearier wings;
+  And all dead years draw thither,
+    And all disastrous things;
+  Dead dreams of days forsaken,
+  Blind buds that snows have shaken,
+  Wild leaves that winds have taken,
+    Red strays of ruined springs.
+
+  We are not sure of sorrow,
+    And joy was never sure;
+  To-day will die to-morrow;
+    Time stoops to no man's lure;
+  And love, grown faint and fretful,
+  With lips but half regretful
+  Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
+    Weeps that no loves endure.
+
+  From too much love of living,
+    From hope and fear set free,
+  We thank with brief thanksgiving
+    Whatever gods may be
+  That no life lives for ever;
+  That dead men rise up never;
+  That even the weariest river
+    Winds somewhere safe to sea.
+
+  Then star nor sun shall waken,
+    Nor any change of light:
+  Nor sound of waters shaken,
+    Nor any sound or sight:
+  Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
+  Nor days nor things diurnal;
+  Only the sleep eternal
+    In an eternal night.
+
+
+
+
+HESPERIA
+
+
+  Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,
+    Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,
+  As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of
+        stories,
+    Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,
+  Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,
+    Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,
+  Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or
+        pleasant,
+    Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?
+  For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the
+        water,
+    Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
+  Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
+    Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.
+  Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,
+    Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead
+  Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number
+    Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the
+        dead,
+  Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten
+        caresses,
+    One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures;
+  The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of
+        thy tresses,
+    And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.
+  But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower,
+    Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odour that fades in a flame;
+  Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful
+        hour
+    That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it
+        shame.
+  Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that
+        are loving,
+    Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;
+  And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee, and
+        moving
+    As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,
+  Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,
+    That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,
+  Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost rearisen,
+    Pale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen in me.
+  From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places
+    Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,
+  Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,
+    And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is
+        red,
+  Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and
+        represses,
+    That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his
+        fill;
+  From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive
+        caresses
+    That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.
+  Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as a
+        rose is,
+    Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud;
+  And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it
+        encloses,
+    Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the
+        blood.
+  As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her
+        bosom,
+    So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame;
+  I have loved overmuch in my life; when the live bud bursts with the
+        blossom,
+    Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame.
+  As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder;
+    As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that
+        allure;
+  And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a
+        wonder;
+    And the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to
+        endure.
+  Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared not for
+        glory's:
+    Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair.
+  Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?
+    Was it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee
+        fair?
+  For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her
+        fuel;
+    She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage of
+        her reign;
+  Who behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth growing
+        cruel,
+    And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of
+        Pain.
+  Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves in
+        the summer,
+    In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I
+        knew;
+  And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their mouths
+        overcome her,
+    And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert with
+        dew.
+  With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be so
+        bitter,
+    With the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and redden and
+        smile;
+  And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her eyelashes
+        glitter,
+    And she laughs with a savour of blood in her face, and a savour of
+        guile.
+  She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and
+        hisses,
+    As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap;
+  Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses,
+    To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep.
+  Ah daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison,
+    Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly;
+  Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon
+        unarisen,
+    Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die.
+  They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there is
+        none that hath ridden,
+    None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride;
+  By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore that is
+        hidden,
+    Where life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide;
+  By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and
+        sterile,
+    By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel of
+        years,
+  Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and
+        peril,
+    Labour and listen and pant not or pause for the peril that nears;
+  And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow
+        asunder,
+    And slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with its glimpses of
+        grass,
+  Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder,
+    Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass;
+  Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a
+        maiden,
+    Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we
+        past;
+  And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-laden,
+    As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah love, shall we win at the
+        last?
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AT SEA
+
+
+  We are in love's land to-day;
+      Where shall we go?
+  Love, shall we start or stay,
+      Or sail or row?
+  There's many a wind and way,
+  And never a May but May;
+  We are in love's hand to-day;
+      Where shall we go?
+
+  Our landwind is the breath
+  Of sorrows kissed to death
+      And joys that were;
+  Our ballast is a rose;
+  Our way lies where God knows
+      And love knows where.
+            We are in love's hand to-day--
+
+  Our seamen are fledged Loves,
+  Our masts are bills of doves,
+      Our decks fine gold;
+  Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
+  Our stores are love-shafts fair
+      And manifold.
+            We are in love's land to-day--
+
+  Where shall we land you, sweet?
+  On fields of strange men's feet,
+      Or fields near home?
+  Or where the fire-flowers blow,
+  Or where the flowers of snow
+      Or flowers of foam?
+            We are in love's hand to-day--
+
+  Land me, she says, where love
+  Shows but one shaft, one dove,
+      One heart, one hand.
+  --A shore like that, my dear,
+  Lies where no man will steer,
+      No maiden land.
+
+        _Imitated from Théophile Gautier._
+
+
+
+
+APRIL
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF THE VIDAME DE CHARTRES
+
+12--?
+
+
+  When the fields catch flower
+    And the underwood is green,
+  And from bower unto bower
+    The songs of the birds begin,
+    I sing with sighing between.
+  When I laugh and sing,
+    I am heavy at heart for my sin;
+  I am sad in the spring
+    For my love that I shall not win,
+  For a foolish thing.
+
+  This profit I have of my woe,
+    That I know, as I sing,
+  I know he will needs have it so
+    Who is master and king,
+    Who is lord of the spirit of spring.
+  I will serve her and will not spare
+    Till her pity awake
+  Who is good, who is pure, who is fair,
+    Even her for whose sake
+  Love hath ta'en me and slain unaware.
+
+  O my lord, O Love,
+    I have laid my life at thy feet;
+  Have thy will thereof,
+    Do as it please thee with it,
+    For what shall please thee is sweet.
+  I am come unto thee
+    To do thee service, O Love;
+  Yet cannot I see
+    Thou wilt take any pity thereof,
+  Any mercy on me.
+
+  But the grace I have long time sought
+    Comes never in sight,
+  If in her it abideth not,
+    Through thy mercy and might,
+    Whose heart is the world's delight.
+  Thou hast sworn without fail I shall die,
+    For my heart is set
+  On what hurts me, I wot not why,
+    But cannot forget
+  What I love, what I sing for and sigh.
+
+  She is worthy of praise,
+    For this grief of her giving is worth
+  All the joy of my days
+    That lie between death's day and birth,
+    All the lordship of things upon earth.
+  Nay, what have I said?
+    I would not be glad if I could;
+  My dream and my dread
+    Are of her, and for her sake I would
+  That my life were fled.
+
+  Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you,
+    Then were I dead;
+  If I sang not a little to say to you,
+    (Could it be said)
+    O my love, how my heart would be fed;
+  Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart,
+    For thy love's sake I live,
+  Do but tell me, ere either depart,
+    What a lover may give
+  For a woman so fair as thou art.
+
+
+  The lovers that disbelieve,
+    False rumours shall grieve
+  And evil-speaking shall part.
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE PARTING
+
+
+  A month or twain to live on honeycomb
+  Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
+  Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
+  And that strong purple under juice and foam
+  Where the wine's heart has burst;
+  Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
+
+  Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
+  Even to change the bitterness of it,
+  The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
+  To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
+  All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
+  Over my face and eyes.
+
+  And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat
+  Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
+  These were not sown, these are not harvested,
+  They grow a month and are cast under feet
+  And none has care thereof,
+  As none has care of a divided love.
+
+  I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
+  Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
+  The fashion of fair temples tremulous
+  With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
+  I know not how love is gone out of this,
+  Seeing that all was his.
+
+  Love's likeness there endures upon all these:
+  But out of these one shall not gather love.
+  Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
+  To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
+  As some bee-builded cell
+  Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.
+
+  I know not how this last month leaves your hair
+  Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
+  And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
+  Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
+  And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
+  Worth patience to regret.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNDEW
+
+
+  A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
+  And pricked at lip with tender red.
+  Tread close, and either way you tread
+  Some faint black water jets between
+  Lest you should bruise the curious head.
+
+  A live thing maybe; who shall know?
+  The summer knows and suffers it;
+  For the cool moss is thick and sweet
+  Each side, and saves the blossom so
+  That it lives out the long June heat.
+
+  The deep scent of the heather burns
+  About it; breathless though it be,
+  Bow down and worship; more than we
+  Is the least flower whose life returns,
+  Least weed renascent in the sea.
+
+  We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight
+  With wants, with many memories;
+  These see their mother what she is,
+  Glad-growing, till August leave more bright
+  The apple-coloured cranberries.
+
+  Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,
+  Blown all one way to shelter it
+  From trample of strayed kine, with feet
+  Felt heavier than the moorhen was,
+  Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.
+
+  You call it sundew: how it grows,
+  If with its colour it have breath,
+  If life taste sweet to it, if death
+  Pain its soft petal, no man knows:
+  Man has no sight or sense that saith.
+
+  My sundew, grown of gentle days,
+  In these green miles the spring begun
+  Thy growth ere April had half done
+  With the soft secret of her ways
+  Or June made ready for the sun.
+
+  O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,
+  I have a secret halved with thee.
+  The name that is love's name to me
+  Thou knowest, and the face of her
+  Who is my festival to see.
+
+  The hard sun, as thy petals knew,
+  Coloured the heavy moss-water:
+  Thou wert not worth green midsummer
+  Nor fit to live to August blue,
+  O sundew, not remembering her.
+
+
+
+
+FÉLISE
+
+_Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?_
+
+
+  What shall be said between us here
+    Among the downs, between the trees,
+  In fields that knew our feet last year,
+    In sight of quiet sands and seas,
+    This year, Félise?
+
+  Who knows what word were best to say?
+    For last year's leaves lie dead and red
+  On this sweet day, in this green May,
+    And barren corn makes bitter bread.
+    What shall be said?
+
+  Here as last year the fields begin,
+    A fire of flowers and glowing grass;
+  The old fields we laughed and lingered in,
+    Seeing each our souls in last year's glass,
+    Félise, alas!
+
+  Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,
+    Not we, though this be as it is?
+  For love awake or love asleep
+    Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,
+    A song like this.
+
+  I that have slept awake, and you
+    Sleep, who last year were well awake,
+  Though love do all that love can do,
+    My heart will never ache or break
+    For your heart's sake.
+
+  The great sea, faultless as a flower,
+    Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,
+  And laughs with love of the amorous hour.
+    I found you fairer once, Félise,
+    Than flowers or seas.
+
+  We played at bondsman and at queen;
+    But as the days change men change too;
+  I find the grey sea's notes of green,
+    The green sea's fervent flakes of blue,
+    More fair than you.
+
+  Your beauty is not over fair
+    Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.
+  The smell of flowers in all your hair
+    Allures not now; no sigh replies
+    If your heart sighs.
+
+  But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,
+    You find love's new name good enough.
+  Less sweet I find it than I found
+    The sweetest name that ever love
+    Grew weary of.
+
+  My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake
+    Grown tame and glad to be caressed,
+  With lips athirst for mine to slake
+    Their tender fever! who had guessed
+    You loved me best?
+
+  I had died for this last year, to know
+    You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?
+  I care not if love come or go
+    Now, though your love seek mine for mate.
+    It is too late.
+
+  The dust of many strange desires
+    Lies deep between us; in our eyes
+  Dead smoke of perishable fires
+    Flickers, a fume in air and skies,
+    A steam of sighs.
+
+  You loved me and you loved me not;
+    A little, much, and overmuch.
+  Will you forget as I forgot?
+    Let all dead things lie dead; none such
+    Are soft to touch.
+
+  I love you and I do not love,
+    Too much, a little, not at all;
+  Too much, and never yet enough.
+    Birds quick to fledge and fly at call
+    Are quick to fall.
+
+  And these love longer now than men,
+    And larger loves than ours are these.
+  No diver brings up love again
+    Dropped once, my beautiful Félise,
+    In such cold seas.
+
+  Gone deeper than all plummets sound,
+    Where in the dim green dayless day
+  The life of such dead things lies bound
+    As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray
+    And castaway.
+
+  Can I forget? yea, that can I,
+    And that can all men; so will you,
+  Alive, or later, when you die.
+    Ah, but the love you plead was true?
+    Was mine not too?
+
+  I loved you for that name of yours
+    Long ere we met, and long enough.
+  Now that one thing of all endures--
+    The sweetest name that ever love
+    Waxed weary of.
+
+  Like colours in the sea, like flowers,
+    Like a cat's splendid circled eyes
+  That wax and wane with love for hours,
+    Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,
+    And soft like sighs--
+
+  And all these only like your name,
+    And your name full of all of these.
+  I say it, and it sounds the same--
+    Save that I say it now at ease,
+    Your name, Félise.
+
+  I said "she must be swift and white,
+    And subtly warm, and half perverse,
+  And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
+    And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."
+    Men have guessed worse.
+
+  What was the song I made of you
+    Here where the grass forgets our feet
+  As afternoon forgets the dew?
+    Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,
+    Such fleet things sweet!
+
+  As afternoon forgets the dew,
+    As time in time forgets all men,
+  As our old place forgets us two,
+    Who might have turned to one thing then
+    But not again.
+
+          O lips that mine have grown into
+            Like April's kissing May,
+          O fervent eyelids letting through
+          Those eyes the greenest of things blue,
+            The bluest of things grey,
+
+          If you were I and I were you,
+            How could I love you, say?
+          How could the roseleaf love the rue,
+          The day love nightfall and her dew,
+            Though night may love the day?
+
+  You loved it may be more than I;
+    We know not; love is hard to seize.
+  And all things are not good to try;
+    And lifelong loves the worst of these
+    For us, Félise.
+
+  Ah, take the season and have done,
+    Love well the hour and let it go:
+  Two souls may sleep and wake up one,
+    Or dream they wake and find it so,
+    And then--you know.
+
+  Kiss me once hard as though a flame
+    Lay on my lips and made them fire;
+  The same lips now, and not the same;
+    What breath shall fill and re-inspire
+    A dead desire?
+
+  The old song sounds hollower in mine ear
+    Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech--
+  A noise one hears and would not hear;
+    Too strong to die, too weak to reach
+    From wave to beach.
+
+  We stand on either side the sea,
+    Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean
+  I toward you, you toward me;
+    But what hears either save the keen
+    Grey sea between?
+
+  A year divides us, love from love,
+    Though you love now, though I loved then.
+  The gulf is strait, but deep enough;
+    Who shall recross, who among men
+    Shall cross again?
+
+  Love was a jest last year, you said,
+    And what lives surely, surely dies.
+  Even so; but now that love is dead,
+    Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,
+    From subtle sighs?
+
+  For many loves are good to see;
+    Mutable loves, and loves perverse;
+  But there is nothing, nor shall be,
+    So sweet, so wicked, but my verse
+    Can dream of worse.
+
+  For we that sing and you that love
+    Know that which man may, only we.
+  The rest live under us; above,
+    Live the great gods in heaven, and see
+    What things shall be.
+
+  So this thing is and must be so;
+    For man dies, and love also dies.
+  Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro
+    The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,
+    And laughs, and lies.
+
+  Eyes coloured like a water-flower,
+    And deeper than the green sea's glass;
+  Eyes that remember one sweet hour--
+    In vain we swore it should not pass;
+    In vain, alas!
+
+  Ah my Félise, if love or sin,
+    If shame or fear could hold it fast,
+  Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,
+    And they laugh well who laugh the last.
+    Is it not past?
+
+  The gods, the gods are stronger; time
+    Falls down before them, all men's knees
+  Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb
+    Like incense towards them; yea, for these
+    Are gods, Félise.
+
+  Immortal are they, clothed with powers,
+    Not to be comforted at all;
+  Lords over all the fruitless hours;
+    Too great to appease, too high to appal,
+    Too far to call.
+
+  For none shall move the most high gods,
+    Who are most sad, being cruel; none
+  Shall break or take away the rods
+    Wherewith they scourge us, not as one
+    That smites a son.
+
+  By many a name of many a creed
+    We have called upon them, since the sands
+  Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed
+    Of life; and out of many lands
+    Have we stretched hands.
+
+  When have they heard us? who hath known
+    Their faces, climbed unto their feet,
+  Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,
+    Doth heaven remurmur and repeat
+    Sad sounds or sweet?
+
+  Do the stars answer? in the night
+    Have ye found comfort? or by day
+  Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,
+    Falls from the farthest starriest way
+    On you that pray?
+
+  Are the skies wet because we weep,
+    Or fair because of any mirth?
+  Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;
+    Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,
+    Thou dust and earth.
+
+  O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;
+    O laughing lips and lips that mourn,
+  Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight
+    Of God's intolerable scorn,
+    Not to be borne.
+
+  Behold, there is no grief like this;
+    The barren blossom of thy prayer,
+  Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.
+    O fools and blind, what seek ye there,
+    High up in the air?
+
+  Ye must have gods, the friends of men,
+    Merciful gods, compassionate,
+  And these shall answer you again.
+    Will ye beat always at the gate,
+    Ye fools of fate?
+
+  Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,
+    That all ye shall not live, but die.
+  Lo, what thing have ye found endure?
+    Or what thing have ye found on high
+    Past the blind sky?
+
+  The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,
+    Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.
+  Ye fools; for which among you deems
+    His prayer can alter green to red
+    Or stones to bread?
+
+  Why should ye bear with hopes and fears
+    Till all these things be drawn in one,
+  The sound of iron-footed years,
+    And all the oppression that is done
+    Under the sun?
+
+  Ye might end surely, surely pass
+    Out of the multitude of things,
+  Under the dust, beneath the grass,
+    Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,
+    No record clings.
+
+  No memory more of love or hate,
+    No trouble, nothing that aspires,
+  No sleepless labour thwarting fate,
+    And thwarted; where no travail tires,
+    Where no faith fires.
+
+  All passes, nought that has been is,
+    Things good and evil have one end.
+  Can anything be otherwise
+    Though all men swear all things would mend
+    With God to friend?
+
+  Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,
+    Can ye move mountains? bid the flower
+  Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?
+    Can ye hold fast for shine or shower
+    One wingless hour?
+
+  Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring
+    One sigh back, bid one smile revive?
+  Can God restore one ruined thing,
+    Or he who slays our souls alive
+    Make dead things thrive?
+
+  Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,
+    Though sad things stay and glad things fly;
+  Two gifts he has given us, to forget
+    All glad and sad things that go by,
+    And then to die.
+
+  We know not whether death be good,
+    But life at least it will not be:
+  Men will stand saddening as we stood,
+    Watch the same fields and skies as we
+    And the same sea.
+
+  Let this be said between us here,
+    One love grows green when one turns grey;
+  This year knows nothing of last year;
+    To-morrow has no more to say
+    To yesterday.
+
+  Live and let live, as I will do,
+    Love and let love, and so will I.
+  But, sweet, for me no more with you:
+    Not while I live, not though I die.
+    Goodnight, goodbye.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+
+  In the greenest growth of the Maytime,
+    I rode where the woods were wet,
+  Between the dawn and the daytime;
+    The spring was glad that we met.
+
+  There was something the season wanted,
+    Though the ways and the woods smelt sweet;
+  The breath at your lips that panted,
+  The pulse of the grass at your feet.
+
+  You came, and the sun came after,
+    And the green grew golden above;
+  And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,
+    And the meadow-sweet shook with love.
+
+  Your feet in the full-grown grasses
+    Moved soft as a weak wind blows;
+  You passed me as April passes,
+    With face made out of a rose.
+
+  By the stream where the stems were slender,
+    Your bright foot paused at the sedge;
+  It might be to watch the tender
+    Light leaves in the springtime hedge,
+
+  On boughs that the sweet month blanches
+    With flowery frost of May:
+  It might be a bird in the branches,
+    It might be a thorn in the way.
+
+  I waited to watch you linger
+    With foot drawn back from the dew,
+  Till a sunbeam straight like a finger
+    Struck sharp through the leaves at you.
+
+  And a bird overhead sang _Follow_,
+    And a bird to the right sang _Here_;
+  And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
+    And the meaning of May was clear.
+
+  I saw where the sun's hand pointed,
+    I knew what the bird's note said;
+  By the dawn and the dewfall anointed,
+    You were queen by the gold on your head.
+
+  As the glimpse of a burnt-out ember
+    Recalls a regret of the sun,
+  I remember, forget, and remember
+    What Love saw done and undone.
+
+  I remember the way we parted,
+    The day and the way we met;
+  You hoped we were both broken-hearted,
+    And knew we should both forget.
+
+  And May with her world in flower
+    Seemed still to murmur and smile
+  As you murmured and smiled for an hour;
+    I saw you turn at the stile.
+
+  A hand like a white wood-blossom
+    You lifted, and waved, and passed,
+  With head hung down to the bosom,
+    And pale, as it seemed, at last.
+
+  And the best and the worst of this is
+    That neither is most to blame
+  If you've forgotten my kisses
+    And I've forgotten your name.
+
+
+
+
+HENDECASYLLABICS
+
+
+  In the month of the long decline of roses
+  I, beholding the summer dead before me,
+  Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
+  Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
+  Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
+  Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
+  Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
+  Moving tremulous under feet of angels
+  Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
+  Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
+  Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
+  And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
+  Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
+  Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
+  Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
+  Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
+  Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
+  Heard between them a voice of exultation,
+  "Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
+  Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
+  All the fruits of the day from all her branches
+  Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
+  All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
+  All are taken away; the season wasted,
+  Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
+  Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
+  Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
+  We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
+  Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
+  Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
+  Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
+  When low light was upon the windy reaches
+  Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
+  Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
+  And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
+  Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
+  All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
+  Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."
+
+
+
+
+SAPPHICS
+
+
+  All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
+  Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
+  Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
+    Stood and beheld me.
+
+  Then to me so lying awake a vision
+  Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
+  Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
+    Full of the vision,
+
+  Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
+  Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
+  Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
+    Saw the reluctant
+
+  Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
+  Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
+  Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
+    Shone Mitylene;
+
+  Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her
+  Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,
+  As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing
+    Wings of a great wind.
+
+  So the goddess fled from her place, with awful
+  Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;
+  While behind a clamour of singing women
+    Severed the twilight.
+
+  Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!
+  All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,
+  Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
+    Fear was upon them,
+
+  While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.
+  Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,
+  None endured the sound of her song for weeping;
+    Laurel by laurel,
+
+  Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,
+  Round her woven tresses and ashen temples
+  White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,
+    Ravaged with kisses,
+
+  Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.
+  Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite
+  Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.
+    Yea, by her name too
+
+  Called her, saying, "Turn to me, O my Sappho;"
+  Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not
+  Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,
+    Heard not about her
+
+  Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing,
+  Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite
+  Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment,
+    Saw not her hands wrung;
+
+  Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten
+  Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings,
+  Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen,
+    Fairer than all men;
+
+  Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers,
+  Full of songs and kisses and little whispers,
+  Full of music; only beheld among them
+    Soar, as a bird soars
+
+  Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel,
+  Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion,
+  Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders,
+    Clothed with the wind's wings.
+
+  Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered
+  Roses, awful roses of holy blossom;
+  Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces
+    Round Aphrodite,
+
+  Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent;
+  Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song.
+  All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion,
+    Fled from before her.
+
+  All withdrew long since, and the land was barren,
+  Full of fruitless women and music only.
+  Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset,
+    Lulled at the dewfall,
+
+  By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of,
+  Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight,
+  Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting,
+    Purged not in Lethe,
+
+  Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing
+  Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
+  Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
+    Hearing, to hear them.
+
+
+
+
+AT ELEUSIS
+
+
+  Men of Eleusis, ye that with long staves
+  Sit in the market-houses, and speak words
+  Made sweet with wisdom as the rare wine is
+  Thickened with honey; and ye sons of these
+  Who in the glad thick streets go up and down
+  For pastime or grave traffic or mere chance;
+  And all fair women having rings of gold
+  On hands or hair; and chiefest over these
+  I name you, daughters of this man the king,
+  Who dipping deep smooth pitchers of pure brass
+  Under the bubbled wells, till each round lip
+  Stooped with loose gurgle of waters incoming,
+  Found me an old sick woman, lamed and lean,
+  Beside a growth of builded olive-boughs
+  Whence multiplied thick song of thick-plumed throats--
+  Also wet tears filled up my hollow hands
+  By reason of my crying into them--
+  And pitied me; for as cold water ran
+  And washed the pitchers full from lip to lip,
+  So washed both eyes full the strong salt of tears.
+  And ye put water to my mouth, made sweet
+  With brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke
+  And gathered my loose knees from under me.
+  Moreover in the broad fair halls this month
+  Have I found space and bountiful abode
+  To please me. I Demeter speak of this,
+  Who am the mother and the mate of things:
+  For as ill men by drugs or singing words
+  Shut the doors inward of the narrowed womb
+  Like a lock bolted with round iron through,
+  Thus I shut up the body and sweet mouth
+  Of all soft pasture and the tender land,
+  So that no seed can enter in by it
+  Though one sow thickly, nor some grain get out
+  Past the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel
+  To widen the sealed lips of them for use.
+  None of you is there in the peopled street
+  But knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache
+  With no green spot made count of in the black:
+  How the wind finds no comfortable grass
+  Nor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs;
+  And in hot autumn when ye house the stacks,
+  All fields are helpless in the sun, all trees
+  Stand as a man stripped out of all but skin.
+  Nevertheless ye sick have help to get
+  By means and stablished ordinance of God;
+  For God is wiser than a good man is.
+  But never shall new grass be sweet in earth
+  Till I get righted of my wound and wrong
+  By changing counsel of ill-minded Zeus.
+  For of all other gods is none save me
+  Clothed with like power to build and break the year.
+  I make the lesser green begin, when spring
+  Touches not earth but with one fearful foot;
+  And as a careful gilder with grave art
+  Soberly colours and completes the face,
+  Mouth, chin and all, of some sweet work in stone,
+  I carve the shapes of grass and tender corn
+  And colour the ripe edges and long spikes
+  With the red increase and the grace of gold,
+  No tradesman in soft wools is cunninger
+  To kill the secret of the fat white fleece
+  With stains of blue and purple wrought in it.
+  Three moons were made and three moons burnt away
+  While I held journey hither out of Crete
+  Comfortless, tended by grave Hecate
+  Whom my wound stung with double iron point;
+  For all my face was like a cloth wrung out
+  With close and weeping wrinkles, and both lids
+  Sodden with salt continuance of tears.
+  For Hades and the sidelong will of Zeus
+  And that lame wisdom that has writhen feet,
+  Cunning, begotten in the bed of Shame,
+  These three took evil will at me, and made
+  Such counsel that when time got wing to fly
+  This Hades out of summer and low fields
+  Forced the bright body of Persephone:
+  Out of pure grass, where she lying down, red flowers
+  Made their sharp little shadows on her sides,
+  Pale heat, pale colour on pale maiden flesh--
+  And chill water slid over her reddening feet,
+  Killing the throbs in their soft blood; and birds,
+  Perched next her elbow and pecking at her hair,
+  Stretched their necks more to see her than even to sing.
+  A sharp thing is it I have need to say;
+  For Hades holding both white wrists of hers
+  Unloosed the girdle and with knot by knot
+  Bound her between his wheels upon the seat,
+  Bound her pure body, holiest yet and dear
+  To me and God as always, clothed about
+  With blossoms loosened as her knees went down.
+  Let fall as she let go of this and this
+  By tens and twenties, tumbled to her feet,
+  White waifs or purple of the pasturage.
+  Therefore with only going up and down
+  My feet were wasted, and the gracious air,
+  To me discomfortable and dun, became
+  As weak smoke blowing in the under world.
+  And finding in the process of ill days
+  What part had Zeus herein, and how as mate
+  He coped with Hades, yokefellow in sin,
+  I set my lips against the meat of gods
+  And drank not neither ate or slept in heaven.
+  Nor in the golden greeting of their mouths
+  Did ear take note of me, nor eye at all
+  Track my feet going in the ways of them.
+  Like a great fire on some strait slip of land
+  Between two washing inlets of wet sea
+  That burns the grass up to each lip of beach
+  And strengthens, waxing in the growth of wind,
+  So burnt my soul in me at heaven and earth,
+  Each way a ruin and a hungry plague,
+  Visible evil; nor could any night
+  Put cool between mine eyelids, nor the sun
+  With competence of gold fill out my want.
+  Yea so my flame burnt up the grass and stones,
+  Shone to the salt-white edges of thin sea,
+  Distempered all the gracious work, and made
+  Sick change, unseasonable increase of days
+  And scant avail of seasons; for by this
+  The fair gods faint in hollow heaven: there comes
+  No taste of burnings of the twofold fat
+  To leave their palates smooth, nor in their lips
+  Soft rings of smoke and weak scent wandering;
+  All cattle waste and rot, and their ill smell
+  Grows alway from the lank unsavoury flesh
+  That no man slays for offering; the sea
+  And waters moved beneath the heath and corn
+  Preserve the people of fin-twinkling fish,
+  And river-flies feed thick upon the smooth;
+  But all earth over is no man or bird
+  (Except the sweet race of the kingfisher)
+  That lacks not and is wearied with much loss.
+  Meantime the purple inward of the house
+  Was softened with all grace of scent and sound
+  In ear and nostril perfecting my praise;
+  Faint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake
+  And the just grain with dues of the shed salt
+  Made me content: yet my hand loosened not
+  Its gripe upon your harvest all year long.
+  While I, thus woman-muffled in wan flesh
+  And waste externals of a perished face,
+  Preserved the levels of my wrath and love
+  Patiently ruled; and with soft offices
+  Cooled the sharp noons and busied the warm nights
+  In care of this my choice, this child my choice,
+  Triptolemus, the king's selected son:
+  That this fair yearlong body, which hath grown
+  Strong with strange milk upon the mortal lip
+  And nerved with half a god, might so increase
+  Outside the bulk and the bare scope of man:
+  And waxen over large to hold within
+  Base breath of yours and this impoverished air,
+  I might exalt him past the flame of stars,
+  The limit and walled reach of the great world.
+  Therefore my breast made common to his mouth
+  Immortal savours, and the taste whereat
+  Twice their hard life strains out the coloured veins
+  And twice its brain confirms the narrow shell.
+  Also at night, unwinding cloth from cloth
+  As who unhusks an almond to the white
+  And pastures curiously the purer taste,
+  I bared the gracious limbs and the soft feet,
+  Unswaddled the weak hands, and in mid ash
+  Laid the sweet flesh of either feeble side,
+  More tender for impressure of some touch
+  Than wax to any pen; and lit around
+  Fire, and made crawl the white worm-shapen flame,
+  And leap in little angers spark by spark
+  At head at once and feet; and the faint hair
+  Hissed with rare sprinkles in the closer curl,
+  And like scaled oarage of a keen thin fish
+  In sea-water, so in pure fire his feet
+  Struck out, and the flame bit not in his flesh,
+  But like a kiss it curled his lip, and heat
+  Fluttered his eyelids; so each night I blew
+  The hot ash red to purge him to full god.
+  Ill is it when fear hungers in the soul
+  For painful food, and chokes thereon, being fed;
+  And ill slant eyes interpret the straight sun,
+  But in their scope its white is wried to black:
+  By the queen Metaneira mean I this;
+  For with sick wrath upon her lips, and heart
+  Narrowing with fear the spleenful passages,
+  She thought to thread this web's fine ravel out,
+  Nor leave her shuttle split in combing it;
+  Therefore she stole on us, and with hard sight
+  Peered, and stooped close; then with pale open mouth
+  As the fire smote her in the eyes between
+  Cried, and the child's laugh, sharply shortening
+  As fire doth under rain, fell off; the flame
+  Writhed once all through and died, and in thick dark
+  Tears fell from mine on the child's weeping eyes,
+  Eyes dispossessed of strong inheritance
+  And mortal fallen anew. Who not the less
+  From bud of beard to pale-grey flower of hair
+  Shall wax vinewise to a lordly vine, whose grapes
+  Bleed the red heavy blood of swoln soft wine,
+  Subtle with sharp leaves' intricacy, until
+  Full of white years and blossom of hoary days
+  I take him perfected; for whose one sake
+  I am thus gracious to the least who stands
+  Filleted with white wool and girt upon
+  As he whose prayer endures upon the lip
+  And falls not waste: wherefore let sacrifice
+  Burn and run red in all the wider ways;
+  Seeing I have sworn by the pale temples' band
+  And poppied hair of gold Persephone
+  Sad-tressed and pleached low down about her brows,
+  And by the sorrow in her lips, and death
+  Her dumb and mournful-mouthèd minister,
+  My word for you is eased of its harsh weight
+  And doubled with soft promise; and your king
+  Triptolemus, this Celeus dead and swathed
+  Purple and pale for golden burial,
+  Shall be your helper in my services,
+  Dividing earth and reaping fruits thereof
+  In fields where wait, well-girt, well-wreathen, all
+  The heavy-handed seasons all year through;
+  Saving the choice of warm spear-headed grain,
+  And stooping sharp to the slant-sided share
+  All beasts that furrow the remeasured land
+  With their bowed necks of burden equable.
+
+
+
+
+AUGUST
+
+
+  There were four apples on the bough,
+  Half gold half red, that one might know
+  The blood was ripe inside the core;
+  The colour of the leaves was more
+  Like stems of yellow corn that grow
+  Through all the gold June meadow's floor.
+
+  The warm smell of the fruit was good
+  To feed on, and the split green wood,
+  With all its bearded lips and stains
+  Of mosses in the cloven veins,
+  Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
+  In sunshine or in happy rains.
+
+  There were four apples on the tree,
+  Red stained through gold, that all might see
+  The sun went warm from core to rind;
+  The green leaves made the summer blind
+  In that soft place they kept for me
+  With golden apples shut behind.
+
+  The leaves caught gold across the sun,
+  And where the bluest air begun
+  Thirsted for song to help the heat;
+  As I to feel my lady's feet
+  Draw close before the day were done;
+  Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.
+
+  In the mute August afternoon
+  They trembled to some undertune
+  Of music in the silver air;
+  Great pleasure was it to be there
+  Till green turned duskier and the moon
+  Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.
+
+  That August time it was delight
+  To watch the red moons wane to white
+  'Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
+  A sense of heavy harmonies
+  Grew on the growth of patient night,
+  More sweet than shapen music is.
+
+  But some three hours before the moon
+  The air, still eager from the noon,
+  Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
+  Against the stem I leant my head;
+  The colour soothed me like a tune,
+  Green leaves all round the gold and red.
+
+  I lay there till the warm smell grew
+  More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
+  Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
+  The rind with stain and wet; I heard
+  A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
+  Too weak to alter its one word.
+
+  The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
+  Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
+  Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
+  (As water feels the slow gold melt
+  Right through it when the day burns mute)
+  The peace of time wherein love dwelt.
+
+  There were four apples on the tree,
+  Gold stained on red that all might see
+  The sweet blood filled them to the core:
+  The colour of her hair is more
+  Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
+  Mown from the harvest's middle floor.
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL[5]
+
+    [5] Suggested by a drawing of Mr. D. G. Rossetti's.
+
+
+  Three damsels in the queen's chamber,
+      The queen's mouth was most fair;
+  She spake a word of God's mother
+      As the combs went in her hair.
+          Mary that is of might,
+          Bring us to thy Son's sight.
+
+  They held the gold combs out from her,
+      A span's length off her head;
+  She sang this song of God's mother
+      And of her bearing-bed.
+          Mary most full of grace,
+          Bring us to thy Son's face.
+
+  When she sat at Joseph's hand,
+      She looked against her side;
+  And either way from the short silk band
+      Her girdle was all wried.
+          Mary that all good may,
+          Bring us to thy Son's way.
+
+  Mary had three women for her bed,
+      The twain were maidens clean;
+  The first of them had white and red,
+      The third had riven green.
+          Mary that is so sweet,
+          Bring us to thy Son's feet.
+
+  She had three women for her hair,
+      Two were gloved soft and shod;
+  The third had feet and fingers bare,
+      She was the likest God.
+          Mary that wieldeth land,
+          Bring us to thy Son's hand.
+
+  She had three women for her ease,
+      The twain were good women:
+  The first two were the two Maries,
+      The third was Magdalen.
+          Mary that perfect is,
+          Bring us to thy Son's kiss.
+
+  Joseph had three workmen in his stall,
+      To serve him well upon;
+  The first of them were Peter and Paul,
+      The third of them was John.
+          Mary, God's handmaiden,
+          Bring us to thy Son's ken.
+
+  "If your child be none other man's,
+      But if it be very mine,
+  The bedstead shall be gold two spans,
+      The bedfoot silver fine."
+          Mary that made God mirth,
+          Bring us to thy Son's birth.
+
+  "If the child be some other man's,
+      And if it be none of mine,
+  The manger shall be straw two spans,
+      Betwixen kine and kine."
+          Mary that made sin cease,
+          Bring us to thy Son's peace.
+
+  Christ was born upon this wise,
+      It fell on such a night,
+  Neither with sounds of psalteries,
+      Nor with fire for light.
+          Mary that is God's spouse,
+          Bring us to thy Son's house.
+
+  The star came out upon the east
+      With a great sound and sweet:
+  Kings gave gold to make him feast
+      And myrrh for him to eat.
+          Mary, of thy sweet mood,
+          Bring us to thy Son's good.
+
+  He had two handmaids at his head,
+      One handmaid at his feet;
+  The twain of them were fair and red,
+      The third one was right sweet.
+          Mary that is most wise,
+          Bring us to thy Son's eyes. Amen.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASQUE OF QUEEN BERSABE
+
+A MIRACLE-PLAY
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Knights mine, all that be in hall,
+  I have a counsel to you all,
+  Because of this thing God lets fall
+      Among us for a sign.
+  For some days hence as I did eat
+  From kingly dishes my good meat,
+  There flew a bird between my feet
+      As red as any wine.
+  This bird had a long bill of red
+  And a gold ring above his head;
+  Long time he sat and nothing said,
+  Put softly down his neck and fed
+      From the gilt patens fine:
+  And as I marvelled, at the last
+  He shut his two keen eyën fast
+  And suddenly woxe big and brast
+      Ere one should tell to nine.
+
+
+  PRIMUS MILES
+
+  Sir, note this that I will say;
+  That Lord who maketh corn with hay
+  And morrows each of yesterday,
+      He hath you in his hand,
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES (_Paganus quidam_)
+
+  By Satan I hold no such thing;
+  For if wine swell within a king
+  Whose ears for drink are hot and ring,
+  The same shall dream of wine-bibbing
+      Whilst he can lie or stand.
+
+
+  QUEEN BERSABE
+
+  Peace now, lords, for Godis head,
+  Ye chirk as starlings that be fed
+  And gape as fishes newly dead;
+  The devil put your bones to bed,
+      Lo, this is all to say.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  By Mahound, lords, I have good will
+  This devil's bird to wring and spill;
+  For now meseems our game goes ill,
+      Ye have scant hearts to play.
+
+
+  TERTIUS MILES
+
+  Lo, sirs, this word is there said,
+  That Urias the knight is dead
+  Through some ill craft; by Poulis head,
+  I doubt his blood hath made so red
+  This bird that flew from the queen's bed
+      Whereof ye have such fear.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Yea, my good knave, and is it said
+  That I can raise men from the dead?
+  By God I think to have his head
+  Who saith words of my lady's bed
+      For any thief to hear.
+    _Et percutiat eum in capite._
+
+
+  QUEEN BERSABE
+
+  I wis men shall spit at me,
+  And say, it were but right for thee
+  That one should hang thee on a tree;
+  Ho! it were a fair thing to see
+  The big stones bruise her false body;
+      Fie! who shall see her dead?
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  I rede you have no fear of this,
+  For, as ye wot, the first good kiss
+  I had must be the last of his;
+  Now are ye queen of mine, I wis,
+  And lady of a house that is
+      Full rich of meat and bread.
+
+
+  PRIMUS MILES
+
+  I bid you make good cheer to be
+  So fair a queen as all men see.
+  And hold us for your lieges free;
+  By Peter's soul that hath the key,
+      Ye have good hap of it.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  I would that he were hanged and dead
+  Who hath no joy to see your head
+  With gold about it, barred on red;
+  I hold him as a sow of lead
+      That is so scant of wit.
+
+
+  _Tunc dicat NATHAN propheta_
+
+  O king, I have a word to thee;
+  The child that is in Bersabe
+  Shall wither without light to see;
+  This word is come of God by me
+      For sin that ye have done.
+  Because herein ye did not right,
+  To take the fair one lamb to smite
+  That was of Urias the knight;
+      Ye wist he had but one.
+  Full many sheep I wot ye had,
+  And many women, when ye bade,
+  To do your will and keep you glad,
+  And a good crown about your head
+      With gold to show thereon.
+  This Urias had one poor house
+  With low-barred latoun shot-windows
+  And scant of corn to fill a mouse;
+  And rusty basnets for his brows,
+      To wear them to the bone.
+  Yea the roofs also, as men sain,
+  Were thin to hold against the rain;
+  Therefore what rushes were there lain
+  Grew wet withouten foot of men;
+  The stancheons were all gone in twain
+      As sick man's flesh is gone.
+  Nathless he had great joy to see
+  The long hair of this Bersabe
+  Fall round her lap and round her knee
+  Even to her small soft feet, that be
+  Shod now with crimson royally
+      And covered with clean gold.
+  Likewise great joy he had to kiss
+  Her throat, where now the scarlet is
+  Against her little chin, I wis,
+      That then was but cold.
+  No scarlet then her kirtle had
+  And little gold about it sprad;
+  But her red mouth was always glad
+  To kiss, albeit the eyes were sad
+      With love they had to hold.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  How! old thief, thy wits are lame;
+  To clip such it is no shame;
+  I rede you in the devil's name,
+  Ye come not here to make men game;
+  By Termagaunt that maketh grame,
+      I shall to-bete thine head.
+    _Hìc Diabolus capiat eum._
+  This knave hath sharp fingers, perfay;
+  Mahound you thank and keep alway,
+  And give you good knees to pray;
+  What man hath no lust to play,
+  The devil wring his ears, I say;
+  There is no more but wellaway,
+      For now am I dead.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Certes his mouth is wried and black,
+  Full little pence be in his sack;
+  This devil hath him by the back,
+      It is no boot to lie.
+
+
+  NATHAN
+
+  Sitteth now still and learn of me;
+  A little while and ye shall see
+  The face of God's strength presently.
+  All queens made as this Bersabe,
+  All that were fair and foul ye be,
+      Come hither; it am I.
+
+      _Et hìc omnes cantabunt._
+
+
+  HERODIAS
+
+  I am the queen Herodias.
+  This headband of my temples was
+      King Herod's gold band woven me.
+  This broken dry staff in my hand
+  Was the queen's staff of a great land
+      Betwixen Perse and Samarie.
+  For that one dancing of my feet,
+  The fire is come in my green wheat,
+      From one sea to the other sea.
+
+
+  AHOLIBAH
+
+  I am the queen Aholibah.
+  My lips kissed dumb the word of _Ah_
+      Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.
+  God wrought to me my royal bed;
+  The inner work thereof was red,
+      The outer work was ivory.
+  My mouth's heat was the heat of flame
+  For lust towards the kings that came
+      With horsemen riding royally.
+
+
+  CLEOPATRA
+
+  I am the queen of Ethiope.
+  Love bade my kissing eyelids ope
+      That men beholding might praise love.
+  My hair was wonderful and curled;
+  My lips held fast the mouth o' the world
+      To spoil the strength and speech thereof.
+  The latter triumph in my breath
+  Bowed down the beaten brows of death,
+      Ashamed they had not wrath enough.
+
+
+  ABIHAIL
+
+  I am the queen of Tyrians.
+  My hair was glorious for twelve spans,
+      That dried to loose dust afterward.
+  My stature was a strong man's length:
+  My neck was like a place of strength
+      Built with white walls, even and hard,
+  Like the first noise of rain leaves catch
+  One from another, snatch by snatch,
+      Is my praise, hissed against and marred.
+
+
+  AZUBAH
+
+  I am the queen of Amorites.
+  My face was like a place of lights
+      With multitudes at festival.
+  The glory of my gracious brows
+  Was like God's house made glorious
+      With colours upon either wall.
+  Between my brows and hair there was
+  A white space like a space of glass
+      With golden candles over all.
+
+
+  AHOLAH
+
+  I am the queen of Amalek.
+  There was no tender touch or fleck
+      To spoil my body or bared feet.
+  My words were soft like dulcimers,
+  And the first sweet of grape-flowers
+      Made each side of my bosom sweet.
+  My raiment was as tender fruit
+  Whose rind smells sweet of spice-tree root,
+      Bruised balm-blossom and budded wheat.
+
+
+  AHINOAM
+
+  I am the queen Ahinoam.
+  Like the throat of a soft slain lamb
+      Was my throat, softer veined than his:
+  My lips were as two grapes the sun
+  Lays his whole weight of heat upon
+      Like a mouth heavy with a kiss:
+  My hair's pure purple a wrought fleece,
+  My temples therein as a piece
+      Of a pomegranate's cleaving is.
+
+
+  ATARAH
+
+  I am the queen Sidonian.
+  My face made faint the face of man,
+      And strength was bound between my brows
+  Spikenard was hidden in my ships,
+  Honey and wheat and myrrh in strips,
+      White wools that shine as colour does,
+  Soft linen dyed upon the fold,
+  Split spice and cores of scented gold,
+      Cedar and broken calamus.
+
+
+  SEMIRAMIS
+
+  I am the queen Semiramis.
+  The whole world and the sea that is
+      In fashion like a chrysopras,
+  The noise of all men labouring,
+  The priest's mouth tired through thanksgiving,
+      The sound of love in the blood's pause,
+  The strength of love in the blood's beat,
+  All these were cast beneath my feet
+      And all found lesser than I was.
+
+
+  HESIONE
+
+  I am the queen Hesione.
+  The seasons that increased in me
+      Made my face fairer than all men's.
+  I had the summer in my hair;
+  And all the pale gold autumn air
+      Was as the habit of my sense.
+  My body was as fire that shone;
+  God's beauty that makes all things one
+      Was one among my handmaidens.
+
+
+  CHRYSOTHEMIS
+
+  I am the queen of Samothrace.
+  God, making roses, made my face
+      As a rose filled up full with red.
+  My prows made sharp the straitened seas
+  From Pontus to that Chersonese
+      Whereon the ebbed Asian stream is shed.
+  My hair was as sweet scent that drips;
+  Love's breath begun about my lips
+      Kindled the lips of people dead.
+
+
+  THOMYRIS
+
+  I am the queen of Scythians.
+  My strength was like no strength of man's,
+      My face like day, my breast like spring.
+  My fame was felt in the extreme land
+  That hath sunshine on the one hand
+      And on the other star-shining.
+  Yea, and the wind there fails of breath;
+  Yea, and there life is waste like death;
+      Yea, and there death is a glad thing.
+
+
+  HARHAS
+
+  I am the queen of Anakim.
+  In the spent years whose speech is dim,
+      Whose raiment is the dust and death,
+  My stately body without stain
+  Shone as the shining race of rain
+      Whose hair a great wind scattereth.
+  Now hath God turned my lips to sighs,
+  Plucked off mine eyelids from mine eyes,
+      And sealed with seals my way of breath.
+
+
+  MYRRHA
+
+  I am the queen Arabian.
+  The tears wherewith mine eyelids ran
+      Smelt like my perfumed eyelids' smell.
+  A harsh thirst made my soft mouth hard,
+  That ached with kisses afterward;
+      My brain rang like a beaten bell.
+  As tears on eyes, as fire on wood,
+  Sin fed upon my breath and blood,
+      Sin made my breasts subside and swell.
+
+
+  PASIPHAE
+
+  I am the queen Pasiphae.
+  Not all the pure clean-coloured sea
+      Could cleanse or cool my yearning veins;
+  Nor any root nor herb that grew,
+  Flag-leaves that let green water through,
+      Nor washing of the dews and rains.
+  From shame's pressed core I wrung the sweet
+  Fruit's savour that was death to eat,
+      Whereof no seed but death remains.
+
+
+  SAPPHO
+
+  I am the queen of Lesbians.
+  My love, that had no part in man's,
+      Was sweeter than all shape of sweet.
+  The intolerable infinite desire
+  Made my face pale like faded fire
+      When the ashen pyre falls through with heat.
+  My blood was hot wan wine of love,
+  And my song's sound the sound thereof,
+      The sound of the delight of it.
+
+
+  MESSALINA
+
+  I am the queen of Italy.
+  These were the signs God set on me;
+      A barren beauty subtle and sleek,
+  Curled carven hair, and cheeks worn wan
+  With fierce false lips of many a man,
+      Large temples where the blood ran weak,
+  A mouth athirst and amorous
+  And hungering as the grave's mouth does
+      That, being an-hungred, cannot speak.
+
+
+  AMESTRIS
+
+  I am the queen of Persians.
+  My breasts were lordlier than bright swans.
+      My body as amber fair and thin.
+  Strange flesh was given my lips for bread,
+  With poisonous hours my days were fed,
+      And my feet shod with adder-skin.
+  In Shushan toward Ecbatane
+  I wrought my joys with tears and pain,
+      My loves with blood and bitter sin.
+
+
+  EPHRATH
+
+  I am the queen of Rephaim.
+  God, that some while refraineth him,
+      Made in the end a spoil of me.
+  My rumour was upon the world
+  As strong sound of swoln water hurled
+      Through porches of the straining sea.
+  My hair was like the flag-flower,
+  And my breasts carven goodlier
+      Than beryl with chalcedony.
+
+
+  PASITHEA
+
+  I am the queen of Cypriotes.
+  Mine oarsmen, labouring with brown throats,
+      Sang of me many a tender thing.
+  My maidens, girdled loose and braced
+  With gold from bosom to white waist,
+      Praised me between their wool-combing.
+  All that praise Venus all night long
+  With lips like speech and lids like song
+      Praised me till song lost heart to sing.
+
+
+  ALACIEL
+
+  I am the queen Alaciel.
+  My mouth was like that moist gold cell
+      Whereout the thickest honey drips.
+  Mine eyes were as a grey-green sea;
+  The amorous blood that smote on me
+      Smote to my feet and finger-tips.
+  My throat was whiter than the dove,
+  Mine eyelids as the seals of love,
+      And as the doors of love my lips.
+
+
+  ERIGONE
+
+  I am the queen Erigone.
+  The wild wine shed as blood on me
+      Made my face brighter than a bride's.
+  My large lips had the old thirst of earth,
+  Mine arms the might of the old sea's girth
+      Bound round the whole world's iron sides.
+  Within mine eyes and in mine ears
+  Were music and the wine of tears,
+      And light, and thunder of the tides.
+        _Et hìc exeant, et dicat Bersabe regina_;
+
+  Alas, God, for thy great pity
+  And for the might that is in thee,
+  Behold, I woful Bersabe
+  Cry out with stoopings of my knee
+  And thy wrath laid and bound on me
+      Till I may see thy love.
+  Behold, Lord, this child is grown
+  Within me between bone and bone
+  To make me mother of a son,
+  Made of my body with strong moan;
+  There shall not be another one
+      That shall be made hereof.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Lord God, alas, what shall I sain?
+  Lo, thou art as an hundred men
+  Both to break and build again:
+  The wild ways thou makest plain,
+  Thine hands hold the hail and rain,
+  And thy fingers both grape and grain;
+  Of their largess we be all well fain,
+      And of their great pity:
+  The sun thou madest of good gold,
+  Of clean silver the moon cold,
+  All the great stars thou hast told
+  As thy cattle in thy fold
+  Every one by his name of old;
+  Wind and water thou hast in hold,
+      Both the land and the long sea;
+  Both the green sea and the land,
+  Lord God, thou hast in hand,
+  Both white water and grey sand;
+  Upon thy right or thy left hand
+  There is no man that may stand;
+      Lord, thou rue on me.
+  O wise Lord, if thou be keen
+  To note things amiss that been,
+  I am not worth a shell of bean
+  More than an old mare meagre and lean;
+  For all my wrong-doing with my queen,
+  It grew not of our heartès clean,
+      But it began of her body.
+  For it fell in the hot May
+  I stood within a paven way
+  Built of fair bright stone, perfay,
+  That is as fire of night and day
+      And lighteth all my house.
+  Therein be neither stones nor sticks,
+  Neither red nor white bricks,
+  But for cubits five or six
+  There is most goodly sardonyx
+      And amber laid in rows.
+  It goes round about my roofs,
+  (If ye list ye shall have proofs)
+  There is good space for horse and hoofs,
+      Plain and nothing perilous.
+  For the fair green weather's heat,
+  And for the smell of leavès sweet,
+  It is no marvel, well ye weet,
+      A man to waxen amorous.
+  This I say now by my case
+  That spied forth of that royal place;
+  There I saw in no great space
+  Mine own sweet, both body and face,
+  Under the fresh boughs.
+  In a water that was there
+  She wesshe her goodly body bare
+  And dried it with her owen hair:
+  Both her arms and her knees fair,
+      Both bosom and brows;
+  Both shoulders and eke thighs
+  Tho she wesshe upon this wise;
+  Ever she sighed with little sighs,
+    And ever she gave God thank.
+  Yea, God wot I can well see yet
+  Both her breast and her sides all wet
+  And her long hair withouten let
+  Spread sideways like a drawing net;
+  Full dear bought and full far fet
+  Was that sweet thing there y-set;
+  It were a hard thing to forget
+  How both lips and eyen met,
+      Breast and breath sank.
+  So goodly a sight as there she was,
+  Lying looking on her glass
+  By wan water in green grass,
+      Yet saw never man.
+  So soft and great she was and bright
+  With all her body waxen white,
+  I woxe nigh blind to see the light
+  Shed out of it to left and right;
+  This bitter sin from that sweet sight
+      Between us twain began.
+
+
+  NATHAN
+
+  Now, sir, be merry anon,
+  For ye shall have a full wise son,
+  Goodly and great of flesh and bone;
+  There shall no king be such an one,
+      I swear by Godis rood.
+  Therefore, lord, be merry here,
+  And go to meat withouten fear,
+  And hear a mass with goodly cheer;
+  For to all folk ye shall be dear,
+      And all folk of your blood.
+
+      _Et tunc dicant Laudamus._
+
+
+
+
+ST. DOROTHY
+
+
+  It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen
+  That out of tender mouths God's praise hath been
+  Made perfect, and with wood and simple string
+  He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing
+  To please himself with softness of all sound;
+  And no small thing but hath been sometime found
+  Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness
+  But God hath bruised withal the sentences
+  And evidence of wise men witnessing;
+  No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing
+  It never shall get sight of the great sun;
+  The strength of ten has been the strength of one,
+  And lowliness has waxed imperious.
+    There was in Rome a man Theophilus
+  Of right great blood and gracious ways, that had
+  All noble fashions to make people glad
+  And a soft life of pleasurable days;
+  He was a goodly man for one to praise,
+  Flawless and whole upward from foot to head;
+  His arms were a red hawk that alway fed
+  On a small bird with feathers gnawed upon,
+  Beaten and plucked about the bosom-bone
+  Whereby a small round fleck like fire there was:
+  They called it in their tongue lampadias;
+  This was the banner of the lordly man.
+  In many straits of sea and reaches wan
+  Full of quick wind, and many a shaken firth,
+  It had seen fighting days of either earth,
+  Westward or east of waters Gaditane
+  (This was the place of sea-rocks under Spain
+  Called after the great praise of Hercules)
+  And north beyond the washing Pontic seas,
+  Far windy Russian places fabulous,
+  And salt fierce tides of storm-swoln Bosphorus.
+    Now as this lord came straying in Rome town
+  He saw a little lattice open down
+  And after it a press of maidens' heads
+  That sat upon their cold small quiet beds
+  Talking, and played upon short-stringèd lutes;
+  And other some ground perfume out of roots
+  Gathered by marvellous moons in Asia;
+  Saffron and aloes and wild cassia,
+  Coloured all through and smelling of the sun;
+  And over all these was a certain one
+  Clothed softly, with sweet herbs about her hair
+  And bosom flowerful; her face more fair
+  Than sudden-singing April in soft lands:
+  Eyed like a gracious bird, and in both hands
+  She held a psalter painted green and red.
+    This Theophile laughed at the heart, and said,
+  Now God so help me hither and St. Paul,
+  As by the new time of their festival
+  I have good will to take this maid to wife.
+  And herewith fell to fancies of her life
+  And soft half-thoughts that ended suddenly.
+  This is man's guise to please himself, when he
+  Shall not see one thing of his pleasant things,
+  Nor with outwatch of many travailings
+  Come to be eased of the least pain he hath
+  For all his love and all his foolish wrath
+  And all the heavy manner of his mind.
+  Thus is he like a fisher fallen blind
+  That casts his nets across the boat awry
+  To strike the sea, but lo, he striketh dry
+  And plucks them back all broken for his pain
+  And bites his beard and casts across again
+  And reaching wrong slips over in the sea.
+  So hath this man a strangled neck for fee,
+  For all his cost he chuckles in his throat.
+    This Theophile that little hereof wote
+  Laid wait to hear of her what she might be:
+  Men told him she had name of Dorothy,
+  And was a lady of a worthy house.
+  Thereat this knight grew inly glorious
+  That he should have a love so fair of place.
+  She was a maiden of most quiet face,
+  Tender of speech, and had no hardihood
+  But was nigh feeble of her fearful blood;
+  Her mercy in her was so marvellous
+  From her least years, that seeing her school-fellows
+  That read beside her stricken with a rod,
+  She would cry sore and say some word to God
+  That he would ease her fellow of his pain.
+  There is no touch of sun or fallen rain
+  That ever fell on a more gracious thing.
+    In middle Rome there was in stone-working
+  The church of Venus painted royally.
+  The chapels of it were some two or three,
+  In each of them her tabernacle was
+  And a wide window of six feet in glass
+  Coloured with all her works in red and gold.
+  The altars had bright cloths and cups to hold
+  The wine of Venus for the services,
+  Made out of honey and crushed wood-berries
+  That shed sweet yellow through the thick wet red,
+  That on high days was borne upon the head
+  Of Venus' priest for any man to drink;
+  So that in drinking he should fall to think
+  On some fair face, and in the thought thereof
+  Worship, and such should triumph in his love.
+  For this soft wine that did such grace and good
+  Was new trans-shaped and mixed with Love's own blood,
+  That in the fighting Trojan time was bled;
+  For which came such a woe to Diomed
+  That he was stifled after in hard sea.
+  And some said that this wine-shedding should be
+  Made of the falling of Adonis' blood,
+  That curled upon the thorns and broken wood
+  And round the gold silk shoes on Venus' feet;
+  The taste thereof was as hot honey sweet
+  And in the mouth ran soft and riotous.
+  This was the holiness of Venus' house.
+    It was their worship, that in August days
+  Twelve maidens should go through those Roman ways
+  Naked, and having gold across their brows
+  And their hair twisted in short golden rows,
+  To minister to Venus in this wise:
+  And twelve men chosen in their companies
+  To match these maidens by the altar-stair,
+  All in one habit, crowned upon the hair.
+  Among these men was chosen Theophile.
+    This knight went out and prayed a little while,
+  Holding queen Venus by her hands and knees;
+  I will give thee twelve royal images
+  Cut in glad gold, with marvels of wrought stone
+  For thy sweet priests to lean and pray upon,
+  Jasper and hyacinth and chrysopras,
+  And the strange Asian thalamite that was
+  Hidden twelve ages under heavy sea
+  Among the little sleepy pearls, to be
+  A shrine lit over with soft candle-flame
+  Burning all night red as hot brows of shame,
+  So thou wilt be my lady without sin.
+  Goddess that art all gold outside and in,
+  Help me to serve thee in thy holy way.
+  Thou knowest, Love, that in my bearing day
+  There shone a laughter in the singing stars
+  Round the gold-ceilèd bride-bed wherein Mars
+  Touched thee and had thee in your kissing wise.
+  Now therefore, sweet, kiss thou my maiden's eyes
+  That they may open graciously towards me;
+  And this new fashion of thy shrine shall be
+  As soft with gold as thine own happy head.
+    The goddess, that was painted with face red
+  Between two long green tumbled sides of sea,
+  Stooped her neck sideways, and spake pleasantly:
+  Thou shalt have grace as thou art thrall of mine.
+  And with this came a savour of shed wine
+  And plucked-out petals from a rose's head:
+  And softly with slow laughs of lip she said,
+  Thou shalt have favour all thy days of me.
+    Then came Theophilus to Dorothy,
+  Saying: O sweet, if one should strive or speak
+  Against God's ways, he gets a beaten cheek
+  For all his wage and shame above all men.
+  Therefore I have no will to turn again
+  When God saith "go," lest a worse thing fall out.
+  Then she, misdoubting lest he went about
+  To catch her wits, made answer somewhat thus:
+  I have no will, my lord Theophilus,
+  To speak against this worthy word of yours;
+  Knowing how God's will in all speech endures,
+  That save by grace there may no thing be said,
+  Then Theophile waxed light from foot to head,
+  And softly fell upon this answering.
+  It is well seen you are a chosen thing
+  To do God service in his gracious way.
+  I will that you make haste and holiday
+  To go next year upon the Venus stair,
+  Covered none else, but crowned upon your hair,
+  And do the service that a maiden doth.
+  She said: but I that am Christ's maid were loth
+  To do this thing that hath such bitter name.
+  Thereat his brows were beaten with sore shame
+  And he came off and said no other word.
+  Then his eyes chanced upon his banner-bird,
+  And he fell fingering at the staff of it
+  And laughed for wrath and stared between his feet,
+  And out of a chafed heart he spake as thus:
+  Lo how she japes at me Theophilus,
+  Feigning herself a fool and hard to love;
+  Yet in good time for all she boasteth of
+  She shall be like a little beaten bird.
+  And while his mouth was open in that word
+  He came upon the house Janiculum,
+  Where some went busily, and other some
+  Talked in the gate called the gate glorious.
+  The emperor, which was one Gabalus,
+  Sat over all and drank chill wine alone.
+  To whom is come Theophilus anon,
+  And said as thus: _Beau sire, Dieu vous aide_.
+  And afterward sat under him, and said
+  All this thing through as ye have wholly heard.
+    This Gabalus laughed thickly in his beard.
+  Yea, this is righteousness and maiden rule.
+  Truly, he said, a maid is but a fool.
+  And japed at them as one full villainous,
+  In a lewd wise, this heathen Gabalus,
+  And sent his men to bind her as he bade.
+  Thus have they taken Dorothy the maid,
+  And haled her forth as men hale pick-purses:
+  A little need God knows they had of this,
+  To hale her by her maiden gentle hair.
+  Thus went she lowly, making a soft prayer,
+  As one who stays the sweet wine in his mouth,
+  Murmuring with eased lips, and is most loth
+  To have done wholly with the sweet of it.
+    Christ king, fair Christ, that knowest all men's wit
+  And all the feeble fashion of my ways,
+  O perfect God, that from all yesterdays
+  Abidest whole with morrows perfected,
+  I pray thee by thy mother's holy head
+  Thou help me to do right, that I not slip:
+  I have no speech nor strength upon my lip,
+  Except thou help me who art wise and sweet.
+  Do this too for those nails that clove thy feet,
+  Let me die maiden after many pains.
+  Though I be least among thy handmaidens,
+  Doubtless I shall take death more sweetly thus.
+    Now have they brought her to King Gabalus,
+  Who laughed in all his throat some breathing-whiles:
+  By God, he said, if one should leap two miles,
+  He were not pained about the sides so much.
+  This were a soft thing for a man to touch.
+  Shall one so chafe that hath such little bones?
+  And shook his throat with thick and chuckled moans
+  For laughter that she had such holiness.
+  What aileth thee, wilt thou do services?
+  It were good fare to fare as Venus doth.
+    Then said this lady with her maiden mouth,
+  Shamefaced, and something paler in the cheek:
+  Now, sir, albeit my wit and will to speak
+  Give me no grace in sight of worthy men,
+  For all my shame yet know I this again,
+  I may not speak, nor after downlying
+  Rise up to take delight in lute-playing,
+  Nor sing nor sleep, nor sit and fold my hands,
+  But my soul in some measure understands
+  God's grace laid like a garment over me.
+  For this fair God that out of strong sharp sea
+  Lifted the shapely and green-coloured land,
+  And hath the weight of heaven in his hand
+  As one might hold a bird, and under him
+  The heavy golden planets beam by beam
+  Building the feasting-chambers of his house,
+  And the large world he holdeth with his brows,
+  And with the light of them astonisheth
+  All place and time and face of life and death
+  And motion of the north wind and the south,
+  And is the sound within his angel's mouth
+  Of singing words and words of thanksgiving,
+  And is the colour of the latter spring
+  And heat upon the summer and the sun,
+  And is beginning of all things begun
+  And gathers in him all things to their end,
+  And with the fingers of his hand doth bend
+  The stretched-out sides of heaven like a sail,
+  And with his breath he maketh the red pale
+  And fills with blood faint faces of men dead,
+  And with the sound between his lips are fed
+  Iron and fire and the white body of snow,
+  And blossom of all trees in places low,
+  And small bright herbs about the little hills,
+  And fruit pricked softly with birds' tender bills,
+  And flight of foam about green fields of sea,
+  And fourfold strength of the great winds that be
+  Moved always outward from beneath his feet,
+  And growth of grass and growth of sheavèd wheat
+  And all green flower of goodly-growing lands;
+  And all these things he gathers with his hands
+  And covers all their beauty with his wings;
+  The same, even God that governs all these things,
+  Hath set my feet to be upon his ways.
+  Now therefore for no painfulness of days
+  I shall put off this service bound on me.
+  Also, fair sir, ye know this certainly,
+  How God was in his flesh full chaste and meek
+  And gave his face to shame, and either cheek
+  Gave up to smiting of men tyrannous.
+    And here with a great voice this Gabalus
+  Cried out and said: By God's blood and his bones,
+  This were good game betwixen night and nones
+  For one to sit and hearken to such saws:
+  I were as lief fall in some big beast's jaws
+  As hear these women's jaw-teeth clattering;
+  By God a woman is the harder thing,
+  One may not put a hook into her mouth.
+  Now by St. Luke I am so sore adrouth
+  For all these saws I must needs drink again.
+  But I pray God deliver all us men
+  From all such noise of women and their heat.
+  That is a noble scripture, well I weet,
+  That likens women to an empty can;
+  When God said that he was a full wise man,
+  I trow no man may blame him as for that.
+    And herewithal he drank a draught, and spat,
+  And said: Now shall I make an end hereof.
+  Come near all men and hearken for God's love,
+  And ye shall hear a jest or twain, God wot.
+  And spake as thus with mouth full thick and hot;
+  But thou do this thou shalt be shortly slain.
+  Lo, sir, she said, this death and all this pain
+  I take in penance of my bitter sins.
+  Yea now, quoth Gabalus, this game begins.
+  Lo, without sin one shall not live a span.
+  Lo, this is she that would not look on man
+  Between her fingers folded in thwart wise.
+  See how her shame hath smitten in her eyes
+  That was so clean she had not heard of shame.
+  Certes, he said, by Gabalus my name,
+  This two years back I was not so well pleased.
+  This were good mirth for sick men to be eased
+  And rise up whole and laugh at hearing of.
+  I pray thee show us something of thy love,
+  Since thou wast maid thy gown is waxen wide.
+  Yea, maid I am, she said, and somewhat sighed,
+  As one who thought upon the low fair house
+  Where she sat working, with soft bended brows
+  Watching her threads, among the school-maidens.
+  And she thought well now God had brought her thence
+  She should not come to sew her gold again.
+    Then cried King Gabalus upon his men
+  To have her forth and draw her with steel gins.
+  And as a man hag-ridden beats and grins
+  And bends his body sidelong in his bed,
+  So wagged he with his body and knave's head,
+  Gaping at her, and blowing with his breath.
+  And in good time he gat an evil death
+  Out of his lewdness with his cursèd wives:
+  His bones were hewn asunder as with knives
+  For his misliving, certes it is said.
+  But all the evil wrought upon this maid,
+  It were full hard for one to handle it.
+  For her soft blood was shed upon her feet,
+  And all her body's colour bruised and faint.
+  But she, as one abiding God's great saint,
+  Spake not nor wept for all this travail hard.
+  Wherefore the king commanded afterward
+  To slay her presently in all men's sight.
+  And it was now an hour upon the night
+  And winter-time, and a few stars began.
+  The weather was yet feeble and all wan
+  For beating of a weighty wind and snow.
+  And she came walking in soft wise and slow,
+  And many men with faces piteous.
+  Then came this heavy cursing Gabalus,
+  That swore full hard into his drunken beard;
+  And faintly after without any word
+  Came Theophile some paces off the king.
+  And in the middle of this wayfaring
+  Full tenderly beholding her he said:
+    There is no word of comfort with men dead
+  Nor any face and colour of things sweet;
+  But always with lean cheeks and lifted feet
+  These dead men lie all aching to the blood
+  With bitter cold, their brows withouten hood
+  Beating for chill, their bodies swathed full thin:
+  Alas, what hire shall any have herein
+  To give his life and get such bitterness?
+  Also the soul going forth bodiless
+  Is hurt with naked cold, and no man saith
+  If there be house or covering for death
+  To hide the soul that is discomforted.
+    Then she beholding him a little said:
+  Alas, fair lord, ye have no wit of this;
+  For on one side death is full poor of bliss
+  And as ye say full sharp of bone and lean:
+  But on the other side is good and green
+  And hath soft flower of tender-coloured hair
+  Grown on his head, and a red mouth as fair
+  As may be kissed with lips; thereto his face
+  Is as God's face, and in a perfect place
+  Full of all sun and colour of straight boughs
+  And waterheads about a painted house
+  That hath a mile of flowers either way
+  Outward from it, and blossom-grass of May
+  Thickening on many a side for length of heat,
+  Hath God set death upon a noble seat
+  Covered with green and flowered in the fold,
+  In likeness of a great king grown full old
+  And gentle with new temperance of blood;
+  And on his brows a purfled purple hood,
+  They may not carry any golden thing;
+  And plays some tune with subtle fingering
+  On a small cithern, full of tears and sleep
+  And heavy pleasure that is quick to weep
+  And sorrow with the honey in her mouth;
+  And for this might of music that he doth
+  Are all souls drawn toward him with great love
+  And weep for sweetness of the noise thereof
+  And bow to him with worship of their knees;
+  And all the field is thick with companies
+  Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes
+  And gather honey of the yellow fruits
+  Between the branches waxen soft and wide:
+  And all this peace endures in either side
+  Of the green land, and God beholdeth all.
+  And this is girdled with a round fair wall
+  Made of red stone and cool with heavy leaves
+  Grown out against it, and green blossom cleaves
+  To the green chinks, and lesser wall-weed sweet,
+  Kissing the crannies that are split with heat,
+  And branches where the summer draws to head.
+    And Theophile burnt in the cheek, and said:
+  Yea, could one see it, this were marvellous.
+  I pray you, at your coming to this house,
+  Give me some leaf of all those tree-branches;
+  Seeing how so sharp and white our weather is,
+  There is no green nor gracious red to see.
+    Yea, sir, she said, that shall I certainly.
+  And from her long sweet throat without a fleck
+  Undid the gold, and through her stretched-out neck
+  The cold axe clove, and smote away her head:
+  Out of her throat the tender blood full red
+  Fell suddenly through all her long soft hair.
+  And with good speed for hardness of the air
+  Each man departed to his house again.
+    Lo, as fair colour in the face of men
+  At seed-time of their blood, or in such wise
+  As a thing seen increaseth in men's eyes,
+  Caught first far off by sickly fits of sight,
+  So a word said, if one shall hear aright,
+  Abides against the season of its growth.
+  This Theophile went slowly, as one doth
+  That is not sure for sickness of his feet;
+  And counting the white stonework of the street,
+  Tears fell out of his eyes for wrath and love,
+  Making him weep more for the shame thereof
+  Than for true pain: so went he half a mile.
+  And women mocked him, saying: Theophile,
+  Lo, she is dead; what shall a woman have
+  That loveth such an one? so Christ me save,
+  I were as lief to love a man new-hung.
+  Surely this man has bitten on his tongue,
+  This makes him sad and writhled in his face.
+    And when they came upon the paven place
+  That was called sometime the place amorous
+  There came a child before Theophilus
+  Bearing a basket, and said suddenly:
+  Fair sir, this is my mistress Dorothy
+  That sends you gifts; and with this he was gone.
+  In all this earth there is not such an one
+  For colour and straight stature made so fair.
+  The tender growing gold of his pure hair
+  Was as wheat growing, and his mouth as flame.
+  God called him Holy after his own name;
+  With gold cloth like fire burning he was clad.
+  But for the fair green basket that he had,
+  It was filled up with heavy white and red;
+  Great roses stained still where the first rose bled,
+  Burning at heart for shame their heart withholds:
+  And the sad colour of strong marigolds
+  That have the sun to kiss their lips for love;
+  The flower that Venus' hair is woven of,
+  The colour of fair apples in the sun,
+  Late peaches gathered when the heat was done
+  And the slain air got breath; and after these
+  The fair faint-headed poppies drunk with ease,
+  And heaviness of hollow lilies red.
+    Then cried they all that saw these things, and said
+  It was God's doing, and was marvellous.
+  And in brief while this knight Theophilus
+  Is waxen full of faith, and witnesseth
+  Before the king of God and love and death,
+  For which the king bade hang him presently.
+  A gallows of a goodly piece of tree
+  This Gabalus hath made to hang him on.
+  Forth of this world lo Theophile is gone
+  With a wried neck, God give us better fare
+  Than his that hath a twisted throat to wear;
+  But truly for his love God hath him brought
+  There where his heavy body grieves him nought
+  Nor all the people plucking at his feet;
+  But in his face his lady's face is sweet,
+  And through his lips her kissing lips are gone:
+  God send him peace, and joy of such an one.
+    This is the story of St. Dorothy.
+  I will you of your mercy pray for me
+  Because I wrote these sayings for your grace,
+  That I may one day see her in the face.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO DREAMS
+
+(FROM BOCCACCIO)
+
+
+  I will that if I say a heavy thing
+  Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring
+  Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,
+  And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet.
+  Moreover it sounds often well to let
+  One string, when ye play music, keep at fret
+  The whole song through; one petal that is dead
+  Confirms the roses, be they white or red;
+  Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear
+  As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;
+  The sick sound aching in a lifted throat
+  Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note;
+  And though the rain falls often, and with rain
+  Late autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain,
+  I deem that God is not disquieted.
+  Also while men are fed with wine and bread,
+  They shall be fed with sorrow at his hand.
+    There grew a rose-garden in Florence land
+  More fair than many; all red summers through
+  The leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew
+  Sideways with tender wind; and therein fell
+  Sweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible,
+  As a bird's will to sing disturbed his throat
+  And set the sharp wings forward like a boat
+  Pushed through soft water, moving his brown side
+  Smooth-shapen as a maid's, and shook with pride
+  His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun's
+  Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once.
+  The ways were clean to walk and delicate;
+  And when the windy white of March grew late,
+  Before the trees took heart to face the sun
+  With ravelled raiment of lean winter on,
+  The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.
+    Some roods away a lordly house there was,
+  Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet
+  From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,
+  Sown close among the strewings of the floor;
+  And either wall of the slow corridor
+  Was dim with deep device of gracious things;
+  Some angel's steady mouth and weight of wings
+  Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole
+  And beard cut black against the aureole
+  That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby
+  Mary's gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie
+  Wherein was bound a child with tender feet;
+  Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.
+    Within this house a righteous lord abode,
+  Ser Averardo; patient of his mood,
+  And just of judgment; and to child he had
+  A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad
+  Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;
+  And where she came, the lips that pain made strait
+  Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew
+  Tender as those that sleep brings patience to.
+  Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin
+  She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.
+  Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise;
+  Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,
+  Filled with clear light and fire and large repose
+  Like a fair hound's; no man there is but knows
+  Her face was white, and thereto she was tall;
+  In no wise lacked there any praise at all
+  To her most perfect and pure maidenhood;
+  No sin I think there was in all her blood.
+    She, where a gold grate shut the roses in,
+  Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green
+  Flushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there
+  Love made him room and space to worship her
+  With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought
+  Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not
+  For weariness, but at one taste undoes
+  The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous
+  Of all the hidden honey; words and sense
+  Fail through the tune's imperious prevalence.
+    In a poor house this lover kept apart,
+  Long communing with patience next his heart
+  If love of his might move that face at all,
+  Tuned evenwise with colours musical;
+  Then after length of days he said thus: "Love,
+  For love's own sake and for the love thereof
+  Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood;
+  For good it were, if anything be good,
+  To comfort me in this pain's plague of mine;
+  Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine
+  Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is
+  Seems pleasant to me; only I know this,
+  Love's ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet
+  To travel, but the end of such is sweet:
+  Now do with me as seemeth you the best."
+  She mused a little, as one holds his guest
+  By the hand musing, with her face borne down:
+  Then said: "Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,
+  Have no more care of all that you have said;
+  Since if there is no sleep will bind your head,
+  Lo, I am fain to help you certainly;
+  Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;
+  There is no pleasure when a man is dead."
+  Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head
+  And clipped her fair long body many times;
+  I have no wit to shape in written rhymes
+  A scanted tithe of this great joy they had.
+    They were too near love's secret to be glad;
+  As whoso deems the core will surely melt
+  From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt
+  Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:
+  Or as sweet music sharpens afterward,
+  Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;
+  As sea-water, having killed over-heat
+  In a man's body, chills it with faint ache;
+  So their sense, burdened only for love's sake,
+  Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,
+  They saved each day some gold reserves of it,
+  Being wiser in love's riddle than such be
+  Whom fragments feed with his chance charity.
+  All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;
+  The rose-thorn's prickle dangerous to touch,
+  And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;
+  Too keen the breathed honey of the rose,
+  Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;
+  They were so far gone in love's histories,
+  Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath,
+  Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,
+  And strength of soul and body waxen blind
+  For weariness, and flesh entailed with mind,
+  When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.
+    Even this green place the summer caught them in
+  Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves
+  In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumèd eves
+  Burnt out to make the sun's love-offering,
+  The midnoon's prayer, the rose's thanksgiving,
+  The trees' weight burdening the strengthless air,
+  The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,
+  Her body's balance from the moving feet--
+  All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet
+  It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth
+  On May's new lip the tender April breath:
+  So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in
+  All April through, and all their latter kin
+  Of languid leaves whereon the Autumn blows--
+  The dead red raiment of the last year's rose--
+  The last year's laurel, and the last year's love,
+  Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of.
+    What man will gather in red summer-time
+  The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme
+  Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,
+  Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit
+  The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through
+  With colour, make all broken beauties new
+  For love's new lesson--shall not such find pain
+  When the marred music labouring in his brain
+  Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip
+  One word that might leave satisfied his lip--
+  One touch that might put fire in all the chords?
+  This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words
+  Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate--
+  Some speech the old love found out to compensate
+  For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness--
+  Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless
+  Passionless months and undelighted weeks.
+  The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,
+  Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath:
+  The year was plagued with instances of death.
+    So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass
+  With leaves about, and many a bird there was
+  Where the green shadow thickliest impleached
+  Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached
+  Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white:
+  Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright
+  With purple as purple water and gold wrought in.
+  One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,
+  Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade
+  The breast's bright plaited work: but nothing frayed
+  The sun's large kiss on the luxurious hair.
+  Her beauty was new colour to the air
+  And music to the silent many birds.
+  Love was an-hungred for some perfect words
+  To praise her with; but only her low name
+  "Andrevuola" came thrice, and thrice put shame
+  In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red
+  That for pure love straightway shame's self was dead.
+    Then with lids gathered as who late had wept
+  She began saying: "I have so little slept
+  My lids drowse now against the very sun;
+  Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun
+  Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,
+  And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous
+  Almost away." He said thus, kissing them:
+  "O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,
+  My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore
+  Shall not the waking time increase much more
+  With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?
+  Has any heat too hard and insolent
+  Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone
+  The maiden grass shut under from the sun?
+  Where in this world is room enough for pain?"
+    The feverish finger of love had touched again
+  Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek
+  In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek
+  With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth
+  Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,
+  Making it humble as weak hunger is.
+  She lay close to him, bade do this and this,
+  Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe
+  Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe
+  The old record out of old things done and dead,
+  She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red
+  For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;
+  Saying "Though my wits be weak, this is no shame
+  For a poor maid whom love so punisheth
+  With heats of hesitation and stopped breath
+  That with my dreams I live yet heavily
+  For pure sad heart and faith's humility.
+  Now be not wroth and I will show you this.
+    "Methought our lips upon their second kiss
+  Met in this place, and a fair day we had
+  And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad
+  With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;
+  When I, beholding ever how your mouth
+  Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back,
+  Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black
+  Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,
+  A devil's hide with foul flame-writhen grail
+  Fashioned where hell's heat festers loathsomest;
+  And that brief speech may ease me of the rest,
+  Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing.
+  My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering
+  On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,
+  Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,
+  As if the palpitating dawn drew breath
+  For horror, breathing between life and death,
+  Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent."
+    So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,
+  She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing,
+  The timeless travail of hell's childbearing,
+  Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he,
+  For relish of her tasted misery
+  And tender little thornprick of her pain,
+  Laughed with mere love. What lover among men
+  But hath his sense fed sovereignly 'twixt whiles
+  With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles
+  And soft disaster of a painèd face?
+  What pain, established in so sweet a place,
+  But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?
+  What colour burning man's wide-open eye
+  But may be pleasurably seen? what sense
+  Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence
+  No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood
+  And emptied flesh in their most broken mood
+  Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus
+  Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous.
+    Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began,
+  Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan
+  Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath.
+  "Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death
+  And in death's service wears out half his age,
+  Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,
+  Shadow and sound of things ungracious;
+  Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,
+  And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had
+  As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.
+    "This dream I tell you came three nights ago;
+  In full mid sleep I took a whim to know
+  How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;
+  But save my dream all sweet availed me not.
+  First came a smell of pounded spice and scent
+  Such as God ripens in some continent
+  Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea;
+  And breaths as though some costly rose could be
+  Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire
+  To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire
+  The flower's poor heart with heat and waste, to make
+  Strong magic for some perfumed woman's sake.
+  Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet
+  Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat
+  As if a lute should play of its own heart
+  And fearfully, not smitten of either part;
+  And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet
+  As gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat;
+  So I rose naked from the bed, and stood
+  Counting the mobile measure in my blood
+  Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came
+  Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame,
+  Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much
+  As the outer curls that feel the comb's first touch
+  Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;
+  And blind between my dream and my desire
+  I seemed to stand and held my spirit still
+  Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill
+  Honey from cells forgotten of the bee
+  Is less afraid to stir the hive and see
+  Some wasp's bright back inside, than I to feel
+  Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.
+  I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here
+  So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear
+  And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would
+  Have here some colour and smooth shape as good
+  As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides
+  With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides
+  And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind
+  Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind
+  To touch their hair they see not, neither fly;
+  This would I see in heaven and not die.
+  So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,
+  So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt
+  In the dumb night's warm weight of glowing gloom
+  Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,
+  And made it like a green low place wherein
+  Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin
+  Against a ripple, that the angry pearl
+  May flow like flame about her: the next curl
+  Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun
+  To wash the dust well out; another one
+  Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings
+  With lavish body sidelong, so that rings
+  Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail
+  All round her fine and floated body pale,
+  Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side
+  Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,
+  As taken in some underflow of sea
+  Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she
+  Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head
+  Clear of the river: even from wall to bed,
+  I tell you, was my room transfigured so.
+  Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know
+  If there were walls or leaves, or if there was
+  No bed's green curtain, but mere gentle grass.
+  There were set also hard against the feet
+  Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,
+  With the cool water's noise to hear in rhymes:
+  And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes
+  And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills
+  To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.
+  Next the grave walking of a woman's feet
+  Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat
+  Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:
+  And I thought ever, surely it were wise
+  Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)
+  Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose
+  Because it turns a face to her, the wind
+  Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,
+  I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,
+  I played with pleasures, made them to my mind,
+  Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed,
+  First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed
+  On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last
+  Touched me between the cheek and lip and past
+  Over my face with kisses here and there
+  Sown in and out across the eyes and hair.
+  Still I said nothing; till she set her face
+  More close and harder on the kissing-place,
+  And her mouth caught like a snake's mouth, and stung
+  So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung
+  More than a bird's foot: yet a wound it grew,
+  A great one, let this red mark witness you
+  Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof
+  So clove my sense that I woke out of love
+  And knew not what this dream was nor had wit;
+  But now God knows if I have skill of it."
+    Hereat she laid one palm against her lips
+  To stop their trembling; as when water slips
+  Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise
+  And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys
+  The carven rims with murmuring, so came
+  Words in her lips with no word right of them,
+  A beaten speech thick and disconsolate,
+  Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate
+  Of her sore fear that grew from anything--
+  The sound of the strong summer thickening
+  In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees:
+  The day's breath felt about the ash-branches,
+  And noises of the noon whose weight still grew
+  On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew
+  Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached;
+  For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked
+  And soothed with shade: but westward all its growth
+  Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth
+  Who feels his temples newly feverous.
+  And even with such motion in her brows
+  As that man hath in whom sick days begin,
+  She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin
+  As a sick man's, sudden and tremulous;
+  "Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us,
+  Let us love more;" and held his mouth with hers.
+  As the first sound of flooded hill-waters
+  Is heard by people of the meadow-grass,
+  Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass
+  With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream
+  Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him
+  She felt before tears came her eyelids wet,
+  Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet,
+  Heard his throat's harsh last moan before it clomb:
+  And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb,
+  Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech,
+  Each grasping other, and the eyes of each
+  Fed in the other's face: till suddenly
+  He cried out with a little broken cry
+  This word, "O help me, sweet, I am but dead."
+  And even so saying, the colour of fair red
+  Was gone out of his face, and his blood's beat
+  Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet
+  And pointed hands; and without moan he died.
+  Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side,
+  Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes:
+  For the pure sharpness of her miseries
+  She had no heart's pain, but mere body's wrack;
+  But at the last her beaten blood drew back
+  Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows
+  Suddenly grown aware and piteous
+  Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath
+  Came as though one nigh dead came back from death;
+  Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair.
+    And in brief while she thought to bury there
+  The dead man that her love might lie with him
+  In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim
+  And soft earth round the branchèd apple-trees,
+  Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease,
+  And no man entering divide him thence.
+  Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens
+  To be her help to do upon this wise.
+  And saying so the tears out of her eyes
+  Fell without noise and comforted her heart:
+  Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part
+  Began to soften in her sense of it.
+  There under all the little branches sweet
+  The place was shapen of his burial;
+  They shed thereon no thing funereal,
+  But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom,
+  Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some
+  Fair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider
+  Of marigold and great spent sunflower.
+    And afterward she came back without word
+  To her own house; two days went, and the third
+  Went, and she showed her father of this thing.
+  And for great grief of her soul's travailing
+  He gave consent she should endure in peace
+  Till her life's end; yea, till her time should cease,
+  She should abide in fellowship of pain.
+  And having lived a holy year or twain
+  She died of pure waste heart and weariness.
+  And for love's honour in her love's distress
+  This word was written over her tomb's head;
+  "Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead."
+
+
+
+
+AHOLIBAH
+
+
+  In the beginning God made thee
+      A woman well to look upon,
+  Thy tender body as a tree
+      Whereon cool wind hath always blown
+      Till the clean branches be well grown.
+
+  There was none like thee in the land;
+      The girls that were thy bondwomen
+  Did bind thee with a purple band
+      Upon thy forehead, that all men
+      Should know thee for God's handmaiden.
+
+  Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,
+      With silk to wear on hands and feet
+  And plates of gold on either side:
+      Wine made thee glad, and thou didst eat
+      Honey, and choice of pleasant meat.
+
+  And fishers in the middle sea
+      Did get thee sea-fish and sea-weeds
+  In colour like the robes on thee;
+      And curious work of plaited reeds,
+      And wools wherein live purple bleeds.
+
+  And round the edges of thy cup
+      Men wrought thee marvels out of gold,
+  Strong snakes with lean throats lifted up,
+      Large eyes whereon the brows had hold,
+      And scaly things their slime kept cold.
+
+  For thee they blew soft wind in flutes
+      And ground sweet roots for cunning scent;
+  Made slow because of many lutes,
+      The wind among thy chambers went
+      Wherein no light was violent.
+
+  God called thy name Aholibah,
+      His tabernacle being in thee,
+  A witness through waste Asia;
+      Thou wert a tent sewn cunningly
+      With gold and colours of the sea.
+
+  God gave thee gracious ministers
+      And all their work who plait and weave:
+  The cunning of embroiderers
+      That sew the pillow to the sleeve,
+      And likeness of all things that live.
+
+  Thy garments upon thee were fair
+      With scarlet and with yellow thread;
+  Also the weaving of thine hair
+      Was as fine gold upon thy head,
+      And thy silk shoes were sewn with red.
+
+  All sweet things he bade sift, and ground
+      As a man grindeth wheat in mills
+  With strong wheels alway going round;
+      He gave thee corn, and grass that fills
+      The cattle on a thousand hills.
+
+  The wine of many seasons fed
+      Thy mouth, and made it fair and clean;
+  Sweet oil was poured out on thy head
+      And ran down like cool rain between
+      The strait close locks it melted in.
+
+  The strong men and the captains knew
+      Thy chambers wrought and fashioned
+  With gold and covering of blue,
+      And the blue raiment of thine head
+      Who satest on a stately bed.
+
+  All these had on their garments wrought
+      The shape of beasts and creeping things,
+  The body that availeth not,
+      Flat backs of worms and veinèd wings,
+      And the lewd bulk that sleeps and stings.
+
+  Also the chosen of the years,
+      The multitude being at ease,
+  With sackbuts and with dulcimers
+      And noise of shawms and psalteries
+      Made mirth within the ears of these.
+
+  But as a common woman doth,
+      Thou didst think evil and devise;
+  The sweet smell of thy breast and mouth
+      Thou madest as the harlot's wise,
+      And there was painting on thine eyes.
+
+  Yea, in the woven guest-chamber
+      And by the painted passages
+  Where the strange gracious paintings were,
+      State upon state of companies,
+      There came on thee the lust of these.
+
+  Because of shapes on either wall
+      Sea-coloured from some rare blue shell
+  At many a Tyrian interval,
+      Horsemen on horses, girdled well,
+      Delicate and desirable,
+
+  Thou saidest: I am sick of love:
+      Stay me with flagons, comfort me
+  With apples for my pain thereof
+      Till my hands gather in his tree
+      That fruit wherein my lips would be.
+
+  Yea, saidest thou, I will go up
+      When there is no more shade than one
+  May cover with a hollow cup,
+      And make my bed against the sun
+      Till my blood's violence be done.
+
+  Thy mouth was leant upon the wall
+      Against the painted mouth, thy chin
+  Touched the hair's painted curve and fall;
+      Thy deep throat, fallen lax and thin,
+      Worked as the blood's beat worked therein.
+
+  Therefore, O thou Aholibah,
+      God is not glad because of thee;
+  And thy fine gold shall pass away
+      Like those fair coins of ore that be
+      Washed over by the middle sea.
+
+  Then will one make thy body bare
+      To strip it of all gracious things,
+  And pluck the cover from thine hair,
+      And break the gift of many kings,
+      Thy wrist-rings and thine ankle-rings.
+
+  Likewise the man whose body joins
+      To thy smooth body, as was said,
+  Who hath a girdle on his loins
+      And dyed attire upon his head--
+      The same who, seeing, worshipped,
+
+  Because thy face was like the face
+      Of a clean maiden that smells sweet,
+  Because thy gait was as the pace
+      Of one that opens not her feet
+      And is not heard within the street--
+
+  Even he, O thou Aholibah,
+      Made separate from thy desire,
+  Shall cut thy nose and ears away
+      And bruise thee for thy body's hire
+      And burn the residue with fire.
+
+  Then shall the heathen people say,
+      The multitude being at ease;
+  Lo, this is that Aholibah
+      Whose name was blown among strange seas.
+      Grown old with soft adulteries.
+
+  Also her bed was made of green,
+      Her windows beautiful for glass
+  That she had made her bed between:
+      Yea, for pure lust her body was
+      Made like white summer-coloured grass.
+
+  Her raiment was a strong man's spoil;
+      Upon a table by a bed
+  She set mine incense and mine oil
+      To be the beauty of her head
+      In chambers walled about with red.
+
+  Also between the walls she had
+      Fair faces of strong men portrayed;
+  All girded round the loins, and clad
+      With several cloths of woven braid
+      And garments marvellously made.
+
+  Therefore the wrath of God shall be
+      Set as a watch upon her way;
+  And whoso findeth by the sea
+      Blown dust of bones will hardly say
+      If this were that Aholibah.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND SLEEP
+
+
+  Lying asleep between the strokes of night
+    I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
+    Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
+  Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
+  Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
+    But perfect-coloured without white or red.
+    And her lips opened amorously, and said--
+  I wist not what, saving one word--Delight.
+  And all her face was honey to my mouth,
+    And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
+      The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
+  The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
+    The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
+      And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.
+
+
+
+
+MADONNA MIA
+
+
+  Under green apple-boughs
+  That never a storm will rouse,
+  My lady hath her house
+    Between two bowers;
+  In either of the twain
+  Red roses full of rain;
+  She hath for bondwomen
+    All kind of flowers.
+
+  She hath no handmaid fair
+  To draw her curled gold hair
+  Through rings of gold that bear
+    Her whole hair's weight;
+  She hath no maids to stand
+  Gold-clothed on either hand;
+  In all the great green land
+    None is so great.
+
+  She hath no more to wear
+  But one white hood of vair
+  Drawn over eyes and hair,
+    Wrought with strange gold,
+  Made for some great queen's head,
+  Some fair great queen since dead;
+  And one strait gown of red
+    Against the cold.
+
+  Beneath her eyelids deep
+  Love lying seems asleep,
+  Love, swift to wake, to weep,
+    To laugh, to gaze;
+  Her breasts are like white birds,
+  And all her gracious words
+  As water-grass to herds
+    In the June-days.
+
+  To her all dews that fall
+  And rains are musical;
+  Her flowers are fed from all,
+    Her joy from these;
+  In the deep-feathered firs
+  Their gift of joy is hers,
+  In the least breath that stirs
+    Across the trees.
+
+  She grows with greenest leaves,
+  Ripens with reddest sheaves,
+  Forgets, remembers, grieves,
+    And is not sad;
+  The quiet lands and skies
+  Leave light upon her eyes;
+  None knows her, weak or wise,
+    Or tired or glad.
+
+  None knows, none understands,
+  What flowers are like her hands;
+  Though you should search all lands
+    Wherein time grows,
+  What snows are like her feet,
+  Though his eyes burn with heat
+  Through gazing on my sweet,
+    Yet no man knows.
+
+  Only this thing is said;
+  That white and gold and red,
+  God's three chief words, man's bread
+    And oil and wine,
+  Were given her for dowers,
+  And kingdom of all hours,
+  And grace of goodly flowers
+    And various vine.
+
+  This is my lady's praise:
+  God after many days
+  Wrought her in unknown ways,
+    In sunset lands;
+  This was my lady's birth;
+  God gave her might and mirth
+  And laid his whole sweet earth
+    Between her hands.
+
+  Under deep apple-boughs
+  My lady hath her house;
+  She wears upon her brows
+    The flower thereof;
+  All saying but what God saith
+  To her is as vain breath;
+  She is more strong than death,
+    Being strong as love.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+  We were ten maidens in the green corn,
+    Small red leaves in the mill-water:
+  Fairer maidens never were born,
+    Apples of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  We were ten maidens by a well-head,
+    Small white birds in the mill-water:
+  Sweeter maidens never were wed,
+    Rings of red for the king's daughter.
+
+  The first to spin, the second to sing,
+    Seeds of wheat in the mill-water;
+  The third may was a goodly thing,
+    White bread and brown for the king's daughter.
+
+  The fourth to sew and the fifth to play,
+    Fair green weed in the mill-water;
+  The sixth may was a goodly may,
+    White wine and red for the king's daughter.
+
+  The seventh to woo, the eighth to wed,
+    Fair thin reeds in the mill-water;
+  The ninth had gold work on her head,
+    Honey in the comb for the king's daughter.
+
+  The ninth had gold work round her hair,
+    Fallen flowers in the mill-water;
+  The tenth may was goodly and fair,
+    Golden gloves for the king's daughter.
+
+  We were ten maidens in a field green,
+    Fallen fruit in the mill-water;
+  Fairer maidens never have been,
+    Golden sleeves for the king's daughter.
+
+  By there comes the king's young son,
+    A little wind in the mill-water;
+  "Out of ten maidens ye'll grant me one,"
+    A crown of red for the king's daughter.
+
+  "Out of ten mays ye'll give me the best,"
+    A little rain in the mill-water;
+  A bed of yellow straw for all the rest,
+    A bed of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's ta'en out the goodliest,
+    Rain that rains in the mill-water;
+  A comb of yellow shell for all the rest,
+    A comb of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's made her bed to the goodliest,
+    Wind and hail in the mill-water;
+  A grass girdle for all the rest,
+    A girdle of arms for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's set his heart to the goodliest,
+    Snow that snows in the mill-water;
+  Nine little kisses for all the rest,
+    An hundredfold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's ta'en his leave at the goodliest,
+    Broken boats in the mill-water;
+  Golden gifts for all the rest,
+    Sorrow of heart for the king's daughter.
+
+  "Ye'll make a grave for my fair body,"
+    Running rain in the mill-water;
+  "And ye'll streek my brother at the side of me,"
+    The pains of hell for the king's daughter.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER DEATH
+
+
+  The four boards of the coffin lid
+  Heard all the dead man did.
+
+  The first curse was in his mouth,
+  Made of grave's mould and deadly drouth.
+
+  The next curse was in his head,
+  Made of God's work discomfited.
+
+  The next curse was in his hands,
+  Made out of two grave-bands.
+
+  The next curse was in his feet,
+  Made out of a grave-sheet.
+
+  "I had fair coins red and white,
+  And my name was as great light;
+
+  I had fair clothes green and red,
+  And strong gold bound round my head.
+
+  But no meat comes in my mouth,
+  Now I fare as the worm doth;
+
+  And no gold binds in my hair,
+  Now I fare as the blind fare.
+
+  My live thews were of great strength,
+  Now am I waxen a span's length;
+
+  My live sides were full of lust,
+  Now are they dried with dust."
+
+  The first board spake and said:
+  "Is it best eating flesh or bread?"
+
+  The second answered it:
+  "Is wine or honey the more sweet?"
+
+  The third board spake and said:
+  "Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"
+
+  The fourth made answer thus:
+  "All these things are as one with us."
+
+  The dead man asked of them:
+  "Is the green land stained brown with flame?
+
+  Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,
+  And my wife's body for beasts' meat?
+
+  Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,
+  And built a gallows to hang my man?"
+
+  The boards said to him:
+  "This is a lewd thing that ye deem.
+
+  Your wife has gotten a golden bed,
+  All the sheets are sewn with red.
+
+  Your son has gotten a coat of silk,
+  The sleeves are soft as curded milk.
+
+  Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,
+  All the skirt has braids of blue.
+
+  Your man has gotten both ring and glove,
+  Wrought well for eyes to love."
+
+  The dead man answered thus:
+  "What good gift shall God give us?"
+
+  The boards answered him anon:
+  "Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."
+
+
+
+
+MAY JANET
+
+(BRETON)
+
+
+  "Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,
+    And go to the wars with me."
+  He's drawn her by both hands
+    With her face against the sea.
+
+  "He that strews red shall gather white,
+    He that sows white reap red,
+  Before your face and my daughter's
+    Meet in a marriage-bed.
+
+  "Gold coin shall grow in the yellow field,
+    Green corn in the green sea-water,
+  And red fruit grow of the rose's red,
+    Ere your fruit grow in her."
+
+  "But I shall have her by land," he said,
+    "Or I shall have her by sea,
+  Or I shall have her by strong treason
+    And no grace go with me."
+
+  Her father's drawn her by both hands,
+    He's rent her gown from her,
+  He's ta'en the smock round her body,
+    Cast in the sea-water.
+
+  The captain's drawn her by both sides
+    Out of the fair green sea;
+  "Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,
+    And come to the war with me."
+
+  The first town they came to
+    There was a blue bride-chamber;
+  He clothed her on with silk
+    And belted her with amber.
+
+  The second town they came to
+    The bridesmen feasted knee to knee;
+  He clothed her on with silver,
+    A stately thing to see.
+
+  The third town they came to
+    The bridesmaids all had gowns of gold;
+  He clothed her on with purple,
+    A rich thing to behold.
+
+  The last town they came to
+    He clothed her white and red,
+  With a green flag either side of her
+    And a gold flag overhead.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLOODY SON
+
+(FINNISH)
+
+
+  "O where have ye been the morn sae late,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  O where have ye been the morn sae late?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "By the water-gate, by the water-gate,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "I watered my steeds with water frae the lake,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "Why is your coat sae fouled the day,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  Why is your coat sae fouled the day?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The steeds were stamping sair by the weary banks of clay,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And where gat ye thae sleeves of red,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And where gat ye thae sleeves of red?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "I have slain my ae brither by the weary waterhead,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And where will ye gang to mak your mend,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And where will ye gang to mak your mend?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The warldis way, to the warldis end,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your father dear,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your father dear?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The wood to fell and the logs to bear,
+  For he'll never see my body mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your mither dear,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your mither dear?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The wool to card and the wool to wear,
+  For ye'll never see my body mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave for your wife to take,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave for your wife to take?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "A goodly gown and a fair new make,
+  For she'll do nae mair for my body's sake,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your young son fair,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your young son fair?
+    And I wot ye hae not anither."
+  "A twiggen school-rod for his body to bear,
+  Though it garred him greet he'll get nae mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet?
+    And I wot ye hae not anither."
+  "Wild mulberries for her mouth to eat,
+  She'll get nae mair though it garred her greet,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And when will ye come back frae roamin',
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And when will ye come back frae roamin'?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When the sunrise out of the north is comen,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall the sunrise on the north side be,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall the sunrise on the north side be?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When chuckie-stanes shall swim in the sea,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall stanes in the sea swim,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall stanes in the sea swim?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When birdies' feathers are as lead therein,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall feathers be as lead,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall feathers be as lead?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When God shall judge between the quick and dead,
+    O dear mither."
+
+
+
+
+THE SEA-SWALLOWS
+
+
+  This fell when Christmas lights were done,
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  But before the Easter lights begun;
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  Two lovers sat where the rowan blows
+    And all the grass is heavy and fine,
+  By the gathering-place of the sea-swallows
+    When the wind brings them over Tyne.
+
+  Blossom of broom will never make bread,
+    Red rose leaves will never make wine;
+  Between her brows she is grown red,
+    That was full white in the fields by Tyne.
+
+  "O what is this thing ye have on,
+    Show me now, sweet daughter of mine?"
+  "O father, this is my little son
+    That I found hid in the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "O what will ye give my son to eat,
+    Red rose leaves will never make wine?"
+  "Fen-water and adder's meat."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye get my son to wear?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "A weed and a web of nettle's hair."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye take to line his bed?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Two black stones at the kirkwall's head."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye give my son for land?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Three girl's paces of red sand."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye give me for my son?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Six times to kiss his young mouth on."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "But what have ye done with the bearing-bread,
+    And what have ye made of the washing-wine?
+  Or where have ye made your bearing-bed,
+    To bear a son in the sides of Tyne?"
+
+  "The bearing-bread is soft and new,
+    There is no soil in the straining wine;
+  The bed was made between green and blue,
+    It stands full soft by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "The fair grass was my bearing-bread,
+    The well-water my washing-wine;
+  The low leaves were my bearing-bed,
+    And that was best in the sides of Tyne."
+
+  "O daughter, if ye have done this thing,
+    I wot the greater grief is mine;
+  This was a bitter child-bearing,
+    When ye were got by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "About the time of sea-swallows
+    That fly full thick by six and nine,
+  Ye'll have my body out of the house,
+    To bury me by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "Set nine stones by the wall for twain,"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  "For the bed I take will measure ten."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Tread twelve girl's paces out for three,"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  "For the pit I made has taken me."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+
+
+
+THE YEAR OF LOVE
+
+
+  There were four loves that one by one,
+  Following the seasons and the sun,
+  Passed over without tears, and fell
+  Away without farewell.
+
+  The first was made of gold and tears,
+  The next of aspen-leaves and fears,
+  The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,
+  The last love of strange fruits.
+
+  These were the four loves faded. Hold
+  Some minutes fast the time of gold
+  When our lips each way clung and clove
+  To a face full of love.
+
+  The tears inside our eyelids met,
+  Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet
+  The faces cleaving each to each
+  Where the blood served for speech.
+
+  The second, with low patient brows
+  Bound under aspen-coloured boughs
+  And eyes made strong and grave with sleep
+  And yet too weak to weep--
+
+  The third, with eager mouth at ease
+  Fed from late autumn honey, lees
+  Of scarce gold left in latter cells
+  With scattered flower-smells--
+
+  Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet
+  Of ruined roses, wrists and feet
+  Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves
+  Hold in stray poppy-leaves--
+
+  The fourth, with lips whereon has bled
+  Some great pale fruit's slow colour, shed
+  From the rank bitter husk whence drips
+  Faint blood between her lips--
+
+  Made of the heat of whole great Junes
+  Burning the blue dark round their moons
+  (Each like a mown red marigold)
+  So hard the flame keeps hold--
+
+  These are burnt thoroughly away.
+  Only the first holds out a day
+  Beyond these latter loves that were
+  Made of mere heat and air.
+
+  And now the time is winterly
+  The first love fades too: none will see,
+  When April warms the world anew,
+  The place wherein love grew.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+1865
+
+
+  The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
+    The earth gives her streams to the sea:
+  They are many, but my gift is single,
+    My verses, the firstfruits of me.
+  Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf,
+    Cast forth without fruit upon air;
+  Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf
+    Blown loose from the hair.
+
+  The night shakes them round me in legions,
+    Dawn drives them before her like dreams;
+  Time sheds them like snows on strange regions,
+    Swept shoreward on infinite streams;
+  Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy,
+    Dead fruits of the fugitive years;
+  Some stained as with wine and made bloody,
+    And some as with tears.
+
+  Some scattered in seven years' traces,
+    As they fell from the boy that was then;
+  Long left among idle green places,
+    Or gathered but now among men;
+  On seas full of wonder and peril,
+    Blown white round the capes of the north;
+  Or in islands where myrtles are sterile
+    And loves bring not forth.
+
+  O daughters of dreams and of stories
+    That life is not wearied of yet,
+  Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
+    Félise and Yolande and Juliette,
+  Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
+    When sleep, that is true or that seems,
+  Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
+    O daughters of dreams?
+
+  They are past as a slumber that passes,
+    As the dew of a dawn of old time;
+  More frail than the shadows on glasses,
+    More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.
+  As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
+    When their hollows are full of the night,
+  So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
+    Recede out of sight.
+
+  The songs of dead seasons, that wander
+    On wings of articulate words;
+  Lost leaves that the shore-wind may squander,
+    Light flocks of untameable birds;
+  Some sang to me dreaming in class-time
+    And truant in hand as in tongue;
+  For the youngest were born of boy's pastime,
+    The eldest are young.
+
+  Is there shelter while life in them lingers,
+    Is there hearing for songs that recede,
+  Tunes touched from a harp with man's fingers
+    Or blown with boy's mouth in a reed?
+  Is there place in the land of your labour,
+    Is there room in your world of delight,
+  Where change has not sorrow for neighbour
+    And day has not night?
+
+  In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,
+    Will you spare not a space for them there
+  Made green with the running of rivers
+    And gracious with temperate air;
+  In the fields and the turreted cities,
+    That cover from sunshine and rain
+  Fair passions and bountiful pities
+    And loves without stain?
+
+  In a land of clear colours and stories,
+    In a region of shadowless hours,
+  Where earth has a garment of glories
+    And a murmur of musical flowers;
+  In woods where the spring half uncovers
+    The flush of her amorous face,
+  By the waters that listen for lovers,
+    For these is there place?
+
+  For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle
+    Their music as clouds do their fire:
+  For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle
+    Wild wings in a wind of desire;
+  In the stream of the storm as it settles
+    Blown seaward, borne far from the sun,
+  Shaken loose on the darkness like petals
+    Dropt one after one?
+
+  Though the world of your hands be more gracious
+    And lovelier in lordship of things
+  Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
+    Warm heaven of her imminent wings,
+  Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
+    For the love of old loves and lost times;
+  And receive in your palace of painting
+    This revel of rhymes.
+
+  Though the seasons of man full of losses
+    Make empty the years full of youth,
+  If but one thing be constant in crosses,
+    Change lays not her hand upon truth;
+  Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
+    That the grief as the joy of them ends
+  Ere time that breaks all men has broken
+    The faith between friends.
+
+  Though the many lights dwindle to one light,
+    There is help if the heaven has one;
+  Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight
+    And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
+  They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,
+    When, refreshed as a bride and set free,
+  With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
+    Night sinks on the sea.
+
+
+
+  PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS
+  WEST NORWOOD
+  LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by 
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by 
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems & Ballads (First Series)
+
+Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2011 [EBook #35402]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS & BALLADS (FIRST SERIES) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Poems and Ballads</h1>
+<p class="center">First Series</p>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+<h2>Algernon Charles Swinburne</h2>
+
+<h4>Taken from<br />
+The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne&mdash;Vol. I</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS<br />
+OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE</h4>
+
+<h3>VOL. I<br />
+<big>POEMS &amp; BALLADS</big><br />
+(FIRST SERIES)</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>I. <span class="smcap">Poems and Ballads</span> (First Series).</p>
+
+<p>II. <span class="smcap">Songs before Sunrise, and Songs of Two Nations.</span></p>
+
+<p>III. <span class="smcap">Poems and Ballads</span> (Second and Third Series), and <span class="smcap">Songs of the Spring-Tides</span>.</p>
+
+<p>IV. <span class="smcap">Tristram of Lyonesse, The Tale of Balen, Atalanta in Calydon, Erechtheus.</span></p>
+
+<p>V. <span class="smcap">Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, etc.</span></p>
+
+<p>VI. <span class="smcap">A Midsummer Holiday, Astrophel, A Channel Passage and Other Poems</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h5>LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>POEMS &amp; BALLADS</h1>
+<p class="center">(FIRST SERIES)</p>
+
+<h3><small>By</small><br />
+Algernon Charles Swinburne</h3>
+
+
+<h4>1917</h4>
+<h3>LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><i>First printed</i> (<i>Chatto</i>), 1904<br />
+<i>Reprinted</i> 1904, '09, '10, '12<br />
+(<i>Heinemann</i>), 1917</p>
+
+
+<h5><i>London: William Heinemann</i> 1917</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>TO</h3>
+<h2>THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>DEDICATORY EPISTLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>To my best and dearest friend I dedicate the first collected edition of
+my poems, and to him I address what I have to say on the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>You will agree with me that it is impossible for any man to undertake
+the task of commentary, however brief and succinct, on anything he has
+done or tried to do, without incurring the charge of egoism. But there
+are two kinds of egoism, the furtive and the frank: and the outspoken
+and open-hearted candour of Milton and Wordsworth, Corneille and Hugo,
+is not the least or the lightest of their claims to the regard as well
+as the respect or the reverence of their readers. Even if I were worthy
+to claim kinship with the lowest or with the highest of these deathless
+names, I would not seek to shelter myself under the shadow of its
+authority. The question would still remain open on all sides. Whether it
+is worth while for any man to offer any remarks or for any other man to
+read his remarks on his own work, his own ambition, or his own attempts,
+he cannot of course determine. If there are great examples of abstinence
+from such a doubtful enterprise, there are likewise great examples to
+the contrary. As long as the writer can succeed in evading the kindred
+charges and the cognate risks of vanity and humility, there can be no
+reason why he should not undertake it. And when he has nothing to regret
+and nothing to recant, when he finds nothing that he could wish to
+cancel, to alter, or to unsay, in any page he has ever laid before his
+reader, he need not be seriously troubled by the inevitable
+consciousness that the work of his early youth is not and cannot be
+unnaturally unlike the work of a very young man. This would be no excuse
+for it, if it were in any sense bad work: if it be so, no apology would
+avail; and I certainly have none to offer.</p>
+
+<p>It is now thirty-six years since my first volume of miscellaneous verse,
+lyrical and dramatic and elegiac and generally heterogeneous, had as
+quaint a reception and as singular a fortune as I have ever heard or
+read of. I do not think you will differ from my opinion that what is
+best in it cannot be divided from what is not so good by any other line
+of division than that which marks off mature from immature execution&mdash;in
+other words, complete from incomplete conception. For its author the
+most amusing and satisfying result of the clatter aroused by it was the
+deep diversion of collating and comparing the variously inaccurate
+verdicts of the scornful or mournful censors who insisted on regarding
+all the studies of passion or sensation attempted or achieved in it as
+either confessions of positive fact or excursions of absolute fancy.
+There are photographs from life in the book; and there are sketches from
+imagination. Some which keen-sighted criticism has dismissed with a
+smile as ideal or imaginary were as real and actual as they well could
+be: others which have been taken for obvious transcripts from memory
+were utterly fantastic or dramatic. If the two kinds cannot be
+distinguished, it is surely rather a credit than a discredit to an
+artist whose medium or material has more in common with a musician's
+than with a sculptor's. Friendly and kindly critics, English and
+foreign, have detected ignorance of the subject in poems taken straight
+from the life, and have protested that they could not believe me were I
+to swear that poems entirely or mainly fanciful were not faithful
+expressions or transcriptions of the writer's actual experience and
+personal emotion. But I need not remind you that all I have to say about
+this book was said once for all in the year of its publication: I have
+nothing to add to my notes then taken, and I have nothing to retract
+from them. To parade or to disclaim experience of passion or of sorrow,
+of pleasure or of pain, is the habit and the sign of a school which has
+never found a disciple among the better sort of English poets, and which
+I know to be no less pitifully contemptible in your opinion than in
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>In my next work it should be superfluous to say that there is no touch
+of dramatic impersonation or imaginary emotion. The writer of 'Songs
+before Sunrise,' from the first line to the last, wrote simply in
+submissive obedience to Sir Philip Sidney's precept&mdash;'Look in thine
+heart, and write.' The dedication of these poems, and the fact that the
+dedication was accepted, must be sufficient evidence of this. They do
+not pretend and they were never intended to be merely the metrical
+echoes, or translations into lyric verse, of another man's doctrine.
+Mazzini was no more a Pope or a Dictator than I was a parasite or a
+papist. Dictation and inspiration are rather different things. These
+poems, and others which followed or preceded them in print, were
+inspired by such faith as is born of devotion and reverence: not by such
+faith, if faith it may be called, as is synonymous with servility or
+compatible with prostration of an abject or wavering spirit and a
+submissive or dethroned intelligence. You know that I never pretended to
+see eye to eye with my illustrious friends and masters, Victor Hugo and
+Giuseppe Mazzini, in regard to the positive and passionate confidence of
+their sublime and purified theology. Our betters ought to know better
+than we: they would be the last to wish that we should pretend to their
+knowledge, or assume a certitude which is theirs and is not ours. But on
+one point we surely cannot but be at one with them: that the spirit and
+the letter of all other than savage and barbarous religions are
+irreconcilably at variance, and that prayer or homage addressed to an
+image of our own or of other men's making, be that image avowedly
+material or conventionally spiritual, is the affirmation of idolatry
+with all its attendant atrocities, and the negation of all belief, all
+reverence, and all love, due to the noblest object of human worship that
+humanity can realise or conceive. Thus much the exercise of our common
+reason might naturally suffice to show us: but when its evidence is
+confirmed and fortified by the irrefragable and invariable evidence of
+history, there is no room for further dispute or fuller argument on a
+subject now visibly beyond reach and eternally beyond need of debate or
+demonstration. I know not whether it may or may not be worth while to
+add that every passing word I have since thought fit to utter on any
+national or political question has been as wholly consistent with the
+principles which I then did my best to proclaim and defend as any
+apostasy from the faith of all republicans in the fundamental and final
+principle of union, voluntary if possible and compulsory if not, would
+have been ludicrous in the impudence of its inconsistency with those
+simple and irreversible principles. Monarchists and anarchists may be
+advocates of national dissolution and reactionary division: republicans
+cannot be. The first and last article of their creed is unity: the most
+grinding and crushing tyranny of a convention, a directory, or a despot,
+is less incompatible with republican faith than the fissiparous
+democracy of disunionists or communalists.</p>
+
+<p>If the fortunes of my lyrical work were amusingly eccentric and
+accidental, the varieties of opinion which have saluted the appearance
+of my plays have been, or have seemed to my humility, even more
+diverting and curious. I have been told by reviewers of note and
+position that a single one of them is worth all my lyric and otherwise
+undramatic achievements or attempts: and I have been told on equal or
+similar authority that, whatever I may be in any other field, as a
+dramatist I am demonstrably nothing. My first if not my strongest
+ambition was to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a
+young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of
+Shakespeare, in the line of work which those three poets had left as a
+possibly unattainable example for ambitious Englishmen. And my first
+book, written while yet under academic or tutorial authority, bore
+evidence of that ambition in every line. I should be the last to deny
+that it also bore evidence of the fact that its writer had no more
+notion of dramatic or theatrical construction than the authors of
+'Tamburlaine the Great,' 'King Henry VI.,' and 'Sir Thomas Wyatt.' Not
+much more, you may possibly say, was discernible in 'Chastelard': a play
+also conceived and partly written by a youngster not yet emancipated
+from servitude to college rule. I fear that in the former volume there
+had been little if any promise of power to grapple with the realities
+and subtleties of character and of motive: that whatever may be in it of
+promise or of merit must be sought in the language and the style of such
+better passages as may perhaps be found in single and separable speeches
+of Catherine and of Rosamond. But in 'Chastelard' there are two figures
+and a sketch in which I certainly seem to see something of real and
+evident life. The sketch of Darnley was afterwards filled out and
+finished in the subsequent tragedy of 'Bothwell.' That ambitious,
+conscientious, and comprehensive piece of work is of course less
+properly definable as a tragedy than by the old Shakespearean term of a
+chronicle history. The radical difference between tragic history and
+tragedy of either the classic or the romantic order, and consequently
+between the laws which govern the one and the principles which guide the
+other, you have yourself made clear and familiar to all capable
+students. This play of mine was not, I think, inaccurately defined as an
+epic drama in the French verses of dedication which were acknowledged by
+the greatest of all French poets in a letter from which I dare only
+quote one line of Olympian judgment and godlike generosity. 'Occuper ces
+deux cimes, cela n'est donn&eacute; qu'&agrave; vous.' Nor will I refrain from the
+confession that I cannot think it an epic or a play in which any one
+part is sacrificed to any other, any subordinate figure mishandled or
+neglected or distorted or effaced for the sake of the predominant and
+central person. And, though this has nothing or less than nothing to do
+with any question of poetic merit or demerit, of dramatic success or
+unsuccess, I will add that I took as much care and pains as though I had
+been writing or compiling a history of the period to do loyal justice to
+all the historic figures which came within the scope of my dramatic or
+poetic design. There is not one which I have designedly altered or
+intentionally modified: it is of course for others to decide whether
+there is one which is not the living likeness of an actual or imaginable
+man.</p>
+
+<p>The third part of this trilogy, as far as I know or remember, found
+favour only with the only man in England who could speak on the subject
+of historic drama with the authority of an expert and a master. The
+generally ungracious reception of 'Mary Stuart' gave me neither surprise
+nor disappointment: the cordial approbation or rather the generous
+applause of Sir Henry Taylor gave me all and more than all the
+satisfaction I could ever have looked for in recompense of as much
+painstaking and conscientious though interesting and enjoyable work as
+can ever, I should imagine, have been devoted to the completion of any
+comparable design. Private and personal appreciation I have always
+thought and often found more valuable and delightful than all possible
+or imaginable clamour of public praise. This preference will perhaps be
+supposed to influence my opinion if I avow that I think I have never
+written anything worthier of such reward than the closing tragedy which
+may or may not have deserved but which certainly received it.</p>
+
+<p>My first attempt to do something original in English which might in some
+degree reproduce for English readers the likeness of a Greek tragedy,
+with possibly something more of its true poetic life and charm than
+could have been expected from the authors of 'Caractacus' and 'Merope,'
+was perhaps too exuberant and effusive in its dialogue, as it certainly
+was too irregular in the occasional license of its choral verse, to
+accomplish the design or achieve the success which its author should
+have aimed at. It may or may not be too long as a poem: it is, I fear,
+too long for a poem of the kind to which it belongs or aims at
+belonging. Poetical and mathematical truth are so different that I
+doubt, however unwilling I may naturally be to doubt, whether it can
+truthfully be said of 'Atalanta in Calydon' that the whole is greater
+than any part of it. I hope it may be, and I can honestly say no more.
+Of 'Erechtheus' I venture to believe with somewhat more confidence that
+it can. Either poem, by the natural necessity of its kind and structure,
+has its crowning passage or passages which cannot, however much they may
+lose by detachment from their context, lose as much as the crowning
+scene or scenes of an English or Shakespearean play, as opposed to an
+&AElig;schylean or Sophoclean tragedy, must lose and ought to lose by a
+similar separation. The two best things in these two Greek plays, the
+antiphonal lamentation for the dying Meleager and the choral
+presentation of stormy battle between the forces of land and sea, lose
+less by such division from the main body of the poem than would those
+scenes in 'Bothwell' which deal with the turning-point in the life of
+Mary Stuart on the central and conclusive day of Carberry Hill.</p>
+
+<p>It might be thought pedantic or pretentious in a modern poet to divide
+his poems after the old Roman fashion into sections and classes; I must
+confess that I should like to see this method applied, were it but by
+way of experiment in a single edition, to the work of the leading poets
+of our own country and century: to see, for instance, their lyrical and
+elegiac works ranged and registered apart, each kind in a class of its
+own, such as is usually reserved, I know not why, for sonnets only. The
+apparent formality of such an arrangement as would give us, for
+instance, the odes of Coleridge and Shelley collected into a distinct
+reservation or division might possibly be more than compensated to the
+more capable among students by the gain in ethical or spiritual symmetry
+and &aelig;sthetic or intellectual harmony. The ode or hymn&mdash;I need remind no
+probable reader that the terms are synonymous in the speech of
+Pindar&mdash;asserts its primacy or pre-eminence over other forms of poetry
+in the very name which defines or proclaims it as essentially the song;
+as something above all less pure and absolute kinds of song by the very
+nature and law of its being. The Greek form, with its regular
+arrangement of turn, return, and aftersong, is not to be imitated
+because it is Greek, but to be adopted because it is best: the very
+best, as a rule, that could be imagined for lyrical expression of the
+thing conceived or lyrical aspiration towards the aim imagined. The
+rhythmic reason of its rigid but not arbitrary law lies simply and
+solely in the charm of its regular variations. This can be given in
+English as clearly and fully, if not so sweetly and subtly, as in Greek;
+and should, therefore, be expected and required in an English poem of
+the same nature and proportion. The Sapphic or Alcaic ode, a simple
+sequence of identical stanzas, could be imitated or revived in Latin by
+translators or disciples: the scheme of it is exquisitely adequate and
+sufficient for comparatively short flights of passion or emotion, ardent
+or contemplative and personal or patriotic; but what can be done in
+English could not be attempted in Latin. It seems strange to me, our
+language being what it is, that our literature should be no richer than
+it is in examples of the higher or at least the more capacious and
+ambitious kind of ode. Not that the full Pindaric form of threefold or
+triune structure need be or should be always adopted: but without an
+accurately corresponsive or antiphonal scheme of music even the master
+of masters, who is Coleridge, could not produce, even through the superb
+and enchanting melodies of such a poem as his 'Dejection,' a fit and
+complete companion, a full and perfect rival, to such a poem as his ode
+on France.</p>
+
+<p>The title of ode may more properly and fairly be so extended as to cover
+all lyrical poems in stanzas or couplets than so strained as to include
+a lawless lyric of such irregular and uneven build as Coleridge only and
+hardly could make acceptable or admissible among more natural and lawful
+forms of poetry. Law, not lawlessness, is the natural condition of
+poetic life; but the law must itself be poetic and not pedantic, natural
+and not conventional. It would be a trivial precision or restriction
+which would refuse the title of ode to the stanzas of Milton or the
+heptameters of Aristophanes; that glorious form of lyric verse which a
+critic of our own day, as you may not impossibly remember, has likened
+with such magnificent felicity of comparison to the gallop of the horses
+of the sun. Nor, I presume, should this title be denied to a poem
+written in the more modest metre&mdash;more modest as being shorter by a
+foot&mdash;which was chosen for those twin poems of antiphonal correspondence
+in subject and in sound, the 'Hymn to Proserpine' and the 'Hymn of Man':
+the deathsong of spiritual decadence and the birthsong of spiritual
+renascence. Perhaps, too, my first stanzas addressed to Victor Hugo may
+be ranked as no less of an ode than that on the insurrection in Candia:
+a poem which attracted, whether or not it may have deserved, the notice
+and commendation of Mazzini: from whom I received, on the occasion of
+its appearance, a letter which was the beginning of my personal
+intercourse with the man whom I had always revered above all other men
+on earth. But for this happy accident I might not feel disposed to set
+much store by my first attempt at a regular ode of orthodox or
+legitimate construction; I doubt whether it quite succeeded in evading
+the criminal risk and the capital offence of formality; at least until
+the change of note in the closing epode gave fuller scope and freer play
+of wing to the musical expression. But in my later ode on Athens,
+absolutely faithful as it is in form to the strictest type and the most
+stringent law of Pindaric hymnology, I venture to believe that there is
+no more sign of this infirmity than in the less classically regulated
+poem on the Armada; which, though built on a new scheme, is nevertheless
+in its way, I think, a legitimate ode, by right of its regularity in
+general arrangement of corresponsive divisions. By the test of these two
+poems I am content that my claims should be decided and my station
+determined as a lyric poet in the higher sense of the term; a craftsman
+in the most ambitious line of his art that ever aroused or ever can
+arouse the emulous aspiration of his kind.</p>
+
+<p>Even had I ever felt the same impulse to attempt and the same ambition
+to achieve the enterprise of epic or narrative that I had always felt
+with regard to lyric or dramatic work, I could never have proposed to
+myself the lowly and unambitious aim of competition with the work of so
+notable a contemporary workman in the humbler branch of that line as
+William Morris. No conception could have been further from my mind when
+I undertook to rehandle the deathless legend of Tristram than that of so
+modest and preposterous a trial of rivalry. My aim was simply to present
+that story, not diluted and debased as it had been in our own time by
+other hands, but undefaced by improvement and undeformed by
+transformation, as it was known to the age of Dante wherever the
+chronicles of romance found hearing, from Ercildoune to Florence: and
+not in the epic or romantic form of sustained or continuous narrative,
+but mainly through a succession of dramatic scenes or pictures with
+descriptive settings or backgrounds: the scenes being of the simplest
+construction, duologue or monologue, without so much as the classically
+permissible intervention of a third or fourth person. It is only in our
+native northern form of narrative poetry, on the old and unrivalled
+model of the English ballad, that I can claim to have done any work of
+the kind worth reference: unless the story of Balen should be considered
+as something other than a series or sequence of ballads. A more
+plausible objection was brought to bear against 'Tristram of Lyonesse'
+than that of failure in an enterprise which I never thought of
+undertaking: the objection of an irreconcilable incongruity between the
+incidents of the old legend and the meditations on man and nature, life
+and death, chance and destiny, assigned to a typical hero of chivalrous
+romance. And this objection might be unanswerable if the slightest
+attempt had been made to treat the legend as in any possible sense
+historical or capable of either rational or ideal association with
+history, such as would assimilate the name and fame of Arthur to the
+name and fame of any actual and indisputable Alfred or Albert of the
+future. But the age when these romances actually lived and flourished
+side by side with the reviving legends of Thebes and Troy, not in the
+crude and bloodless forms of Celtic and archaic fancy but in the ampler
+and manlier developments of Teutonic and medi&aelig;val imagination, was the
+age of Dante and of Chaucer: an age in which men were only too prone to
+waste their time on the twin sciences of astrology and theology, to
+expend their energies in the jungle of pseudosophy or the morass of
+metaphysics. There is surely nothing more incongruous or anachronic in
+the soliloquy of Tristram after his separation from Iseult than in the
+lecture of Theseus after the obsequies of Arcite. Both heroes belong to
+the same impossible age of an imaginary world: and each has an equal
+right, should it so please his chronicler, to reason in the pauses of
+action and philosophise in the intervals of adventure. After all, the
+active men of the actual age of chivalry were not all of them mere
+muscular machines for martial or pacific exercise of their physical
+functions or abilities.</p>
+
+<p>You would agree, if the point were worth discussion, that it might
+savour somewhat of pretention, if not of affectation, to be over
+particular in arrangement of poems according to subject rather than
+form, spirit rather than method, or motive rather than execution: and
+yet there might be some excuse for the fancy or the pedantry of such a
+classification as should set apart, for example, poems inspired by the
+influence of places, whether seen but once or familiar for years or
+associated with the earliest memories within cognisance or record of the
+mind, and poems inspired by the emotions of regard or regret for the
+living or the dead; above all, by the rare and profound passion of
+reverence and love and faith which labours and rejoices to find
+utterance in some tributary sacrifice of song. Mere descriptive poetry
+of the prepense and formal kind is exceptionally if not proverbially
+liable to incur and to deserve the charge of dullness: it is unnecessary
+to emphasise or obtrude the personal note, the presence or the emotion
+of a spectator, but it is necessary to make it felt and keep it
+perceptible if the poem is to have life in it or even a right to live:
+felt as in Wordsworth's work it is always, perceptible as it is always
+in Shelley's. This note is more plain and positive than usual in the
+poem which attempts&mdash;at once a simple and an ambitious attempt&mdash;to
+render the contrast and the concord of night and day on Loch Torridon:
+it is, I think, duly sensible though implicitly subdued in four poems of
+the West Undercliff, born or begotten of sunset in the bay and moonlight
+on the cliffs, noon or morning in a living and shining garden, afternoon
+or twilight on one left flowerless and forsaken. Not to you or any other
+poet, nor indeed to the very humblest and simplest lover of poetry, will
+it seem incongruous or strange, suggestive of imperfect sympathy with
+life or deficient inspiration from nature, that the very words of Sappho
+should be heard and recognised in the notes of the nightingales, the
+glory of the presence of dead poets imagined in the presence of the
+glory of the sky, the lustre of their advent and their passage felt
+visible as in vision on the live and limpid floorwork of the cloudless
+and sunset-coloured sea. The half-brained creature to whom books are
+other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with
+the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life:
+those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that
+books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters
+or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the
+spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it
+possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, &AElig;schylus and Sappho, do not for us live only on the dusty
+shelves of libraries.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly probable that especial and familiar love of places should
+give any special value to verses written under the influence of their
+charm: no intimacy of years and no association with the past gave any
+colour of emotion to many other studies of English land and sea which
+certainly are no less faithful and possibly have no less spiritual or
+poetic life in them than the four to which I have just referred, whose
+localities lie all within the boundary of a mile or so. No contrast
+could be stronger than that between the majestic and exquisite glory of
+cliff and crag, lawn and woodland, garden and lea, to which I have done
+homage though assuredly I have not done justice in these four poems&mdash;'In
+the Bay,' 'On the Cliffs,' 'A Forsaken Garden,' the dedication of 'The
+Sisters'&mdash;and the dreary beauty, inhuman if not unearthly in its
+desolation, of the innumerable creeks and inlets, lined and paven with
+sea-flowers, which make of the salt marshes a fit and funereal setting,
+a fatal and appropriate foreground, for the supreme desolation of the
+relics of Dunwich; the beautiful and awful solitude of a wilderness on
+which the sea has forbidden man to build or live, overtopped and bounded
+by the tragic and ghastly solitude of a headland on which the sea has
+forbidden the works of human charity and piety to survive: between the
+dense and sand-encumbered tides which are eating the desecrated wreck
+and ruin of them all away, and the matchless magic, the ineffable
+fascination of the sea whose beauties and delights, whose translucent
+depths of water and divers-coloured banks of submarine foliage and
+flowerage, but faintly reflected in the stanzas of the little ode 'Off
+Shore,' complete the charm of the scenes as faintly sketched or shadowed
+forth in the poems just named, or the sterner and stranger magic of the
+seaboard to which tribute was paid in 'An Autumn Vision,' 'A Swimmer's
+Dream,' 'On the South Coast,' 'Neap-tide': or, again, between the
+sterile stretches and sad limitless outlook of the shore which faces a
+hitherto undetermined and interminable sea, and the joyful and fateful
+beauty of the seas off Bamborough and the seas about Sark and Guernsey.
+But if there is enough of the human or personal note to bring into touch
+the various poems which deal with these various impressions, there may
+perhaps be no less of it discernible in such as try to render the effect
+of inland or woodland solitude&mdash;the splendid oppression of nature at
+noon which found utterance of old in words of such singular and
+everlasting significance as panic and nympholepsy.</p>
+
+<p>The retrospect across many years over the many eulogistic and elegiac
+poems which I have inscribed or devoted to the commemoration or the
+panegyric of the living or the dead has this in it of pride and
+pleasure, that I find little to recant and nothing to repent on
+reconsideration of them all. If ever a word of tributary thanksgiving
+for the delight and the benefit of loyal admiration evoked in the spirit
+of a boy or aroused in the intelligence of a man may seem to exceed the
+limit of demonstrable accuracy, I have no apology to offer for any such
+aberration from the safe path of tepid praise or conventional applause.
+I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships:
+I might add if I cared, as he if he had cared might have added, that I
+have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends; and this,
+though by comparison a matter of ineffable insignificance, can hardly be
+to any rational and right-minded man a matter of positive indifference.
+Rather should it be always a subject for thankfulness and
+self-congratulation if a man can honestly and reasonably feel assured
+that his friends and foes alike have been always and at almost all
+points the very men he would have chosen, had choice and foresight been
+allowed him, at the very outset of his career in life. I should never,
+when a boy, have dared to dream that as a man I might possibly be
+admitted to the personal acquaintance of the three living gods, I do not
+say of my idolatry, for idolatry is a term inapplicable where the gods
+are real and true, but of my whole-souled and single-hearted worship:
+and yet, when writing of Landor, of Mazzini, and of Hugo, I write of men
+who have honoured me with the assurance and the evidence of their
+cordial and affectionate regard. However inadequate and unworthy may be
+my tribute to their glory when living and their memory when dead, it is
+that of one whose gratitude and devotion found unforgettable favour in
+their sight. And I must be allowed to add that the redeeming quality of
+entire and absolute sincerity may be claimed on behalf of every line I
+have written in honour of friends, acquaintances, or strangers. My
+tribute to Richard Burton was not more genuine in its expression than my
+tribute to Christina Rossetti. Two noble human creatures more utterly
+unlike each other it would be unspeakably impossible to conceive; but it
+was as simply natural for one who honoured them both to do honest
+homage, before and after they had left us, to the saintly and secluded
+poetess as to the adventurous and unsaintly hero. Wherever anything is
+worthy of honour and thanksgiving it is or it always should be as
+natural if not as delightful to give thanks and do honour to a stranger
+as to a friend, to a benefactor long since dead as to a benefactor still
+alive. To the kindred spirits of Philip Sidney and Aurelio Saffi it was
+almost as equal a pleasure to offer what tribute I could bring as if
+Sidney also could have honoured me with his personal friendship. To
+Tennyson and Browning it was no less fit that I should give honour than
+that I should do homage to the memory of Bruno, the martyred friend of
+Sidney. And I can hardly remember any task that I ever took more delight
+in discharging than I felt in the inadequate and partial payment of a
+lifelong debt to the marvellous and matchless succession of poets who
+made the glory of our country incomparable for ever by the work they did
+between the joyful date of the rout of the Armada and the woful date of
+the outbreak of civil war.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Lamb, as I need not remind you, wrote for antiquity: nor need
+you be assured that when I write plays it is with a view to their being
+acted at the Globe, the Red Bull, or the Black Friars. And whatever may
+be the dramatic or other defects of 'Marino Faliero' or 'Locrine,' they
+do certainly bear the same relation to previous plays or attempts at
+plays on the same subjects as 'King Henry V.' to 'The Famous
+Victories'&mdash;if not as 'King Lear,' a poem beyond comparison with all
+other works of man except possibly 'Prometheus' and 'Othello,' to the
+primitive and infantile scrawl or drivel of 'King Leir and his three
+daughters.' The fifth act of 'Marino Faliero,' hopelessly impossible as
+it is from the point of view of modern stagecraft, could hardly have
+been found too untheatrical, too utterly given over to talk without
+action, by the audiences which endured and applauded the magnificent
+monotony of Chapman's eloquence&mdash;the fervent and inexhaustible
+declamation which was offered and accepted as a substitute for study of
+character and interest of action when his two finest plays, if plays
+they can be called, found favour with an incredibly intelligent and an
+inconceivably tolerant audience. The metrical or executive experiment
+attempted and carried through in 'Locrine' would have been improper to
+any but a purely and wholly romantic play or poem: I do not think that
+the life of human character or the lifelikeness of dramatic dialogue has
+suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the
+exigence of metre. The tragedy of 'The Sisters,' however defective it
+may be in theatrical interest or progressive action, is the only modern
+English play I know in which realism in the reproduction of natural
+dialogue and accuracy in the representation of natural intercourse
+between men and women of gentle birth and breeding have been found or
+made compatible with expression in genuine if simple blank verse. It is
+not for me to decide whether anything in the figures which play their
+parts on my imaginary though realistic stage may be worthy of sympathy,
+attention, or interest: but I think they talk and act as they would have
+done in life without ever lapsing into platitude or breaking out of
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>In 'Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards,' I took up a subject long since
+mishandled by an English dramatist of all but the highest rank, and one
+which in later days Alfieri had commemorated in a magnificent passage of
+a wholly unhistoric and somewhat unsatisfactory play. The comparatively
+slight deviation from historic records in the final catastrophe or
+consummation of mine is not, I think, to say the least, injurious to the
+tragic effect or the moral interest of the story.</p>
+
+<p>A writer conscious of any natural command over the musical resources of
+his language can hardly fail to take such pleasure in the enjoyment of
+this gift or instinct as the greatest writer and the greatest versifier
+of our age must have felt at its highest possible degree when composing
+a musical exercise of such incomparable scope and fullness as 'Les
+Djinns.' But if he be a poet after the order of Hugo or Coleridge or
+Shelley, the result will be something very much more than a musical
+exercise; though indeed, except to such ears as should always be kept
+closed against poetry, there is no music in verse which has not in it
+sufficient fullness and ripeness of meaning, sufficient adequacy of
+emotion or of thought, to abide the analysis of any other than the
+purblind scrutiny of prepossession or the squint-eyed inspection of
+malignity. There may perhaps be somewhat more depth and variety of
+feeling or reflection condensed into the narrow frame of the poems which
+compose 'A Century of Roundels' than would be needed to fulfil the epic
+vacuity of a Ch&#339;rilus or a Coluthus. And the form chosen for my only
+narrative poem was chosen as a test of the truth of my conviction that
+such work could be done better on the straitest and the strictest
+principles of verse than on the looser and more slippery lines of
+medi&aelig;val or modern improvisation. The impulsive and irregular verse
+which had been held sufficient for the stanza selected or accepted by
+Thornton and by Tennyson seemed capable of improvement and invigoration
+as a vehicle or a medium for poetic narrative. And I think it has not
+been found unfit to give something of dignity as well as facility to a
+narrative which recasts in modern English verse one of the noblest and
+loveliest old English legends. There is no episode in the cycle of
+Arthurian romance more genuinely Homeric in its sublime simplicity and
+its pathetic sublimity of submission to the masterdom of fate than that
+which I have rather reproduced than recast in 'The Tale of Balen': and
+impossible as it is to render the text or express the spirit of the
+Iliad in English prose or rhyme&mdash;above all, in English blank verse&mdash;it
+is possible, in such a metre as was chosen and refashioned for this
+poem, to give some sense of the rage and rapture of battle for which
+Homer himself could only find fit and full expression by similitudes
+drawn like mine from the revels and the terrors and the glories of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>It is nothing to me that what I write should find immediate or general
+acceptance: it is much to know that on the whole it has won for me the
+right to address this dedication and inscribe this edition to you.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align: right'>
+<span class="smcap">Algernon Charles Swinburne.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>POEMS AND BALLADS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>TO<br /><br />
+MY FRIEND</h4>
+
+<h2>EDWARD BURNE JONES</h2>
+
+<h4>THESE POEMS<br /><br />
+ARE AFFECTIONATELY AND ADMIRINGLY<br /><br />
+DEDICATED</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<h4>POEMS AND BALLADS</h4>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_BALLAD_OF_LIFE"><span class="smcap">A Ballad of Life</span></a></td><td align='right'>1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_BALLAD_OF_DEATH"><span class="smcap">A Ballad of Death</span></a></td><td align='right'>4</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LAUS_VENERIS"><span class="smcap">Laus Veneris</span></a></td><td align='right'>11</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PHAEDRA"><span class="smcap">Ph&aelig;dra</span></a></td><td align='right'>27</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_TRIUMPH_OF_TIME"><span class="smcap">The Triumph of Time</span></a></td><td align='right'>34</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LES_NOYADES"><span class="smcap">Les Noyades</span></a></td><td align='right'>48</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_LEAVE_TAKING"><span class="smcap">A Leave-Taking</span></a></td><td align='right'>52</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ITYLUS"><span class="smcap">Itylus</span></a></td><td align='right'>54</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ANACTORIA"><span class="smcap">Anactoria</span></a></td><td align='right'>57</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HYMN_TO_PROSERPINE"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Proserpine</span></a></td><td align='right'>67</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ILICET"><span class="smcap">Ilicet</span></a></td><td align='right'>74</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HERMAPHRODITUS"><span class="smcap">Hermaphroditus</span></a></td><td align='right'>79</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#FRAGOLETTA"><span class="smcap">Fragoletta</span></a></td><td align='right'>82</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#RONDEL1"><span class="smcap">Rondel</span></a></td><td align='right'>85</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SATIA_TE_SANGUINE"><span class="smcap">Satia te Sanguine</span></a></td><td align='right'>87</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LITANY"><span class="smcap">A Litany</span></a></td><td align='right'>89</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LAMENTATION"><span class="smcap">A Lamentation</span></a></td><td align='right'>95</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ANIMA_ANCEPS"><span class="smcap">Anima Anceps</span></a></td><td align='right'>100</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IN_THE_ORCHARD"><span class="smcap">In the Orchard</span></a></td><td align='right'>102</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_MATCH"><span class="smcap">A Match</span></a></td><td align='right'>104</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#FAUSTINE"><span class="smcap">Faustine</span></a></td><td align='right'>106</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CAMEO"><span class="smcap">A Cameo</span></a></td><td align='right'>113</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SONG_BEFORE_DEATH"><span class="smcap">Song before Death</span></a></td><td align='right'>114</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ROCOCO"><span class="smcap">Rococo</span></a></td><td align='right'>115</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#STAGE_LOVE"><span class="smcap">Stage Love</span></a></td><td align='right'>118</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_LEPER"><span class="smcap">The Leper</span></a></td><td align='right'>119</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_BALLAD_OF_BURDENS"><span class="smcap">A Ballad of Burdens</span></a></td><td align='right'>125</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#RONDEL2"><span class="smcap">Rondel</span></a></td><td align='right'>128</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#BEFORE_THE_MIRROR"><span class="smcap">Before the Mirror</span></a></td><td align='right'>129</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#EROTION"><span class="smcap">Erotion</span></a></td><td align='right'>132</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IN_MEMORY_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR"><span class="smcap">In Memory of Walter Savage Landor</span></a></td><td align='right'>134</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_ORDER"><span class="smcap">A Song in Time of Order.</span> 1852</a></td><td align='right'>137</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_REVOLUTION"><span class="smcap">A Song in Time of Revolution.</span> 1860.</a></td><td align='right'>140</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#TO_VICTOR_HUGO"><span class="smcap">To Victor Hugo</span></a></td><td align='right'>144</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#BEFORE_DAWN"><span class="smcap">Before Dawn</span></a></td><td align='right'>151</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#DOLORES"><span class="smcap">Dolores</span></a></td><td align='right'>154</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_GARDEN_OF_PROSERPINE"><span class="smcap">The Garden of Proserpine</span></a></td><td align='right'>169</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HESPERIA"><span class="smcap">Hesperia</span></a></td><td align='right'>173</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LOVE_AT_SEA"><span class="smcap">Love at Sea</span></a></td><td align='right'>179</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#APRIL"><span class="smcap">April</span></a></td><td align='right'>181</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#BEFORE_PARTING"><span class="smcap">Before Parting</span></a></td><td align='right'>184</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_SUNDEW"><span class="smcap">The Sundew</span></a></td><td align='right'>186</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#FELISE"><span class="smcap">F&eacute;lise</span></a></td><td align='right'>188</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AN_INTERLUDE"><span class="smcap">An Interlude</span></a></td><td align='right'>199</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HENDECASYLLABICS"><span class="smcap">Hendecasyllabics</span></a></td><td align='right'>202</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SAPPHICS"><span class="smcap">Sapphics</span></a></td><td align='right'>204</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AT_ELEUSIS"><span class="smcap">At Eleusis</span></a></td><td align='right'>208</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AUGUST"><span class="smcap">August</span></a></td><td align='right'>215</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_CHRISTMAS_CAROL"><span class="smcap">A Christmas Carol</span></a></td><td align='right'>218</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_MASQUE_OF_QUEEN_BERSABE"><span class="smcap">The Masque of Queen Bersabe</span></a></td><td align='right'>221</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ST_DOROTHY"><span class="smcap">St. Dorothy</span></a></td><td align='right'>237</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_TWO_DREAMS"><span class="smcap">The Two Dreams</span></a></td><td align='right'>252</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AHOLIBAH"><span class="smcap">Aholibah</span></a></td><td align='right'>266</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LOVE_AND_SLEEP"><span class="smcap">Love and Sleep</span></a></td><td align='right'>272</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#MADONNA_MIA"><span class="smcap">Madonna Mia</span></a></td><td align='right'>273</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_KINGS_DAUGHTER"><span class="smcap">The King's Daughter</span></a></td><td align='right'>276</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AFTER_DEATH"><span class="smcap">After Death</span></a></td><td align='right'>279</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#MAY_JANET"><span class="smcap">May Janet</span></a></td><td align='right'>282</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_BLOODY_SON"><span class="smcap">The Bloody Son</span></a></td><td align='right'>284</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_SEASWALLOWS"><span class="smcap">The Sea-Swallows</span></a></td><td align='right'>288</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_YEAR_OF_LOVE"><span class="smcap">The Year of Love</span></a></td><td align='right'>291</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#DEDICATION"><span class="smcap">Dedication</span>, 1865</a></td><td align='right'>293</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_BALLAD_OF_LIFE" id="A_BALLAD_OF_LIFE"></a>A BALLAD OF LIFE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In midst whereof there was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Made my blood burn and swoon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a flame rained upon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Seemed sad with glad things gone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She held a little cithern by the strings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of some dead lute-player<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in dead years had done delicious things.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The seven strings were named accordingly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The first string charity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The second tenderness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loving-kindness, that is pity's kin<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And is most pitiless.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were three men with her, each garmented<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With gold and shod with gold upon the feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And with plucked ears of wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first man's hair was wound upon his head:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All his gold garment had<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pale stains of dust and rust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A riven hood was pulled across his eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The token of him being upon this wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made for a sign of Lust.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Coloured like green wood when flame kindles it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He hath such feeble feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They may not well endure in any place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His face was full of grey old miseries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all his blood's increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was even increase of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last was Fear, that is akin to Death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fear answers him again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My soul said in me; This is marvellous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seeing the air's face is not so delicate<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor the sun's grace so great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sin and she be kin or amorous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seeing where maidens served her on their knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I bade one crave of these<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To know the cause thereof.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Lust said: I am Love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thereat her hands began a lute-playing<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all the while she sung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no sound but long tears following<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long tears upon men's faces, waxen white<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With extreme sad delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But those three following men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Became as men raised up among the dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great glad mouths open and fair cheeks made red<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With child's blood come again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then I said: Now assuredly I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My lady is perfect, and transfigureth<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All sin and sorrow and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making them fair as her own eyelids be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or lips wherein my whole soul's life abides;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or as her sweet white sides<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And bosom carved to kiss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now therefore, if her pity further me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubtless for her sake all my days shall be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As righteous as she is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the least thornprick harms;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And girdled in thy golden singing-coat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come thou before my lady and say this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Borgia, thy gold hair's colour burns in me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Therefore so many as these roses be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kiss me so many times.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That she will stoop herself none otherwise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than a blown vine-branch doth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ballad, and on thy mouth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_BALLAD_OF_DEATH" id="A_BALLAD_OF_DEATH"></a>A BALLAD OF DEATH</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the sides of mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the flesh to cleave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many sorrows after each his wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Love and Time and Sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came softer with her praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abide a little for our lady's love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And more than peace the passage of her days.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Time, thou shalt not find in any land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, cast out of thine hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another woman fashioned like as this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was made a goodly thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By night there stood over against my bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both sides drawn fully back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And temples drained of purple and full of death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sea's gold in it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were painted all the secret ways of love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And covered things thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brides that kept within the bride-chamber<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their garment of soft shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And weeping faces of the wearied loves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tears that through her eyelids fell on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made mine own bitter where they ran between<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As blood had fallen therein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If any glad thing be or any good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the best thing is taken forth of us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even she to whom all praise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was as one flower in a great multitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One glorious flower of many and glorious,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day found gracious among many days:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even she whose handmaiden was Love&mdash;to whom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At kissing times across her stateliest bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kings bowed themselves and shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even she between whose lips the kiss became<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fire and frankincense;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then I beheld, and lo on the other side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet still, but now not red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweet, but like spoilt gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The body that was clothed with love of old.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the hollow bosom of her gown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! that my tears ran down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to the place where many kisses were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even where they are cloven apart&mdash;who knows not this?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! the flowers cleave apart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their sweet fills the tender interspace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! in the days when God did good to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each part about her was a righteous thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her mouth an almsgiving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glory of her garments charity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The beauty of her bosom a good deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the good days when God kept sight of us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love lay upon her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all her body was more virtuous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rain-rotten in rank lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when thy bosom is filled full thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And say "My master that was thrall to Love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is become thrall to Death."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For haply it may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That when thy feet return at evening<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death shall come in with thee.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>LAUS VENERIS</h1>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Lors dit en plourant; H&eacute;las trop malheureux homme et mauldict pescheur,
+oncques ne verrai-je cl&eacute;mence et mis&eacute;ricorde de Dieu. Ores m'en irai-je
+d'icy et me cacherai dedans le mont Horsel, en requ&eacute;rant de faveur et
+d'amoureuse merci ma doulce dame V&eacute;nus, car pour son amour serai-je bien
+&agrave; tout jamais damn&eacute; en enfer. Voicy la fin de tous mes faicts d'armes et
+de toutes mes belles chansons. H&eacute;las, trop belle estoyt la face de ma
+dame et ses yeulx, et en mauvais jour je vis ces chouses-l&agrave;. Lors s'en
+alla tout en g&eacute;missant et se retourna chez elle, et l&agrave; vescut tristement
+en grand amour pr&egrave;s de sa dame. Puis apr&egrave;s advint que le pape vit un
+jour esclater sur son baston force belles fleurs rouges et blanches et
+maints boutons de feuilles, et ainsi vit-il reverdir toute l'escorce. Ce
+dont il eut grande crainte et moult s'en esmut, et grande piti&eacute; lui prit
+de ce chevalier qui s'en estoyt d&eacute;parti sans espoir comme un homme
+mis&eacute;rable et damn&eacute;. Doncques envoya force messaigers devers luy pour le
+ramener, disant qu'il aurait de Dieu grace et bonne absolution de son
+grand pesch&eacute; d'amour. Mais oncques plus ne le virent; car toujours
+demeura ce pauvre chevalier aupr&egrave;s de V&eacute;nus la haulte et forte d&eacute;esse &egrave;s
+flancs de la montagne amoureuse.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Livre des grandes merveilles d'amour, escript en latin<br />
+et en fran&ccedil;oys par Maistre Antoine Gaget.</i> 1530. &nbsp; </p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LAUS_VENERIS" id="LAUS_VENERIS"></a>LAUS VENERIS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft, and stung softly&mdash;fairer for a fleck.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But though my lips shut sucking on the place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no vein at work upon her face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, this is she that was the world's delight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old grey years were parcels of her might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The strewings of the ways wherein she trod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were the twain seasons of the day and night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lo her wonderfully woven hair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She is right fair; what hath she done to thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Had now thy mother such a lip&mdash;like this?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Inside the Horsel here the air is hot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right little peace one hath for it, God wot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The scented dusty daylight burns the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my heart chokes me till I hear it not.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behold, my Venus, my soul's body, lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With my love laid upon her garment-wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Feeling my love in all her limbs and hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shed between her eyelids through her eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She holds my heart in her sweet open hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hanging asleep; hard by her head there stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Crowned with gilt thorns and clothed with flesh like fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, wan as foam blown up the salt burnt sands&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hot as the brackish waifs of yellow spume<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That shift and steam&mdash;loose clots of arid fume<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From the sea's panting mouth of dry desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There stands he, like one labouring at a loom.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The warp holds fast across; and every thread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That makes the woof up has dry specks of red;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Always the shuttle cleaves clean through, and he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weaves with the hair of many a ruined head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love is not glad nor sorry, as I deem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Labouring he dreams, and labours in the dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till when the spool is finished, lo I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His web, reeled off, curls and goes out like steam.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Night falls like fire; the heavy lights run low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as they drop, my blood and body so<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shake as the flame shakes, full of days and hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sleep not neither weep they as they go.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah yet would God this flesh of mine might be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where air might wash and long leaves cover me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah yet would God that stems and roots were bred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of my weary body and my head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That sleep were sealed upon me with a seal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I were as the least of all his dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would God my blood were dew to feed the grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My body broken as a turning wheel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That life were as the naming of a name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That death were not more pitiful than desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That these things were not one thing and the same!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behold now, surely somewhere there is death:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For each man hath some space of years, he saith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A little space of time ere time expire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little day, a little way of breath.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His day's work and his night's work are undone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And lo, between the nightfall and the light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah God, that I were as all souls that be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As any herb or leaf of any tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As men that toil through hours of labouring night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As bones of men under the deep sharp sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Outside it must be winter among men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For at the gold bars of the gates again<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I heard all night and all the hours of it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ways and woods are strangled with the snow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And with short song the maidens spin and sit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until Christ's birthnight, lily-like, arow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The scent and shadow shed about me make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very soul in all my senses ache;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The hot hard night is fed upon my breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sleep beholds me from afar awake.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or in strange places somewhere there is death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on death's face the scattered hair of sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But me the hot and hungry days devour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For her love's sake whose lips through mine respire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So lie we, not as sleep that lies by death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With heavy kisses and with happy breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not as man lies by woman, when the bride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughs low for love's sake and the words he saith.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slain in the old time, having found her fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She casts them forth and gathers them again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her little chambers drip with flower-like red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She tramples all that winepress of the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Between her lips the steam of them is sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The languor in her ears of many lyres.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her doors are made with music, and barred round<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With sighing and with laughter and with tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is the knight Adonis that was slain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The body and the spirit in her ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till the ending of the days and ways of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shaking of the sources of the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, satiated with things insatiable;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth's sweet sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As water, as the flesh of men that weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As their heart's vein whose heart goes nigh to break.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wring their juice upon me as it drips.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is no change of cheer for many days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rung by the running fingers of the wind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Day smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on mine eyes the dark sits as the light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If heaven be clean or unclean in thy sight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, as if earth were sprinkled over me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Each pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is a feverish famine in my veins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Below her bosom, where a crushed grape stains<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The white and blue, there my lips caught and clove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An hour since, and what mark of me remains?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sin, is it sin whereby men's souls are thrust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the pit? yet had I a good trust<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To save my soul before it slipped therein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trod under by the fire-shod feet of lust.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I look between the iron sides of death<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Into sad hell where all sweet love hath end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All but the pain that never finisheth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There are the naked faces of great kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The singing folk with all their lute-playings;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There when one cometh he shall have to friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grave that covets and the worm that clings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There sit the knights that were so great of hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ladies that were queens of fair green land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grown grey and black now, brought unto the dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soiled, without raiment, clad about with sand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is one end for all of them; they sit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked and sad, they drink the dregs of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Trodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trampled and trodden by the fiery feet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cities and people whom the gods loved well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yet for her sake on them the fire gat hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for their sakes on her the fire of hell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The queen whose face was worth the world to kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wearing at breast a suckling snake of gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And large pale lips of strong Semiramis,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Curled like a tiger's that curl back to feed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red only where the last kiss made them bleed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her hair most thick with many a carven gem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in all these there was no sin like mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No, not in all the strange great sins of them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For I was of Christ's choosing, I God's knight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I can well see, for all the dusty days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone past, the clean great time of goodly fight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sharp from the beautifully bending head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all its gracious body lithe as lips<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That curl in touching you; right in this wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Leaving all colours in them brown and red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The caught-up choked dry laughters following them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all the fighting face is grown a flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the heart's gladness of the goodly game.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let me think yet a little; I do know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These things were sweet, but sweet such years ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Their savour is all turned now into tears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Touch my blood too, and sting me with delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all this waste and weary body of mine<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That never feels clear air; right gladly then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I rode alone, a great way off my men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And heard the chiming bridle smite and smite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Till my song shifted to that iron one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing there rode up between me and the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Some certain of my foe's men, for his three<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White wolves across their painted coats did run.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first red-bearded, with square cheeks&mdash;alack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I made my knave's blood turn his beard to black;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The slaying of him was a joy to see:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perchance too, when at night he came not back,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would beat when he had drunken; yet small grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hath any for the ridding of such knaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This bitter love is sorrow in all lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sign across the head of the world he stands,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An one that hath a plague-mark on his brows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dust and spilt blood do track him to his house<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Down under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a sweet snake's breath made more poisonous<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With chewing of some perfumed deadly grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are shed all round his passage if he pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And their quenched savour leaves the whole soul weak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sick with keen guessing whence the perfume was.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smells the rare scent made where a panther feeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And tracking ever slotwise the warm smell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His head far down the hot sweet throat of her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And lo, one springe and you are fast in hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fast as the gin's grip of a wayfarer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I think now, as the heavy hours decease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One after one, and bitter thoughts increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One upon one, of all sweet finished things;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The breaking of the battle; the long peace<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wherein we sat clothed softly, each man's hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of vair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And noise of singing in the late sweet air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sang of love too, knowing nought thereof;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sweeter," I said, "the little laugh of love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than tears out of the eyes of Magdalen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or any fallen feather of the Dove.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of blinded eyelids that expand again&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love draws them open with those lips of his,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of one same fire and colour with their own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sang these things long since and knew them not;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This man and that finds favour in his eyes,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I said, "but I, what guerdon have I got?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The dust of praise that is blown everywhere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all men's faces with the common air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before they wind it in a singer's hair."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had no hope but of some evil thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And so rode slowly past the windy wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And past the vineyard and the water-spring,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up to the Horsel. A great elder-tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Held back its heaps of flowers to let me see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked, with hair shed over to the knee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She walked between the blossom and the grass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew the beauty of her, what she was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The beauty of her body and her sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my flesh the sin of hers, alas!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas! for sorrow is all the end of this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O breast whereat some suckling sorrow clings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red with the bitter blossom of a kiss!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, with blind lips I felt for you, and found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About my neck your hands and hair enwound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The hands that stifle and the hair that stings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I felt them fasten sharply without sound.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, for my sin I had great store of bliss:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise up, make answer for me, let thy kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seal my lips hard from speaking of my sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest one go mad to hear how sweet it is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet I waxed faint with fume of barren bowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And murmuring of the heavy-headed hours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And let the dove's beak fret and peck within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips in vain, and Love shed fruitless flowers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So that God looked upon me when your hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were hot about me; yea, God brake my bands<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To save my soul alive, and I came forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a man blind and naked in strange lands<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That hears men laugh and weep, and knows not whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wherefore, but is broken in his sense;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Howbeit I met folk riding from the north<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towards Rome, to purge them of their souls' offence,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And rode with them, and spake to none; the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stunned me like lights upon some wizard way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And ate like fire mine eyes and mine eyesight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So rode I, hearing all these chant and pray,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And marvelled; till before us rose and fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White cursed hills, like outer skirts of hell<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seen where men's eyes look through the day to night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a jagged shell's lips, harsh, untunable,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blown in between by devils' wrangling breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nathless we won well past that hell and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Down to the sweet land where all airs are good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even unto Rome where God's grace tarrieth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then came each man and worshipped at his knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who in the Lord God's likeness bears the keys<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To bind or loose, and called on Christ's shed blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so the sweet-souled father gave him ease.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But when I came I fell down at his feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying, "Father, though the Lord's blood be right sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The spot it takes not off the panther's skin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor shall an Ethiop's stain be bleached with it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lo, I have sinned and have spat out at God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore his hand is heavier and his rod<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">More sharp because of mine exceeding sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all his raiment redder than bright blood<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Before mine eyes; yea, for my sake I wot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heat of hell is waxen seven times hot<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through my great sin." Then spake he some sweet word,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Giving me cheer; which thing availed me not;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, scarce I wist if such indeed were said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For when I ceased&mdash;lo, as one newly dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who hears a great cry out of hell, I heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The crying of his voice across my head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Until this dry shred staff, that hath no whit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of leaf nor bark, bear blossom and smell sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seek thou not any mercy in God's sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For so long shalt thou be cast out from it."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall that thing be which is not nor has been?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yea, what if sapless bark wax green and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall any good fruit grow upon my sin?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, though sweet fruit were plucked of a dry tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though men drew sweet waters of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There should not grow sweet leaves on this dead stem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This waste wan body and shaken soul of me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, though God search it warily enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is not one sound thing in all thereof;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though he search all my veins through, searching them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He shall find nothing whole therein but love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For I came home right heavy, with small cheer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo my love, mine own soul's heart, more dear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than mine own soul, more beautiful than God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who hath my being between the hands of her&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fair still, but fair for no man saving me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when she came out of the naked sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Making the foam as fire whereon she trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the inner flower of fire was she.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, she laid hold upon me, and her mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clove unto mine as soul to body doth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And, laughing, made her lips luxurious;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hair had smells of all the sunburnt south,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strange spice and flower, strange savour of crushed fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And perfume the swart kings tread underfoot<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For pleasure when their minds wax amorous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Charred frankincense and grated sandal-root.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I forgot fear and all weary things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All ended prayers and perished thanksgivings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Feeling her face with all her eager hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleave to me, clinging as a fire that clings<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To the body and to the raiment, burning them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As after death I know that such-like flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall cleave to me for ever; yea, what care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Albeit I burn then, having felt the same?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah love, there is no better life than this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And afterward be cast out of God's sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">High up in barren heaven before his face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As we twain in the heavy-hearted place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Remembering love and all the dead delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all that time was sweet with for a space?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For till the thunder in the trumpet be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul may divide from body, but not we<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One from another; I hold thee with my hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I let mine eyes have all their will of thee,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I seal myself upon thee with my might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abiding alway out of all men's sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Until God loosen over sea and land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thunder of the trumpets of the night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8"><small>EXPLICIT LAUS VENERIS.</small></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PHAEDRA" id="PHAEDRA"></a>PH&AElig;DRA</h2>
+
+<h4>HIPPOLYTUS; PH&AElig;DRA; CHORUS OF TR&#338;ZENIAN WOMEN</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">HIPPOLYTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lay not thine hand upon me; let me go;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take off thine eyes that put the gods to shame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What, wilt thou turn my loathing to thy death?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, I will never loosen hold nor breathe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till thou have slain me; godlike for great brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art, and thewed as gods are, with clear hair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draw now thy sword and smite me as thou art god,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For verily I am smitten of other gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why not of thee?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">O queen, take heed of words;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why wilt thou eat the husk of evil speech?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wear wisdom for that veil about thy head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And goodness for the binding of thy brows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, but this god hath cause enow to smite;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he will slay me, baring breast and throat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I lean toward the stroke with silent mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a great heart. Come, take thy sword and slay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me not starve between desire and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But send me on my way with glad wet lips;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in the vein-drawn ashen-coloured palm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death's hollow hand holds water of sweet draught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dip and slake dried mouths at, as a deer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Specked red from thorns laps deep and loses pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, if mine own blood ran upon my mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would drink that. Nay, but be swift with me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set thy sword here between the girdle and breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I shall grow a poison if I live.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are not my cheeks as grass, my body pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my breath like a dying poisoned man's?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O whatsoever of godlike names thou be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By thy chief name I charge thee, thou strong god,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid thee slay me. Strike, up to the gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up to the hand-grip of the hilt; strike here;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I am Cretan of my birth; strike now;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I am Theseus' wife; stab up to the rims,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am born daughter to Pasiphae.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See thou spare not for greatness of my blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor for the shining letters of my name:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make thy sword sure inside thine hand and smite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the bright writing of my name is black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I am sick with hating the sweet sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HIPPOLYTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let not this woman wail and cleave to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That am no part of the gods' wrath with her;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loose ye her hands from me lest she take hurt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lady, this speech and majesty are twain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pure shame is of one counsel with the gods.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HIPPOLYTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man is as beast when shame stands off from him.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man, what have I to do with shame or thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not of one counsel with the gods.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am their kin, I have strange blood in me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not of their likeness nor of thine:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My veins are mixed, and therefore am I mad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea therefore chafe and turn on mine own flesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half of a woman made with half a god.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou wast hewn out of an iron womb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fed with molten mother-snow for milk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sword was nurse of thine; Hippolyta,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That had the spear to father, and the axe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bridesman, and wet blood of sword-slain men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For wedding-water out of a noble well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even she did bear thee, thinking of a sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou wast made a man mistakingly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, for I love thee, I will have thy hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, for I will not loose thee, thou art sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art my son, I am thy father's wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ache toward thee with a bridal blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pulse is heavy in all my married veins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My whole face beats, I will feed full of thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My body is empty of ease, I will be fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am burnt to the bone with love, thou shalt not go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am heartsick, and mine eyelids prick mine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt not sleep nor eat nor say a word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till thou hast slain me. I am not good to live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is an evil born with all its teeth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When love is cast out of the bound of love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HIPPOLYTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is no hate that is so hateworthy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I pray thee turn that hate of thine my way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hate not it nor anything of thine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, maidens, how he burns about the brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And draws the chafing sword-strap down his hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What wilt thou do? wilt thou be worse than death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be but as sweet as is the bitterest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The most dispiteous out of all the gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am well pleased. Lo, do I crave so much?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do but bid thee be unmerciful,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even the one thing thou art. Pity me not:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wert not quick to pity. Think of me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As of a thing thy hounds are keen upon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the wet woods between the windy ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And slay me for a spoil. This body of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is worth a wild beast's fell or hide of hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spotted deeper than a panther's grain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I were but dead if thou wert pure indeed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray thee by thy cold green holy crown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by the fillet-leaves of Artemis.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, but thou wilt not. Death is not like thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Albeit men hold him worst of all the gods.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For of all gods Death only loves not gifts,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor with burnt-offering nor blood-sacrifice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shalt thou do aught to get thee grace of him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He will have nought of altar and altar-song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from him only of all the lords in heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Persuasion turns a sweet averted mouth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou art worse: from thee with baffled breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back on my lips my prayer falls like a blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And beats upon them, dumb. What shall I say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no word I can compel thee with<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do me good and slay me. But take heed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say, be wary; look between thy feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest a snare take them though the ground be good.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HIPPOLYTUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shame may do most where fear is found most weak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That which for shame's sake yet I have not done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall it be done for fear's? Take thine own way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better the foot slip than the whole soul swerve.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The man is choice and exquisite of mouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet in the end a curse shall curdle it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He goes with cloak upgathered to the lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding his eye as with some ill in sight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A bitter ill he hath i' the way thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it shall burn the sight out as with fire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Speak no such word whereto mischance is kin.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of my heart and by fate's leave I speak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHORUS.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Set not thy heart to follow after fate.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PH&AElig;DRA.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O women, O sweet people of this land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O goodly city and pleasant ways thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And woods with pasturing grass and great well-heads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hills with light and night between your leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And winds with sound and silence in your lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And earth and water and all immortal things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I take you to my witness what I am.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is a god about me like as fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sprung whence, who knoweth, or who hath heart to say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A god more strong than whom slain beasts can soothe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or honey, or any spilth of blood-like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor shall one please him with a whitened brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wheat nor wool nor aught of plaited leaf.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For like my mother am I stung and slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And round my cheeks have such red malady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on my lips such fire and foam as hers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is that Ate out of Amathus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That breeds up death and gives it one for love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She hath slain mercy, and for dead mercy's sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Being frighted with this sister that was slain)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flees from before her fearful-footed shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And will not bear the bending of her brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And long soft arrows flown from under them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As from bows bent. Desire flows out of her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As out of lips doth speech: and over her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shines fire, and round her and beneath her fire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She hath sown pain and plague in all our house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love loathed of love, and mates unmatchable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild wedlock, and the lusts that bleat or low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And marriage-fodder snuffed about of kine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo how the heifer runs with leaping flank<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleek under shaggy and speckled lies of hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chews a horrible lip, and with harsh tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laps alien froth and licks a loathlier mouth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas, a foul first steam of trodden tares,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fouler of these late grapes underfoot.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A bitter way of waves and clean-cut foam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the sad road of sonorous sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The high gods gave king Theseus for no love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, but for love, yet to no loving end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas the long thwarts and the fervent oars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blown hard sails that straightened the scant rope!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There were no strong pools in the hollow sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To drag at them and suck down side and beak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wind to catch them in the teeth and hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No shoal, no shallow among the roaring reefs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No gulf whereout the straining tides throw spars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No surf where white bones twist like whirled white fire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But like to death he came with death, and sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And slew and spoiled and gat him that he would.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For death, for marriage, and for child-getting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I set my curse against him as a sword;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, and the severed half thereof I leave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pittheus, because he slew not (when that face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was tender, and the life still soft in it)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The small swathed child, but bred him for my fate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would I had been the first that took her death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out from between wet hoofs and reddened teeth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Splashed horns, fierce fetlocks of the brother bull?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For now shall I take death a deadlier way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gathering it up between the feet of love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or off the knees of murder reaching it.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_TRIUMPH_OF_TIME" id="THE_TRIUMPH_OF_TIME"></a>THE TRIUMPH OF TIME</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Before our lives divide for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">While time is with us and hands are free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will say no word that a man might say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this could never have been; and never,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To think of things that are well outworn?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The dream foregone and the deed forborne?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though joy be done with and grief be vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The singing seasons divide and depart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Winter and summer depart in twain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With sullen savour of poisonous pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have given no man of my fruit to eat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This wild new growth of the corn and vine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This wine and bread without lees or leaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the change of years, in the coil of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the clamour and rumour of life to be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We, drinking love at the furthest springs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Covered with love as a covering tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had grown as gods, as the gods above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled from the heart to the lips with love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O love, my love, had you loved but me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grief collapse as a thing disproved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Death consume as a thing unclean.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul to soul while the years fell past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Had the chance been with us that has not been.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have put my days and dreams out of mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Days that are over, dreams that are done.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though we seek life through, we shall surely find<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is none of them clear to us now, not one.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But clear are these things; the grass and the sand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips wide open and face burnt blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The low downs lean to the sea; the stream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Turning her smile to a fugitive pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mother of loves that are swift to fade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mother of mutable winds and hours.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A barren mother, a mother-maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would we twain were even as she,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost in the night and the light of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Break, and are broken, and shed into showers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The loves and hours of the life of a man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I lose what I long for, save what I can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My love, my love, and no love for me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It is not much that a man can save<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">On the sands of life, in the straits of time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who swims in sight of the great third wave<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some waif washed up with the strays and spars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weed from the water, grass from a grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There will no man do for your sake, I think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What I would have done for the least word said.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Broken it up for your daily bread:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Body for body and blood for blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the flow of the full sea risen to flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That yearns and trembles before it sink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And time at fullest and all his dower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had given you surely, and life to boot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Were we once made one for a single hour.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And deep in one is the bitter root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And sweet for one is the lifelong flower.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To my life if you bade me, played my part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As it pleased you&mdash;these were the thoughts that stung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The dreams that smote with a keener dart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than shafts of love or arrows of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were but as fire is, dust, or breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the little snakes that eat my heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wish we were dead together to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Out of the world's way, out of the light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the ages of worldly weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgotten of all men altogether,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Made one with death, filled full of the night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How we should slumber, how we should sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alive as of old to the lips, and leap<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Spirit to spirit as lovers use.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For what shall it profit when men are dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To have looked for day when the day was fled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let come what will, there is one thing worth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have had fair love in the life upon earth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have held love safe till the day grew night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">While skies had colour and lips were red.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would I lose you now? would I take you then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If I lose you now that my heart has need?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And come what may after death to men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What thing worth this will the dead years breed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lose life, lose all; but at least I know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sweet life's love, having loved you so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In death nor life, nor in dream or deed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mixed into me as honey in wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not time, that sayeth and gainsayeth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all strong things had severed us then;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all things earthly, nor all divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But none shall triumph a whole life through:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For death is one, and the fates are three.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the door of life, by the gate of breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are worse things waiting for men than death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death could not sever my soul and you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As these have severed your soul from me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But will it not one day in heaven repent you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet mine, and see where the great love is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The gate is strait; I shall not be there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Had you seen good such a thing were done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I too might have stood with the souls that stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who now on earth need care how I live?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have the high gods anything left to give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Which gifts are goodly; but I will none.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O all fair lovers about the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Round and round in a gulf of the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still, through the sound and the straining stream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bright fine lips so cruelly curled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Free, without pity, withheld from woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would I have you change now, change at a blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Startled and stricken, awake and aware?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, if I could, would I have you see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My very love of you filling me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And know my soul to the quick, as I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The likeness and look of your throat and hair?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall not change you. Nay, though I might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Would I change my sweet one love with a word?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had rather your hair should change in a night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Die as a leaf that dies in a day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will keep my soul in a place out of sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Full of the sound of the sorrow of years.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have woven a veil for the weeping face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have found a way for the failing feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A place for slumber and sorrow to meet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no rumour about the place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor light, nor any that sees or hears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"Let none take pity upon thee, none<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sun.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With soft spun verses and tears unshed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And sweet light visions of things undone?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And gold, and beautiful burial things.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou, be at peace now, make no stir;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is not thy grave as a royal king's?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fret not thyself though the end were sore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, be patient, vex me no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep; what hast thou to do with her?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The misconceived and the misbegotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I would find a sin to do ere I die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That would set you higher in heaven, serve you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave you happy, when clean forgotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As a dead man out of mind, am I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I am swift to follow you, keen to see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But love lacks might to redeem or undo me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As I have been, I know I shall surely be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What should such fellows as I do?" Nay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My part were worse if I chose to play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the worst is this after all; if they knew me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not a soul upon earth would pity me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I play not for pity of these; but you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If you saw with your soul what man am I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would praise me at least that my soul all through<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The souls and lips that are bought and sold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smiles of silver and kisses of gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lapdog loves that whine as they chew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The little lovers that curse and cry.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There are fairer women, I hear; that may be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But I, that I love you and find you fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do the high gods know or the great gods care?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the swords in my heart for one were seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would the iron hollow of doubtful heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That knows not itself whether night-time or day be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Reverberate words and a foolish prayer?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I will go back to the great sweet mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mother and lover of men, the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will go down to her, I and none other,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O fair white mother, in days long past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Born without sister, born without brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Set free my soul as thy soul is free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O fair green-girdled mother of mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy large embraces are keen like pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save me and hide me with all thy waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those pure cold populous graves of thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wrought without hand in a world without stain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Change as the winds change, veer in the tide;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled full with life to the eyes and hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With splendid summer and perfume and pride.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This woven raiment of nights and days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Were it once cast off and unwound from me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Alive and aware of thy ways and thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fair mother, fed with the lives of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But death is the worst that comes of thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Having given us love, hast thou taken away?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O tender-hearted, O perfect lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall they not vanish away and apart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From the first thou wert; in the end thou art.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And grief shall endure not for ever, I know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As things that are not shall these things be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And none be grievous as this to me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sound of time, the rhyme of the years;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As tender things of a spring-tide sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Drowned gold and purple and royal rings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all time past, was it all for this?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Times unforgotten, and treasures of things?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swift years of liking and sweet long laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wist not well of the years thereafter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With lips that trembled and trailing wings?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There lived a singer in France of old<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the tideless dolorous midland sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a land of sand and ruin and gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There shone one woman, and none but she.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And finding life for her love's sake fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And praised God, seeing; and so died he.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Died, praising God for his gift and grace:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For she bowed down to him weeping, and said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Live;" and her tears were shed on his face<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or ever the life in his face was shed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once, and her close lips touched him and clung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And so drew back, and the man was dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O brother, the gods were good to you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sleep, and be glad while the world endures.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be well content as the years wear through;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give thanks for life, O brother, and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For gifts she gave you, gracious and few,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rest, and be glad of the gods; but I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How shall I praise them, or how take rest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is not room under all the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For me that know not of worst or best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dream or desire of the days before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet things or bitterness, any more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love will not come to me now though I die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As love came close to you, breast to breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall never be friends again with roses;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As a wave of the sea turned back by song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Face to face with its own desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The pulse of war and passion of wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The music burning at heart like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An armed archangel whose hands raise up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All senses mixed in the spirit's cup<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These things are over, and no more mine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These were a part of the playing I heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than overwatching of eyes that weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now time has done with his one sweet word,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The wine and leaven of lovely life.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I shall go my ways, tread out my measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fill the days of my daily breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With fugitive things not good to treasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do as the world doth, say as it saith;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if we had loved each other&mdash;O sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To feel you tread it to dust and death&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, had I not taken my life up and given<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All that life gives and the years let go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come life, come death, not a word be said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LES_NOYADES" id="LES_NOYADES"></a>LES NOYADES</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whatever a man of the sons of men<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall say to his heart of the lords above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have shown man verily, once and again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Marvellous mercies and infinite love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the wild fifth year of the change of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When France was glorious and blood-red, fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With dust of battle and deaths of kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A queen of men, with helmeted hair,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Carrier came down to the Loire and slew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till all the ways and the waves waxed red:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound and drowned, slaying two by two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Maidens and young men, naked and wed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They brought on a day to his judgment-place<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One rough with labour and red with fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a lady noble by name and face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Faultless, a maiden, wonderful, white.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She knew not, being for shame's sake blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If his eyes were hot on her face hard by.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the judge bade strip and ship them, and bind<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Bosom to bosom, to drown and die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The white girl winced and whitened; but he<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Caught fire, waxed bright as a great bright flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen with thunder far out on the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Laughed hard as the glad blood went and came.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twice his lips quailed with delight, then said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"I have but a word to you all, one word;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear with me; surely I am but dead;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all they laughed and mocked him and heard.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Judge, when they open the judgment-roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I will stand upright before God and pray:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Lord God, have mercy on one man's soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For his mercy was great upon earth, I say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Lord, if I loved thee&mdash;Lord, if I served&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If these who darkened thy fair Son's face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A hand's-breadth, Lord, in the perilous place&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'I pray thee say to this man, O Lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will face thy wrath, though it bite as a sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And my soul shall burn for his soul, and atone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'For, Lord, thou knowest, O God most wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How gracious on earth were his deeds towards me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall this be a small thing in thine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That is greater in mine than the whole great sea?'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I have loved this woman my whole life long,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And even for love's sake when have I said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'I love you'? when have I done you wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Living? but now I shall have you dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love me or loathe, we are one not twain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God be praised in his heaven above<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For this my pleasure and that my pain!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For never a man, being mean like me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall die like me till the whole world dies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall drown with her, laughing for love; and she<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mix with me, touching me, lips and eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Shall she not know me and see me all through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Me, on whose heart as a worm she trod?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have given me, God requite it you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What man yet never was given of God."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sweet one love, O my life's delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dear, though the days have divided us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not twice in the world shall the gods do thus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Had it been so hard for my love? but I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though the gods gave all that a god can give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had chosen rather the gift to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cease, and be glad above all that live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the Loire would have driven us down to the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the sea would have pitched us from shoal to shoal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I should have held you, and you held me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As flesh holds flesh, and the soul the soul.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could I change you, help you to love me, sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Could I give you the love that would sweeten death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We should yield, go down, locked hands and feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Die, drown together, and breath catch breath;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But you would have felt my soul in a kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And known that once if I loved you well;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I would have given my soul for this<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To burn for ever in burning hell.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LEAVE_TAKING" id="A_LEAVE_TAKING"></a>A LEAVE-TAKING</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us go hence together without fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over all old things and all things dear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She loves not you nor me as all we love her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not hear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us rise up and part; she will not know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us go seaward as the great winds go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no help, for all these things are so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the world is bitter as a tear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how these things are, though ye strove to show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not know.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We gave love many dreams and days to keep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not weep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though she saw all heaven in flower above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us give up, go down; she will not care.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all the stars made gold of all the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sea moving saw before it move<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all those waves went over us, and drove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not care.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sing all once more together; surely she,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She too, remembering days and words that were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">She would not see.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ITYLUS" id="ITYLUS"></a>ITYLUS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How can thine heart be full of the spring?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thousand summers are over and dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What hast thou found in the spring to follow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The soft south whither thine heart is set?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not the grief of the old time follow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy way is long to the sun and the south;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From tawny body and sweet small mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Feed the heart of the night with fire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I the nightingale all spring through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All spring through till the spring be done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Take flight and follow and find the sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For where thou fliest I shall not follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till life forget and death remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till thou remember and I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I know not how thou hast heart to sing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy lord the summer is good to follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My heart in me is a molten ember<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And over my head the waves have met.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Could I forget or thou remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Couldst thou remember and I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The heart's division divideth us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To the place of the slaying of Itylus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I pray thee sing not a little space.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The woven web that was plain to follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The small slain body, the flowerlike face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Can I remember if thou forget?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The hands that cling and the feet that follow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The voice of the child's blood crying yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But the world shall end when I forget.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ANACTORIA" id="ANACTORIA"></a>ANACTORIA</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">&#964;&#943;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#945;&#8022; &#964;&#8058; &#960;&#949;&#953;&#952;&#959;&#8150;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">&#956;&#8048;&#968; &#963;&#945;&#947;&#951;&#957;&#949;&#973;&#963;&#945;&#962; &#966;&#953;&#955;&#972;&#964;&#945;&#964;&#945; &#894;<br /></span>
+<span class="i18"><span class="smcap">Sappho.</span></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would the sea had hidden us, the fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erotion or Erinna to my love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no mouth but some serpent's found thee sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intense device, and superflux of pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Relapse and reluctation of the breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all love's fiery nights and all his days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the broken kisses salt as brine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all the flowerlike white stained round with blue;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fervent underlid, and that above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifted with laughter or abashed with love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leavings of the lilies in thine hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the fruit of nights and flower of days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Love was born of burns and foams like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eyes insatiable of amorous hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coloured like night at heart, but cloven through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with deep eyelids under and above&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, take no thought for Love's sake; shall this be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she who loves thy lover not love thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I beheld in sleep the light that is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of body and soul that mix with eager tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Imperishable, upon her storied seat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mind of many colours, and a mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all her subtle face laughing aloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bowed down upon me, saying, "Who doth thee wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sappho?" but thou&mdash;thy body is the song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though my voice die not till the whole world die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall kiss that would not kiss thee" (yea, kiss me)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"When thou wouldst not"&mdash;when I would not kiss thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, more to me than all men as thou art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made earth and all the centuries of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The young men and the maidens and the gods?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And summer and flower of women and of years?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunlight, and exaltation of the moon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waters that answer waters, fields that wear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond those flying feet of fluttered doves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are there not other gods for other loves?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blossom not thorns and flowers not blood should break.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy body were abolished and consumed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The paces and the pauses of thy feet!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blood like purple blossom at the tips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Die of thy pain and my delight, and be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would I not plague thee dying overmuch?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lyre of many faultless agonies?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wring thy very spirit through the flesh?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cruel? but love makes all that love him well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As wise as heaven and crueller than hell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me hath love made more bitter toward thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than death toward man; but were I made as he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who hath made all things to break them one by one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If my feet trod upon the stars and sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And souls of men as his have alway trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God knows I might be crueller than God.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mystery of the cruelty of things?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or say what God above all gods and years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lamentation from strange lands, from graves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From prison, and from plunging prows of ships<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through flamelike foam of the sea's closing lips&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of comets, desolating the dim air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When darkness is made fast with seals and bars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkening, and blind inexpiable things&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And travail of the planets of the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is not his incense bitterness, his meat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Murder? his hidden face and iron feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath not man known, and felt them on their way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threaten and trample all things and every day?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pain animate the dust of dead desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And life yield up her flower to violent fate?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mix his immortality with death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why hath he made us? what had all we done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we should live and loathe the sterile sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the moon wax paler as she wanes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the rose born of one same blood with thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a song sung, as a word said, and fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any memory of thee anywhere;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For never Muse has bound above thine hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All summer kinship of the mortal rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And colour of deciduous days, nor shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Except these kisses of my lips on thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brand them with immortality; but me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cast forth of heaven, with feet of awful gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in the light and laughter, in the moan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And music, and in grasp of lip and hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shudder of water that makes felt on land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The immeasurable tremor of all the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all the winds of the world for pure delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When nightingales are louder for love's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like me the one star swooning with desire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I at thine; like me the waste white noon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by the yearning in my veins I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With troubled stars and travailing things of flame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my heart the grief consuming them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the summer travail of the trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the winter sickness; and the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled full with deadly works of death and birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has pain like mine in her divided breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wild birds rend her branches overhead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These, woven as raiment for his word and thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, earth may labour, men live long and die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Years change and stars, and the high God devise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New things, and old things wane before his eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than they&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, having made me, me he shall not slay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all these end; he hath his will of these.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This soul of mine as any soul of these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give me water and great sweet waves, and make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very sea's name lordlier for my sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole sea sweeter&mdash;albeit I die indeed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hide myself and sleep and no man heed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of me the high God hath not all his will.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blossom of branches, and on each high hill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clear air and wind, and under in clamorous vales<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wan washed sand and the waves' vain desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Violently singing till the whole world sings&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I Sappho shall be one with all these things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all high things for ever; and my face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gladness and much sadness and long love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New things, and never this best thing again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they shall know me as ye who have known me here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I love thee; and they shall praise me, and say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"She hath all time as all we have our day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall she not live and have her will"&mdash;even I?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For these shall give me of their souls, shall give<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save me and serve me, strive for me with death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assuage me nor allay me nor appease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till time wax faint in all his periods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till fate undo the bondage of the gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lay, to slake and satiate me all through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shed around and over and under me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HYMN_TO_PROSERPINE" id="HYMN_TO_PROSERPINE"></a>HYMN TO PROSERPINE</h2>
+
+<h4>(AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)</h4>
+
+
+<h4><i>Vicisti, Galil&aelig;e.</i></h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The laurel, the palms and the p&aelig;an, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ILICET" id="ILICET"></a>ILICET</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is an end of joy and sorrow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peace all day long, all night, all morrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But never a time to laugh or weep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The end is come of pleasant places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The end of tender words and faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The end of all, the poppied sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No place for sound within their hearing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No room to hope, no time for fearing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No lips to laugh, no lids for tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old years have run out all their measure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No fragment of the broken years.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Outside of all the worlds and ages,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There where the fool is as the sage is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There where the slayer is clean of blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No end, no passage, no beginning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There where the sinner leaves off sinning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There where the good man is not good.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is not one thing with another,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Evil saith to Good: My brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My brother, I am one with thee:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall not strive nor cry for ever:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No man shall choose between them: never<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall this thing end and that thing be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall shake them, and they shall not waken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">None that has lain down shall arise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stones are sealed across their places;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One shadow is shed on all their faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One blindness cast on all their eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep, is it sleep perchance that covers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each face, as each face were his lover's?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Farewell; as men that sleep fare well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grave's mouth laughs unto derision<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desire and dread and dream and vision,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Delight of heaven and sorrow of hell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No soul shall tell nor lip shall number<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The names and tribes of you that slumber;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No memory, no memorial.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Thou knowest"&mdash;who shall say thou knowest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is none highest and none lowest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">An end, an end, an end of all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To these that shall not have good morrow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The gods be gentle to all these.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, if death be not, how shall they be?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, is there help in heaven? it may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All things and lords of things shall cease.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bronz&egrave;d brims are deep in ashes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The pale old lips of death are fed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">At sight of all these poor old dead?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy laughter shall not give thee ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt not raise up one of these.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Burnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The breathing flame's mouth curls and kisses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The small dried rows of frankincense;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All round the sad red blossoms smoulder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flowers coloured like the fire, but colder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In sign of sweet things taken hence;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, for their sake and in death's favour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things of sweet shape and of sweet savour<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We yield them, spice and flower and wine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, costlier things than wine or spices,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereof none knoweth how great the price is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fruit that comes not of the vine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From boy's pierced throat and girl's pierced bosom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drips, reddening round the blood-red blossom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The slow delicious bright soft blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bathing the spices and the pyre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bathing the flowers and fallen fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Bathing the blossom by the bud.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Roses whose lips the flame has deadened<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drink till the lapping leaves are reddened<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And warm wet inner petals weep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Barren of balm and purple pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fumes with no native steam of sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why will ye weep? what do ye weeping?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For waking folk and people sleeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And sands that fill and sands that fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The days rose-red, the poppied hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is one end of one and all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall such an one lend love or borrow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall these give thanks for words or breath?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their hate is as their loving-kindness;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The frontlet of their brows is blindness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The armlet of their arms is death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, for no noise or light of thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He that hath taken, shall he give?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hath rent them: shall he bind together?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hath bound them: shall he break the tether?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He hath slain them: shall he bid them live?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A little sorrow, a little pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fate metes us from the dusty measure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That holds the date of all of us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are born with travail and strong crying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from the birth-day to the dying<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The likeness of our life is thus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One girds himself to serve another,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose father was the dust, whose mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The little dead red worm therein;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They find no fruit of things they cherish;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The goodness of a man shall perish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It shall be one thing with his sin.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In deep wet ways by grey old gardens<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They know not what fruits wane or grow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red summer burns to the utmost ember;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They know not, neither can remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The old years and flowers they used to know.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, for their sakes, so trapped and taken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For theirs, forgotten and forsaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, where the heart of wrath is broken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where long love ends as a thing spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How shall thy crying enter there?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the iron sides of the old world falter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The likeness of them shall not alter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For all the rumour of periods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stars and seasons that come after,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tears of latter men, the laughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the old unalterable gods.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far up above the years and nations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The high gods, clothed and crowned with patience,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Endure through days of deathlike date;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They bear the witness of things hidden;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before their eyes all life stands chidden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As they before the eyes of Fate.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not for their love shall Fate retire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor they relent for our desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor the graves open for their call.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The end is more than joy and anguish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than lives that laugh and lives that languish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The poppied sleep, the end of all.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HERMAPHRODITUS" id="HERMAPHRODITUS"></a>HERMAPHRODITUS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">I<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save the long smile that they are wearied of.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Two loves at either blossom of thy breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strive until one be under and one above.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their breath is fire upon the amorous air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A strong desire begot on great despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A great despair cast out by strong desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">II<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where between sleep and life some brief space is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With love like gold bound round about the head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yet from them something like as fire is shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That shall not be assuaged till death be dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love made himself of flesh that perisheth<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But on the one side sat a man like death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And on the other a woman sat like sin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love turned himself and would not enter in.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">III<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or like the night's dew laid upon the night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or make thee woman for a man's delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To what strange end hath some strange god made fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Given all the gold that all the seasons wear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To thee that art a thing of barren hours?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">IV<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though love and life and death should come and go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So dreadful, so desirable, so dear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But Love being blind, how should he know of this?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Au Mus&eacute;e du Louvre, Mars 1863.</i></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FRAGOLETTA" id="FRAGOLETTA"></a>FRAGOLETTA</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Love! what shall be said of thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The son of grief begot by joy?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being sightless, wilt thou see?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being sexless, wilt thou be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maiden or boy?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I dreamed of strange lips yesterday<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was like a rose's&mdash;yea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rose's when it lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within the bud.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What fields have bred thee, or what groves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Concealed thee, O mysterious flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O double rose of Love's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With leaves that lure the doves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From bud to bower?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I dare not kiss it, lest my lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Press harder than an indrawn breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the sweet life slip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth, and the sweet leaves drip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bloodlike, in death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O sole desire of my delight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sole delight of my desire!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine eyelids and eyesight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed on thee day and night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like lips of fire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lean back thy throat of carven pearl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let thy mouth murmur like the dove's;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say, Venus hath no girl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No front of female curl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among her Loves.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy sweet low bosom, thy close hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy strait soft flanks and slenderer feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy virginal strange air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are these not over fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Love to greet?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How should he greet thee? what new name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fit to move all men's hearts, could move<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee, deaf to love or shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's sister, by the same<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mother as Love?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, the maiden's mouth is cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her breast-blossoms are simply red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hair mere brown or gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fold over simple fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Binding her head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy mouth is made of fire and wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy barren bosom takes my kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turns my soul to thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turns thy lip to mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mine it is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou hast a serpent in thine hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all the curls that close and cling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ah, thy breast-flower!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah love, thy mouth too fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To kiss and sting!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cleave to me, love me, kiss mine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Satiate thy lips with loving me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, for thou shalt not rise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lie still as Love that dies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love of thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mine arms are close about thine head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips are fervent on thy face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where my kiss hath fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy flower-like blood leaps red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the kissed place.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O bitterness of things too sweet!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O broken singing of the dove!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's wings are over fleet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like the panther's feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feet of Love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="RONDEL1" id="RONDEL1"></a>RONDEL</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These many years since we began to be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What have the gods done with us? what with me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These many years.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With her, my love, with her have they done well?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who shall answer for her? who shall tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These many years!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But if tears ever touched, for any grief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep double shells wherethrough the eye-flower peers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These many years.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SATIA_TE_SANGUINE" id="SATIA_TE_SANGUINE"></a>SATIA TE SANGUINE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If you loved me ever so little,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I could bear the bonds that gall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could dream the bonds were brittle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You do not love me at all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O beautiful lips, O bosom<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">More white than the moon's and warm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sterile, a ruinous blossom<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is blown your way in a storm.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As the lost white feverish limbs<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In foam where the sea-weed swims,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Swam loose for the streams to lift,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My heart swims blind in a sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That stuns me; swims to and fro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gathers to windward and lee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A broken, an emptied boat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sea saps it, winds blow apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sick and adrift and afloat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The barren waif of a heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where, when the gods would be cruel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do they go for a torture? where<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah, not in the flesh, not there!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The racks of earth and the rods<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are weak as foam on the sands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the heart is the prey for gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who crucify hearts, not hands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mere pangs corrode and consume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dead when life dies in the brain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the infinite spirit is room<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For the pulse of an infinite pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wish you were dead, my dear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I would give you, had I to give<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some death too bitter to fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It is better to die than live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wish you were stricken of thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And burnt with a bright flame through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Consumed and cloven in sunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I dead at your feet like you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If I could but know after all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I might cease to hunger and ache,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though your heart were ever so small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If it were not a stone or a snake.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You are crueller, you that we love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than hatred, hunger, or death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have eyes and breasts like a dove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And you kill men's hearts with a breath<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As plague in a poisonous city<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Insults and exults on her dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So you, when pallid for pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Comes love, and fawns to be fed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As a tame beast writhes and wheedles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He fawns to be fed with wiles;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You carve him a cross of needles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And whet them sharp as your smiles.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He is patient of thorn and whip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He is dumb under axe or dart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You suck with a sleepy red lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The wet red wounds in his heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You thrill as his pulses dwindle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You brighten and warm as he bleeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With insatiable eyes that kindle<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And insatiable mouth that feeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your hands nailed love to the tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You stript him, scourged him with rods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And drowned him deep in the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That hides the dead and their gods.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And for all this, die will he not;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is no man sees him but I;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You came and went and forgot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I hope he will some day die.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LITANY" id="LITANY"></a>A LITANY</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&#7952;&#957; &#959;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#8183; &#966;&#945;&#949;&#957;&#957;&#8048;&#962;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">&#954;&#961;&#8059;&#968;&#969; &#960;&#945;&#961;' &#8017;&#956;&#8054;&#957; &#945;&#8016;&#947;&#8048;&#962;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">&#956;&#8055;&#945;&#962; &#960;&#961;&#8056; &#957;&#965;&#954;&#964;&#8056;&#962; &#7953;&#960;&#964;&#8048; &#957;&#8059;&#954;&#964;&#945;&#962; &#7957;&#958;&#949;&#964;&#949;, &#954;.&#964;.&#955;.<br /></span>
+<span class="i18"><i>Anth. Sac.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">FIRST ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All the bright lights of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I will make dark over thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One night shall be as seven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That its skirts may cover thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will send on thy strong men a sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On thy remnant a rod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye shall know that I am the Lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Saith the Lord God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SECOND ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All the bright lights of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou hast made dark over us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One night has been as seven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That its skirt might cover us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On our remnant a rod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We know that thou art the Lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O Lord our God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">THIRD ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As the tresses and wings of the wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are scattered and shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will scatter all them that have sinned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There shall none be taken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a sower that scattereth seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So will I scatter them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I will break and shatter them.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">FOURTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As the wings and the locks of the wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are scattered and shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There was no man taken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a sower that scattereth seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So hast thou scattered us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou hast broken and shattered us.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">FIFTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From all thy lovers that love thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I God will sunder thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will make darkness above thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thick darkness under thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before me goeth a light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Behind me a sword;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall a remnant find grace in my sight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I am the Lord.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SIXTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From all our lovers that love us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou God didst sunder us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou madest darkness above us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thick darkness under us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast kindled thy wrath for a light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And made ready thy sword;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let a remnant find grace in thy sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We beseech thee, O Lord.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SEVENTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou bring fine gold for a payment<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For sins on this wise?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the glittering of raiment<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the shining of eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the painting of faces<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the sundering of trust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the sins of thine high places<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And delight of thy lust?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For your high things ye shall have lowly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lamentation for song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, behold, I God am holy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I the Lord am strong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye shall seek me and shall not reach me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till the wine-press be trod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that hour ye shall turn and beseech me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Saith the Lord God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">EIGHTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not with fine gold for a payment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But with coin of sighs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with rending of raiment<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And with weeping of eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with shame of stricken faces<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And with strewing of dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the sin of stately places<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lordship of lust;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With voices of men made lowly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made empty of song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lord God most holy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O God most strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We reach out hands to reach thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere the wine-press be trod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O Lord our God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">NINTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In that hour thou shalt say to the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Come down and cover us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the cloud on thy left and thy right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be thou spread over us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A snare shall be as thy mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a curse thy bride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt put her away, and another<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall lie by thy side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt neither rise up by day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor lie down by night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would God it were dark! thou shalt say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Would God it were light!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sight of thine eyes shall be made<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the burning of fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy soul shall be sorely afraid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For thy soul's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye whom your lords loved well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Putting silver and gold on you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The inevitable hell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall surely take hold on you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your gold shall be for a token,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your staff for a rod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the breaking of bands ye are broken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Saith the Lord God.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">TENTH ANTIPHONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In our sorrow we said to the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fall down and cover us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the darkness at left and at right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be thou shed over us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had breaking of spirit to mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And cursing to bride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one was slain, and another<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood up at our side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We could not arise by day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor lie down by night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sword was sharp in our way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy word in our sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The delight of our eyelids was made<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the burning of fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our souls became sorely afraid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For our soul's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We whom the world loved well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Laying silver and gold on us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The kingdom of death and of hell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Riseth up to take hold on us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our gold is turned to a token,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our staff to a rod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O Lord our God.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LAMENTATION" id="LAMENTATION"></a>A LAMENTATION</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">I<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who hath known the ways of time<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or trodden behind his feet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There is no such man among men.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For chance overcomes him, or crime<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Changes; for all things sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In time wax bitter again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who shall give sorrow enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or who the abundance of tears?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine eyes are heavy with love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And a sword gone thorough mine ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A sound like a sword and fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For pity, for great desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who shall ensure me thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lest I die, being full of my fears?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who hath known the ways and the wrath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sleepless spirit, the root<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And blossom of evil will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The divine device of a god?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who shall behold it or hath?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The twice-tongued prophets are mute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The many speakers are still;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">No foot has travelled or trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No hand has meted, his path.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Man's fate is a blood-red fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the mighty gods have their fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And relax not the rein, or the rod.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye were mighty in heart from of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ye slew with the spear, and are slain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keen after heat is the cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sore after summer is rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And melteth man to the bone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As water he weareth away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As a flower, as an hour in a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fallen from laughter to moan.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my spirit is shaken with fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lest an evil thing begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New-born, a spear for a spear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And one for another sin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or ever our tears began,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It was known from of old and said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One law for a living man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And another law for the dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For these are fearful and sad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Vain, and things without breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While he lives let a man be glad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">For none hath joy of his death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">II<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or all the travail of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The many ways and waves, the birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fruitless, the labour nothing worth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is none shall say he hath seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is none he hath known.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I have reaped and sown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have seen the desire of mine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The beginning of love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The season of kisses and sighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the end thereof.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have known the ways of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All the perilous ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange winds have spoken with me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the tongues of strange days.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have hewn the pine for ships;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where steeds run arow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have seen from their bridled lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Foam blown as the snow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With snapping of chariot-poles<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And with straining of oars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have grazed in the race the goals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the storm the shores;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a greave is cleft with an arrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">At the joint of the knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To the heart of the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When air was smitten in sunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I have watched on high<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ways of the stars and the thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the night of the sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As from lips that dissever;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One abideth the space of an hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One endureth for ever.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, what hath he seen or known,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the way and the wave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unbeholden, unsailed on, unsown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From the breast to the grave?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or ever the stars were made, or skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grief was born, and the kinless night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mother of gods without form or name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And light is born out of heaven and dies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And one day knows not another's light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But night is one, and her shape the same.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But dumb the goddesses underground<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And sift in scales and winnow as wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Men's souls, and sorrow of manifold things.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">III<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nor less of grief than ours<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The gods wrought long ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To bruise men one by one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with the incessant hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fresh grief and greener woe<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spring, as the sudden sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Year after year makes flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And these die down and grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the next year lacks none.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As these men sleep, have slept<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The old heroes in time fled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No dream-divided sleep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And holier eyes have wept<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than ours, when on her dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gods have seen Thetis weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With heavenly hair far-swept<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Back, heavenly hands outspread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Round what she could not keep,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could not one day withhold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One night; and like as these<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">White ashes of no weight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Held not his urn the cold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ashes of Heracles?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For all things born one gate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Opens, no gate of gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Opens; and no man sees<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beyond the gods and fate.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ANIMA_ANCEPS" id="ANIMA_ANCEPS"></a>ANIMA ANCEPS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Till death have broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet life's love-token,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till all be spoken<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That shall be said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What dost thou praying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O soul, and playing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With song and saying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Things flown and fled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this we know not&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fresh springs flow not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fresh griefs grow not<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When men are dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When strange years cover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lover and lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And joys are over<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And tears are shed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If one day's sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mar the day's morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If man's life borrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And man's death pay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If souls once taken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If lives once shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arise, awaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By night, by day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why with strong crying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And years of sighing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Living and dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fast ye and pray?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all your weeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waking and sleeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death comes to reaping<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And takes away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though time rend after<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roof-tree from rafter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little laughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is much more worth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than thus to measure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hour, the treasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pain, the pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The death, the birth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grief, when days alter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like joy shall falter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Song-book and psalter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mourning and mirth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live like the swallow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seek not to follow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where earth is hollow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Under the earth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_THE_ORCHARD" id="IN_THE_ORCHARD"></a>IN THE ORCHARD</h2>
+
+<h4>(PROVEN&Ccedil;AL BURDEN)</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kissed upon either cheek and either eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I turn to thee as some green afternoon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lie closer, lean your face upon my side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it not sweeter than a foolish kiss?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My rose, so like a tender mouth it is:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dividing my delight and my desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The crescent life and love the plenilune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love me though dusk begin and dark retire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, my heart fails, my blood draws back; I know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When life runs over, life is near to go;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And with the slain of love love's ways are strewn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with their blood, if love will have it so;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, do thy will now; slay me if thou wilt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no building now the walls are built,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No quarrying now the corner-stone is hewn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No drinking now the vine's whole blood is spilt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slay me ere day can slay desire again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take life and all, for I will die, I say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love, I gave love, is life a better boon?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sweet night's sake I will not live till day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold my hair fast, and kiss me through it so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_MATCH" id="A_MATCH"></a>A MATCH</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If love were what the rose is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were like the leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our lives would grow together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sad or singing weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blown fields or flowerful closes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Green pleasure or grey grief;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If love were what the rose is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were like the leaf.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If I were what the words are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love were like the tune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With double sound and single<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delight our lips would mingle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With kisses glad as birds are<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That get sweet rain at noon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I were what the words are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love were like the tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If you were life, my darling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I your love were death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'd shine and snow together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere March made sweet the weather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With daffodil and starling<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And hours of fruitful breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you were life, my darling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I your love were death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If you were thrall to sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were page to joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'd play for lives and seasons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With loving looks and treasons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tears of night and morrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And laughs of maid and boy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you were thrall to sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were page to joy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If you were April's lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were lord in May,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'd throw with leaves for hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And draw for days with flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till day like night were shady<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And night were bright like day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you were April's lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were lord in May.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If you were queen of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were king of pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'd hunt down love together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pluck out his flying-feather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And teach his feet a measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And find his mouth a rein;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you were queen of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I were king of pain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FAUSTINE" id="FAUSTINE"></a>FAUSTINE</h2>
+
+<h4><i>Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant.</i></h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lean back, and get some minutes' peace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Let your head lean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back to the shoulder with its fleece<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of locks, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The shapely silver shoulder stoops,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Weighed over clean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With state of splendid hair that droops<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Each side, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let me go over your good gifts<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That crown you queen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Each week, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bright heavy brows well gathered up:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">White gloss and sheen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carved lips that make my lips a cup<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To drink, Faustine,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Being mixed therein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since first the devil threw dice with God<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For you, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your naked new-born soul, their stake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stood blind between;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God said "let him that wins her take<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And keep Faustine."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But this time Satan throve, no doubt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Long since, I ween,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's part in you was battered out;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Long since, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The die rang sideways as it fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rang cracked and thin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a man's laughter heard in hell<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Far down, Faustine,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A shadow of laughter like a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dead sorrow's kin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So rang, thrown down, the devil's die<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That won Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A suckling of his breed you were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One hard to wean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God, who lost you, left you fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We see, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You have the face that suits a woman<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For her soul's screen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sort of beauty that's called human<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In hell, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You could do all things but be good<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or chaste of mien;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that you would not if you could,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We know, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even he who cast seven devils out<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of Magdalene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could hardly do as much, I doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For you, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did Satan make you to spite God?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or did God mean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To scourge with scorpions for a rod<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our sins, Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I know what queen at first you were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As though I had seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red gold and black imperious hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Twice crown Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As if your fed sarcophagus<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Spared flesh and skin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You come back face to face with us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The same Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She loved the games men played with death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where death must win;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As though the slain man's blood and breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Revived Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lithe limbs and lean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To soothe Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She drank the steaming drift and dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blown off the scene;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blood could not ease the bitter lust<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That galled Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All round the foul fat furrows reeked,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where blood sank in;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All round Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But these are gone now: years entomb<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The dust and din;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, even the bath's fierce reek and fume<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That slew Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Was life worth living then? and now<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is life worth sin?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where are the imperial years? and how<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are you Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your soul forgot her joys, forgot<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her times of teen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, this life likewise will you not<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Forget, Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For in the time we know not of<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Did fate begin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weaving the web of days that wove<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your doom, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The threads were wet with wine, and all<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Were smooth to spin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wove you like a Bacchanal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The first Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And Bacchus cast your mates and you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wild grapes to glean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your flower-like lips were dashed with dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From his, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The vine's wet green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long ere they coined in Roman gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your face, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then after change of soaring feather<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And winnowing fin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You woke in weeks of feverish weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A new Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A star upon your birthday burned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose fierce serene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red pulseless planet never yearned<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In heaven, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through Mitylene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shook the fierce quivering blood in you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By night, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The shameless nameless love that makes<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hell's iron gin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shut on you like a trap that breaks<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The soul, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when your veins were void and dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What ghosts unclean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swarmed round the straitened barren bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That hid Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What sterile growths of sexless root<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or epicene?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What flower of kisses without fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of love, Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What adders came to shed their coats?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What coiled obscene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Small serpents with soft stretching throats<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Caressed Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the time came of famished hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Maimed loves and mean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This ghastly thin-faced time of ours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To spoil Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You seem a thing that hinges hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A love-machine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With clockwork joints of supple gold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No more, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not godless, for you serve one God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The Lampsacene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who metes the gardens with his rod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your lord, Faustine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If one should love you with real love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Such things have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things your fair face knows nothing of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It seems, Faustine);<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That clear hair heavily bound back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The lights wherein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your throat, Faustine,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong, heavy, throwing out the face<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And hard bright chin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shameful scornful lips that grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Their shame, Faustine,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Curled lips, long-since half kissed away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Still sweet and keen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You'd give him&mdash;poison shall we say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or what, Faustine?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CAMEO" id="CAMEO"></a>A CAMEO</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was a graven image of Desire<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Painted with red blood on a ground of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Passing between the young men and the old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by him Pain, whose body shone like fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The insatiable Satiety kept hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The senses and the sorrows and the sins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the strange loves that suck the breasts of Hate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Followed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon whose lock was written <i>Peradventure</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SONG_BEFORE_DEATH" id="SONG_BEFORE_DEATH"></a>SONG BEFORE DEATH</h2>
+
+<h4>(FROM THE FRENCH)</h4>
+
+<h4>1795</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet mother, in a minute's span<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Death parts thee and my love of thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet love, that yet art living man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Come back, true love, to comfort me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my love comes not any day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As roses, when the warm West blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Break to full flower and sweeten spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My soul would break to a glorious rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In such wise at his whispering.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain I listen; wellaway!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My love says nothing any day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You that will weep for pity of love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">On the low place where I am lain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray you, having wept enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Tell him for whom I bore such pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he was yet, ah! wellaway!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My true love to my dying day.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ROCOCO" id="ROCOCO"></a>ROCOCO</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Take hands and part with laughter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Touch lips and part with tears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once more and no more after,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whatever comes with years.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We twain shall not remeasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways that left us twain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor crush the lees of pleasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From sanguine grapes of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We twain once well in sunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What will the mad gods do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For hate with me, I wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or what for love with you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget them till November,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And dream there's April yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget that I remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And dream that I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Time found our tired love sleeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And kissed away his breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what should we do weeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though light love sleep to death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have drained his lips at leisure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till there's not left to drain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A single sob of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A single pulse of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dream that the lips once breathless<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Might quicken if they would;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say that the soul is deathless;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dream that the gods are good;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say March may wed September,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And time divorce regret;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But not that you remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And not that I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have heard from hidden places<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What love scarce lives and hears:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have seen on fervent faces<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The pallor of strange tears:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whence, ripe to steam and stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Foams round the feet of pleasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The blood-red must of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Remembrance may recover<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And time bring back to time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The name of your first lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ring of my first rhyme;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But rose-leaves of December<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The frosts of June shall fret,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The day that you remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The day that I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The snake that hides and hisses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In heaven we twain have known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grief of cruel kisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The joy whose mouth makes moan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pulse's pause and measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where in one furtive vein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Throbs through the heart of pleasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The purpler blood of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have done with tears and treasons<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love for treason's sake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Room for the swift new seasons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The years that burn and break,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dismantle and dismember<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Men's days and dreams, Juliette;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love may not remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But time will not forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Life treads down love in flying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Time withers him at root;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring all dead things and dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, crushed by three days' pressure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our three days' love lies slain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And earlier leaf of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And latter flower of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Breathe close upon the ashes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It may be flame will leap;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unclose the soft close lashes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lift up the lids, and weep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light love's extinguished ember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Let one tear leave it wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For one that you remember<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And ten that you forget.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="STAGE_LOVE" id="STAGE_LOVE"></a>STAGE LOVE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the game began between them for a jest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He played king and she played queen to match the best;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the sting and all the stain of long delight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When she played at half a love with half a lover.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he died for good in play, and rose in sorrow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What the years mean; how time dies and is not slain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How love grows and laughs and cries and wanes again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were things she came to know, and take their measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the play was played out so for one man's pleasure.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_LEPER" id="THE_LEPER"></a>THE LEPER</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing is better, I well think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than love; the hidden well-water<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is not so delicate to drink:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This was well seen of me and her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I served her in a royal house;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I served her wine and curious meat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For will to kiss between her brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I had no heart to sleep or eat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mere scorn God knows she had of me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who plucked his clerk's hood back to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I vex my head with thinking this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yea, though God always hated me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hates me now that I can kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her eyes, plait up her hair to see<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How she then wore it on the brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yet am I glad to have her dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here in this wretched wattled house<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where I can kiss her eyes and head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nothing is better, I well know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than love; no amber in cold sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or gathered berries under snow:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That is well seen of her and me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">First I take heart and think of this:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That knight's gold hair she chose to love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">His mouth she had such will to kiss.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then I remember that sundawn<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I brought him by a privy way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out at her lattice, and thereon<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What gracious words she found to say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(Cold rushes for such little feet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Both feet could lie into my hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A marvel was it of my sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her upright body could so stand.)<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now am I clean and whole of shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor shall men burn me in the face<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For my sweet fault that scandals them."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I tell you over word by word.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She, sitting edgewise on her bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding her feet, said thus. The third,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A sweeter thing than these, I said.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God, that makes time and ruins it<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And alters not, abiding God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Changed with disease her body sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The body of love wherein she abode.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love is more sweet and comelier<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than a dove's throat strained out to sing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All they spat out and cursed at her<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And cast her forth for a base thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This curse to plague her, a curse of his.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fools were they surely, seeing not<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How sweeter than all sweet she is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He that had held her by the hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With kissing lips blinding her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sigh under him, with short mad cries<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of her throat and sobbing mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And body broken up with love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sweet hot tears his lips were loth<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her own should taste the savour of,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, he inside whose grasp all night<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her fervent body leapt or lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stained with sharp kisses red and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Found her a plague to spurn away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I hid her in this wattled house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I served her water and poor bread.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For joy to kiss between her brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Time upon time I was nigh dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bread failed; we got but well-water<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And gathered grass with dropping seed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had such joy of kissing her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I had small care to sleep or feed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sometimes when service made me glad<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sharp tears leapt between my lids,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Falling on her, such joy I had<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To do the service God forbids.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I pray you let me be at peace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Get hence, make room for me to die."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She said that: her poor lip would cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Put up to mine, and turn to cry.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I said, "Bethink yourself how love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fared in us twain, what either did;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That I should do this, God forbid."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, though God hateth us, he knows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That hardly in a little thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love faileth of the work it does<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till it grow ripe for gathering.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Six months, and now my sweet is dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A trouble takes me; I know not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If all were done well, all well said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No word or tender deed forgot.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Too sweet, for the least part in her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To have shed life out by fragments; yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I might see something I forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Six months, and I sit still and hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In two cold palms her cold two feet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love bites and stings me through, to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her keen face made of sunken bones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her worn-off eyelids madden me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That were shot through with purple once.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She said, "Be good with me; I grow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">So tired for shame's sake, I shall die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you say nothing:" even so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And she is dead now, and shame put by.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, and the scorn she had of me<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never should have kissed her. See<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What fools God's anger makes of men!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She might have loved me a little too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Had I been humbler for her sake.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that new shame could make love new<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She saw not&mdash;yet her shame did make.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I took too much upon my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Having for such mean service done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beauty and all the ways thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her face and all the sweet thereon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, all this while I tended her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I know the old love held fast his part:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know the old scorn waxed heavier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It may be all my love went wrong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scrawled after the blind evensong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Spoilt music with no perfect word.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But surely I would fain have done<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All things the best I could. Perchance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because I failed, came short of one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She kept at heart that other man's.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am grown blind with all these things:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It may be now she hath in sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some better knowledge; still there clings<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The old question. Will not God do right?<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_BALLAD_OF_BURDENS" id="A_BALLAD_OF_BURDENS"></a>A BALLAD OF BURDENS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of fair women. Vain delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sorrowful old age that comes by night<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As a thief comes that has no heart by day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And weariness that keeps awake for hire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And grief that says what pleasure used to say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of bought kisses. This is sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A burden without fruit in childbearing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Threescore between the dawn and evening.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cover thy head, and weep; for verily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These market-men that buy thy white and brown<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the last days shall take no thought for thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the last days like earth thy face shall be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And say at night "Would God the day were here,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And say at dawn "Would God the day were dead."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wear remorse of heart for thine attire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And no more as the thing beforetime seen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thou shalt say of mercy "It hath been,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And living, watch the old lips and loves expire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And talking, tears shall take thy breath between;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of sad sayings. In that day<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy times and ways and words of love, and say<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">How one was dear and one desirable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now with lights reverse the old hours retire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the last hour is shod with fire from hell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">White rain and wind among the tender trees;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A summer of green sorrows gathering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rank autumn in a mist of miseries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With sad face set towards the year, that sees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And winter wan with many maladies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of dead faces. Out of sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And out of love, beyond the reach of hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Changed in the changing of the dark and light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They walk and weep about the barren lands<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where no seed is nor any garner stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where in short breaths the doubtful days respire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The burden of much gladness. Life and lust<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Forsake thee, and the face of thy delight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And underfoot the heavy hour strews dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And overhead strange weathers burn and bite;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And where the red was, lo the bloodless white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where truth was, the likeness of a liar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And where day was, the likeness of the night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">L'ENVOY<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Heed well this rhyme before your pleasure tire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For life is sweet, but after life is death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This is the end of every man's desire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="RONDEL2" id="RONDEL2"></a>RONDEL</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kissing her hair I sat against her feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With her own tresses bound and found her fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kissing her hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep were no sweeter than her face to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What pain could get between my face and hers?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What new sweet thing would love not relish worse?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kissing her hair?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="BEFORE_THE_MIRROR" id="BEFORE_THE_MIRROR"></a>BEFORE THE MIRROR</h2>
+
+<h4>(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE)</h4>
+
+<h4>INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">I<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">White rose in red rose-garden<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is not so white;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Snowdrops that plead for pardon<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And pine for fright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because the hard East blows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over their maiden rows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behind the veil, forbidden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shut up from sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, is there sorrow hidden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is there delight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is joy thy dower or grief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White rose of weary leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Soft snows that hard winds harden<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till each flake bite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fill all the flowerless garden<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose flowers took flight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long since when summer ceased,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And men rose up from feast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">II<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Come snow, come wind or thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">High up in air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I watch my face, and wonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">At my bright hair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nought else exalts or grieves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rose at heart, that heaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With love of her own leaves and lips that pair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She knows not loves that kissed her<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She knows not where.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art thou the ghost, my sister,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">White sister there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am I the ghost, who knows?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hand, a fallen rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I cannot see what pleasures<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or what pains were;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What pale new loves and treasures<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">New years will bear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What beam will fall, what shower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What grief or joy for dower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But one thing-knows the flower; the flower is fair."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">III<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Glad, but not flushed with gladness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Since joys go by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad, but not bent with sadness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Since sorrows die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep in the gleaming glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sees all past things pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all sweet life that was lie down and lie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There glowing ghosts of flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Draw down, draw nigh;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wings of swift spent hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Take flight and fly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sees by formless gleams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She hears across cold streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Face fallen and white throat lifted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With sleepless eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sees old loves that drifted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She knew not why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old loves and faded fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Float down a stream that hears<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EROTION" id="EROTION"></a>EROTION</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O love, to lay down fear at love's fair feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not some fiery memory of his breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love me no more, but love my love of thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One thing I can, and one love cannot&mdash;die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed my desire and deaden my despair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep other hours for others, save me this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast thou not given me above all that live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joy, and a little sorrow shalt not give?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What even though fairer fingers of strange girls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass nestling through thy beautiful boy's curls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though I were not, though I be not, best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have loved and love thee more than all the rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O love, O lover, loose or hold me fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had thee first, whoever have thee last;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairer or not, what need I know, what care?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why am I fair at all before thee, why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At all desired? seeing thou art fair, not I.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall be glad of thee, O fairest head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall remember while the light lives yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the night-time I shall not forget.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not, for thy love I will not, grieve;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not as they use who love not more than I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who love not as I love thee though I die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though thy lips, once mine, be oftener prest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To many another brow and balmier breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_MEMORY_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR" id="IN_MEMORY_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR"></a>IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Back to the flower-town, side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bright months bring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freedom and spring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Filled full of sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All things come back to her, being free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All things but one.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In many a tender wheaten plot<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flowers that were dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live, and old suns revive; but not<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That holier head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By this white wandering waste of sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Far north, I hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One face shall never turn to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As once this year:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall never smile and turn and rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On mine as there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor one most sacred hand be prest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon my hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I came as one whose thoughts half linger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half run before;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The youngest to the oldest singer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That England bore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I found him whom I shall not find<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till all grief end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In holiest age our mightiest mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Father and friend.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But thou, if anything endure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If hope there be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O spirit that man's life left pure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Man's death set free,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not with disdain of days that were<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Look earthward now;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let dreams revive the reverend hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The imperial brow;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come back in sleep, for in the life<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where thou art not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We find none like thee. Time and strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the world's lot<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Move thee no more; but love at least<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And reverent heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May move thee, royal and released,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Soul, as thou art.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And thou, his Florence, to thy trust<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Receive and keep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep safe his dedicated dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His sacred sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So shall thy lovers, come from far,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mix with thy name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As morning-star with evening-star<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His faultless fame<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_ORDER" id="A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_ORDER"></a>A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER. 1852</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Push hard across the sand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the salt wind gathers breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shoulder and wrist and hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Push hard as the push of death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wind is as iron that rings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The foam-heads loosen and flee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It swells and welters and swings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pulse of the tide of the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And up on the yellow cliff<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The long corn flickers and shakes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Push, for the wind holds stiff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the gunwale dips and rakes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good hap to the fresh fierce weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The quiver and beat of the sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While three men hold together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The kingdoms are less by three.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out to the sea with her there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Out with her over the sand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the kings keep the earth for their share!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We have done with the sharers of land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They have tied the world in a tether,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They have bought over God with a fee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While three men hold together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The kingdoms are less by three.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have done with the kisses that sting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The thief's mouth red from the feast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood on the hands of the king<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the lie at the lips of the priest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Will they tie the winds in a tether,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Put a bit in the jaws of the sea?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While three men hold together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The kingdoms are less by three.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let our flag run out straight in the wind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The old red shall be floated again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the names that were twenty are ten;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the devil's riddle is mastered<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the galley-bench creaks with a Pope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall see Buonaparte the bastard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kick heels with his throat in a rope.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the emperor halters his kine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Shame is a watchman asleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Faith is a keeper of swine,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While three men hold together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The kingdoms are less by three.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All the world has its burdens to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Cayenne to the Austrian whips;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth, with the rain in our hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the salt sweet foam in our lips;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the teeth of the hard glad weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the blown wet face of the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While three men hold together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The kingdoms are less by three.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_REVOLUTION" id="A_SONG_IN_TIME_OF_REVOLUTION"></a>A SONG IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. 1860</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The heart of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of their feet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like reeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The high-priest sick from qualms, with his raiment bloodily dashed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thief with branded palms, and the liar with cheeks abashed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are smitten, they tremble greatly, they are pained for their pleasant things:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the house of the priests made stately, and the might in the mouth of the kings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are grieved and greatly afraid; they are taken, they shall not flee:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the heart of the nations is made as the strength of the springs of the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They were fair in the grace of gold, they walked with delicate feet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were clothed with the cunning of old, and the smell of their garments was sweet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the breaking of gold in their hair they halt as a man made lame:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are utterly naked and bare; their mouths are bitter with shame.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou judge thy people now, O king that wast found most wise?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou lie any more, O thou whose mouth is emptied of lies?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall God make a pact with thee, till his hook be found in thy sides?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou put back the time of the sea, or the place of the season of tides?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Set a word in thy lips, to stand before God with a word in thy mouth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That "the rain shall return in the land, and the tender dew after drouth."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the arm of the elders is broken, their strength is unbound and undone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wait for a sign of a token; they cry, and there cometh none.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their moan is in every place, the cry of them filleth the land:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is shame in the sight of their face, there is fear in the thews of their hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are girdled about the reins with a curse for the girdle thereon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the noise of the rending of chains the face of their colour is gone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the sound of the shouting of men they are grievously stricken at heart:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are smitten asunder with pain, their bones are smitten apart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the earth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the south.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness of death;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the waters are emptied and broken, the waves of the waters are stayed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where God has bound for a token the darkness that maketh afraid;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall be red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of the dead.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TO_VICTOR_HUGO" id="TO_VICTOR_HUGO"></a>TO VICTOR HUGO</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">In the fair days when God<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By man as godlike trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And each alike was Greek, alike was free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God's lightning spared, they said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Alone the happier head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To whom the high gods gave of right<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their thunders and their laurels and their light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Sunbeams and bays before<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our master's servants wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For these Apollo left in all men's lands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But far from these ere now<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And watched with jealous brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay the blind lightnings shut between God's hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And only loosed on slaves and kings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The terror of the tempest of their wings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Born in those younger years<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That shone with storms of spears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook in the wind blown from a dead world's pyre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When by her back-blown hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Napoleon caught the fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And stayed with iron words and hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Thou sawest the tides of things<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Close over heads of kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Laurels and lightnings were<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As sunbeams and soft air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mixed, or as memory with desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the lute's pulses with the louder lyre.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">For thee man's spirit stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Disrobed of flesh and blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bare the heart of the most secret hours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And to thine hand more tame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than birds in winter came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from thy table fed, and sang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till with the tune men's ears took fire and rang.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Even all men's eyes and ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With fiery sound and tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelid light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At those high songs of thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That stung the sense like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or wailed as in some flooded cave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">But we, our master, we<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose hearts, uplift to thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We ask not nor await<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the clenched hands of fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou, remission of the world's old wrong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Respite we ask not, nor release;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Though thy most fiery hope<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Storm heaven, to set wide ope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All feet of men, all eyes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The old night resumes her skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where nought save these is sure in sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">One thing we can; to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Awhile, as men may, free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But not by hope or pleasure the most stern<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Goddess, most awful-eyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sits, but on either side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And memory grey with many a flowerless year.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Not that in stranger's wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I lift not loving eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the fair foster-mother France, that gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beyond the pale fleet foam<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Help to my sires and home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whom from her nursing breasts and hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Not without thoughts that ache<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For theirs and for thy sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I whose young song took flight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Toward the great heat and light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On me a child from thy far splendour shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From thine high place of soul and song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Ah, not with lessening love<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For memories born hereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I look to that sweet mother-land, and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The old fields and fair full streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And skies, but fled like dreams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all between the skies and graves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">She, killed with noisome air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even she! and still so fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who said "Let there be freedom," and there was<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freedom; and as a lance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fiery eyes of France<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touched the world's sleep and as a sleep made pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forth of men's heavier ears and eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Are they men's friends indeed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who watch them weep and bleed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou, first of men and friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Seest thou, even thou, the end?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Evils may pass and hopes endure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O nursed in airs apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O poet highest of heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are not the years more wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More sad than keenest eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Passing we hear them not, but past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Thou art chief of us, and lord;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy song is as a sword<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou art lord and king; but we<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lift younger eyes, and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hours that have borne men down so long,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">But thine imperial soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As years and ruins roll<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the same end, and all things and all dreams<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the same wreck and roar<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Drift on the dim same shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tracks the fresh water-spring to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">As once the high God bound<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With many a rivet round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man's saviour, and with iron nailed him through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the wild end of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where even his own bird's wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Caucasus beheld below<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">So the strong God, the chance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Central of circumstance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still shows him exile who will not be slave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All thy great fame and thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Girt by the dim strait sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shows us our greatest from his throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Yea, he is strong, thou say'st,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A mystery many-faced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The blind night sees him, death<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shrinks beaten at his breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his right hand is heavy on the sea:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We know he hath made us, and is king;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We know not if he care for anything.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Thus much, no more, we know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He bade what is be so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bade hope and fear, bade ill<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And good redeem and kill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till all men be aweary of the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And his world burn in its own flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bear no witness longer of his name.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Yet though all this be thus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be those men praised of us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For fame or fear or gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor waxed for winter cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Praised above men of men be these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till this one world and work we know shall cease.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Yea, one thing more than this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We know that one thing is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The splendour of a spirit without blame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That not the labouring years<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blind-born, nor any fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But purer power with fiery breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Praised above men be thou,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose laurel-laden brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made for the morning, droops not in the night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Praised and beloved, that none<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of all thy great things done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BEFORE_DAWN" id="BEFORE_DAWN"></a>BEFORE DAWN</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet life, if life were stronger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth clear of years that wrong her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then two things might live longer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Two sweeter things than they;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delight, the rootless flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love, the bloomless bower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delight that lives an hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love that lives a day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From evensong to daytime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When April melts in Maytime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love lengthens out his playtime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love lessens breath by breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kiss by kiss grows older<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On listless throat or shoulder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turned sideways now, turned colder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than life that dreams of death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This one thing once worth giving<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life gave, and seemed worth living;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sin sweet beyond forgiving<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And brief beyond regret:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To laugh and love together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And weave with foam and feather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wind and words the tether<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our memories play with yet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, one thing worth beginning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One thread in life worth spinning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With all the whole soul's will;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lull you till one stilled you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To kiss you till one killed you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feed you till one filled you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sweet lips, if love could fill;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To hunt sweet Love and lose him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between white arms and bosom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the bud and blossom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Between your throat and chin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say of shame&mdash;what is it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of virtue&mdash;we can miss it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sin&mdash;we can but kiss it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And it's no longer sin:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To feel the strong soul, stricken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through fleshly pulses, quicken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath swift sighs that thicken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Soft hands and lips that smite;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lips that no love can tire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With hands that sting like fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weaving the web Desire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To snare the bird Delight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But love so lightly plighted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our love with torch unlighted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Paused near us unaffrighted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who found and left him free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None, seeing us cloven in sunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will weep or laugh or wonder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light love stands clear of thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And safe from winds at sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As, when late larks give warning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of dying lights and dawning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Night murmurs to the morning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"Lie still, O love, lie still;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And half her dark limbs cover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The white limbs of her lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With amorous plumes that hover<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fervent lips that chill;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As scornful day represses<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Night's void and vain caresses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from her cloudier tresses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Unwinds the gold of his,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With limbs from limbs dividing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And breath by breath subsiding;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love has no abiding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But dies before the kiss;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So hath it been, so be it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For who shall live and flee it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But look that no man see it<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or hear it unaware;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest all who love and choose him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See Love, and so refuse him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all who find him lose him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But all have found him fair.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DOLORES" id="DOLORES"></a>DOLORES</h2>
+
+<h4>(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS)</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavy white limbs, and the cruel<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Red mouth like a venomous flower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When these are gone by with their glories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What shall rest of thee then, what remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O mystic and sombre Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But thy sins, which are seventy times seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And then they would haunt thee in heaven:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the loves that complete and control<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That wear out the soul.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O garment not golden but gilded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O garden where all men may dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O tower not of ivory, but builded<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By hands that reach heaven from hell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O mystical rose of the mire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O house not of gold but of gain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O house of unquenchable fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O lips full of lust and of laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Curled snakes that are fed from my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bite hard, lest remembrance come after<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And press with new lips where you pressed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my heart too springs up at the pressure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ere pain come in turn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Out of sight though they lie of to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There have been and there yet shall be sorrows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That smite not and bite not in play.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life and the love thou despisest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These hurt us indeed, and in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O wise among women, and wisest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That stung thee, what visions that smote?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When desire took thee first by the throat?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What bud was the shell of a blossom<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That all men may smell to and pluck?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What milk fed thee first at what bosom?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What sins gave thee suck?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou art noble and nude and antique;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Libitina thy mother, Priapus<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We play with light loves in the portal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And wince and relent and refrain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loves die, and we know thee immortal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou art fed with perpetual breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And alive after infinite changes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fresh from the kisses of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of languors rekindled and rallied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of barren delights and unclean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And poisonous queen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Men touch them, and change in a trice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lilies and languors of virtue<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For the raptures and roses of vice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">These crown and caress thee and chain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O splendid and sterile Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There are sins it may be to discover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There are deeds it may be to delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What new passions for daytime or night?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What spells that they know not a word of<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose lives are as leaves overblown?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Unwritten, unknown?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah beautiful passionate body<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That never has ached with a heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though they sting till it shudder and smart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More kind than the love we adore is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They hurt not the heart or the brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O bitter and tender Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As our kisses relax and redouble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From the lips and the foam and the fangs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No dream of impossible pangs?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the sweet of the sins of old ages<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Too bitter the core.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And bared all thy beauties to one?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If the worst that can be has been done?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sweet as the rind was the core is;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We are fain of thee still, we are fain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sanguine and subtle Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the hunger of change and emotion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the thirst of unbearable things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By despair, the twin-born of devotion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the pleasure that winces and stings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The delight that consumes the desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The desire that outruns the delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the cruelty deaf as a fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And blind as the night,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the ravenous teeth that have smitten<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through the kisses that blossom and bud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the lips intertwisted and bitten<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till the foam has a savour of blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the pulse as it rises and falters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the hands as they slacken and strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The light fire in the veins of a boy?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Less careful of labour and glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than the elders whose hair has uncurled;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And young, but with fancies as hoary<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And grey as the world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have passed from the outermost portal<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What care though the service be mortal?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O our Lady of Torture, what care?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All thine the last wine that I pour is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The last in the chalice we drain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O fierce and luxurious Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All thine the new wine of desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The fruit of four lips as they clung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The foam of a serpentine tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The froth of the serpents of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">More salt than the foam of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now felt as a flame, now at leisure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As wine shed for me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Marked cross from the womb and perverse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have found out the secret to cozen<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The gods that constrain us and curse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They alone, they are wise, and none other;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Give me place, even me, in their train,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the crown of our life as it closes<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No thorns go as deep as a rose's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And love is more cruel than lust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time turns the old days to derision,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our loves into corpses or wives;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And marriage and death and division<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Make barren our lives.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And satiate with comfortless hours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we know thee, how all men belie thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The passion that slays and recovers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The pangs and the kisses that rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The desire of thy furious embraces<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is more than the wisdom of years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the blossom though blood lie in traces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though the foliage be sodden with tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the lords in whose keeping the door is<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That opens on all who draw breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The myrtle to death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And they mixed and made peace after strife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Death tingled with blood, and was life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like lovers they melted and tingled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the dusk of thine innermost fane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the darkness they murmured and mingled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In a twilight where virtues are vices,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In thy chapels, unknown of the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a tune that enthralls and entices,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They were wed, and the twain were as one.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the tune from thine altar hath sounded<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Since God bade the world's work begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the fume of thine incense abounded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To sweeten the sin.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love listens, and paler than ashes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through his curls as the crown on them slips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And laughs with insatiable lips.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With music that scares the profane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Asleep and awake.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With juice not of fruit nor of bud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the sense in the spirit reposes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who would live and not languish or feign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sleepless and deadly Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In a lull of the fires of thy life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the days without name, without number,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When thy will stung the world into strife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Foam-white, from the foam?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When the city lay red from thy rods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thine hands were as arrows to scatter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The children of change and their gods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the blood of thy foemen made fervent<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A sand never moist from the main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On sands by the storm never shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor wet from the washing of tides;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But red from the print of thy paces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Made smooth for the world and its lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And splendid with swords.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Drew bitter and perilous breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There torments laid hold on the treasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of limbs too delicious for death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thy gardens were lit with live torches;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When the world was a steed for thy rein;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the nations lay prone in thy porches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When, with flame all around him aspirant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The implacable beautiful tyrant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a sound as the sound of loud water<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Smote far through the flight of the fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mixed with the lightning of slaughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A thunder of lyres.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For these, in a world of new things?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No hunger compel to complain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As of old when the world's heart was lighter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The white wealth of thy body made whiter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the blushes of amorous blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And branded by kisses that bruise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all shall be gone that now lingers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah, what shall we lose?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thy limbs are as melodies yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And move to the music of passion<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With lithe and lascivious regret.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What ailed us, O gods, to desert you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For creeds that refuse and restrain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come down and redeem us from virtue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But the flame has not fallen from this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though obscure be the god, and though nameless<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The eyes and the hair that we kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Low fires that love sits by and forges<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fresh heads for his arrows and thine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With kisses and wine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy skin changes country and colour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And shrivels or swells to a snake's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We know it, the flames and the flakes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red brands on it smitten and bitten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Round skies where a star is a stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the leaves with thy litanies written,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On thy bosom though many a kiss be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There are none such as knew it of old.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Male ringlets or feminine gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thy lips met with under the statue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the eyes of the garden-god at you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Across the fig-leaves?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then still, through dry seasons and moister,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One god had a wreath to his shrine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then love was the pearl of his oyster,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And Venus rose red out of wine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have all done amiss, choosing rather<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Such loves as the wise gods disdain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intercede for us thou with thy father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In spring he had crowns of his garden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Red corn in the heat of the year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then hoary green olives that harden<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And milk-budded myrtles with Venus<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A visible God."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What broke off the garlands that girt you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What sundered you spirit and clay?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weak sins yet alive are as virtue<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To the strength of the sins of that day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For dried is the blood of thy lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rears not the bountiful token<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And spreads not the fatherly feast.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the midmost of Ida, from shady<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Recesses that murmur at morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A goddess new-born.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the chaplets of old are above us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old poets outsing and outlove us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And Catullus makes mouths at our speech.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With such lips as he sang with, again?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intercede for us all of thy pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of Dindymus heavily laden<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her lions draw bound and unfed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mother, a mortal, a maiden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A queen over death and the dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is cold, and her habit is lowly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her temple of branches and sods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most fruitful and virginal, holy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A mother of gods.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She hath wasted with fire thine high places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She hath hidden and marred and made sad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of gods that were goodly and glad.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She slays, and her hands are not bloody;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She moves as a moon in the wane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They shall pass and their places be taken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The gods and the priests that are pure.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They shall perish, and shalt thou endure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death laughs, breathing close and relentless<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the nostrils and eyelids of lust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a pinch in his fingers of scentless<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And delicate dust.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt change and transmute as a god,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the rod to a serpent that hisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the serpent again to a rod.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou shalt live until evil be slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And good shall die first, said thy prophet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now he lies out of reach, out of breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sin's child by incestuous Death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did he find out in fire at his waking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or discern as his eyelids lost light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the bands of the body were breaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all came in sight?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who has known all the evil before us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or the tyrannous secrets of time?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though we match not the dead men that bore us<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">At a song, at a kiss, at a crime&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the heathen outface and outlive us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And our lives and our longings are twain&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who are we that embalm and embrace thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With spices and savours of song?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is time, that his children should face thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could hurt thee&mdash;but pain would delight thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or caress thee&mdash;but love would repel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lovers whose lips would excite thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are serpents in hell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who now shall content thee as they did,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy lovers, when temples were built<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the hair of the sacrifice braided<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Lampsacus fervent with faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In Aphaca red from thy reign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who embraced thee with awful embraces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do their hands as we touch come between us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their lips have thy lips taken fever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With the blood of their bodies grown red?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast thou left upon earth a believer<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If these men are dead?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They were purple of raiment and golden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In marvellous chambers of thine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are fled, and their footprints escape us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O daughter of Death and Priapus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What ails us to fear overmeasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To praise thee with timorous breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O mistress and mother of pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The one thing as certain as death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall change as the things that we cherish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall fade as they faded before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As foam upon water shall perish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As sand upon shore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We shall know what the darkness discovers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our fathers of old, and our lovers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall see whether hell be not heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Find out whether tares be not grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the joys of thee seventy times seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GARDEN_OF_PROSERPINE" id="THE_GARDEN_OF_PROSERPINE"></a>THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here, where the world is quiet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Here, where all trouble seems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead winds' and spent waves' riot<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In doubtful dreams of dreams;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I watch the green field growing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For reaping folk and sowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For harvest-time and mowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A sleepy world of streams.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am tired of tears and laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And men that laugh and weep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of what may come hereafter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For men that sow to reap:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am weary of days and hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blown buds of barren flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desires and dreams and powers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And everything but sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here life has death for neighbour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And far from eye or ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wan waves and wet winds labour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Weak ships and spirits steer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They drive adrift, and whither<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wot not who make thither;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But no such winds blow hither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And no such things grow here.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No growth of moor or coppice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No heather-flower or vine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But bloomless buds of poppies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Green grapes of Proserpine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pale beds of blowing rushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where no leaf blooms or blushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save this whereout she crushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For dead men deadly wine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pale, without name or number,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In fruitless fields of corn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They bow themselves and slumber<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All night till light is born;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like a soul belated,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In hell and heaven unmated,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By cloud and mist abated<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Comes out of darkness morn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though one were strong as seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He too with death shall dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wake with wings in heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor weep for pains in hell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though one were fair as roses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His beauty clouds and closes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And well though love reposes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the end it is not well.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pale, beyond porch and portal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Crowned with calm leaves, she stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who gathers all things mortal<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With cold immortal hands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her languid lips are sweeter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than love's who fears to greet her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To men that mix and meet her<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From many times and lands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She waits for each and other,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She waits for all men born;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgets the earth her mother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The life of fruits and corn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spring and seed and swallow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take wing for her and follow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where summer song rings hollow<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And flowers are put to scorn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There go the loves that wither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The old loves with wearier wings;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all dead years draw thither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all disastrous things;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead dreams of days forsaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blind buds that snows have shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild leaves that winds have taken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Red strays of ruined springs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We are not sure of sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And joy was never sure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-day will die to-morrow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Time stoops to no man's lure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love, grown faint and fretful,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips but half regretful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sighs, and with eyes forgetful<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Weeps that no loves endure.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From too much love of living,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From hope and fear set free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We thank with brief thanksgiving<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whatever gods may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no life lives for ever;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That dead men rise up never;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That even the weariest river<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Winds somewhere safe to sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then star nor sun shall waken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor any change of light:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor sound of waters shaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Nor any sound or sight:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor days nor things diurnal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only the sleep eternal<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In an eternal night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HESPERIA" id="HESPERIA"></a>HESPERIA</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten caresses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of thy tresses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odour that fades in a flame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it shame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that are loving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee, and moving<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost rearisen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Pale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen in me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and represses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive caresses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as a rose is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it encloses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her bosom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have loved overmuch in my life; when the live bud bursts with the blossom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that allure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a wonder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to endure.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared not for glory's:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Was it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee fair?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her fuel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage of her reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth growing cruel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of Pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves in the summer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I knew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their mouths overcome her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert with dew.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be so bitter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and redden and smile;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her eyelashes glitter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And she laughs with a savour of blood in her face, and a savour of guile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and hisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon unarisen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there is none that hath ridden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore that is hidden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and sterile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel of years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and peril,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Labour and listen and pant not or pause for the peril that nears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow asunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with its glimpses of grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a maiden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-laden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah love, shall we win at the last?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOVE_AT_SEA" id="LOVE_AT_SEA"></a>LOVE AT SEA</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We are in love's land to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where shall we go?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, shall we start or stay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or sail or row?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's many a wind and way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And never a May but May;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are in love's hand to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where shall we go?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our landwind is the breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sorrows kissed to death<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And joys that were;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our ballast is a rose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our way lies where God knows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And love knows where.<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">We are in love's hand to-day&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our seamen are fledged Loves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our masts are bills of doves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our decks fine gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our ropes are dead maids' hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our stores are love-shafts fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And manifold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">We are in love's land to-day&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where shall we land you, sweet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On fields of strange men's feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or fields near home?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where the fire-flowers blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where the flowers of snow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or flowers of foam?<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">We are in love's hand to-day&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Land me, she says, where love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shows but one shaft, one dove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One heart, one hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;A shore like that, my dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies where no man will steer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No maiden land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3"><i>Imitated from Th&eacute;ophile Gautier.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="APRIL" id="APRIL"></a>APRIL</h2>
+
+<h4>FROM THE FRENCH OF THE VIDAME DE CHARTRES</h4>
+
+<h4>12&mdash;?</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the fields catch flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the underwood is green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from bower unto bower<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The songs of the birds begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I sing with sighing between.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I laugh and sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I am heavy at heart for my sin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am sad in the spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For my love that I shall not win,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a foolish thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This profit I have of my woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That I know, as I sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know he will needs have it so<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who is master and king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who is lord of the spirit of spring.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will serve her and will not spare<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till her pity awake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is good, who is pure, who is fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Even her for whose sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love hath ta'en me and slain unaware.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my lord, O Love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I have laid my life at thy feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have thy will thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do as it please thee with it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For what shall please thee is sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am come unto thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To do thee service, O Love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet cannot I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou wilt take any pity thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any mercy on me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the grace I have long time sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Comes never in sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If in her it abideth not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Through thy mercy and might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose heart is the world's delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast sworn without fail I shall die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For my heart is set<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On what hurts me, I wot not why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But cannot forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What I love, what I sing for and sigh.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She is worthy of praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For this grief of her giving is worth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the joy of my days<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That lie between death's day and birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All the lordship of things upon earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, what have I said?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I would not be glad if I could;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My dream and my dread<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are of her, and for her sake I would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That my life were fled.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then were I dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I sang not a little to say to you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Could it be said)<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O my love, how my heart would be fed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For thy love's sake I live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do but tell me, ere either depart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What a lover may give<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a woman so fair as thou art.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lovers that disbelieve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">False rumours shall grieve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And evil-speaking shall part.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BEFORE_PARTING" id="BEFORE_PARTING"></a>BEFORE PARTING</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A month or twain to live on honeycomb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that strong purple under juice and foam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the wine's heart has burst;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to change the bitterness of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over my face and eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet who knows what end the scyth&egrave;d wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were not sown, these are not harvested,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They grow a month and are cast under feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And none has care thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As none has care of a divided love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I know each shadow of your lips by rote,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fashion of fair temples tremulous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tender blood, and colour of your throat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know not how love is gone out of this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing that all was his.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love's likeness there endures upon all these:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But out of these one shall not gather love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As some bee-builded cell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I know not how this last month leaves your hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Less full of purple colour and hid spice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worth patience to regret.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SUNDEW" id="THE_SUNDEW"></a>THE SUNDEW</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A little marsh-plant, yellow green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pricked at lip with tender red.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tread close, and either way you tread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some faint black water jets between<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest you should bruise the curious head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A live thing maybe; who shall know?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The summer knows and suffers it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the cool moss is thick and sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each side, and saves the blossom so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it lives out the long June heat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The deep scent of the heather burns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About it; breathless though it be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bow down and worship; more than we<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the least flower whose life returns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Least weed renascent in the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With wants, with many memories;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These see their mother what she is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glad-growing, till August leave more bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The apple-coloured cranberries.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blown all one way to shelter it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From trample of strayed kine, with feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt heavier than the moorhen was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You call it sundew: how it grows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If with its colour it have breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If life taste sweet to it, if death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pain its soft petal, no man knows:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man has no sight or sense that saith.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My sundew, grown of gentle days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In these green miles the spring begun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy growth ere April had half done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the soft secret of her ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or June made ready for the sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have a secret halved with thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The name that is love's name to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou knowest, and the face of her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is my festival to see.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hard sun, as thy petals knew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coloured the heavy moss-water:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wert not worth green midsummer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor fit to live to August blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O sundew, not remembering her.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FELISE" id="FELISE"></a>F&Eacute;LISE</h2>
+
+<h4><i>Mais o&ugrave; sont les neiges d'antan?</i></h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What shall be said between us here<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Among the downs, between the trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fields that knew our feet last year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In sight of quiet sands and seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This year, F&eacute;lise?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who knows what word were best to say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For last year's leaves lie dead and red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On this sweet day, in this green May,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And barren corn makes bitter bread.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What shall be said?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here as last year the fields begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A fire of flowers and glowing grass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old fields we laughed and lingered in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seeing each our souls in last year's glass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">F&eacute;lise, alas!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not we, though this be as it is?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love awake or love asleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A song like this.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I that have slept awake, and you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sleep, who last year were well awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though love do all that love can do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My heart will never ache or break<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For your heart's sake.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The great sea, faultless as a flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And laughs with love of the amorous hour.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I found you fairer once, F&eacute;lise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than flowers or seas.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We played at bondsman and at queen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But as the days change men change too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I find the grey sea's notes of green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The green sea's fervent flakes of blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">More fair than you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your beauty is not over fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smell of flowers in all your hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Allures not now; no sigh replies<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If your heart sighs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You find love's new name good enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Less sweet I find it than I found<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sweetest name that ever love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grew weary of.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grown tame and glad to be caressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips athirst for mine to slake<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Their tender fever! who had guessed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You loved me best?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I had died for this last year, to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I care not if love come or go<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now, though your love seek mine for mate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It is too late.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dust of many strange desires<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lies deep between us; in our eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead smoke of perishable fires<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Flickers, a fume in air and skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A steam of sighs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You loved me and you loved me not;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A little, much, and overmuch.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will you forget as I forgot?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Let all dead things lie dead; none such<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are soft to touch.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I love you and I do not love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Too much, a little, not at all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too much, and never yet enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Birds quick to fledge and fly at call<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are quick to fall.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And these love longer now than men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And larger loves than ours are these.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No diver brings up love again<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dropped once, my beautiful F&eacute;lise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In such cold seas.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gone deeper than all plummets sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where in the dim green dayless day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life of such dead things lies bound<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And castaway.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can I forget? yea, that can I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And that can all men; so will you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alive, or later, when you die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah, but the love you plead was true?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Was mine not too?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I loved you for that name of yours<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Long ere we met, and long enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now that one thing of all endures&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sweetest name that ever love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Waxed weary of.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like colours in the sea, like flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Like a cat's splendid circled eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wax and wane with love for hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And soft like sighs&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And all these only like your name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And your name full of all of these.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say it, and it sounds the same&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Save that I say it now at ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your name, F&eacute;lise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I said "she must be swift and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And subtly warm, and half perverse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Men have guessed worse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What was the song I made of you<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Here where the grass forgets our feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As afternoon forgets the dew?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Such fleet things sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As afternoon forgets the dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As time in time forgets all men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As our old place forgets us two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who might have turned to one thing then<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But not again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">O lips that mine have grown into<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Like April's kissing May,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">O fervent eyelids letting through<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Those eyes the greenest of things blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">The bluest of things grey,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">If you were I and I were you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">How could I love you, say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">How could the roseleaf love the rue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The day love nightfall and her dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Though night may love the day?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You loved it may be more than I;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We know not; love is hard to seize.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all things are not good to try;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And lifelong loves the worst of these<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For us, F&eacute;lise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, take the season and have done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love well the hour and let it go:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two souls may sleep and wake up one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or dream they wake and find it so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And then&mdash;you know.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kiss me once hard as though a flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lay on my lips and made them fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same lips now, and not the same;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What breath shall fill and re-inspire<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A dead desire?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The old song sounds hollower in mine ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A noise one hears and would not hear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Too strong to die, too weak to reach<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From wave to beach.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We stand on either side the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I toward you, you toward me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But what hears either save the keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Grey sea between?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A year divides us, love from love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though you love now, though I loved then.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gulf is strait, but deep enough;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who shall recross, who among men<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall cross again?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love was a jest last year, you said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And what lives surely, surely dies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even so; but now that love is dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">From subtle sighs?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For many loves are good to see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Mutable loves, and loves perverse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there is nothing, nor shall be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">So sweet, so wicked, but my verse<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Can dream of worse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For we that sing and you that love<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Know that which man may, only we.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rest live under us; above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Live the great gods in heaven, and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What things shall be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So this thing is and must be so;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For man dies, and love also dies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And laughs, and lies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Eyes coloured like a water-flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And deeper than the green sea's glass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyes that remember one sweet hour&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In vain we swore it should not pass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In vain, alas!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah my F&eacute;lise, if love or sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">If shame or fear could hold it fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And they laugh well who laugh the last.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is it not past?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gods, the gods are stronger; time<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Falls down before them, all men's knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Like incense towards them; yea, for these<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Are gods, F&eacute;lise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Immortal are they, clothed with powers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not to be comforted at all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lords over all the fruitless hours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Too great to appease, too high to appal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Too far to call.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For none shall move the most high gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who are most sad, being cruel; none<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall break or take away the rods<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wherewith they scourge us, not as one<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That smites a son.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By many a name of many a creed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">We have called upon them, since the sands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of life; and out of many lands<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Have we stretched hands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When have they heard us? who hath known<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Their faces, climbed unto their feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Doth heaven remurmur and repeat<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sad sounds or sweet?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do the stars answer? in the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Have ye found comfort? or by day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Falls from the farthest starriest way<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">On you that pray?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Are the skies wet because we weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or fair because of any mirth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou dust and earth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O laughing lips and lips that mourn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of God's intolerable scorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not to be borne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Behold, there is no grief like this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The barren blossom of thy prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O fools and blind, what seek ye there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">High up in the air?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye must have gods, the friends of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Merciful gods, compassionate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And these shall answer you again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Will ye beat always at the gate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ye fools of fate?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That all ye shall not live, but die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, what thing have ye found endure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or what thing have ye found on high<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Past the blind sky?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye fools; for which among you deems<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">His prayer can alter green to red<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or stones to bread?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why should ye bear with hopes and fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Till all these things be drawn in one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sound of iron-footed years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all the oppression that is done<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Under the sun?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye might end surely, surely pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Out of the multitude of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the dust, beneath the grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No record clings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No memory more of love or hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No trouble, nothing that aspires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No sleepless labour thwarting fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thwarted; where no travail tires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Where no faith fires.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All passes, nought that has been is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Things good and evil have one end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can anything be otherwise<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though all men swear all things would mend<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With God to friend?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Can ye move mountains? bid the flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Can ye hold fast for shine or shower<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One wingless hour?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One sigh back, bid one smile revive?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can God restore one ruined thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or he who slays our souls alive<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Make dead things thrive?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though sad things stay and glad things fly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two gifts he has given us, to forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All glad and sad things that go by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And then to die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We know not whether death be good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But life at least it will not be:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men will stand saddening as we stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Watch the same fields and skies as we<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the same sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let this be said between us here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">One love grows green when one turns grey;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This year knows nothing of last year;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To-morrow has no more to say<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To yesterday.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Live and let live, as I will do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Love and let love, and so will I.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, sweet, for me no more with you:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Not while I live, not though I die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Goodnight, goodbye.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AN_INTERLUDE" id="AN_INTERLUDE"></a>AN INTERLUDE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the greenest growth of the Maytime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I rode where the woods were wet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the dawn and the daytime;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The spring was glad that we met.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was something the season wanted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Though the ways and the woods smelt sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The breath at your lips that panted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The pulse of the grass at your feet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You came, and the sun came after,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the green grew golden above;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the meadow-sweet shook with love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your feet in the full-grown grasses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Moved soft as a weak wind blows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You passed me as April passes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With face made out of a rose.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the stream where the stems were slender,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Your bright foot paused at the sedge;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It might be to watch the tender<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Light leaves in the springtime hedge,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On boughs that the sweet month blanches<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With flowery frost of May:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It might be a bird in the branches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It might be a thorn in the way.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I waited to watch you linger<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With foot drawn back from the dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till a sunbeam straight like a finger<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Struck sharp through the leaves at you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And a bird overhead sang <i>Follow</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And a bird to the right sang <i>Here</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the arch of the leaves was hollow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the meaning of May was clear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I saw where the sun's hand pointed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I knew what the bird's note said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the dawn and the dewfall anointed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You were queen by the gold on your head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As the glimpse of a burnt-out ember<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Recalls a regret of the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I remember, forget, and remember<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What Love saw done and undone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remember the way we parted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The day and the way we met;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You hoped we were both broken-hearted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And knew we should both forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And May with her world in flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seemed still to murmur and smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As you murmured and smiled for an hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I saw you turn at the stile.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A hand like a white wood-blossom<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">You lifted, and waved, and passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With head hung down to the bosom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And pale, as it seemed, at last.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the best and the worst of this is<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That neither is most to blame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you've forgotten my kisses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I've forgotten your name.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HENDECASYLLABICS" id="HENDECASYLLABICS"></a>HENDECASYLLABICS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the month of the long decline of roses<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, beholding the summer dead before me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I heard as it were a noise of waters<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moving tremulous under feet of angels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard between them a voice of exultation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even like as a leaf the year is withered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the fruits of the day from all her branches<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gathered, neither is any left to gather.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All are taken away; the season wasted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an ember among the fallen ashes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woven under the eyes of stars and planets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When low light was upon the windy reaches<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SAPPHICS" id="SAPPHICS"></a>SAPPHICS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Stood and beheld me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then to me so lying awake a vision<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Full of the vision,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Saw the reluctant<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looking always, looking with necks reverted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Shone Mitylene;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wings of a great wind.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So the goddess fled from her place, with awful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While behind a clamour of singing women<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Severed the twilight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fear was upon them,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None endured the sound of her song for weeping;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Laurel by laurel,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round her woven tresses and ashen temples<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ravaged with kisses,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yea, by her name too<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Called her, saying, "Turn to me, O my Sappho;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Heard not about her<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Saw not her hands wrung;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fairer than all men;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of songs and kisses and little whispers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of music; only beheld among them<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Soar, as a bird soars<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Clothed with the wind's wings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roses, awful roses of holy blossom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Round Aphrodite,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fled from before her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All withdrew long since, and the land was barren,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of fruitless women and music only.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lulled at the dewfall,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Purged not in Lethe,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hearing, to hear them.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AT_ELEUSIS" id="AT_ELEUSIS"></a>AT ELEUSIS</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Men of Eleusis, ye that with long staves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sit in the market-houses, and speak words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made sweet with wisdom as the rare wine is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thickened with honey; and ye sons of these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who in the glad thick streets go up and down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For pastime or grave traffic or mere chance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all fair women having rings of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On hands or hair; and chiefest over these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I name you, daughters of this man the king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who dipping deep smooth pitchers of pure brass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the bubbled wells, till each round lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stooped with loose gurgle of waters incoming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found me an old sick woman, lamed and lean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beside a growth of builded olive-boughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence multiplied thick song of thick-plumed throats&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also wet tears filled up my hollow hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By reason of my crying into them&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pitied me; for as cold water ran<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And washed the pitchers full from lip to lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So washed both eyes full the strong salt of tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ye put water to my mouth, made sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gathered my loose knees from under me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moreover in the broad fair halls this month<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I found space and bountiful abode<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To please me. I Demeter speak of this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who am the mother and the mate of things:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For as ill men by drugs or singing words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shut the doors inward of the narrowed womb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a lock bolted with round iron through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus I shut up the body and sweet mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all soft pasture and the tender land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So that no seed can enter in by it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though one sow thickly, nor some grain get out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To widen the sealed lips of them for use.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None of you is there in the peopled street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With no green spot made count of in the black:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the wind finds no comfortable grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in hot autumn when ye house the stacks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All fields are helpless in the sun, all trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand as a man stripped out of all but skin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nevertheless ye sick have help to get<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By means and stablished ordinance of God;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For God is wiser than a good man is.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never shall new grass be sweet in earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I get righted of my wound and wrong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By changing counsel of ill-minded Zeus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For of all other gods is none save me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with like power to build and break the year.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I make the lesser green begin, when spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touches not earth but with one fearful foot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as a careful gilder with grave art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soberly colours and completes the face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mouth, chin and all, of some sweet work in stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I carve the shapes of grass and tender corn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And colour the ripe edges and long spikes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the red increase and the grace of gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No tradesman in soft wools is cunninger<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To kill the secret of the fat white fleece<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With stains of blue and purple wrought in it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three moons were made and three moons burnt away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I held journey hither out of Crete<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comfortless, tended by grave Hecate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom my wound stung with double iron point;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all my face was like a cloth wrung out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With close and weeping wrinkles, and both lids<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sodden with salt continuance of tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Hades and the sidelong will of Zeus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that lame wisdom that has writhen feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cunning, begotten in the bed of Shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These three took evil will at me, and made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such counsel that when time got wing to fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Hades out of summer and low fields<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forced the bright body of Persephone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of pure grass, where she lying down, red flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made their sharp little shadows on her sides,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pale heat, pale colour on pale maiden flesh&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chill water slid over her reddening feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Killing the throbs in their soft blood; and birds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched next her elbow and pecking at her hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretched their necks more to see her than even to sing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sharp thing is it I have need to say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Hades holding both white wrists of hers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unloosed the girdle and with knot by knot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound her between his wheels upon the seat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound her pure body, holiest yet and dear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me and God as always, clothed about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With blossoms loosened as her knees went down.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let fall as she let go of this and this<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By tens and twenties, tumbled to her feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White waifs or purple of the pasturage.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore with only going up and down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My feet were wasted, and the gracious air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me discomfortable and dun, became<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As weak smoke blowing in the under world.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And finding in the process of ill days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What part had Zeus herein, and how as mate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He coped with Hades, yokefellow in sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I set my lips against the meat of gods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And drank not neither ate or slept in heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor in the golden greeting of their mouths<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did ear take note of me, nor eye at all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Track my feet going in the ways of them.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a great fire on some strait slip of land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between two washing inlets of wet sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That burns the grass up to each lip of beach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strengthens, waxing in the growth of wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So burnt my soul in me at heaven and earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each way a ruin and a hungry plague,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Visible evil; nor could any night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put cool between mine eyelids, nor the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With competence of gold fill out my want.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea so my flame burnt up the grass and stones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shone to the salt-white edges of thin sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distempered all the gracious work, and made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sick change, unseasonable increase of days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And scant avail of seasons; for by this<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fair gods faint in hollow heaven: there comes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No taste of burnings of the twofold fat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To leave their palates smooth, nor in their lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft rings of smoke and weak scent wandering;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All cattle waste and rot, and their ill smell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grows alway from the lank unsavoury flesh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no man slays for offering; the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waters moved beneath the heath and corn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Preserve the people of fin-twinkling fish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And river-flies feed thick upon the smooth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all earth over is no man or bird<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Except the sweet race of the kingfisher)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lacks not and is wearied with much loss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meantime the purple inward of the house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was softened with all grace of scent and sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ear and nostril perfecting my praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the just grain with dues of the shed salt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made me content: yet my hand loosened not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its gripe upon your harvest all year long.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I, thus woman-muffled in wan flesh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waste externals of a perished face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Preserved the levels of my wrath and love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patiently ruled; and with soft offices<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cooled the sharp noons and busied the warm nights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In care of this my choice, this child my choice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Triptolemus, the king's selected son:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That this fair yearlong body, which hath grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong with strange milk upon the mortal lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nerved with half a god, might so increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outside the bulk and the bare scope of man:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waxen over large to hold within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Base breath of yours and this impoverished air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I might exalt him past the flame of stars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The limit and walled reach of the great world.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore my breast made common to his mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Immortal savours, and the taste whereat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Twice their hard life strains out the coloured veins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And twice its brain confirms the narrow shell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also at night, unwinding cloth from cloth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As who unhusks an almond to the white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pastures curiously the purer taste,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bared the gracious limbs and the soft feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unswaddled the weak hands, and in mid ash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laid the sweet flesh of either feeble side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More tender for impressure of some touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than wax to any pen; and lit around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fire, and made crawl the white worm-shapen flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leap in little angers spark by spark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At head at once and feet; and the faint hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hissed with rare sprinkles in the closer curl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like scaled oarage of a keen thin fish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sea-water, so in pure fire his feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Struck out, and the flame bit not in his flesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But like a kiss it curled his lip, and heat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fluttered his eyelids; so each night I blew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hot ash red to purge him to full god.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ill is it when fear hungers in the soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For painful food, and chokes thereon, being fed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ill slant eyes interpret the straight sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in their scope its white is wried to black:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the queen Metaneira mean I this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For with sick wrath upon her lips, and heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Narrowing with fear the spleenful passages,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She thought to thread this web's fine ravel out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor leave her shuttle split in combing it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore she stole on us, and with hard sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peered, and stooped close; then with pale open mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the fire smote her in the eyes between<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried, and the child's laugh, sharply shortening<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fire doth under rain, fell off; the flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Writhed once all through and died, and in thick dark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tears fell from mine on the child's weeping eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyes dispossessed of strong inheritance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mortal fallen anew. Who not the less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From bud of beard to pale-grey flower of hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall wax vinewise to a lordly vine, whose grapes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bleed the red heavy blood of swoln soft wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Subtle with sharp leaves' intricacy, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of white years and blossom of hoary days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I take him perfected; for whose one sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am thus gracious to the least who stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filleted with white wool and girt upon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he whose prayer endures upon the lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And falls not waste: wherefore let sacrifice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burn and run red in all the wider ways;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing I have sworn by the pale temples' band<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And poppied hair of gold Persephone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad-tressed and pleached low down about her brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by the sorrow in her lips, and death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her dumb and mournful-mouth&egrave;d minister,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My word for you is eased of its harsh weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And doubled with soft promise; and your king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Triptolemus, this Celeus dead and swathed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purple and pale for golden burial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be your helper in my services,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dividing earth and reaping fruits thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fields where wait, well-girt, well-wreathen, all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavy-handed seasons all year through;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saving the choice of warm spear-headed grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stooping sharp to the slant-sided share<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All beasts that furrow the remeasured land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With their bowed necks of burden equable.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AUGUST" id="AUGUST"></a>AUGUST</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were four apples on the bough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half gold half red, that one might know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood was ripe inside the core;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The colour of the leaves was more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like stems of yellow corn that grow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all the gold June meadow's floor.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The warm smell of the fruit was good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feed on, and the split green wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all its bearded lips and stains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mosses in the cloven veins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most pleasant, if one lay or stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sunshine or in happy rains.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were four apples on the tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red stained through gold, that all might see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun went warm from core to rind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The green leaves made the summer blind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that soft place they kept for me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With golden apples shut behind.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The leaves caught gold across the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where the bluest air begun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thirsted for song to help the heat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I to feel my lady's feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draw close before the day were done;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the mute August afternoon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They trembled to some undertune<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of music in the silver air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great pleasure was it to be there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till green turned duskier and the moon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That August time it was delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To watch the red moons wane to white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sense of heavy harmonies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grew on the growth of patient night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More sweet than shapen music is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But some three hours before the moon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air, still eager from the noon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the stem I leant my head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The colour soothed me like a tune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Green leaves all round the gold and red.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I lay there till the warm smell grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the round ripe leaves had blurred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rind with stain and wet; I heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wind that blew and breathed and blew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too weak to alter its one word.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wet leaves next the gentle fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt the mould warmer: I too felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(As water feels the slow gold melt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right through it when the day burns mute)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The peace of time wherein love dwelt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were four apples on the tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold stained on red that all might see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet blood filled them to the core:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The colour of her hair is more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like stems of fair faint gold, that be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mown from the harvest's middle floor.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_CHRISTMAS_CAROL" id="A_CHRISTMAS_CAROL"></a>A CHRISTMAS CAROL<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Three damsels in the queen's chamber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The queen's mouth was most fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She spake a word of God's mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the combs went in her hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that is of might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's sight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They held the gold combs out from her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A span's length off her head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sang this song of God's mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And of her bearing-bed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary most full of grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's face.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When she sat at Joseph's hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She looked against her side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And either way from the short silk band<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her girdle was all wried.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that all good may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's way.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mary had three women for her bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The twain were maidens clean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first of them had white and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The third had riven green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that is so sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's feet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She had three women for her hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Two were gloved soft and shod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The third had feet and fingers bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She was the likest God.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that wieldeth land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She had three women for her ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The twain were good women:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first two were the two Maries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The third was Magdalen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that perfect is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's kiss.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Joseph had three workmen in his stall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To serve him well upon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first of them were Peter and Paul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The third of them was John.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary, God's handmaiden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's ken.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If your child be none other man's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But if it be very mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bedstead shall be gold two spans,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bedfoot silver fine."<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that made God mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's birth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If the child be some other man's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And if it be none of mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The manger shall be straw two spans,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Betwixen kine and kine."<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that made sin cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's peace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Christ was born upon this wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It fell on such a night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neither with sounds of psalteries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor with fire for light.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that is God's spouse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's house.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The star came out upon the east<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With a great sound and sweet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kings gave gold to make him feast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And myrrh for him to eat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary, of thy sweet mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's good.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He had two handmaids at his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One handmaid at his feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The twain of them were fair and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The third one was right sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mary that is most wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bring us to thy Son's eyes. Amen.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MASQUE_OF_QUEEN_BERSABE" id="THE_MASQUE_OF_QUEEN_BERSABE"></a>THE MASQUE OF QUEEN BERSABE</h2>
+
+<h4>A MIRACLE-PLAY</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="cen">KING DAVID<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Knights mine, all that be in hall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have a counsel to you all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because of this thing God lets fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Among us for a sign.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For some days hence as I did eat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From kingly dishes my good meat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There flew a bird between my feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As red as any wine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This bird had a long bill of red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a gold ring above his head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long time he sat and nothing said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put softly down his neck and fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the gilt patens fine:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as I marvelled, at the last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He shut his two keen ey&euml;n fast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And suddenly woxe big and brast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere one should tell to nine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PRIMUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sir, note this that I will say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Lord who maketh corn with hay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And morrows each of yesterday,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He hath you in his hand,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SECUNDUS MILES (<i>Paganus quidam</i>)<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By Satan I hold no such thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For if wine swell within a king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose ears for drink are hot and ring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same shall dream of wine-bibbing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whilst he can lie or stand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">QUEEN BERSABE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Peace now, lords, for Godis head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye chirk as starlings that be fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gape as fishes newly dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The devil put your bones to bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lo, this is all to say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SECUNDUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By Mahound, lords, I have good will<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This devil's bird to wring and spill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For now meseems our game goes ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye have scant hearts to play.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">TERTIUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo, sirs, this word is there said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Urias the knight is dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through some ill craft; by Poulis head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I doubt his blood hath made so red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This bird that flew from the queen's bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereof ye have such fear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">KING DAVID<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, my good knave, and is it said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I can raise men from the dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By God I think to have his head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who saith words of my lady's bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For any thief to hear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Et percutiat eum in capite.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">QUEEN BERSABE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wis men shall spit at me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And say, it were but right for thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That one should hang thee on a tree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! it were a fair thing to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The big stones bruise her false body;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fie! who shall see her dead?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">KING DAVID<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I rede you have no fear of this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, as ye wot, the first good kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had must be the last of his;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now are ye queen of mine, I wis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lady of a house that is<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Full rich of meat and bread.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PRIMUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I bid you make good cheer to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So fair a queen as all men see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hold us for your lieges free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Peter's soul that hath the key,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye have good hap of it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SECUNDUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I would that he were hanged and dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who hath no joy to see your head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gold about it, barred on red;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hold him as a sow of lead<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is so scant of wit.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen"><i>Tunc dicat</i> NATHAN <i>propheta</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O king, I have a word to thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The child that is in Bersabe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall wither without light to see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This word is come of God by me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For sin that ye have done.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because herein ye did not right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To take the fair one lamb to smite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was of Urias the knight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye wist he had but one.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full many sheep I wot ye had,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many women, when ye bade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do your will and keep you glad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a good crown about your head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With gold to show thereon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Urias had one poor house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With low-barred latoun shot-windows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And scant of corn to fill a mouse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rusty basnets for his brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To wear them to the bone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea the roofs also, as men sain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were thin to hold against the rain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore what rushes were there lain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grew wet withouten foot of men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stancheons were all gone in twain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As sick man's flesh is gone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nathless he had great joy to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The long hair of this Bersabe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall round her lap and round her knee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to her small soft feet, that be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shod now with crimson royally<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And covered with clean gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Likewise great joy he had to kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her throat, where now the scarlet is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against her little chin, I wis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That then was but cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No scarlet then her kirtle had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And little gold about it sprad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her red mouth was always glad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To kiss, albeit the eyes were sad<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With love they had to hold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SECUNDUS MILES<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How! old thief, thy wits are lame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To clip such it is no shame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I rede you in the devil's name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye come not here to make men game;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Termagaunt that maketh grame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I shall to-bete thine head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>H&igrave;c Diabolus capiat eum.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This knave hath sharp fingers, perfay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mahound you thank and keep alway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give you good knees to pray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What man hath no lust to play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The devil wring his ears, I say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no more but wellaway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For now am I dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">KING DAVID<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Certes his mouth is wried and black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full little pence be in his sack;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This devil hath him by the back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It is no boot to lie.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">NATHAN<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sitteth now still and learn of me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little while and ye shall see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The face of God's strength presently.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All queens made as this Bersabe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that were fair and foul ye be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Come hither; it am I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Et h&igrave;c omnes cantabunt.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HERODIAS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Herodias.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This headband of my temples was<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">King Herod's gold band woven me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This broken dry staff in my hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was the queen's staff of a great land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Betwixen Perse and Samarie.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For that one dancing of my feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fire is come in my green wheat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From one sea to the other sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">AHOLIBAH<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Aholibah.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips kissed dumb the word of <i>Ah</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God wrought to me my royal bed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The inner work thereof was red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The outer work was ivory.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mouth's heat was the heat of flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For lust towards the kings that came<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With horsemen riding royally.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CLEOPATRA<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Ethiope.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love bade my kissing eyelids ope<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That men beholding might praise love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hair was wonderful and curled;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips held fast the mouth o' the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To spoil the strength and speech thereof.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The latter triumph in my breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bowed down the beaten brows of death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ashamed they had not wrath enough.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">ABIHAIL<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Tyrians.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hair was glorious for twelve spans,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That dried to loose dust afterward.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My stature was a strong man's length:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My neck was like a place of strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Built with white walls, even and hard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the first noise of rain leaves catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One from another, snatch by snatch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is my praise, hissed against and marred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">AZUBAH<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Amorites.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My face was like a place of lights<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With multitudes at festival.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glory of my gracious brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was like God's house made glorious<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With colours upon either wall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between my brows and hair there was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A white space like a space of glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With golden candles over all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">AHOLAH<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Amalek.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no tender touch or fleck<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To spoil my body or bared feet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My words were soft like dulcimers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the first sweet of grape-flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made each side of my bosom sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My raiment was as tender fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose rind smells sweet of spice-tree root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bruised balm-blossom and budded wheat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">AHINOAM<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Ahinoam.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the throat of a soft slain lamb<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was my throat, softer veined than his:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lips were as two grapes the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lays his whole weight of heat upon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a mouth heavy with a kiss:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hair's pure purple a wrought fleece,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My temples therein as a piece<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a pomegranate's cleaving is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">ATARAH<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Sidonian.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My face made faint the face of man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And strength was bound between my brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spikenard was hidden in my ships,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Honey and wheat and myrrh in strips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">White wools that shine as colour does,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft linen dyed upon the fold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Split spice and cores of scented gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cedar and broken calamus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SEMIRAMIS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Semiramis.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole world and the sea that is<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In fashion like a chrysopras,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The noise of all men labouring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The priest's mouth tired through thanksgiving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sound of love in the blood's pause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength of love in the blood's beat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All these were cast beneath my feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all found lesser than I was.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HESIONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Hesione.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The seasons that increased in me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made my face fairer than all men's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had the summer in my hair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the pale gold autumn air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was as the habit of my sense.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My body was as fire that shone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's beauty that makes all things one<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was one among my handmaidens.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">CHRYSOTHEMIS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Samothrace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God, making roses, made my face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As a rose filled up full with red.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My prows made sharp the straitened seas<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Pontus to that Chersonese<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereon the ebbed Asian stream is shed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hair was as sweet scent that drips;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's breath begun about my lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kindled the lips of people dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">THOMYRIS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Scythians.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My strength was like no strength of man's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My face like day, my breast like spring.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fame was felt in the extreme land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hath sunshine on the one hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And on the other star-shining.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, and the wind there fails of breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, and there life is waste like death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yea, and there death is a glad thing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">HARHAS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Anakim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the spent years whose speech is dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose raiment is the dust and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My stately body without stain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shone as the shining race of rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose hair a great wind scattereth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now hath God turned my lips to sighs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plucked off mine eyelids from mine eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sealed with seals my way of breath.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">MYRRHA<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Arabian.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tears wherewith mine eyelids ran<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smelt like my perfumed eyelids' smell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A harsh thirst made my soft mouth hard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ached with kisses afterward;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My brain rang like a beaten bell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As tears on eyes, as fire on wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sin fed upon my breath and blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sin made my breasts subside and swell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PASIPHAE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Pasiphae.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not all the pure clean-coloured sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could cleanse or cool my yearning veins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any root nor herb that grew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flag-leaves that let green water through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor washing of the dews and rains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From shame's pressed core I wrung the sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fruit's savour that was death to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereof no seed but death remains.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">SAPPHO<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Lesbians.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My love, that had no part in man's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was sweeter than all shape of sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The intolerable infinite desire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made my face pale like faded fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the ashen pyre falls through with heat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My blood was hot wan wine of love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my song's sound the sound thereof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sound of the delight of it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">MESSALINA<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Italy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These were the signs God set on me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A barren beauty subtle and sleek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curled carven hair, and cheeks worn wan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With fierce false lips of many a man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Large temples where the blood ran weak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mouth athirst and amorous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hungering as the grave's mouth does<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That, being an-hungred, cannot speak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">AMESTRIS<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Persians.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My breasts were lordlier than bright swans.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My body as amber fair and thin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange flesh was given my lips for bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With poisonous hours my days were fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And my feet shod with adder-skin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Shushan toward Ecbatane<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wrought my joys with tears and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My loves with blood and bitter sin.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">EPHRATH<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Rephaim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God, that some while refraineth him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made in the end a spoil of me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My rumour was upon the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As strong sound of swoln water hurled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through porches of the straining sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hair was like the flag-flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my breasts carven goodlier<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than beryl with chalcedony.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">PASITHEA<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen of Cypriotes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine oarsmen, labouring with brown throats,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sang of me many a tender thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My maidens, girdled loose and braced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gold from bosom to white waist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Praised me between their wool-combing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that praise Venus all night long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips like speech and lids like song<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Praised me till song lost heart to sing.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">ALACIEL<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Alaciel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mouth was like that moist gold cell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereout the thickest honey drips.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine eyes were as a grey-green sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The amorous blood that smote on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smote to my feet and finger-tips.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My throat was whiter than the dove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine eyelids as the seals of love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as the doors of love my lips.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">ERIGONE<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am the queen Erigone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild wine shed as blood on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made my face brighter than a bride's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My large lips had the old thirst of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine arms the might of the old sea's girth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bound round the whole world's iron sides.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within mine eyes and in mine ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were music and the wine of tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And light, and thunder of the tides.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3"><i>Et h&igrave;c exeant, et dicat Bersabe regina</i>;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas, God, for thy great pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for the might that is in thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold, I woful Bersabe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cry out with stoopings of my knee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy wrath laid and bound on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till I may see thy love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold, Lord, this child is grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within me between bone and bone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make me mother of a son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of my body with strong moan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There shall not be another one<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That shall be made hereof.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">KING DAVID<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lord God, alas, what shall I sain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, thou art as an hundred men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both to break and build again:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild ways thou makest plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine hands hold the hail and rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy fingers both grape and grain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of their largess we be all well fain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And of their great pity:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun thou madest of good gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of clean silver the moon cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the great stars thou hast told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thy cattle in thy fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every one by his name of old;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wind and water thou hast in hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Both the land and the long sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both the green sea and the land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord God, thou hast in hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both white water and grey sand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon thy right or thy left hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no man that may stand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lord, thou rue on me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O wise Lord, if thou be keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To note things amiss that been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not worth a shell of bean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than an old mare meagre and lean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all my wrong-doing with my queen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It grew not of our heart&egrave;s clean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But it began of her body.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it fell in the hot May<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I stood within a paven way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Built of fair bright stone, perfay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is as fire of night and day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lighteth all my house.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therein be neither stones nor sticks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neither red nor white bricks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for cubits five or six<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is most goodly sardonyx<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And amber laid in rows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It goes round about my roofs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If ye list ye shall have proofs)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is good space for horse and hoofs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Plain and nothing perilous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the fair green weather's heat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for the smell of leav&egrave;s sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is no marvel, well ye weet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A man to waxen amorous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This I say now by my case<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That spied forth of that royal place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There I saw in no great space<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine own sweet, both body and face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the fresh boughs.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a water that was there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She wesshe her goodly body bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dried it with her owen hair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both her arms and her knees fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Both bosom and brows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both shoulders and eke thighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tho she wesshe upon this wise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever she sighed with little sighs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And ever she gave God thank.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, God wot I can well see yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both her breast and her sides all wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her long hair withouten let<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spread sideways like a drawing net;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full dear bought and full far fet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was that sweet thing there y-set;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were a hard thing to forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How both lips and eyen met,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Breast and breath sank.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So goodly a sight as there she was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lying looking on her glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By wan water in green grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet saw never man.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So soft and great she was and bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all her body waxen white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I woxe nigh blind to see the light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shed out of it to left and right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This bitter sin from that sweet sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Between us twain began.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="cen">NATHAN<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, sir, be merry anon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ye shall have a full wise son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goodly and great of flesh and bone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There shall no king be such an one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I swear by Godis rood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore, lord, be merry here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And go to meat withouten fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hear a mass with goodly cheer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For to all folk ye shall be dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all folk of your blood.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Et tunc dicant Laudamus.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="ST_DOROTHY" id="ST_DOROTHY"></a>ST. DOROTHY</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That out of tender mouths God's praise hath been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made perfect, and with wood and simple string<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To please himself with softness of all sound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no small thing but hath been sometime found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God hath bruised withal the sentences<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And evidence of wise men witnessing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It never shall get sight of the great sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength of ten has been the strength of one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lowliness has waxed imperious.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There was in Rome a man Theophilus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of right great blood and gracious ways, that had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All noble fashions to make people glad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a soft life of pleasurable days;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was a goodly man for one to praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flawless and whole upward from foot to head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His arms were a red hawk that alway fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On a small bird with feathers gnawed upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beaten and plucked about the bosom-bone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereby a small round fleck like fire there was:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They called it in their tongue lampadias;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This was the banner of the lordly man.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In many straits of sea and reaches wan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of quick wind, and many a shaken firth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It had seen fighting days of either earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Westward or east of waters Gaditane<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(This was the place of sea-rocks under Spain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Called after the great praise of Hercules)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And north beyond the washing Pontic seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far windy Russian places fabulous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And salt fierce tides of storm-swoln Bosphorus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now as this lord came straying in Rome town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw a little lattice open down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And after it a press of maidens' heads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sat upon their cold small quiet beds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Talking, and played upon short-string&egrave;d lutes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And other some ground perfume out of roots<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gathered by marvellous moons in Asia;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saffron and aloes and wild cassia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coloured all through and smelling of the sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over all these was a certain one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed softly, with sweet herbs about her hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bosom flowerful; her face more fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than sudden-singing April in soft lands:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyed like a gracious bird, and in both hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She held a psalter painted green and red.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This Theophile laughed at the heart, and said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now God so help me hither and St. Paul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As by the new time of their festival<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have good will to take this maid to wife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And herewith fell to fancies of her life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soft half-thoughts that ended suddenly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is man's guise to please himself, when he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not see one thing of his pleasant things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor with outwatch of many travailings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come to be eased of the least pain he hath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all his love and all his foolish wrath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the heavy manner of his mind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus is he like a fisher fallen blind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That casts his nets across the boat awry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To strike the sea, but lo, he striketh dry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plucks them back all broken for his pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bites his beard and casts across again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And reaching wrong slips over in the sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So hath this man a strangled neck for fee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all his cost he chuckles in his throat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This Theophile that little hereof wote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laid wait to hear of her what she might be:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men told him she had name of Dorothy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And was a lady of a worthy house.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thereat this knight grew inly glorious<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he should have a love so fair of place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She was a maiden of most quiet face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tender of speech, and had no hardihood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But was nigh feeble of her fearful blood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her mercy in her was so marvellous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From her least years, that seeing her school-fellows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That read beside her stricken with a rod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She would cry sore and say some word to God<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he would ease her fellow of his pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no touch of sun or fallen rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ever fell on a more gracious thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In middle Rome there was in stone-working<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The church of Venus painted royally.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The chapels of it were some two or three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In each of them her tabernacle was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a wide window of six feet in glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coloured with all her works in red and gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The altars had bright cloths and cups to hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wine of Venus for the services,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made out of honey and crushed wood-berries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That shed sweet yellow through the thick wet red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That on high days was borne upon the head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Venus' priest for any man to drink;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So that in drinking he should fall to think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On some fair face, and in the thought thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worship, and such should triumph in his love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this soft wine that did such grace and good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was new trans-shaped and mixed with Love's own blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in the fighting Trojan time was bled;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For which came such a woe to Diomed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he was stifled after in hard sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And some said that this wine-shedding should be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of the falling of Adonis' blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That curled upon the thorns and broken wood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And round the gold silk shoes on Venus' feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The taste thereof was as hot honey sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the mouth ran soft and riotous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This was the holiness of Venus' house.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It was their worship, that in August days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Twelve maidens should go through those Roman ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked, and having gold across their brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their hair twisted in short golden rows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To minister to Venus in this wise:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And twelve men chosen in their companies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To match these maidens by the altar-stair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All in one habit, crowned upon the hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among these men was chosen Theophile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This knight went out and prayed a little while,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding queen Venus by her hands and knees;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will give thee twelve royal images<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cut in glad gold, with marvels of wrought stone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thy sweet priests to lean and pray upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jasper and hyacinth and chrysopras,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the strange Asian thalamite that was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hidden twelve ages under heavy sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the little sleepy pearls, to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shrine lit over with soft candle-flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning all night red as hot brows of shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thou wilt be my lady without sin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goddess that art all gold outside and in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Help me to serve thee in thy holy way.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou knowest, Love, that in my bearing day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There shone a laughter in the singing stars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the gold-ceil&egrave;d bride-bed wherein Mars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touched thee and had thee in your kissing wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now therefore, sweet, kiss thou my maiden's eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That they may open graciously towards me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And this new fashion of thy shrine shall be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As soft with gold as thine own happy head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The goddess, that was painted with face red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between two long green tumbled sides of sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stooped her neck sideways, and spake pleasantly:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt have grace as thou art thrall of mine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with this came a savour of shed wine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plucked-out petals from a rose's head:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And softly with slow laughs of lip she said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt have favour all thy days of me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then came Theophilus to Dorothy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying: O sweet, if one should strive or speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against God's ways, he gets a beaten cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all his wage and shame above all men.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore I have no will to turn again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When God saith "go," lest a worse thing fall out.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then she, misdoubting lest he went about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To catch her wits, made answer somewhat thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have no will, my lord Theophilus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To speak against this worthy word of yours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowing how God's will in all speech endures,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That save by grace there may no thing be said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Theophile waxed light from foot to head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And softly fell upon this answering.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is well seen you are a chosen thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do God service in his gracious way.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will that you make haste and holiday<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To go next year upon the Venus stair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Covered none else, but crowned upon your hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And do the service that a maiden doth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She said: but I that am Christ's maid were loth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do this thing that hath such bitter name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thereat his brows were beaten with sore shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he came off and said no other word.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then his eyes chanced upon his banner-bird,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he fell fingering at the staff of it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And laughed for wrath and stared between his feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of a chafed heart he spake as thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo how she japes at me Theophilus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feigning herself a fool and hard to love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet in good time for all she boasteth of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She shall be like a little beaten bird.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while his mouth was open in that word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He came upon the house Janiculum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where some went busily, and other some<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Talked in the gate called the gate glorious.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The emperor, which was one Gabalus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sat over all and drank chill wine alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To whom is come Theophilus anon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And said as thus: <i>Beau sire, Dieu vous aide</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And afterward sat under him, and said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All this thing through as ye have wholly heard.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This Gabalus laughed thickly in his beard.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, this is righteousness and maiden rule.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truly, he said, a maid is but a fool.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And japed at them as one full villainous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a lewd wise, this heathen Gabalus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sent his men to bind her as he bade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus have they taken Dorothy the maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And haled her forth as men hale pick-purses:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little need God knows they had of this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hale her by her maiden gentle hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus went she lowly, making a soft prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one who stays the sweet wine in his mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Murmuring with eased lips, and is most loth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have done wholly with the sweet of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Christ king, fair Christ, that knowest all men's wit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the feeble fashion of my ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O perfect God, that from all yesterdays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abidest whole with morrows perfected,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray thee by thy mother's holy head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou help me to do right, that I not slip:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have no speech nor strength upon my lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Except thou help me who art wise and sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do this too for those nails that clove thy feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me die maiden after many pains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I be least among thy handmaidens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubtless I shall take death more sweetly thus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Now have they brought her to King Gabalus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who laughed in all his throat some breathing-whiles:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By God, he said, if one should leap two miles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He were not pained about the sides so much.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This were a soft thing for a man to touch.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall one so chafe that hath such little bones?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook his throat with thick and chuckled moans<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For laughter that she had such holiness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What aileth thee, wilt thou do services?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were good fare to fare as Venus doth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then said this lady with her maiden mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shamefaced, and something paler in the cheek:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, sir, albeit my wit and will to speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me no grace in sight of worthy men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all my shame yet know I this again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I may not speak, nor after downlying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise up to take delight in lute-playing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor sing nor sleep, nor sit and fold my hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my soul in some measure understands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's grace laid like a garment over me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this fair God that out of strong sharp sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifted the shapely and green-coloured land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hath the weight of heaven in his hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one might hold a bird, and under him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavy golden planets beam by beam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Building the feasting-chambers of his house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the large world he holdeth with his brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the light of them astonisheth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All place and time and face of life and death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And motion of the north wind and the south,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is the sound within his angel's mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of singing words and words of thanksgiving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is the colour of the latter spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heat upon the summer and the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is beginning of all things begun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gathers in him all things to their end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the fingers of his hand doth bend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stretched-out sides of heaven like a sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with his breath he maketh the red pale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fills with blood faint faces of men dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with the sound between his lips are fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Iron and fire and the white body of snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blossom of all trees in places low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And small bright herbs about the little hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fruit pricked softly with birds' tender bills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flight of foam about green fields of sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fourfold strength of the great winds that be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moved always outward from beneath his feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And growth of grass and growth of sheav&egrave;d wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all green flower of goodly-growing lands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all these things he gathers with his hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And covers all their beauty with his wings;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same, even God that governs all these things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath set my feet to be upon his ways.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now therefore for no painfulness of days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall put off this service bound on me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also, fair sir, ye know this certainly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How God was in his flesh full chaste and meek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gave his face to shame, and either cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave up to smiting of men tyrannous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And here with a great voice this Gabalus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried out and said: By God's blood and his bones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This were good game betwixen night and nones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For one to sit and hearken to such saws:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I were as lief fall in some big beast's jaws<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As hear these women's jaw-teeth clattering;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By God a woman is the harder thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One may not put a hook into her mouth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now by St. Luke I am so sore adrouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all these saws I must needs drink again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I pray God deliver all us men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all such noise of women and their heat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is a noble scripture, well I weet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That likens women to an empty can;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When God said that he was a full wise man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I trow no man may blame him as for that.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And herewithal he drank a draught, and spat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And said: Now shall I make an end hereof.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come near all men and hearken for God's love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ye shall hear a jest or twain, God wot.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spake as thus with mouth full thick and hot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou do this thou shalt be shortly slain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, sir, she said, this death and all this pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I take in penance of my bitter sins.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea now, quoth Gabalus, this game begins.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, without sin one shall not live a span.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, this is she that would not look on man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between her fingers folded in thwart wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See how her shame hath smitten in her eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was so clean she had not heard of shame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Certes, he said, by Gabalus my name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This two years back I was not so well pleased.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This were good mirth for sick men to be eased<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rise up whole and laugh at hearing of.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray thee show us something of thy love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since thou wast maid thy gown is waxen wide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, maid I am, she said, and somewhat sighed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one who thought upon the low fair house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where she sat working, with soft bended brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watching her threads, among the school-maidens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she thought well now God had brought her thence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She should not come to sew her gold again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then cried King Gabalus upon his men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have her forth and draw her with steel gins.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as a man hag-ridden beats and grins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bends his body sidelong in his bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So wagged he with his body and knave's head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gaping at her, and blowing with his breath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in good time he gat an evil death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of his lewdness with his curs&egrave;d wives:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His bones were hewn asunder as with knives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his misliving, certes it is said.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all the evil wrought upon this maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were full hard for one to handle it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For her soft blood was shed upon her feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all her body's colour bruised and faint.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she, as one abiding God's great saint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spake not nor wept for all this travail hard.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore the king commanded afterward<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To slay her presently in all men's sight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it was now an hour upon the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And winter-time, and a few stars began.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The weather was yet feeble and all wan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For beating of a weighty wind and snow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she came walking in soft wise and slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many men with faces piteous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then came this heavy cursing Gabalus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That swore full hard into his drunken beard;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And faintly after without any word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came Theophile some paces off the king.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the middle of this wayfaring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full tenderly beholding her he said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is no word of comfort with men dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any face and colour of things sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But always with lean cheeks and lifted feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These dead men lie all aching to the blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With bitter cold, their brows withouten hood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beating for chill, their bodies swathed full thin:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas, what hire shall any have herein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To give his life and get such bitterness?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also the soul going forth bodiless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is hurt with naked cold, and no man saith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there be house or covering for death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hide the soul that is discomforted.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then she beholding him a little said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas, fair lord, ye have no wit of this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For on one side death is full poor of bliss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as ye say full sharp of bone and lean:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But on the other side is good and green<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hath soft flower of tender-coloured hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grown on his head, and a red mouth as fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As may be kissed with lips; thereto his face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is as God's face, and in a perfect place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of all sun and colour of straight boughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waterheads about a painted house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hath a mile of flowers either way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outward from it, and blossom-grass of May<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thickening on many a side for length of heat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath God set death upon a noble seat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Covered with green and flowered in the fold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In likeness of a great king grown full old<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gentle with new temperance of blood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on his brows a purfled purple hood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They may not carry any golden thing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plays some tune with subtle fingering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On a small cithern, full of tears and sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heavy pleasure that is quick to weep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sorrow with the honey in her mouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for this might of music that he doth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are all souls drawn toward him with great love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And weep for sweetness of the noise thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bow to him with worship of their knees;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the field is thick with companies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gather honey of the yellow fruits<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the branches waxen soft and wide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all this peace endures in either side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the green land, and God beholdeth all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And this is girdled with a round fair wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of red stone and cool with heavy leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grown out against it, and green blossom cleaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the green chinks, and lesser wall-weed sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kissing the crannies that are split with heat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And branches where the summer draws to head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And Theophile burnt in the cheek, and said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, could one see it, this were marvellous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pray you, at your coming to this house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me some leaf of all those tree-branches;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing how so sharp and white our weather is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no green nor gracious red to see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yea, sir, she said, that shall I certainly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from her long sweet throat without a fleck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Undid the gold, and through her stretched-out neck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cold axe clove, and smote away her head:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of her throat the tender blood full red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell suddenly through all her long soft hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with good speed for hardness of the air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each man departed to his house again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lo, as fair colour in the face of men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At seed-time of their blood, or in such wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a thing seen increaseth in men's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caught first far off by sickly fits of sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So a word said, if one shall hear aright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abides against the season of its growth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Theophile went slowly, as one doth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is not sure for sickness of his feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And counting the white stonework of the street,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tears fell out of his eyes for wrath and love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making him weep more for the shame thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than for true pain: so went he half a mile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And women mocked him, saying: Theophile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, she is dead; what shall a woman have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That loveth such an one? so Christ me save,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I were as lief to love a man new-hung.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surely this man has bitten on his tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This makes him sad and writhled in his face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And when they came upon the paven place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was called sometime the place amorous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There came a child before Theophilus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bearing a basket, and said suddenly:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair sir, this is my mistress Dorothy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sends you gifts; and with this he was gone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all this earth there is not such an one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For colour and straight stature made so fair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tender growing gold of his pure hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was as wheat growing, and his mouth as flame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God called him Holy after his own name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gold cloth like fire burning he was clad.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for the fair green basket that he had,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was filled up with heavy white and red;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great roses stained still where the first rose bled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning at heart for shame their heart withholds:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sad colour of strong marigolds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That have the sun to kiss their lips for love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower that Venus' hair is woven of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The colour of fair apples in the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Late peaches gathered when the heat was done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the slain air got breath; and after these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fair faint-headed poppies drunk with ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heaviness of hollow lilies red.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then cried they all that saw these things, and said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was God's doing, and was marvellous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in brief while this knight Theophilus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is waxen full of faith, and witnesseth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the king of God and love and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For which the king bade hang him presently.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gallows of a goodly piece of tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Gabalus hath made to hang him on.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth of this world lo Theophile is gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a wried neck, God give us better fare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than his that hath a twisted throat to wear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But truly for his love God hath him brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There where his heavy body grieves him nought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all the people plucking at his feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in his face his lady's face is sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And through his lips her kissing lips are gone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God send him peace, and joy of such an one.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This is the story of St. Dorothy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will you of your mercy pray for me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because I wrote these sayings for your grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may one day see her in the face.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_TWO_DREAMS" id="THE_TWO_DREAMS"></a>THE TWO DREAMS</h2>
+
+<h4>(FROM BOCCACCIO)</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I will that if I say a heavy thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moreover it sounds often well to let<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One string, when ye play music, keep at fret<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole song through; one petal that is dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confirms the roses, be they white or red;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sick sound aching in a lifted throat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though the rain falls often, and with rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Late autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I deem that God is not disquieted.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also while men are fed with wine and bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They shall be fed with sorrow at his hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There grew a rose-garden in Florence land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More fair than many; all red summers through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sideways with tender wind; and therein fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a bird's will to sing disturbed his throat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And set the sharp wings forward like a boat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pushed through soft water, moving his brown side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smooth-shapen as a maid's, and shook with pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun's<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ways were clean to walk and delicate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the windy white of March grew late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the trees took heart to face the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With ravelled raiment of lean winter on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Some roods away a lordly house there was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sown close among the strewings of the floor;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And either wall of the slow corridor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was dim with deep device of gracious things;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some angel's steady mouth and weight of wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And beard cut black against the aureole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mary's gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein was bound a child with tender feet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Within this house a righteous lord abode,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ser Averardo; patient of his mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And just of judgment; and to child he had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where she came, the lips that pain made strait<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tender as those that sleep brings patience to.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled with clear light and fire and large repose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a fair hound's; no man there is but knows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her face was white, and thereto she was tall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In no wise lacked there any praise at all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her most perfect and pure maidenhood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No sin I think there was in all her blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">She, where a gold grate shut the roses in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love made him room and space to worship her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For weariness, but at one taste undoes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all the hidden honey; words and sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fail through the tune's imperious prevalence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In a poor house this lover kept apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long communing with patience next his heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If love of his might move that face at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tuned evenwise with colours musical;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then after length of days he said thus: "Love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love's own sake and for the love thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For good it were, if anything be good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To comfort me in this pain's plague of mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seems pleasant to me; only I know this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To travel, but the end of such is sweet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now do with me as seemeth you the best."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She mused a little, as one holds his guest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the hand musing, with her face borne down:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then said: "Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have no more care of all that you have said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since if there is no sleep will bind your head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, I am fain to help you certainly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no pleasure when a man is dead."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And clipped her fair long body many times;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have no wit to shape in written rhymes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A scanted tithe of this great joy they had.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They were too near love's secret to be glad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As whoso deems the core will surely melt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or as sweet music sharpens afterward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As sea-water, having killed over-heat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a man's body, chills it with faint ache;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So their sense, burdened only for love's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They saved each day some gold reserves of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being wiser in love's riddle than such be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom fragments feed with his chance charity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rose-thorn's prickle dangerous to touch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too keen the breathed honey of the rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were so far gone in love's histories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strength of soul and body waxen blind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For weariness, and flesh entailed with mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Even this green place the summer caught them in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fum&egrave;d eves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burnt out to make the sun's love-offering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The midnoon's prayer, the rose's thanksgiving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The trees' weight burdening the strengthless air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her body's balance from the moving feet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On May's new lip the tender April breath:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All April through, and all their latter kin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of languid leaves whereon the Autumn blows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dead red raiment of the last year's rose&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last year's laurel, and the last year's love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">What man will gather in red summer-time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With colour, make all broken beauties new<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For love's new lesson&mdash;shall not such find pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the marred music labouring in his brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One word that might leave satisfied his lip&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One touch that might put fire in all the chords?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some speech the old love found out to compensate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passionless months and undelighted weeks.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The year was plagued with instances of death.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With leaves about, and many a bird there was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the green shadow thickliest impleached<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With purple as purple water and gold wrought in.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The breast's bright plaited work: but nothing frayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun's large kiss on the luxurious hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beauty was new colour to the air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And music to the silent many birds.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love was an-hungred for some perfect words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To praise her with; but only her low name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Andrevuola" came thrice, and thrice put shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That for pure love straightway shame's self was dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Then with lids gathered as who late had wept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She began saying: "I have so little slept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lids drowse now against the very sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost away." He said thus, kissing them:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall not the waking time increase much more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has any heat too hard and insolent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The maiden grass shut under from the sun?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where in this world is room enough for pain?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The feverish finger of love had touched again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making it humble as weak hunger is.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She lay close to him, bade do this and this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old record out of old things done and dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying "Though my wits be weak, this is no shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a poor maid whom love so punisheth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With heats of hesitation and stopped breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That with my dreams I live yet heavily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For pure sad heart and faith's humility.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now be not wroth and I will show you this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"Methought our lips upon their second kiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Met in this place, and a fair day we had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I, beholding ever how your mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A devil's hide with foul flame-writhen grail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fashioned where hell's heat festers loathsomest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that brief speech may ease me of the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if the palpitating dawn drew breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For horror, breathing between life and death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoov&egrave;d thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The timeless travail of hell's childbearing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For relish of her tasted misery<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tender little thornprick of her pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughed with mere love. What lover among men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But hath his sense fed sovereignly 'twixt whiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soft disaster of a pain&egrave;d face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What pain, established in so sweet a place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What colour burning man's wide-open eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But may be pleasurably seen? what sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And emptied flesh in their most broken mood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in death's service wears out half his age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shadow and sound of things ungracious;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"This dream I tell you came three nights ago;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In full mid sleep I took a whim to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But save my dream all sweet availed me not.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First came a smell of pounded spice and scent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as God ripens in some continent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And breaths as though some costly rose could be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flower's poor heart with heat and waste, to make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong magic for some perfumed woman's sake.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if a lute should play of its own heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fearfully, not smitten of either part;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As gold swoln grain fills out the husk&egrave;d wheat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I rose naked from the bed, and stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Counting the mobile measure in my blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the outer curls that feel the comb's first touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And blind between my dream and my desire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I seemed to stand and held my spirit still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Honey from cells forgotten of the bee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is less afraid to stir the hive and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some wasp's bright back inside, than I to feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have here some colour and smooth shape as good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To touch their hair they see not, neither fly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This would I see in heaven and not die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the dumb night's warm weight of glowing gloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made it like a green low place wherein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against a ripple, that the angry pearl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May flow like flame about her: the next curl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wash the dust well out; another one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lavish body sidelong, so that rings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All round her fine and floated body pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As taken in some underflow of sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clear of the river: even from wall to bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I tell you, was my room transfigured so.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there were walls or leaves, or if there was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No bed's green curtain, but mere gentle grass.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There were set also hard against the feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the cool water's noise to hear in rhymes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next the grave walking of a woman's feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I thought ever, surely it were wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because it turns a face to her, the wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I played with pleasures, made them to my mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touched me between the cheek and lip and past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over my face with kisses here and there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sown in and out across the eyes and hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still I said nothing; till she set her face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More close and harder on the kissing-place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her mouth caught like a snake's mouth, and stung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than a bird's foot: yet a wound it grew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A great one, let this red mark witness you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So clove my sense that I woke out of love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And knew not what this dream was nor had wit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now God knows if I have skill of it."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hereat she laid one palm against her lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stop their trembling; as when water slips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The carven rims with murmuring, so came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Words in her lips with no word right of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A beaten speech thick and disconsolate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her sore fear that grew from anything&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sound of the strong summer thickening<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The day's breath felt about the ash-branches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And noises of the noon whose weight still grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soothed with shade: but westward all its growth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who feels his temples newly feverous.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even with such motion in her brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As that man hath in whom sick days begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a sick man's, sudden and tremulous;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us love more;" and held his mouth with hers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the first sound of flooded hill-waters<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is heard by people of the meadow-grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She felt before tears came her eyelids wet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard his throat's harsh last moan before it clomb:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each grasping other, and the eyes of each<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fed in the other's face: till suddenly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He cried out with a little broken cry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This word, "O help me, sweet, I am but dead."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even so saying, the colour of fair red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was gone out of his face, and his blood's beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pointed hands; and without moan he died.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the pure sharpness of her miseries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She had no heart's pain, but mere body's wrack;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But at the last her beaten blood drew back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suddenly grown aware and piteous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came as though one nigh dead came back from death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And in brief while she thought to bury there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dead man that her love might lie with him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soft earth round the branch&egrave;d apple-trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no man entering divide him thence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be her help to do upon this wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And saying so the tears out of her eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell without noise and comforted her heart:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Began to soften in her sense of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There under all the little branches sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The place was shapen of his burial;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They shed thereon no thing funereal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of marigold and great spent sunflower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And afterward she came back without word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her own house; two days went, and the third<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Went, and she showed her father of this thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for great grief of her soul's travailing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave consent she should endure in peace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till her life's end; yea, till her time should cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She should abide in fellowship of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And having lived a holy year or twain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She died of pure waste heart and weariness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for love's honour in her love's distress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This word was written over her tomb's head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AHOLIBAH" id="AHOLIBAH"></a>AHOLIBAH</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the beginning God made thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A woman well to look upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy tender body as a tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereon cool wind hath always blown<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till the clean branches be well grown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was none like thee in the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The girls that were thy bondwomen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did bind thee with a purple band<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon thy forehead, that all men<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Should know thee for God's handmaiden.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With silk to wear on hands and feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plates of gold on either side:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wine made thee glad, and thou didst eat<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Honey, and choice of pleasant meat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And fishers in the middle sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Did get thee sea-fish and sea-weeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In colour like the robes on thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And curious work of plaited reeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And wools wherein live purple bleeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And round the edges of thy cup<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Men wrought thee marvels out of gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong snakes with lean throats lifted up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Large eyes whereon the brows had hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And scaly things their slime kept cold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For thee they blew soft wind in flutes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And ground sweet roots for cunning scent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made slow because of many lutes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wind among thy chambers went<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wherein no light was violent.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God called thy name Aholibah,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His tabernacle being in thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A witness through waste Asia;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou wert a tent sewn cunningly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With gold and colours of the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God gave thee gracious ministers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all their work who plait and weave:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cunning of embroiderers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That sew the pillow to the sleeve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And likeness of all things that live.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy garments upon thee were fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With scarlet and with yellow thread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also the weaving of thine hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was as fine gold upon thy head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thy silk shoes were sewn with red.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All sweet things he bade sift, and ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As a man grindeth wheat in mills<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With strong wheels alway going round;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He gave thee corn, and grass that fills<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cattle on a thousand hills.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wine of many seasons fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy mouth, and made it fair and clean;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet oil was poured out on thy head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And ran down like cool rain between<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The strait close locks it melted in.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The strong men and the captains knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy chambers wrought and fashioned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gold and covering of blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the blue raiment of thine head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who satest on a stately bed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All these had on their garments wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The shape of beasts and creeping things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The body that availeth not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flat backs of worms and vein&egrave;d wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the lewd bulk that sleeps and stings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Also the chosen of the years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The multitude being at ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sackbuts and with dulcimers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And noise of shawms and psalteries<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made mirth within the ears of these.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But as a common woman doth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou didst think evil and devise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet smell of thy breast and mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou madest as the harlot's wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And there was painting on thine eyes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, in the woven guest-chamber<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And by the painted passages<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the strange gracious paintings were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">State upon state of companies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There came on thee the lust of these.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Because of shapes on either wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sea-coloured from some rare blue shell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At many a Tyrian interval,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Horsemen on horses, girdled well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Delicate and desirable,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou saidest: I am sick of love:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stay me with flagons, comfort me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With apples for my pain thereof<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till my hands gather in his tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That fruit wherein my lips would be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yea, saidest thou, I will go up<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When there is no more shade than one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May cover with a hollow cup,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And make my bed against the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till my blood's violence be done.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy mouth was leant upon the wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Against the painted mouth, thy chin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touched the hair's painted curve and fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy deep throat, fallen lax and thin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Worked as the blood's beat worked therein.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore, O thou Aholibah,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God is not glad because of thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy fine gold shall pass away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like those fair coins of ore that be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Washed over by the middle sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then will one make thy body bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To strip it of all gracious things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pluck the cover from thine hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And break the gift of many kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy wrist-rings and thine ankle-rings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Likewise the man whose body joins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To thy smooth body, as was said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who hath a girdle on his loins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And dyed attire upon his head&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The same who, seeing, worshipped,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Because thy face was like the face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a clean maiden that smells sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because thy gait was as the pace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of one that opens not her feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And is not heard within the street&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even he, O thou Aholibah,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made separate from thy desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall cut thy nose and ears away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And bruise thee for thy body's hire<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And burn the residue with fire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then shall the heathen people say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The multitude being at ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, this is that Aholibah<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose name was blown among strange seas.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grown old with soft adulteries.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Also her bed was made of green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her windows beautiful for glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That she had made her bed between:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yea, for pure lust her body was<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made like white summer-coloured grass.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her raiment was a strong man's spoil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon a table by a bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She set mine incense and mine oil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be the beauty of her head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In chambers walled about with red.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Also between the walls she had<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fair faces of strong men portrayed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All girded round the loins, and clad<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With several cloths of woven braid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And garments marvellously made.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore the wrath of God shall be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Set as a watch upon her way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whoso findeth by the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blown dust of bones will hardly say<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If this were that Aholibah.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOVE_AND_SLEEP" id="LOVE_AND_SLEEP"></a>LOVE AND SLEEP</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lying asleep between the strokes of night<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I saw my love lean over my sad bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But perfect-coloured without white or red.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And her lips opened amorously, and said&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wist not what, saving one word&mdash;Delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all her face was honey to my mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all her body pasture to mine eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MADONNA_MIA" id="MADONNA_MIA"></a>MADONNA MIA</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under green apple-boughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That never a storm will rouse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lady hath her house<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Between two bowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In either of the twain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red roses full of rain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She hath for bondwomen<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">All kind of flowers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She hath no handmaid fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To draw her curled gold hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through rings of gold that bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her whole hair's weight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She hath no maids to stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold-clothed on either hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all the great green land<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">None is so great.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She hath no more to wear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one white hood of vair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drawn over eyes and hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wrought with strange gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made for some great queen's head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some fair great queen since dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one strait gown of red<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Against the cold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beneath her eyelids deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love lying seems asleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, swift to wake, to weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To laugh, to gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her breasts are like white birds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all her gracious words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As water-grass to herds<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the June-days.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To her all dews that fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rains are musical;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her flowers are fed from all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Her joy from these;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the deep-feathered firs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their gift of joy is hers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the least breath that stirs<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Across the trees.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She grows with greenest leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ripens with reddest sheaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgets, remembers, grieves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And is not sad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The quiet lands and skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave light upon her eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None knows her, weak or wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or tired or glad.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">None knows, none understands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What flowers are like her hands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you should search all lands<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wherein time grows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What snows are like her feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though his eyes burn with heat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through gazing on my sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Yet no man knows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only this thing is said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That white and gold and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's three chief words, man's bread<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And oil and wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were given her for dowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kingdom of all hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grace of goodly flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And various vine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is my lady's praise:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God after many days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrought her in unknown ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In sunset lands;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This was my lady's birth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God gave her might and mirth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And laid his whole sweet earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Between her hands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under deep apple-boughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lady hath her house;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She wears upon her brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The flower thereof;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All saying but what God saith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her is as vain breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is more strong than death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Being strong as love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_KINGS_DAUGHTER" id="THE_KINGS_DAUGHTER"></a>THE KING'S DAUGHTER</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were ten maidens in the green corn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Small red leaves in the mill-water:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairer maidens never were born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Apples of gold for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were ten maidens by a well-head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Small white birds in the mill-water:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweeter maidens never were wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rings of red for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first to spin, the second to sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Seeds of wheat in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The third may was a goodly thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">White bread and brown for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fourth to sew and the fifth to play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fair green weed in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sixth may was a goodly may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">White wine and red for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The seventh to woo, the eighth to wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fair thin reeds in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ninth had gold work on her head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Honey in the comb for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The ninth had gold work round her hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fallen flowers in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tenth may was goodly and fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Golden gloves for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were ten maidens in a field green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Fallen fruit in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairer maidens never have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Golden sleeves for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By there comes the king's young son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A little wind in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Out of ten maidens ye'll grant me one,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A crown of red for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Out of ten mays ye'll give me the best,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A little rain in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A bed of yellow straw for all the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A bed of gold for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's ta'en out the goodliest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Rain that rains in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A comb of yellow shell for all the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A comb of gold for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's made her bed to the goodliest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wind and hail in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A grass girdle for all the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A girdle of arms for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's set his heart to the goodliest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Snow that snows in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nine little kisses for all the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">An hundredfold for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He's ta'en his leave at the goodliest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Broken boats in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Golden gifts for all the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Sorrow of heart for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ye'll make a grave for my fair body,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Running rain in the mill-water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"And ye'll streek my brother at the side of me,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The pains of hell for the king's daughter.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AFTER_DEATH" id="AFTER_DEATH"></a>AFTER DEATH</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The four boards of the coffin lid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard all the dead man did.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first curse was in his mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of grave's mould and deadly drouth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The next curse was in his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of God's work discomfited.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The next curse was in his hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made out of two grave-bands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The next curse was in his feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made out of a grave-sheet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I had fair coins red and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my name was as great light;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I had fair clothes green and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strong gold bound round my head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But no meat comes in my mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now I fare as the worm doth;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And no gold binds in my hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now I fare as the blind fare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My live thews were of great strength,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now am I waxen a span's length;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My live sides were full of lust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now are they dried with dust."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first board spake and said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Is it best eating flesh or bread?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The second answered it:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Is wine or honey the more sweet?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The third board spake and said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fourth made answer thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"All these things are as one with us."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dead man asked of them:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Is the green land stained brown with flame?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my wife's body for beasts' meat?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And built a gallows to hang my man?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boards said to him:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"This is a lewd thing that ye deem.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your wife has gotten a golden bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the sheets are sewn with red.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your son has gotten a coat of silk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sleeves are soft as curded milk.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the skirt has braids of blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your man has gotten both ring and glove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrought well for eyes to love."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dead man answered thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What good gift shall God give us?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The boards answered him anon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MAY_JANET" id="MAY_JANET"></a>MAY JANET</h2>
+
+<h4>(BRETON)</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And go to the wars with me."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He's drawn her by both hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">With her face against the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He that strews red shall gather white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He that sows white reap red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before your face and my daughter's<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Meet in a marriage-bed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Gold coin shall grow in the yellow field,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Green corn in the green sea-water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And red fruit grow of the rose's red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Ere your fruit grow in her."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But I shall have her by land," he said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"Or I shall have her by sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or I shall have her by strong treason<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And no grace go with me."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her father's drawn her by both hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He's rent her gown from her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He's ta'en the smock round her body,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cast in the sea-water.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The captain's drawn her by both sides<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Out of the fair green sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And come to the war with me."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first town they came to<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There was a blue bride-chamber;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He clothed her on with silk<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And belted her with amber.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The second town they came to<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bridesmen feasted knee to knee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He clothed her on with silver,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A stately thing to see.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The third town they came to<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bridesmaids all had gowns of gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He clothed her on with purple,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A rich thing to behold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The last town they came to<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">He clothed her white and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a green flag either side of her<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And a gold flag overhead.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_BLOODY_SON" id="THE_BLOODY_SON"></a>THE BLOODY SON</h2>
+
+<h4>(FINNISH)</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O where have ye been the morn sae late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O where have ye been the morn sae late?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"By the water-gate, by the water-gate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I watered my steeds with water frae the lake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Why is your coat sae fouled the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why is your coat sae fouled the day?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"The steeds were stamping sair by the weary banks of clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And where gat ye thae sleeves of red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where gat ye thae sleeves of red?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I have slain my ae brither by the weary waterhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And where will ye gang to mak your mend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where will ye gang to mak your mend?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"The warldis way, to the warldis end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And what will ye leave your father dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what will ye leave your father dear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">"The wood to fell and the logs to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For he'll never see my body mair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And what will ye leave your mither dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what will ye leave your mither dear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"The wool to card and the wool to wear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ye'll never see my body mair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And what will ye leave for your wife to take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what will ye leave for your wife to take?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A goodly gown and a fair new make,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For she'll do nae mair for my body's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And what will ye leave your young son fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what will ye leave your young son fair?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot ye hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A twiggen school-rod for his body to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though it garred him greet he'll get nae mair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot ye hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Wild mulberries for her mouth to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She'll get nae mair though it garred her greet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And when will ye come back frae roamin',<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when will ye come back frae roamin'?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"When the sunrise out of the north is comen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When shall the sunrise on the north side be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When shall the sunrise on the north side be?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"When chuckie-stanes shall swim in the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When shall stanes in the sea swim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When shall stanes in the sea swim?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"When birdies' feathers are as lead therein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When shall feathers be as lead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My merry son, come tell me hither?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When shall feathers be as lead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I wot I hae not anither."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"When God shall judge between the quick and dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O dear mither."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SEASWALLOWS" id="THE_SEASWALLOWS"></a>THE SEA-SWALLOWS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This fell when Christmas lights were done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But before the Easter lights begun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Two lovers sat where the rowan blows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And all the grass is heavy and fine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the gathering-place of the sea-swallows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When the wind brings them over Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blossom of broom will never make bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Red rose leaves will never make wine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between her brows she is grown red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That was full white in the fields by Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O what is this thing ye have on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Show me now, sweet daughter of mine?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"O father, this is my little son<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That I found hid in the sides of Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O what will ye give my son to eat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Red rose leaves will never make wine?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Fen-water and adder's meat."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or what will ye get my son to wear?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A weed and a web of nettle's hair."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or what will ye take to line his bed?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Two black stones at the kirkwall's head."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or what will ye give my son for land?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Three girl's paces of red sand."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or what will ye give me for my son?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Six times to kiss his young mouth on."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But what have ye done with the bearing-bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And what have ye made of the washing-wine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where have ye made your bearing-bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To bear a son in the sides of Tyne?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The bearing-bread is soft and new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is no soil in the straining wine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bed was made between green and blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">It stands full soft by the sides of Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The fair grass was my bearing-bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The well-water my washing-wine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The low leaves were my bearing-bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And that was best in the sides of Tyne."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O daughter, if ye have done this thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">I wot the greater grief is mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This was a bitter child-bearing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When ye were got by the sides of Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"About the time of sea-swallows<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That fly full thick by six and nine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye'll have my body out of the house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">To bury me by the sides of Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Set nine stones by the wall for twain,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"For the bed I take will measure ten."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tread twelve girl's paces out for three,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(Red rose leaves will never make wine)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"For the pit I made has taken me."<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_YEAR_OF_LOVE" id="THE_YEAR_OF_LOVE"></a>THE YEAR OF LOVE</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There were four loves that one by one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Following the seasons and the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passed over without tears, and fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away without farewell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The first was made of gold and tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The next of aspen-leaves and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last love of strange fruits.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These were the four loves faded. Hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some minutes fast the time of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When our lips each way clung and clove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a face full of love.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tears inside our eyelids met,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The faces cleaving each to each<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the blood served for speech.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The second, with low patient brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound under aspen-coloured boughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eyes made strong and grave with sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet too weak to weep&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The third, with eager mouth at ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fed from late autumn honey, lees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of scarce gold left in latter cells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With scattered flower-smells&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ruined roses, wrists and feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold in stray poppy-leaves&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fourth, with lips whereon has bled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some great pale fruit's slow colour, shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the rank bitter husk whence drips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faint blood between her lips&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Made of the heat of whole great Junes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning the blue dark round their moons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Each like a mown red marigold)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So hard the flame keeps hold&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These are burnt thoroughly away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only the first holds out a day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond these latter loves that were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made of mere heat and air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now the time is winterly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first love fades too: none will see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When April warms the world anew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The place wherein love grew.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DEDICATION" id="DEDICATION"></a>DEDICATION</h2>
+
+<h4>1865</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sea gives her shells to the shingle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The earth gives her streams to the sea:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are many, but my gift is single,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My verses, the firstfruits of me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cast forth without fruit upon air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blown loose from the hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The night shakes them round me in legions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dawn drives them before her like dreams;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time sheds them like snows on strange regions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Swept shoreward on infinite streams;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dead fruits of the fugitive years;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some stained as with wine and made bloody,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And some as with tears.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some scattered in seven years' traces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As they fell from the boy that was then;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long left among idle green places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or gathered but now among men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On seas full of wonder and peril,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blown white round the capes of the north;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or in islands where myrtles are sterile<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And loves bring not forth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O daughters of dreams and of stories<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That life is not wearied of yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">F&eacute;lise and Yolande and Juliette,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When sleep, that is true or that seems,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">O daughters of dreams?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They are past as a slumber that passes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">As the dew of a dawn of old time;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More frail than the shadows on glasses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When their hollows are full of the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So the birds that flew singing to me-ward<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Recede out of sight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The songs of dead seasons, that wander<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">On wings of articulate words;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost leaves that the shore-wind may squander,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Light flocks of untameable birds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some sang to me dreaming in class-time<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And truant in hand as in tongue;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the youngest were born of boy's pastime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The eldest are young.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is there shelter while life in them lingers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is there hearing for songs that recede,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tunes touched from a harp with man's fingers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Or blown with boy's mouth in a reed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is there place in the land of your labour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Is there room in your world of delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where change has not sorrow for neighbour<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And day has not night?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Will you spare not a space for them there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made green with the running of rivers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And gracious with temperate air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the fields and the turreted cities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That cover from sunshine and rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair passions and bountiful pities<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And loves without stain?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In a land of clear colours and stories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In a region of shadowless hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where earth has a garment of glories<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And a murmur of musical flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In woods where the spring half uncovers<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The flush of her amorous face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the waters that listen for lovers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For these is there place?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Their music as clouds do their fire:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Wild wings in a wind of desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the stream of the storm as it settles<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Blown seaward, borne far from the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shaken loose on the darkness like petals<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Dropt one after one?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the world of your hands be more gracious<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And lovelier in lordship of things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Warm heaven of her imminent wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For the love of old loves and lost times;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And receive in your palace of painting<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">This revel of rhymes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the seasons of man full of losses<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Make empty the years full of youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If but one thing be constant in crosses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Change lays not her hand upon truth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hopes die, and their tombs are for token<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That the grief as the joy of them ends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere time that breaks all men has broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The faith between friends.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the many lights dwindle to one light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There is help if the heaven has one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the earth dispossessed of the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When, refreshed as a bride and set free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Night sinks on the sea.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<h5>PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS<br />
+WEST NORWOOD<br />
+LONDON</h5>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> &AElig;sch. Fr. Niobe:&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&#956;&#972;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#952;&#949;&#8182;&#957; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#920;&#940;&#957;&#945;&#964;&#959;&#962; &#959;&#8016;
+&#948;&#974;&#961;&#969;&#957; &#7952;&#961;&#8119;,
+&#954;.&#964;.&#955;.</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+&#968;&#965;&#967;&#940;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#957; &#949;&#7990;
+&#946;&#945;&#963;&#964;&#940;&#950;&#959;&#957; &#957;&#949;&#954;&#961;&#972;&#957;.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Epictetus.</span></span></p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> En ce temps-l&agrave; estoyt dans ce pays grand nombre de ladres et
+de meseaulx, ce dont le roy eut grand desplaisir, veu que Dieu
+dust en estre moult griefvement courrouc&eacute;. Ores il advint qu'une
+noble damoyselle appel&eacute;e Yolande de Salli&egrave;res estant atteincte et
+touste guast&eacute;e de ce vilain mal, tous ses amys et ses parens ayant
+devant leurs yeux la paour de Dieu la firent issir fors de leurs
+maisons et oncques ne voulurent recepvoir ni reconforter chose
+mauldicte de Dieu et &agrave; tous les hommes puante et abhominable.
+Ceste dame avoyt est&eacute; moult belle et gracieuse de formes, et de
+son corps elle estoyt large et de vie lascive. Pourtant nul des
+amans qui l'avoyent souventesfois accoll&eacute;e et bais&eacute;e moult
+tendrement ne voulust plus h&eacute;berger si laide femme et si
+d&eacute;testable pescheresse. Ung seul clerc qui feut premi&egrave;rement son
+lacquays et son entremetteur en mati&egrave;re d'amour la re&ccedil;ut chez luy
+et la r&eacute;c&eacute;la dans une petite cabane. L&agrave; mourut la meschinette de
+grande mis&egrave;re et de male mort: et apr&egrave;s elle d&eacute;c&eacute;da ledist clerc
+qui pour grand amour l'avoyt six mois durant soign&eacute;e, lav&eacute;e,
+habill&eacute;e et deshabill&eacute;e tous les jours de ses mains propres. Mesme
+dist-on que ce meschant homme et mauldict clerc se rem&eacute;mourant de
+la grande beaut&eacute; pass&eacute;e et guast&eacute;e de ceste femme se d&eacute;lectoyt
+maintesfois &agrave; la baiser sur sa bouche orde et l&eacute;preuse et
+l'accoller doulcement de ses mains amoureuses. Aussy est-il mort
+de ceste mesme maladie abhominable. Cecy advint pr&egrave;s
+Fontainebellant en Gastinois. Et quand ouyt le roy Philippe ceste
+adventure moult en estoyt esmerveill&eacute;.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right;"><i>Grandes Chroniques de France, 1505.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Nam te pr&aelig;cipu&egrave; in suis urbibus colit ora<br />
+Hellespontia, c&aelig;teris ostreosior oris.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Catull.</span> <i>Carm.</i> xviii.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Suggested by a drawing of Mr. D. G. Rossetti's.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by 
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
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diff --git a/35402.txt b/35402.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poems & Ballads (First Series)
+
+Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2011 [EBook #35402]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS & BALLADS (FIRST SERIES) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Poems and Ballads
+  First Series
+
+  By
+  Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+  Taken from
+  The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne--Vol I
+
+
+
+
+  SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS
+
+
+      I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series).
+
+     II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, and SONGS OF TWO NATIONS.
+
+    III. POEMS AND BALLADS (SECOND AND THIRD SERIES), and SONGS OF THE
+            SPRING-TIDES.
+
+     IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON,
+            ERECHTHEUS.
+
+      V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH
+            DRAMATIC POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC.
+
+     VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER
+            POEMS.
+
+
+  London: William Heinemann
+
+
+
+
+  POEMS & BALLADS
+  (FIRST SERIES)
+
+  By
+  Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+
+  1917
+  London: William Heinemann
+
+  _First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904
+  _Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12
+  (_Heinemann_), 1917
+  _London_: _William Heinemann_ 1917
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE
+
+
+To my best and dearest friend I dedicate the first collected edition of
+my poems, and to him I address what I have to say on the occasion.
+
+
+You will agree with me that it is impossible for any man to undertake
+the task of commentary, however brief and succinct, on anything he has
+done or tried to do, without incurring the charge of egoism. But there
+are two kinds of egoism, the furtive and the frank: and the outspoken
+and open-hearted candour of Milton and Wordsworth, Corneille and Hugo,
+is not the least or the lightest of their claims to the regard as well
+as the respect or the reverence of their readers. Even if I were worthy
+to claim kinship with the lowest or with the highest of these deathless
+names, I would not seek to shelter myself under the shadow of its
+authority. The question would still remain open on all sides. Whether it
+is worth while for any man to offer any remarks or for any other man to
+read his remarks on his own work, his own ambition, or his own attempts,
+he cannot of course determine. If there are great examples of abstinence
+from such a doubtful enterprise, there are likewise great examples to
+the contrary. As long as the writer can succeed in evading the kindred
+charges and the cognate risks of vanity and humility, there can be no
+reason why he should not undertake it. And when he has nothing to regret
+and nothing to recant, when he finds nothing that he could wish to
+cancel, to alter, or to unsay, in any page he has ever laid before his
+reader, he need not be seriously troubled by the inevitable
+consciousness that the work of his early youth is not and cannot be
+unnaturally unlike the work of a very young man. This would be no excuse
+for it, if it were in any sense bad work: if it be so, no apology would
+avail; and I certainly have none to offer.
+
+It is now thirty-six years since my first volume of miscellaneous verse,
+lyrical and dramatic and elegiac and generally heterogeneous, had as
+quaint a reception and as singular a fortune as I have ever heard or
+read of. I do not think you will differ from my opinion that what is
+best in it cannot be divided from what is not so good by any other line
+of division than that which marks off mature from immature execution--in
+other words, complete from incomplete conception. For its author the
+most amusing and satisfying result of the clatter aroused by it was the
+deep diversion of collating and comparing the variously inaccurate
+verdicts of the scornful or mournful censors who insisted on regarding
+all the studies of passion or sensation attempted or achieved in it as
+either confessions of positive fact or excursions of absolute fancy.
+There are photographs from life in the book; and there are sketches from
+imagination. Some which keen-sighted criticism has dismissed with a
+smile as ideal or imaginary were as real and actual as they well could
+be: others which have been taken for obvious transcripts from memory
+were utterly fantastic or dramatic. If the two kinds cannot be
+distinguished, it is surely rather a credit than a discredit to an
+artist whose medium or material has more in common with a musician's
+than with a sculptor's. Friendly and kindly critics, English and
+foreign, have detected ignorance of the subject in poems taken straight
+from the life, and have protested that they could not believe me were I
+to swear that poems entirely or mainly fanciful were not faithful
+expressions or transcriptions of the writer's actual experience and
+personal emotion. But I need not remind you that all I have to say about
+this book was said once for all in the year of its publication: I have
+nothing to add to my notes then taken, and I have nothing to retract
+from them. To parade or to disclaim experience of passion or of sorrow,
+of pleasure or of pain, is the habit and the sign of a school which has
+never found a disciple among the better sort of English poets, and which
+I know to be no less pitifully contemptible in your opinion than in
+mine.
+
+In my next work it should be superfluous to say that there is no touch
+of dramatic impersonation or imaginary emotion. The writer of 'Songs
+before Sunrise,' from the first line to the last, wrote simply in
+submissive obedience to Sir Philip Sidney's precept--'Look in thine
+heart, and write.' The dedication of these poems, and the fact that the
+dedication was accepted, must be sufficient evidence of this. They do
+not pretend and they were never intended to be merely the metrical
+echoes, or translations into lyric verse, of another man's doctrine.
+Mazzini was no more a Pope or a Dictator than I was a parasite or a
+papist. Dictation and inspiration are rather different things. These
+poems, and others which followed or preceded them in print, were
+inspired by such faith as is born of devotion and reverence: not by such
+faith, if faith it may be called, as is synonymous with servility or
+compatible with prostration of an abject or wavering spirit and a
+submissive or dethroned intelligence. You know that I never pretended to
+see eye to eye with my illustrious friends and masters, Victor Hugo and
+Giuseppe Mazzini, in regard to the positive and passionate confidence of
+their sublime and purified theology. Our betters ought to know better
+than we: they would be the last to wish that we should pretend to their
+knowledge, or assume a certitude which is theirs and is not ours. But on
+one point we surely cannot but be at one with them: that the spirit and
+the letter of all other than savage and barbarous religions are
+irreconcilably at variance, and that prayer or homage addressed to an
+image of our own or of other men's making, be that image avowedly
+material or conventionally spiritual, is the affirmation of idolatry
+with all its attendant atrocities, and the negation of all belief, all
+reverence, and all love, due to the noblest object of human worship that
+humanity can realise or conceive. Thus much the exercise of our common
+reason might naturally suffice to show us: but when its evidence is
+confirmed and fortified by the irrefragable and invariable evidence of
+history, there is no room for further dispute or fuller argument on a
+subject now visibly beyond reach and eternally beyond need of debate or
+demonstration. I know not whether it may or may not be worth while to
+add that every passing word I have since thought fit to utter on any
+national or political question has been as wholly consistent with the
+principles which I then did my best to proclaim and defend as any
+apostasy from the faith of all republicans in the fundamental and final
+principle of union, voluntary if possible and compulsory if not, would
+have been ludicrous in the impudence of its inconsistency with those
+simple and irreversible principles. Monarchists and anarchists may be
+advocates of national dissolution and reactionary division: republicans
+cannot be. The first and last article of their creed is unity: the most
+grinding and crushing tyranny of a convention, a directory, or a despot,
+is less incompatible with republican faith than the fissiparous
+democracy of disunionists or communalists.
+
+If the fortunes of my lyrical work were amusingly eccentric and
+accidental, the varieties of opinion which have saluted the appearance
+of my plays have been, or have seemed to my humility, even more
+diverting and curious. I have been told by reviewers of note and
+position that a single one of them is worth all my lyric and otherwise
+undramatic achievements or attempts: and I have been told on equal or
+similar authority that, whatever I may be in any other field, as a
+dramatist I am demonstrably nothing. My first if not my strongest
+ambition was to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a
+young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of
+Shakespeare, in the line of work which those three poets had left as a
+possibly unattainable example for ambitious Englishmen. And my first
+book, written while yet under academic or tutorial authority, bore
+evidence of that ambition in every line. I should be the last to deny
+that it also bore evidence of the fact that its writer had no more
+notion of dramatic or theatrical construction than the authors of
+'Tamburlaine the Great,' 'King Henry VI.,' and 'Sir Thomas Wyatt.' Not
+much more, you may possibly say, was discernible in 'Chastelard': a play
+also conceived and partly written by a youngster not yet emancipated
+from servitude to college rule. I fear that in the former volume there
+had been little if any promise of power to grapple with the realities
+and subtleties of character and of motive: that whatever may be in it of
+promise or of merit must be sought in the language and the style of such
+better passages as may perhaps be found in single and separable speeches
+of Catherine and of Rosamond. But in 'Chastelard' there are two figures
+and a sketch in which I certainly seem to see something of real and
+evident life. The sketch of Darnley was afterwards filled out and
+finished in the subsequent tragedy of 'Bothwell.' That ambitious,
+conscientious, and comprehensive piece of work is of course less
+properly definable as a tragedy than by the old Shakespearean term of a
+chronicle history. The radical difference between tragic history and
+tragedy of either the classic or the romantic order, and consequently
+between the laws which govern the one and the principles which guide the
+other, you have yourself made clear and familiar to all capable
+students. This play of mine was not, I think, inaccurately defined as an
+epic drama in the French verses of dedication which were acknowledged by
+the greatest of all French poets in a letter from which I dare only
+quote one line of Olympian judgment and godlike generosity. 'Occuper ces
+deux cimes, cela n'est donne qu'a vous.' Nor will I refrain from the
+confession that I cannot think it an epic or a play in which any one
+part is sacrificed to any other, any subordinate figure mishandled or
+neglected or distorted or effaced for the sake of the predominant and
+central person. And, though this has nothing or less than nothing to do
+with any question of poetic merit or demerit, of dramatic success or
+unsuccess, I will add that I took as much care and pains as though I had
+been writing or compiling a history of the period to do loyal justice to
+all the historic figures which came within the scope of my dramatic or
+poetic design. There is not one which I have designedly altered or
+intentionally modified: it is of course for others to decide whether
+there is one which is not the living likeness of an actual or imaginable
+man.
+
+The third part of this trilogy, as far as I know or remember, found
+favour only with the only man in England who could speak on the subject
+of historic drama with the authority of an expert and a master. The
+generally ungracious reception of 'Mary Stuart' gave me neither surprise
+nor disappointment: the cordial approbation or rather the generous
+applause of Sir Henry Taylor gave me all and more than all the
+satisfaction I could ever have looked for in recompense of as much
+painstaking and conscientious though interesting and enjoyable work as
+can ever, I should imagine, have been devoted to the completion of any
+comparable design. Private and personal appreciation I have always
+thought and often found more valuable and delightful than all possible
+or imaginable clamour of public praise. This preference will perhaps be
+supposed to influence my opinion if I avow that I think I have never
+written anything worthier of such reward than the closing tragedy which
+may or may not have deserved but which certainly received it.
+
+My first attempt to do something original in English which might in some
+degree reproduce for English readers the likeness of a Greek tragedy,
+with possibly something more of its true poetic life and charm than
+could have been expected from the authors of 'Caractacus' and 'Merope,'
+was perhaps too exuberant and effusive in its dialogue, as it certainly
+was too irregular in the occasional license of its choral verse, to
+accomplish the design or achieve the success which its author should
+have aimed at. It may or may not be too long as a poem: it is, I fear,
+too long for a poem of the kind to which it belongs or aims at
+belonging. Poetical and mathematical truth are so different that I
+doubt, however unwilling I may naturally be to doubt, whether it can
+truthfully be said of 'Atalanta in Calydon' that the whole is greater
+than any part of it. I hope it may be, and I can honestly say no more.
+Of 'Erechtheus' I venture to believe with somewhat more confidence that
+it can. Either poem, by the natural necessity of its kind and structure,
+has its crowning passage or passages which cannot, however much they may
+lose by detachment from their context, lose as much as the crowning
+scene or scenes of an English or Shakespearean play, as opposed to an
+AEschylean or Sophoclean tragedy, must lose and ought to lose by a
+similar separation. The two best things in these two Greek plays, the
+antiphonal lamentation for the dying Meleager and the choral
+presentation of stormy battle between the forces of land and sea, lose
+less by such division from the main body of the poem than would those
+scenes in 'Bothwell' which deal with the turning-point in the life of
+Mary Stuart on the central and conclusive day of Carberry Hill.
+
+It might be thought pedantic or pretentious in a modern poet to divide
+his poems after the old Roman fashion into sections and classes; I must
+confess that I should like to see this method applied, were it but by
+way of experiment in a single edition, to the work of the leading poets
+of our own country and century: to see, for instance, their lyrical and
+elegiac works ranged and registered apart, each kind in a class of its
+own, such as is usually reserved, I know not why, for sonnets only. The
+apparent formality of such an arrangement as would give us, for
+instance, the odes of Coleridge and Shelley collected into a distinct
+reservation or division might possibly be more than compensated to the
+more capable among students by the gain in ethical or spiritual symmetry
+and aesthetic or intellectual harmony. The ode or hymn--I need remind no
+probable reader that the terms are synonymous in the speech of
+Pindar--asserts its primacy or pre-eminence over other forms of poetry
+in the very name which defines or proclaims it as essentially the song;
+as something above all less pure and absolute kinds of song by the very
+nature and law of its being. The Greek form, with its regular
+arrangement of turn, return, and aftersong, is not to be imitated
+because it is Greek, but to be adopted because it is best: the very
+best, as a rule, that could be imagined for lyrical expression of the
+thing conceived or lyrical aspiration towards the aim imagined. The
+rhythmic reason of its rigid but not arbitrary law lies simply and
+solely in the charm of its regular variations. This can be given in
+English as clearly and fully, if not so sweetly and subtly, as in Greek;
+and should, therefore, be expected and required in an English poem of
+the same nature and proportion. The Sapphic or Alcaic ode, a simple
+sequence of identical stanzas, could be imitated or revived in Latin by
+translators or disciples: the scheme of it is exquisitely adequate and
+sufficient for comparatively short flights of passion or emotion, ardent
+or contemplative and personal or patriotic; but what can be done in
+English could not be attempted in Latin. It seems strange to me, our
+language being what it is, that our literature should be no richer than
+it is in examples of the higher or at least the more capacious and
+ambitious kind of ode. Not that the full Pindaric form of threefold or
+triune structure need be or should be always adopted: but without an
+accurately corresponsive or antiphonal scheme of music even the master
+of masters, who is Coleridge, could not produce, even through the superb
+and enchanting melodies of such a poem as his 'Dejection,' a fit and
+complete companion, a full and perfect rival, to such a poem as his ode
+on France.
+
+The title of ode may more properly and fairly be so extended as to cover
+all lyrical poems in stanzas or couplets than so strained as to include
+a lawless lyric of such irregular and uneven build as Coleridge only and
+hardly could make acceptable or admissible among more natural and lawful
+forms of poetry. Law, not lawlessness, is the natural condition of
+poetic life; but the law must itself be poetic and not pedantic, natural
+and not conventional. It would be a trivial precision or restriction
+which would refuse the title of ode to the stanzas of Milton or the
+heptameters of Aristophanes; that glorious form of lyric verse which a
+critic of our own day, as you may not impossibly remember, has likened
+with such magnificent felicity of comparison to the gallop of the horses
+of the sun. Nor, I presume, should this title be denied to a poem
+written in the more modest metre--more modest as being shorter by a
+foot--which was chosen for those twin poems of antiphonal correspondence
+in subject and in sound, the 'Hymn to Proserpine' and the 'Hymn of Man':
+the deathsong of spiritual decadence and the birthsong of spiritual
+renascence. Perhaps, too, my first stanzas addressed to Victor Hugo may
+be ranked as no less of an ode than that on the insurrection in Candia:
+a poem which attracted, whether or not it may have deserved, the notice
+and commendation of Mazzini: from whom I received, on the occasion of
+its appearance, a letter which was the beginning of my personal
+intercourse with the man whom I had always revered above all other men
+on earth. But for this happy accident I might not feel disposed to set
+much store by my first attempt at a regular ode of orthodox or
+legitimate construction; I doubt whether it quite succeeded in evading
+the criminal risk and the capital offence of formality; at least until
+the change of note in the closing epode gave fuller scope and freer play
+of wing to the musical expression. But in my later ode on Athens,
+absolutely faithful as it is in form to the strictest type and the most
+stringent law of Pindaric hymnology, I venture to believe that there is
+no more sign of this infirmity than in the less classically regulated
+poem on the Armada; which, though built on a new scheme, is nevertheless
+in its way, I think, a legitimate ode, by right of its regularity in
+general arrangement of corresponsive divisions. By the test of these two
+poems I am content that my claims should be decided and my station
+determined as a lyric poet in the higher sense of the term; a craftsman
+in the most ambitious line of his art that ever aroused or ever can
+arouse the emulous aspiration of his kind.
+
+Even had I ever felt the same impulse to attempt and the same ambition
+to achieve the enterprise of epic or narrative that I had always felt
+with regard to lyric or dramatic work, I could never have proposed to
+myself the lowly and unambitious aim of competition with the work of so
+notable a contemporary workman in the humbler branch of that line as
+William Morris. No conception could have been further from my mind when
+I undertook to rehandle the deathless legend of Tristram than that of so
+modest and preposterous a trial of rivalry. My aim was simply to present
+that story, not diluted and debased as it had been in our own time by
+other hands, but undefaced by improvement and undeformed by
+transformation, as it was known to the age of Dante wherever the
+chronicles of romance found hearing, from Ercildoune to Florence: and
+not in the epic or romantic form of sustained or continuous narrative,
+but mainly through a succession of dramatic scenes or pictures with
+descriptive settings or backgrounds: the scenes being of the simplest
+construction, duologue or monologue, without so much as the classically
+permissible intervention of a third or fourth person. It is only in our
+native northern form of narrative poetry, on the old and unrivalled
+model of the English ballad, that I can claim to have done any work of
+the kind worth reference: unless the story of Balen should be considered
+as something other than a series or sequence of ballads. A more
+plausible objection was brought to bear against 'Tristram of Lyonesse'
+than that of failure in an enterprise which I never thought of
+undertaking: the objection of an irreconcilable incongruity between the
+incidents of the old legend and the meditations on man and nature, life
+and death, chance and destiny, assigned to a typical hero of chivalrous
+romance. And this objection might be unanswerable if the slightest
+attempt had been made to treat the legend as in any possible sense
+historical or capable of either rational or ideal association with
+history, such as would assimilate the name and fame of Arthur to the
+name and fame of any actual and indisputable Alfred or Albert of the
+future. But the age when these romances actually lived and flourished
+side by side with the reviving legends of Thebes and Troy, not in the
+crude and bloodless forms of Celtic and archaic fancy but in the ampler
+and manlier developments of Teutonic and mediaeval imagination, was the
+age of Dante and of Chaucer: an age in which men were only too prone to
+waste their time on the twin sciences of astrology and theology, to
+expend their energies in the jungle of pseudosophy or the morass of
+metaphysics. There is surely nothing more incongruous or anachronic in
+the soliloquy of Tristram after his separation from Iseult than in the
+lecture of Theseus after the obsequies of Arcite. Both heroes belong to
+the same impossible age of an imaginary world: and each has an equal
+right, should it so please his chronicler, to reason in the pauses of
+action and philosophise in the intervals of adventure. After all, the
+active men of the actual age of chivalry were not all of them mere
+muscular machines for martial or pacific exercise of their physical
+functions or abilities.
+
+You would agree, if the point were worth discussion, that it might
+savour somewhat of pretention, if not of affectation, to be over
+particular in arrangement of poems according to subject rather than
+form, spirit rather than method, or motive rather than execution: and
+yet there might be some excuse for the fancy or the pedantry of such a
+classification as should set apart, for example, poems inspired by the
+influence of places, whether seen but once or familiar for years or
+associated with the earliest memories within cognisance or record of the
+mind, and poems inspired by the emotions of regard or regret for the
+living or the dead; above all, by the rare and profound passion of
+reverence and love and faith which labours and rejoices to find
+utterance in some tributary sacrifice of song. Mere descriptive poetry
+of the prepense and formal kind is exceptionally if not proverbially
+liable to incur and to deserve the charge of dullness: it is unnecessary
+to emphasise or obtrude the personal note, the presence or the emotion
+of a spectator, but it is necessary to make it felt and keep it
+perceptible if the poem is to have life in it or even a right to live:
+felt as in Wordsworth's work it is always, perceptible as it is always
+in Shelley's. This note is more plain and positive than usual in the
+poem which attempts--at once a simple and an ambitious attempt--to
+render the contrast and the concord of night and day on Loch Torridon:
+it is, I think, duly sensible though implicitly subdued in four poems of
+the West Undercliff, born or begotten of sunset in the bay and moonlight
+on the cliffs, noon or morning in a living and shining garden, afternoon
+or twilight on one left flowerless and forsaken. Not to you or any other
+poet, nor indeed to the very humblest and simplest lover of poetry, will
+it seem incongruous or strange, suggestive of imperfect sympathy with
+life or deficient inspiration from nature, that the very words of Sappho
+should be heard and recognised in the notes of the nightingales, the
+glory of the presence of dead poets imagined in the presence of the
+glory of the sky, the lustre of their advent and their passage felt
+visible as in vision on the live and limpid floorwork of the cloudless
+and sunset-coloured sea. The half-brained creature to whom books are
+other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with
+the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life:
+those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that
+books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters
+or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the
+spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it
+possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, AEschylus and Sappho, do not for us live only on the dusty
+shelves of libraries.
+
+It is hardly probable that especial and familiar love of places should
+give any special value to verses written under the influence of their
+charm: no intimacy of years and no association with the past gave any
+colour of emotion to many other studies of English land and sea which
+certainly are no less faithful and possibly have no less spiritual or
+poetic life in them than the four to which I have just referred, whose
+localities lie all within the boundary of a mile or so. No contrast
+could be stronger than that between the majestic and exquisite glory of
+cliff and crag, lawn and woodland, garden and lea, to which I have done
+homage though assuredly I have not done justice in these four poems--'In
+the Bay,' 'On the Cliffs,' 'A Forsaken Garden,' the dedication of 'The
+Sisters'--and the dreary beauty, inhuman if not unearthly in its
+desolation, of the innumerable creeks and inlets, lined and paven with
+sea-flowers, which make of the salt marshes a fit and funereal setting,
+a fatal and appropriate foreground, for the supreme desolation of the
+relics of Dunwich; the beautiful and awful solitude of a wilderness on
+which the sea has forbidden man to build or live, overtopped and bounded
+by the tragic and ghastly solitude of a headland on which the sea has
+forbidden the works of human charity and piety to survive: between the
+dense and sand-encumbered tides which are eating the desecrated wreck
+and ruin of them all away, and the matchless magic, the ineffable
+fascination of the sea whose beauties and delights, whose translucent
+depths of water and divers-coloured banks of submarine foliage and
+flowerage, but faintly reflected in the stanzas of the little ode 'Off
+Shore,' complete the charm of the scenes as faintly sketched or shadowed
+forth in the poems just named, or the sterner and stranger magic of the
+seaboard to which tribute was paid in 'An Autumn Vision,' 'A Swimmer's
+Dream,' 'On the South Coast,' 'Neap-tide': or, again, between the
+sterile stretches and sad limitless outlook of the shore which faces a
+hitherto undetermined and interminable sea, and the joyful and fateful
+beauty of the seas off Bamborough and the seas about Sark and Guernsey.
+But if there is enough of the human or personal note to bring into touch
+the various poems which deal with these various impressions, there may
+perhaps be no less of it discernible in such as try to render the effect
+of inland or woodland solitude--the splendid oppression of nature at
+noon which found utterance of old in words of such singular and
+everlasting significance as panic and nympholepsy.
+
+The retrospect across many years over the many eulogistic and elegiac
+poems which I have inscribed or devoted to the commemoration or the
+panegyric of the living or the dead has this in it of pride and
+pleasure, that I find little to recant and nothing to repent on
+reconsideration of them all. If ever a word of tributary thanksgiving
+for the delight and the benefit of loyal admiration evoked in the spirit
+of a boy or aroused in the intelligence of a man may seem to exceed the
+limit of demonstrable accuracy, I have no apology to offer for any such
+aberration from the safe path of tepid praise or conventional applause.
+I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships:
+I might add if I cared, as he if he had cared might have added, that I
+have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends; and this,
+though by comparison a matter of ineffable insignificance, can hardly be
+to any rational and right-minded man a matter of positive indifference.
+Rather should it be always a subject for thankfulness and
+self-congratulation if a man can honestly and reasonably feel assured
+that his friends and foes alike have been always and at almost all
+points the very men he would have chosen, had choice and foresight been
+allowed him, at the very outset of his career in life. I should never,
+when a boy, have dared to dream that as a man I might possibly be
+admitted to the personal acquaintance of the three living gods, I do not
+say of my idolatry, for idolatry is a term inapplicable where the gods
+are real and true, but of my whole-souled and single-hearted worship:
+and yet, when writing of Landor, of Mazzini, and of Hugo, I write of men
+who have honoured me with the assurance and the evidence of their
+cordial and affectionate regard. However inadequate and unworthy may be
+my tribute to their glory when living and their memory when dead, it is
+that of one whose gratitude and devotion found unforgettable favour in
+their sight. And I must be allowed to add that the redeeming quality of
+entire and absolute sincerity may be claimed on behalf of every line I
+have written in honour of friends, acquaintances, or strangers. My
+tribute to Richard Burton was not more genuine in its expression than my
+tribute to Christina Rossetti. Two noble human creatures more utterly
+unlike each other it would be unspeakably impossible to conceive; but it
+was as simply natural for one who honoured them both to do honest
+homage, before and after they had left us, to the saintly and secluded
+poetess as to the adventurous and unsaintly hero. Wherever anything is
+worthy of honour and thanksgiving it is or it always should be as
+natural if not as delightful to give thanks and do honour to a stranger
+as to a friend, to a benefactor long since dead as to a benefactor still
+alive. To the kindred spirits of Philip Sidney and Aurelio Saffi it was
+almost as equal a pleasure to offer what tribute I could bring as if
+Sidney also could have honoured me with his personal friendship. To
+Tennyson and Browning it was no less fit that I should give honour than
+that I should do homage to the memory of Bruno, the martyred friend of
+Sidney. And I can hardly remember any task that I ever took more delight
+in discharging than I felt in the inadequate and partial payment of a
+lifelong debt to the marvellous and matchless succession of poets who
+made the glory of our country incomparable for ever by the work they did
+between the joyful date of the rout of the Armada and the woful date of
+the outbreak of civil war.
+
+Charles Lamb, as I need not remind you, wrote for antiquity: nor need
+you be assured that when I write plays it is with a view to their being
+acted at the Globe, the Red Bull, or the Black Friars. And whatever may
+be the dramatic or other defects of 'Marino Faliero' or 'Locrine,' they
+do certainly bear the same relation to previous plays or attempts at
+plays on the same subjects as 'King Henry V.' to 'The Famous
+Victories'--if not as 'King Lear,' a poem beyond comparison with all
+other works of man except possibly 'Prometheus' and 'Othello,' to the
+primitive and infantile scrawl or drivel of 'King Leir and his three
+daughters.' The fifth act of 'Marino Faliero,' hopelessly impossible as
+it is from the point of view of modern stagecraft, could hardly have
+been found too untheatrical, too utterly given over to talk without
+action, by the audiences which endured and applauded the magnificent
+monotony of Chapman's eloquence--the fervent and inexhaustible
+declamation which was offered and accepted as a substitute for study of
+character and interest of action when his two finest plays, if plays
+they can be called, found favour with an incredibly intelligent and an
+inconceivably tolerant audience. The metrical or executive experiment
+attempted and carried through in 'Locrine' would have been improper to
+any but a purely and wholly romantic play or poem: I do not think that
+the life of human character or the lifelikeness of dramatic dialogue has
+suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the
+exigence of metre. The tragedy of 'The Sisters,' however defective it
+may be in theatrical interest or progressive action, is the only modern
+English play I know in which realism in the reproduction of natural
+dialogue and accuracy in the representation of natural intercourse
+between men and women of gentle birth and breeding have been found or
+made compatible with expression in genuine if simple blank verse. It is
+not for me to decide whether anything in the figures which play their
+parts on my imaginary though realistic stage may be worthy of sympathy,
+attention, or interest: but I think they talk and act as they would have
+done in life without ever lapsing into platitude or breaking out of
+nature.
+
+In 'Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards,' I took up a subject long since
+mishandled by an English dramatist of all but the highest rank, and one
+which in later days Alfieri had commemorated in a magnificent passage of
+a wholly unhistoric and somewhat unsatisfactory play. The comparatively
+slight deviation from historic records in the final catastrophe or
+consummation of mine is not, I think, to say the least, injurious to the
+tragic effect or the moral interest of the story.
+
+A writer conscious of any natural command over the musical resources of
+his language can hardly fail to take such pleasure in the enjoyment of
+this gift or instinct as the greatest writer and the greatest versifier
+of our age must have felt at its highest possible degree when composing
+a musical exercise of such incomparable scope and fullness as 'Les
+Djinns.' But if he be a poet after the order of Hugo or Coleridge or
+Shelley, the result will be something very much more than a musical
+exercise; though indeed, except to such ears as should always be kept
+closed against poetry, there is no music in verse which has not in it
+sufficient fullness and ripeness of meaning, sufficient adequacy of
+emotion or of thought, to abide the analysis of any other than the
+purblind scrutiny of prepossession or the squint-eyed inspection of
+malignity. There may perhaps be somewhat more depth and variety of
+feeling or reflection condensed into the narrow frame of the poems which
+compose 'A Century of Roundels' than would be needed to fulfil the epic
+vacuity of a Choerilus or a Coluthus. And the form chosen for my only
+narrative poem was chosen as a test of the truth of my conviction that
+such work could be done better on the straitest and the strictest
+principles of verse than on the looser and more slippery lines of
+mediaeval or modern improvisation. The impulsive and irregular verse
+which had been held sufficient for the stanza selected or accepted by
+Thornton and by Tennyson seemed capable of improvement and invigoration
+as a vehicle or a medium for poetic narrative. And I think it has not
+been found unfit to give something of dignity as well as facility to a
+narrative which recasts in modern English verse one of the noblest and
+loveliest old English legends. There is no episode in the cycle of
+Arthurian romance more genuinely Homeric in its sublime simplicity and
+its pathetic sublimity of submission to the masterdom of fate than that
+which I have rather reproduced than recast in 'The Tale of Balen': and
+impossible as it is to render the text or express the spirit of the
+Iliad in English prose or rhyme--above all, in English blank verse--it
+is possible, in such a metre as was chosen and refashioned for this
+poem, to give some sense of the rage and rapture of battle for which
+Homer himself could only find fit and full expression by similitudes
+drawn like mine from the revels and the terrors and the glories of the
+sea.
+
+It is nothing to me that what I write should find immediate or general
+acceptance: it is much to know that on the whole it has won for me the
+right to address this dedication and inscribe this edition to you.
+
+                                         ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FRIEND
+
+EDWARD BURNE JONES
+
+THESE POEMS
+
+ARE AFFECTIONATELY AND ADMIRINGLY
+
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS
+
+
+                                            PAGE
+    A BALLAD OF LIFE                           1
+    A BALLAD OF DEATH                          4
+    LAUS VENERIS                              11
+    PHAEDRA                                    27
+    THE TRIUMPH OF TIME                       34
+    LES NOYADES                               48
+    A LEAVE-TAKING                            52
+    ITYLUS                                    54
+    ANACTORIA                                 57
+    HYMN TO PROSERPINE                        67
+    ILICET                                    74
+    HERMAPHRODITUS                            79
+    FRAGOLETTA                                82
+    RONDEL                                    85
+    SATIA TE SANGUINE                         87
+    A LITANY                                  89
+    A LAMENTATION                             95
+    ANIMA ANCEPS                             100
+    IN THE ORCHARD                           102
+    A MATCH                                  104
+    FAUSTINE                                 106
+    A CAMEO                                  113
+    SONG BEFORE DEATH                        114
+    ROCOCO                                   115
+    STAGE LOVE                               118
+    THE LEPER                                119
+    A BALLAD OF BURDENS                      125
+    RONDEL                                   128
+    BEFORE THE MIRROR                        129
+    EROTION                                  132
+    IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR        134
+    A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER. 1852            137
+    A SONG IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. 1860.      140
+    TO VICTOR HUGO                           144
+    BEFORE DAWN                              151
+    DOLORES                                  154
+    THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE                 169
+    HESPERIA                                 173
+    LOVE AT SEA                              179
+    APRIL                                    181
+    BEFORE PARTING                           184
+    THE SUNDEW                               186
+    FELISE                                   188
+    AN INTERLUDE                             199
+    HENDECASYLLABICS                         202
+    SAPPHICS                                 204
+    AT ELEUSIS                               208
+    AUGUST                                   215
+    A CHRISTMAS CAROL                        218
+    THE MASQUE OF QUEEN BERSABE              221
+    ST. DOROTHY                              237
+    THE TWO DREAMS                           252
+    AHOLIBAH                                 266
+    LOVE AND SLEEP                           272
+    MADONNA MIA                              273
+    THE KING'S DAUGHTER                      276
+    AFTER DEATH                              279
+    MAY JANET                                282
+    THE BLOODY SON                           284
+    THE SEA-SWALLOWS                         288
+    THE YEAR OF LOVE                         291
+    DEDICATION, 1865                         293
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF LIFE
+
+
+  I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
+    Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
+    In midst whereof there was
+  A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
+  Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,
+    Made my blood burn and swoon
+      Like a flame rained upon.
+  Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue,
+  And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through
+      Seemed sad with glad things gone.
+
+  She held a little cithern by the strings,
+    Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair
+    Of some dead lute-player
+  That in dead years had done delicious things.
+  The seven strings were named accordingly;
+    The first string charity,
+      The second tenderness,
+  The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,
+  And loving-kindness, that is pity's kin
+      And is most pitiless.
+
+  There were three men with her, each garmented
+    With gold and shod with gold upon the feet;
+    And with plucked ears of wheat
+  The first man's hair was wound upon his head:
+  His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad;
+    All his gold garment had
+      Pale stains of dust and rust.
+  A riven hood was pulled across his eyes;
+  The token of him being upon this wise
+      Made for a sign of Lust.
+
+  The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face
+    Coloured like green wood when flame kindles it.
+    He hath such feeble feet
+  They may not well endure in any place.
+  His face was full of grey old miseries,
+    And all his blood's increase
+      Was even increase of pain.
+  The last was Fear, that is akin to Death;
+  He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith
+      Fear answers him again.
+
+  My soul said in me; This is marvellous,
+    Seeing the air's face is not so delicate
+    Nor the sun's grace so great,
+  If sin and she be kin or amorous.
+  And seeing where maidens served her on their knees,
+    I bade one crave of these
+      To know the cause thereof.
+  Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead.
+  And Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted.
+      And Lust said: I am Love.
+
+  Thereat her hands began a lute-playing
+    And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue;
+    And all the while she sung
+  There was no sound but long tears following
+  Long tears upon men's faces, waxen white
+    With extreme sad delight.
+      But those three following men
+  Became as men raised up among the dead;
+  Great glad mouths open and fair cheeks made red
+      With child's blood come again.
+
+  Then I said: Now assuredly I see
+    My lady is perfect, and transfigureth
+    All sin and sorrow and death,
+  Making them fair as her own eyelids be,
+  Or lips wherein my whole soul's life abides;
+    Or as her sweet white sides
+      And bosom carved to kiss.
+  Now therefore, if her pity further me,
+  Doubtless for her sake all my days shall be
+      As righteous as she is.
+
+  Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms,
+    Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat
+  Where the least thornprick harms;
+    And girdled in thy golden singing-coat,
+  Come thou before my lady and say this;
+    Borgia, thy gold hair's colour burns in me,
+      Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes;
+    Therefore so many as these roses be,
+      Kiss me so many times.
+  Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is,
+    That she will stoop herself none otherwise
+      Than a blown vine-branch doth,
+    And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes,
+      Ballad, and on thy mouth.
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF DEATH
+
+
+  Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
+  Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
+  Upon the sides of mirth,
+  Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
+  Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
+  Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
+  Upon the flesh to cleave,
+  Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
+  And many sorrows after each his wise
+  For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.
+
+  O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
+  Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
+  O Love and Time and Sin,
+  Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
+  Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;
+  O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
+  Came softer with her praise;
+  Abide a little for our lady's love.
+  The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,
+  And more than peace the passage of her days.
+
+  O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.
+  O Time, thou shalt not find in any land
+  Till, cast out of thine hand,
+  The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,
+  Another woman fashioned like as this.
+  O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her
+  Was made a goodly thing;
+  Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
+  With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
+  Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.
+
+  By night there stood over against my bed
+  Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
+  Both sides drawn fully back
+  From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,
+  And temples drained of purple and full of death.
+  Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water
+  And the sea's gold in it.
+  Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.
+  Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,
+  And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.
+
+  Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline
+  Were painted all the secret ways of love
+  And covered things thereof,
+  That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;
+  Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,
+  And brides that kept within the bride-chamber
+  Their garment of soft shame,
+  And weeping faces of the wearied loves
+  That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,
+  With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.
+
+  The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
+  Made mine own bitter where they ran between
+  As blood had fallen therein,
+  She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
+  If any glad thing be or any good
+  Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
+  Even she to whom all praise
+  Was as one flower in a great multitude,
+  One glorious flower of many and glorious,
+  One day found gracious among many days:
+
+  Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom
+  At kissing times across her stateliest bed
+  Kings bowed themselves and shed
+  Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,
+  And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;
+  Even she between whose lips the kiss became
+  As fire and frankincense;
+  Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
+  Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
+  Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.
+
+  Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
+  My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
+  Sweet still, but now not red,
+  Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
+  And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
+  The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
+  And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
+  The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
+  And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
+  The body that was clothed with love of old.
+
+  Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
+  And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
+  Ah! that my tears ran down
+  Even to the place where many kisses were,
+  Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
+  Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
+  Ah! the flowers cleave apart
+  And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
+  Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
+  Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.
+
+  Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
+  Each part about her was a righteous thing;
+  Her mouth an almsgiving,
+  The glory of her garments charity,
+  The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
+  In the good days when God kept sight of us;
+  Love lay upon her eyes,
+  And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
+  And all her body was more virtuous
+  Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.
+
+  Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
+  And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
+  Rain-rotten in rank lands,
+  Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
+  And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
+  And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
+  Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
+  And say "My master that was thrall to Love
+  Is become thrall to Death."
+  Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan,
+  But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
+  For haply it may be
+  That when thy feet return at evening
+  Death shall come in with thee.
+
+
+
+
+LAUS VENERIS
+
+
+Lors dit en plourant; Helas trop malheureux homme et mauldict pescheur,
+oncques ne verrai-je clemence et misericorde de Dieu. Ores m'en irai-je
+d'icy et me cacherai dedans le mont Horsel, en requerant de faveur et
+d'amoureuse merci ma doulce dame Venus, car pour son amour serai-je bien
+a tout jamais damne en enfer. Voicy la fin de tous mes faicts d'armes et
+de toutes mes belles chansons. Helas, trop belle estoyt la face de ma
+dame et ses yeulx, et en mauvais jour je vis ces chouses-la. Lors s'en
+alla tout en gemissant et se retourna chez elle, et la vescut tristement
+en grand amour pres de sa dame. Puis apres advint que le pape vit un
+jour esclater sur son baston force belles fleurs rouges et blanches et
+maints boutons de feuilles, et ainsi vit-il reverdir toute l'escorce. Ce
+dont il eut grande crainte et moult s'en esmut, et grande pitie lui prit
+de ce chevalier qui s'en estoyt departi sans espoir comme un homme
+miserable et damne. Doncques envoya force messaigers devers luy pour le
+ramener, disant qu'il aurait de Dieu grace et bonne absolution de son
+grand pesche d'amour. Mais oncques plus ne le virent; car toujours
+demeura ce pauvre chevalier aupres de Venus la haulte et forte deesse es
+flancs de la montagne amoureuse.
+
+                 _Livre des grandes merveilles d'amour, escript en latin
+                      et en francoys par Maistre Antoine Gaget._ 1530.
+
+
+LAUS VENERIS
+
+
+  Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,
+  Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck
+    Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
+  Soft, and stung softly--fairer for a fleck.
+
+  But though my lips shut sucking on the place,
+  There is no vein at work upon her face;
+    Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt
+  Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.
+
+  Lo, this is she that was the world's delight;
+  The old grey years were parcels of her might;
+    The strewings of the ways wherein she trod
+  Were the twain seasons of the day and night.
+
+  Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed
+  All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,
+    Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God,
+  The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.
+
+  Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.
+  But lo her wonderfully woven hair!
+    And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss;
+  But see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.
+
+  She is right fair; what hath she done to thee?
+  Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;
+    Had now thy mother such a lip--like this?
+  Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.
+
+  Inside the Horsel here the air is hot;
+  Right little peace one hath for it, God wot;
+    The scented dusty daylight burns the air,
+  And my heart chokes me till I hear it not.
+
+  Behold, my Venus, my soul's body, lies
+  With my love laid upon her garment-wise,
+    Feeling my love in all her limbs and hair
+  And shed between her eyelids through her eyes.
+
+  She holds my heart in her sweet open hands
+  Hanging asleep; hard by her head there stands,
+    Crowned with gilt thorns and clothed with flesh like fire,
+  Love, wan as foam blown up the salt burnt sands--
+
+  Hot as the brackish waifs of yellow spume
+  That shift and steam--loose clots of arid fume
+    From the sea's panting mouth of dry desire;
+  There stands he, like one labouring at a loom.
+
+  The warp holds fast across; and every thread
+  That makes the woof up has dry specks of red;
+    Always the shuttle cleaves clean through, and he
+  Weaves with the hair of many a ruined head.
+
+  Love is not glad nor sorry, as I deem;
+  Labouring he dreams, and labours in the dream,
+    Till when the spool is finished, lo I see
+  His web, reeled off, curls and goes out like steam.
+
+  Night falls like fire; the heavy lights run low,
+  And as they drop, my blood and body so
+    Shake as the flame shakes, full of days and hours
+  That sleep not neither weep they as they go.
+
+  Ah yet would God this flesh of mine might be
+  Where air might wash and long leaves cover me,
+    Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
+  Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.
+
+  Ah yet would God that stems and roots were bred
+  Out of my weary body and my head,
+    That sleep were sealed upon me with a seal,
+  And I were as the least of all his dead.
+
+  Would God my blood were dew to feed the grass,
+  Mine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass,
+    My body broken as a turning wheel,
+  And my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas!
+
+  Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame,
+  That life were as the naming of a name,
+    That death were not more pitiful than desire,
+  That these things were not one thing and the same!
+
+  Behold now, surely somewhere there is death:
+  For each man hath some space of years, he saith,
+    A little space of time ere time expire,
+  A little day, a little way of breath.
+
+  And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,
+  His day's work and his night's work are undone;
+    And lo, between the nightfall and the light,
+  He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.
+
+  Ah God, that I were as all souls that be,
+  As any herb or leaf of any tree,
+    As men that toil through hours of labouring night,
+  As bones of men under the deep sharp sea.
+
+  Outside it must be winter among men;
+  For at the gold bars of the gates again
+    I heard all night and all the hours of it
+  The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain.
+
+  Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know
+  The ways and woods are strangled with the snow;
+    And with short song the maidens spin and sit
+  Until Christ's birthnight, lily-like, arow.
+
+  The scent and shadow shed about me make
+  The very soul in all my senses ache;
+    The hot hard night is fed upon my breath,
+  And sleep beholds me from afar awake.
+
+  Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep,
+  Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep,
+    Or in strange places somewhere there is death,
+  And on death's face the scattered hair of sleep.
+
+  There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet
+  They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat;
+    But me the hot and hungry days devour,
+  And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet.
+
+  No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire,
+  For her love's sake whose lips through mine respire;
+    Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower,
+  Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire.
+
+  So lie we, not as sleep that lies by death,
+  With heavy kisses and with happy breath;
+    Not as man lies by woman, when the bride
+  Laughs low for love's sake and the words he saith.
+
+  For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies
+  And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs,
+    To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied,
+  And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes.
+
+  Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were
+  Slain in the old time, having found her fair;
+    Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes,
+  Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair.
+
+  Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain:
+  She casts them forth and gathers them again;
+    With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies
+  Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.
+
+  Her little chambers drip with flower-like red,
+  Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head,
+    Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet
+  She tramples all that winepress of the dead.
+
+  Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires,
+  With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires;
+    Between her lips the steam of them is sweet,
+  The languor in her ears of many lyres.
+
+  Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound,
+  Her doors are made with music, and barred round
+    With sighing and with laughter and with tears,
+  With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound.
+
+  There is the knight Adonis that was slain;
+  With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain;
+    The body and the spirit in her ears
+  Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein.
+
+  Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me;
+  Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee
+    Till the ending of the days and ways of earth,
+  The shaking of the sources of the sea.
+
+  Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell;
+  Me, satiated with things insatiable;
+    Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,
+  Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.
+
+  Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth's sweet sake
+  My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake
+    As water, as the flesh of men that weep,
+  As their heart's vein whose heart goes nigh to break.
+
+  Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips
+  Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips;
+    Ah God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep
+  And wring their juice upon me as it drips.
+
+  There is no change of cheer for many days,
+  But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways
+    Rung by the running fingers of the wind;
+  And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways.
+
+  Day smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night,
+  And on mine eyes the dark sits as the light;
+    Yea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned,
+  If heaven be clean or unclean in thy sight.
+
+  Yea, as if earth were sprinkled over me,
+  Such chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea,
+    Each pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof
+  Gasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily,
+
+  There is a feverish famine in my veins;
+  Below her bosom, where a crushed grape stains
+    The white and blue, there my lips caught and clove
+  An hour since, and what mark of me remains?
+
+  I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss
+  Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,
+    Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;
+  Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.
+
+  Sin, is it sin whereby men's souls are thrust
+  Into the pit? yet had I a good trust
+    To save my soul before it slipped therein,
+  Trod under by the fire-shod feet of lust.
+
+  For if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath,
+  I look between the iron sides of death
+    Into sad hell where all sweet love hath end,
+  All but the pain that never finisheth.
+
+  There are the naked faces of great kings,
+  The singing folk with all their lute-playings;
+    There when one cometh he shall have to friend
+  The grave that covets and the worm that clings.
+
+  There sit the knights that were so great of hand,
+  The ladies that were queens of fair green land,
+    Grown grey and black now, brought unto the dust,
+  Soiled, without raiment, clad about with sand.
+
+  There is one end for all of them; they sit
+  Naked and sad, they drink the dregs of it,
+    Trodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust.
+  Trampled and trodden by the fiery feet.
+
+  I see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell
+  Cities and people whom the gods loved well,
+    Yet for her sake on them the fire gat hold,
+  And for their sakes on her the fire of hell.
+
+  And softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is,
+  The queen whose face was worth the world to kiss,
+    Wearing at breast a suckling snake of gold;
+  And large pale lips of strong Semiramis,
+
+  Curled like a tiger's that curl back to feed;
+  Red only where the last kiss made them bleed;
+    Her hair most thick with many a carven gem,
+  Deep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed.
+
+  Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine;
+  But in all these there was no sin like mine;
+    No, not in all the strange great sins of them
+  That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine.
+
+  For I was of Christ's choosing, I God's knight,
+  No blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light;
+    I can well see, for all the dusty days
+  Gone past, the clean great time of goodly fight.
+
+  I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows,
+  With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows;
+    The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways,
+  Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows
+
+  Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips,
+  Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips
+    Sharp from the beautifully bending head,
+  With all its gracious body lithe as lips
+
+  That curl in touching you; right in this wise
+  My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes,
+    Leaving all colours in them brown and red
+  And flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs,
+
+  The caught-up choked dry laughters following them,
+  When all the fighting face is grown a flame
+    For pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears,
+  And the heart's gladness of the goodly game.
+
+  Let me think yet a little; I do know
+  These things were sweet, but sweet such years ago,
+    Their savour is all turned now into tears;
+  Yea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow,
+
+  The blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine,
+  I felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine
+    Touch my blood too, and sting me with delight
+  Through all this waste and weary body of mine
+
+  That never feels clear air; right gladly then
+  I rode alone, a great way off my men,
+    And heard the chiming bridle smite and smite,
+  And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again,
+
+  Till my song shifted to that iron one;
+  Seeing there rode up between me and the sun
+    Some certain of my foe's men, for his three
+  White wolves across their painted coats did run.
+
+  The first red-bearded, with square cheeks--alack,
+  I made my knave's blood turn his beard to black;
+    The slaying of him was a joy to see:
+  Perchance too, when at night he came not back,
+
+  Some woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief
+  Would beat when he had drunken; yet small grief
+    Hath any for the ridding of such knaves;
+  Yea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief.
+
+  This bitter love is sorrow in all lands,
+  Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,
+    Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves;
+  A sign across the head of the world he stands,
+
+  An one that hath a plague-mark on his brows;
+  Dust and spilt blood do track him to his house
+    Down under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek,
+  Like a sweet snake's breath made more poisonous
+
+  With chewing of some perfumed deadly grass,
+  Are shed all round his passage if he pass,
+    And their quenched savour leaves the whole soul weak,
+  Sick with keen guessing whence the perfume was.
+
+  As one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds
+  Smells the rare scent made where a panther feeds,
+    And tracking ever slotwise the warm smell
+  Is snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds,
+
+  His head far down the hot sweet throat of her--
+  So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier,
+    And lo, one springe and you are fast in hell,
+  Fast as the gin's grip of a wayfarer.
+
+  I think now, as the heavy hours decease
+  One after one, and bitter thoughts increase
+    One upon one, of all sweet finished things;
+  The breaking of the battle; the long peace
+
+  Wherein we sat clothed softly, each man's hair
+  Crowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of vair;
+    The sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings,
+  And noise of singing in the late sweet air.
+
+  I sang of love too, knowing nought thereof;
+  "Sweeter," I said, "the little laugh of love
+    Than tears out of the eyes of Magdalen,
+  Or any fallen feather of the Dove.
+
+  "The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,
+  The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss
+    Of blinded eyelids that expand again--
+  Love draws them open with those lips of his,
+
+  "Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown
+  Of one same fire and colour with their own;
+    Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,
+  Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone."
+
+  I sang these things long since and knew them not;
+  "Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot,
+    This man and that finds favour in his eyes,"
+  I said, "but I, what guerdon have I got?
+
+  "The dust of praise that is blown everywhere
+  In all men's faces with the common air;
+    The bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet
+  Before they wind it in a singer's hair."
+
+  So that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing;
+  I had no hope but of some evil thing,
+    And so rode slowly past the windy wheat
+  And past the vineyard and the water-spring,
+
+  Up to the Horsel. A great elder-tree
+  Held back its heaps of flowers to let me see
+    The ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein,
+  Naked, with hair shed over to the knee.
+
+  She walked between the blossom and the grass;
+  I knew the beauty of her, what she was,
+    The beauty of her body and her sin,
+  And in my flesh the sin of hers, alas!
+
+  Alas! for sorrow is all the end of this.
+  O sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is!
+    O breast whereat some suckling sorrow clings,
+  Red with the bitter blossom of a kiss!
+
+  Ah, with blind lips I felt for you, and found
+  About my neck your hands and hair enwound,
+    The hands that stifle and the hair that stings,
+  I felt them fasten sharply without sound.
+
+  Yea, for my sin I had great store of bliss:
+  Rise up, make answer for me, let thy kiss
+    Seal my lips hard from speaking of my sin,
+  Lest one go mad to hear how sweet it is.
+
+  Yet I waxed faint with fume of barren bowers,
+  And murmuring of the heavy-headed hours;
+    And let the dove's beak fret and peck within
+  My lips in vain, and Love shed fruitless flowers.
+
+  So that God looked upon me when your hands
+  Were hot about me; yea, God brake my bands
+    To save my soul alive, and I came forth
+  Like a man blind and naked in strange lands
+
+  That hears men laugh and weep, and knows not whence
+  Nor wherefore, but is broken in his sense;
+    Howbeit I met folk riding from the north
+  Towards Rome, to purge them of their souls' offence,
+
+  And rode with them, and spake to none; the day
+  Stunned me like lights upon some wizard way,
+    And ate like fire mine eyes and mine eyesight;
+  So rode I, hearing all these chant and pray,
+
+  And marvelled; till before us rose and fell
+  White cursed hills, like outer skirts of hell
+    Seen where men's eyes look through the day to night,
+  Like a jagged shell's lips, harsh, untunable,
+
+  Blown in between by devils' wrangling breath;
+  Nathless we won well past that hell and death,
+    Down to the sweet land where all airs are good,
+  Even unto Rome where God's grace tarrieth.
+
+  Then came each man and worshipped at his knees
+  Who in the Lord God's likeness bears the keys
+    To bind or loose, and called on Christ's shed blood,
+  And so the sweet-souled father gave him ease.
+
+  But when I came I fell down at his feet,
+  Saying, "Father, though the Lord's blood be right sweet,
+    The spot it takes not off the panther's skin,
+  Nor shall an Ethiop's stain be bleached with it.
+
+  "Lo, I have sinned and have spat out at God,
+  Wherefore his hand is heavier and his rod
+    More sharp because of mine exceeding sin,
+  And all his raiment redder than bright blood
+
+  "Before mine eyes; yea, for my sake I wot
+  The heat of hell is waxen seven times hot
+    Through my great sin." Then spake he some sweet word,
+  Giving me cheer; which thing availed me not;
+
+  Yea, scarce I wist if such indeed were said;
+  For when I ceased--lo, as one newly dead
+    Who hears a great cry out of hell, I heard
+  The crying of his voice across my head.
+
+  "Until this dry shred staff, that hath no whit
+  Of leaf nor bark, bear blossom and smell sweet,
+    Seek thou not any mercy in God's sight,
+  For so long shalt thou be cast out from it."
+
+  Yea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green,
+  Shall that thing be which is not nor has been?
+    Yea, what if sapless bark wax green and white,
+  Shall any good fruit grow upon my sin?
+
+  Nay, though sweet fruit were plucked of a dry tree,
+  And though men drew sweet waters of the sea,
+    There should not grow sweet leaves on this dead stem,
+  This waste wan body and shaken soul of me.
+
+  Yea, though God search it warily enough,
+  There is not one sound thing in all thereof;
+    Though he search all my veins through, searching them
+  He shall find nothing whole therein but love.
+
+  For I came home right heavy, with small cheer,
+  And lo my love, mine own soul's heart, more dear
+    Than mine own soul, more beautiful than God,
+  Who hath my being between the hands of her--
+
+  Fair still, but fair for no man saving me,
+  As when she came out of the naked sea
+    Making the foam as fire whereon she trod,
+  And as the inner flower of fire was she.
+
+  Yea, she laid hold upon me, and her mouth
+  Clove unto mine as soul to body doth,
+    And, laughing, made her lips luxurious;
+  Her hair had smells of all the sunburnt south,
+
+  Strange spice and flower, strange savour of crushed fruit,
+  And perfume the swart kings tread underfoot
+    For pleasure when their minds wax amorous,
+  Charred frankincense and grated sandal-root.
+
+  And I forgot fear and all weary things,
+  All ended prayers and perished thanksgivings,
+    Feeling her face with all her eager hair
+  Cleave to me, clinging as a fire that clings
+
+  To the body and to the raiment, burning them;
+  As after death I know that such-like flame
+    Shall cleave to me for ever; yea, what care,
+  Albeit I burn then, having felt the same?
+
+  Ah love, there is no better life than this;
+  To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,
+    And afterward be cast out of God's sight;
+  Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss
+
+  High up in barren heaven before his face
+  As we twain in the heavy-hearted place,
+    Remembering love and all the dead delight,
+  And all that time was sweet with for a space?
+
+  For till the thunder in the trumpet be,
+  Soul may divide from body, but not we
+    One from another; I hold thee with my hand,
+  I let mine eyes have all their will of thee,
+
+  I seal myself upon thee with my might,
+  Abiding alway out of all men's sight
+    Until God loosen over sea and land
+  The thunder of the trumpets of the night.
+
+                      EXPLICIT LAUS VENERIS.
+
+
+
+
+PHAEDRA
+
+HIPPOLYTUS; PHAEDRA; CHORUS OF TROEZENIAN WOMEN
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Lay not thine hand upon me; let me go;
+  Take off thine eyes that put the gods to shame;
+  What, wilt thou turn my loathing to thy death?
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  Nay, I will never loosen hold nor breathe
+  Till thou have slain me; godlike for great brows
+  Thou art, and thewed as gods are, with clear hair:
+  Draw now thy sword and smite me as thou art god,
+  For verily I am smitten of other gods,
+  Why not of thee?
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+                    O queen, take heed of words;
+  Why wilt thou eat the husk of evil speech?
+  Wear wisdom for that veil about thy head
+  And goodness for the binding of thy brows.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  Nay, but this god hath cause enow to smite;
+  If he will slay me, baring breast and throat,
+  I lean toward the stroke with silent mouth
+  And a great heart. Come, take thy sword and slay;
+  Let me not starve between desire and death,
+  But send me on my way with glad wet lips;
+  For in the vein-drawn ashen-coloured palm
+  Death's hollow hand holds water of sweet draught
+  To dip and slake dried mouths at, as a deer
+  Specked red from thorns laps deep and loses pain.
+  Yea, if mine own blood ran upon my mouth,
+  I would drink that. Nay, but be swift with me;
+  Set thy sword here between the girdle and breast,
+  For I shall grow a poison if I live.
+  Are not my cheeks as grass, my body pale,
+  And my breath like a dying poisoned man's?
+  O whatsoever of godlike names thou be,
+  By thy chief name I charge thee, thou strong god,
+  And bid thee slay me. Strike, up to the gold,
+  Up to the hand-grip of the hilt; strike here;
+  For I am Cretan of my birth; strike now;
+  For I am Theseus' wife; stab up to the rims,
+  I am born daughter to Pasiphae.
+  See thou spare not for greatness of my blood,
+  Nor for the shining letters of my name:
+  Make thy sword sure inside thine hand and smite,
+  For the bright writing of my name is black,
+  And I am sick with hating the sweet sun.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Let not this woman wail and cleave to me,
+  That am no part of the gods' wrath with her;
+  Loose ye her hands from me lest she take hurt.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Lady, this speech and majesty are twain;
+  Pure shame is of one counsel with the gods.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Man is as beast when shame stands off from him.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  Man, what have I to do with shame or thee?
+  I am not of one counsel with the gods.
+  I am their kin, I have strange blood in me,
+  I am not of their likeness nor of thine:
+  My veins are mixed, and therefore am I mad,
+  Yea therefore chafe and turn on mine own flesh,
+  Half of a woman made with half a god.
+  But thou wast hewn out of an iron womb
+  And fed with molten mother-snow for milk.
+  A sword was nurse of thine; Hippolyta,
+  That had the spear to father, and the axe
+  To bridesman, and wet blood of sword-slain men
+  For wedding-water out of a noble well,
+  Even she did bear thee, thinking of a sword,
+  And thou wast made a man mistakingly.
+  Nay, for I love thee, I will have thy hands,
+  Nay, for I will not loose thee, thou art sweet,
+  Thou art my son, I am thy father's wife,
+  I ache toward thee with a bridal blood,
+  The pulse is heavy in all my married veins,
+  My whole face beats, I will feed full of thee,
+  My body is empty of ease, I will be fed,
+  I am burnt to the bone with love, thou shalt not go,
+  I am heartsick, and mine eyelids prick mine eyes,
+  Thou shalt not sleep nor eat nor say a word
+  Till thou hast slain me. I am not good to live.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  This is an evil born with all its teeth,
+  When love is cast out of the bound of love.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  There is no hate that is so hateworthy.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  I pray thee turn that hate of thine my way,
+  I hate not it nor anything of thine.
+  Lo, maidens, how he burns about the brow,
+  And draws the chafing sword-strap down his hand.
+  What wilt thou do? wilt thou be worse than death?
+  Be but as sweet as is the bitterest,
+  The most dispiteous out of all the gods,
+  I am well pleased. Lo, do I crave so much?
+  I do but bid thee be unmerciful,
+  Even the one thing thou art. Pity me not:
+  Thou wert not quick to pity. Think of me
+  As of a thing thy hounds are keen upon
+  In the wet woods between the windy ways,
+  And slay me for a spoil. This body of mine
+  Is worth a wild beast's fell or hide of hair,
+  And spotted deeper than a panther's grain.
+  I were but dead if thou wert pure indeed;
+  I pray thee by thy cold green holy crown
+  And by the fillet-leaves of Artemis.
+  Nay, but thou wilt not. Death is not like thee.
+  Albeit men hold him worst of all the gods.
+  For of all gods Death only loves not gifts,[1]
+  Nor with burnt-offering nor blood-sacrifice
+  Shalt thou do aught to get thee grace of him;
+  He will have nought of altar and altar-song,
+  And from him only of all the lords in heaven
+  Persuasion turns a sweet averted mouth.
+  But thou art worse: from thee with baffled breath
+  Back on my lips my prayer falls like a blow,
+  And beats upon them, dumb. What shall I say?
+  There is no word I can compel thee with
+  To do me good and slay me. But take heed;
+  I say, be wary; look between thy feet,
+  Lest a snare take them though the ground be good.
+
+
+  HIPPOLYTUS.
+
+  Shame may do most where fear is found most weak;
+  That which for shame's sake yet I have not done,
+  Shall it be done for fear's? Take thine own way;
+  Better the foot slip than the whole soul swerve.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  The man is choice and exquisite of mouth;
+  Yet in the end a curse shall curdle it.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  He goes with cloak upgathered to the lip,
+  Holding his eye as with some ill in sight.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  A bitter ill he hath i' the way thereof,
+  And it shall burn the sight out as with fire.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Speak no such word whereto mischance is kin.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  Out of my heart and by fate's leave I speak.
+
+
+  CHORUS.
+
+  Set not thy heart to follow after fate.
+
+
+  PHAEDRA.
+
+  O women, O sweet people of this land,
+  O goodly city and pleasant ways thereof,
+  And woods with pasturing grass and great well-heads,
+  And hills with light and night between your leaves,
+  And winds with sound and silence in your lips,
+  And earth and water and all immortal things,
+  I take you to my witness what I am.
+  There is a god about me like as fire,
+  Sprung whence, who knoweth, or who hath heart to say?
+  A god more strong than whom slain beasts can soothe,
+  Or honey, or any spilth of blood-like wine,
+  Nor shall one please him with a whitened brow
+  Nor wheat nor wool nor aught of plaited leaf.
+  For like my mother am I stung and slain,
+  And round my cheeks have such red malady
+  And on my lips such fire and foam as hers.
+  This is that Ate out of Amathus
+  That breeds up death and gives it one for love.
+  She hath slain mercy, and for dead mercy's sake
+  (Being frighted with this sister that was slain)
+  Flees from before her fearful-footed shame,
+  And will not bear the bending of her brows
+  And long soft arrows flown from under them
+  As from bows bent. Desire flows out of her
+  As out of lips doth speech: and over her
+  Shines fire, and round her and beneath her fire.
+  She hath sown pain and plague in all our house,
+  Love loathed of love, and mates unmatchable,
+  Wild wedlock, and the lusts that bleat or low,
+  And marriage-fodder snuffed about of kine.
+  Lo how the heifer runs with leaping flank
+  Sleek under shaggy and speckled lies of hair,
+  And chews a horrible lip, and with harsh tongue
+  Laps alien froth and licks a loathlier mouth.
+  Alas, a foul first steam of trodden tares,
+  And fouler of these late grapes underfoot.
+  A bitter way of waves and clean-cut foam
+  Over the sad road of sonorous sea
+  The high gods gave king Theseus for no love,
+  Nay, but for love, yet to no loving end.
+  Alas the long thwarts and the fervent oars,
+  And blown hard sails that straightened the scant rope!
+  There were no strong pools in the hollow sea
+  To drag at them and suck down side and beak,
+  No wind to catch them in the teeth and hair,
+  No shoal, no shallow among the roaring reefs,
+  No gulf whereout the straining tides throw spars,
+  No surf where white bones twist like whirled white fire.
+  But like to death he came with death, and sought
+  And slew and spoiled and gat him that he would.
+  For death, for marriage, and for child-getting,
+  I set my curse against him as a sword;
+  Yea, and the severed half thereof I leave
+  Pittheus, because he slew not (when that face
+  Was tender, and the life still soft in it)
+  The small swathed child, but bred him for my fate.
+  I would I had been the first that took her death
+  Out from between wet hoofs and reddened teeth,
+  Splashed horns, fierce fetlocks of the brother bull?
+  For now shall I take death a deadlier way,
+  Gathering it up between the feet of love
+  Or off the knees of murder reaching it.
+
+    [1] AEsch. Fr. Niobe:--
+          [Greek: monos theon gar Thanatos ou doron era, k.t.l.]
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
+
+
+  Before our lives divide for ever,
+    While time is with us and hands are free,
+  (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
+    Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
+  I will say no word that a man might say
+  Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
+  For this could never have been; and never,
+    Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
+
+  Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
+    To think of things that are well outworn?
+  Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
+    The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
+  Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
+  Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
+  Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
+    But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.
+
+  It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,
+    Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.
+  The singing seasons divide and depart,
+    Winter and summer depart in twain.
+  It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,
+  The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;
+  Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,
+    With sullen savour of poisonous pain.
+
+  I have given no man of my fruit to eat;
+    I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.
+  Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,
+    This wild new growth of the corn and vine,
+  This wine and bread without lees or leaven,
+  We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,
+  Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,
+    One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.
+
+  In the change of years, in the coil of things,
+    In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
+  We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
+    Covered with love as a covering tree,
+  We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
+  Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
+  Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
+    O love, my love, had you loved but me!
+
+  We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
+    As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
+  Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
+    Death consume as a thing unclean.
+  Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
+  Soul to soul while the years fell past;
+  Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
+    Had the chance been with us that has not been.
+
+  I have put my days and dreams out of mind,
+    Days that are over, dreams that are done.
+  Though we seek life through, we shall surely find
+    There is none of them clear to us now, not one.
+  But clear are these things; the grass and the sand,
+  Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand,
+  With lips wide open and face burnt blind,
+    The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun.
+
+  The low downs lean to the sea; the stream,
+    One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein,
+  Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream,
+    Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain;
+  No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers;
+  The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours,
+  Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam,
+    Turning her smile to a fugitive pain.
+
+  Mother of loves that are swift to fade,
+    Mother of mutable winds and hours.
+  A barren mother, a mother-maid,
+    Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers.
+  I would we twain were even as she,
+  Lost in the night and the light of the sea,
+  Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade,
+    Break, and are broken, and shed into showers.
+
+  The loves and hours of the life of a man,
+    They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
+  Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
+    Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
+  Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
+  Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
+  I lose what I long for, save what I can,
+    My love, my love, and no love for me!
+
+  It is not much that a man can save
+    On the sands of life, in the straits of time,
+  Who swims in sight of the great third wave
+    That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
+  Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
+  That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;
+  Weed from the water, grass from a grave,
+    A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.
+
+  There will no man do for your sake, I think,
+    What I would have done for the least word said.
+  I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,
+    Broken it up for your daily bread:
+  Body for body and blood for blood,
+  As the flow of the full sea risen to flood
+  That yearns and trembles before it sink,
+    I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.
+
+  Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit,
+    And time at fullest and all his dower,
+  I had given you surely, and life to boot,
+    Were we once made one for a single hour.
+  But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,
+  Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;
+  And deep in one is the bitter root,
+    And sweet for one is the lifelong flower.
+
+  To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung
+    To my life if you bade me, played my part
+  As it pleased you--these were the thoughts that stung,
+    The dreams that smote with a keener dart
+  Than shafts of love or arrows of death;
+  These were but as fire is, dust, or breath,
+  Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue
+    Of the little snakes that eat my heart.
+
+  I wish we were dead together to-day,
+    Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
+  Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
+    Out of the world's way, out of the light,
+  Out of the ages of worldly weather,
+  Forgotten of all men altogether,
+  As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,
+    Made one with death, filled full of the night.
+
+  How we should slumber, how we should sleep,
+    Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews!
+  And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep,
+    Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse;
+  Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,
+  Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem
+  Alive as of old to the lips, and leap
+    Spirit to spirit as lovers use.
+
+  Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight;
+    For what shall it profit when men are dead
+  To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's might,
+    To have looked for day when the day was fled?
+  Let come what will, there is one thing worth,
+  To have had fair love in the life upon earth:
+  To have held love safe till the day grew night,
+    While skies had colour and lips were red.
+
+  Would I lose you now? would I take you then,
+    If I lose you now that my heart has need?
+  And come what may after death to men,
+    What thing worth this will the dead years breed?
+  Lose life, lose all; but at least I know,
+  O sweet life's love, having loved you so,
+  Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,
+    In death nor life, nor in dream or deed.
+
+  Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine,
+    Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath,
+  Mixed into me as honey in wine,
+    Not time, that sayeth and gainsayeth,
+  Nor all strong things had severed us then;
+  Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men,
+  Nor all things earthly, nor all divine,
+    Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death.
+
+  I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
+    You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
+  But none shall triumph a whole life through:
+    For death is one, and the fates are three.
+  At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
+  There are worse things waiting for men than death;
+  Death could not sever my soul and you,
+    As these have severed your soul from me.
+
+  You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
+    Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
+  But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
+    Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
+  Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
+  Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
+  And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
+    The gate is strait; I shall not be there.
+
+  But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand,
+    Had you seen good such a thing were done,
+  I too might have stood with the souls that stand
+    In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun;
+  But who now on earth need care how I live?
+  Have the high gods anything left to give,
+  Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?
+    Which gifts are goodly; but I will none.
+
+  O all fair lovers about the world,
+    There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.
+  My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled
+    Round and round in a gulf of the sea;
+  And still, through the sound and the straining stream,
+  Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,
+  The bright fine lips so cruelly curled,
+    And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.
+
+  Free, without pity, withheld from woe,
+    Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair.
+  Would I have you change now, change at a blow,
+    Startled and stricken, awake and aware?
+  Yea, if I could, would I have you see
+  My very love of you filling me,
+  And know my soul to the quick, as I know
+    The likeness and look of your throat and hair?
+
+  I shall not change you. Nay, though I might,
+    Would I change my sweet one love with a word?
+  I had rather your hair should change in a night,
+    Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird;
+  Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey,
+  Die as a leaf that dies in a day.
+  I will keep my soul in a place out of sight,
+    Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.
+
+  Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space,
+    Full of the sound of the sorrow of years.
+  I have woven a veil for the weeping face,
+    Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears;
+  I have found a way for the failing feet,
+  A place for slumber and sorrow to meet;
+  There is no rumour about the place,
+    Nor light, nor any that sees or hears.
+
+  I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said
+    "Let none take pity upon thee, none
+  Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead,
+    Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sun.
+  Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought
+  Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought,
+  With soft spun verses and tears unshed,
+    And sweet light visions of things undone?
+
+  "I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh,
+    And gold, and beautiful burial things.
+  But thou, be at peace now, make no stir;
+    Is not thy grave as a royal king's?
+  Fret not thyself though the end were sore;
+  Sleep, be patient, vex me no more.
+  Sleep; what hast thou to do with her?
+    The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?"
+
+  Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,
+    The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,
+  The misconceived and the misbegotten,
+    I would find a sin to do ere I die,
+  Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through,
+  That would set you higher in heaven, serve you
+  And leave you happy, when clean forgotten,
+    As a dead man out of mind, am I.
+
+  Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me,
+    I am swift to follow you, keen to see;
+  But love lacks might to redeem or undo me;
+    As I have been, I know I shall surely be;
+  "What should such fellows as I do?" Nay,
+  My part were worse if I chose to play;
+  For the worst is this after all; if they knew me,
+    Not a soul upon earth would pity me.
+
+  And I play not for pity of these; but you,
+    If you saw with your soul what man am I,
+  You would praise me at least that my soul all through
+    Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie;
+  The souls and lips that are bought and sold,
+  The smiles of silver and kisses of gold,
+  The lapdog loves that whine as they chew,
+    The little lovers that curse and cry.
+
+  There are fairer women, I hear; that may be;
+    But I, that I love you and find you fair,
+  Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be,
+    Do the high gods know or the great gods care?
+  Though the swords in my heart for one were seven,
+  Would the iron hollow of doubtful heaven,
+  That knows not itself whether night-time or day be,
+    Reverberate words and a foolish prayer?
+
+  I will go back to the great sweet mother,
+    Mother and lover of men, the sea.
+  I will go down to her, I and none other,
+    Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me;
+  Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast:
+  O fair white mother, in days long past
+  Born without sister, born without brother,
+    Set free my soul as thy soul is free.
+
+  O fair green-girdled mother of mine,
+    Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,
+  Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,
+    Thy large embraces are keen like pain.
+  Save me and hide me with all thy waves,
+  Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,
+  Those pure cold populous graves of thine
+    Wrought without hand in a world without stain.
+
+  I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
+    Change as the winds change, veer in the tide;
+  My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,
+    I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;
+  Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were,
+  Filled full with life to the eyes and hair,
+  As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips
+    With splendid summer and perfume and pride.
+
+  This woven raiment of nights and days,
+    Were it once cast off and unwound from me,
+  Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,
+    Alive and aware of thy ways and thee;
+  Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,
+  Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam,
+  A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
+    A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.
+
+  Fair mother, fed with the lives of men,
+    Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say.
+  Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again;
+    Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.
+  But death is the worst that comes of thee;
+  Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,
+  But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,
+    Having given us love, hast thou taken away?
+
+  O tender-hearted, O perfect lover,
+    Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.
+  The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,
+    Shall they not vanish away and apart?
+  But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;
+  Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;
+  Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;
+    From the first thou wert; in the end thou art.
+
+  And grief shall endure not for ever, I know.
+    As things that are not shall these things be;
+  We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow,
+    And none be grievous as this to me.
+  We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears,
+  The sound of time, the rhyme of the years;
+  Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow
+    As tender things of a spring-tide sea.
+
+  Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss,
+    Drowned gold and purple and royal rings.
+  And all time past, was it all for this?
+    Times unforgotten, and treasures of things?
+  Swift years of liking and sweet long laughter,
+  That wist not well of the years thereafter
+  Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss,
+    With lips that trembled and trailing wings?
+
+  There lived a singer in France of old
+    By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
+  In a land of sand and ruin and gold
+    There shone one woman, and none but she.
+  And finding life for her love's sake fail,
+  Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,
+  Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,
+    And praised God, seeing; and so died he.
+
+  Died, praising God for his gift and grace:
+    For she bowed down to him weeping, and said
+  "Live;" and her tears were shed on his face
+    Or ever the life in his face was shed.
+  The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung
+  Once, and her close lips touched him and clung
+  Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;
+    And so drew back, and the man was dead.
+
+  O brother, the gods were good to you.
+    Sleep, and be glad while the world endures.
+  Be well content as the years wear through;
+    Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures;
+  Give thanks for life, O brother, and death,
+  For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath,
+  For gifts she gave you, gracious and few,
+    Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.
+
+  Rest, and be glad of the gods; but I,
+    How shall I praise them, or how take rest?
+  There is not room under all the sky
+    For me that know not of worst or best,
+  Dream or desire of the days before,
+  Sweet things or bitterness, any more.
+  Love will not come to me now though I die,
+    As love came close to you, breast to breast.
+
+  I shall never be friends again with roses;
+    I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
+  Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
+    As a wave of the sea turned back by song.
+  There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,
+  Face to face with its own desire;
+  A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;
+   I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.
+
+  The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
+   The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
+  The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
+   The music burning at heart like wine,
+  An armed archangel whose hands raise up
+  All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
+  Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder--
+    These things are over, and no more mine.
+
+  These were a part of the playing I heard
+    Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
+  Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
+    Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
+  Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
+  Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
+  Now time has done with his one sweet word,
+    The wine and leaven of lovely life.
+
+  I shall go my ways, tread out my measure,
+    Fill the days of my daily breath
+  With fugitive things not good to treasure,
+    Do as the world doth, say as it saith;
+  But if we had loved each other--O sweet,
+  Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet,
+  The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure
+    To feel you tread it to dust and death--
+
+  Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
+    All that life gives and the years let go,
+  The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,
+    The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?
+  Come life, come death, not a word be said;
+  Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?
+  I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,
+    If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?
+
+
+
+
+LES NOYADES
+
+
+  Whatever a man of the sons of men
+    Shall say to his heart of the lords above,
+  They have shown man verily, once and again,
+    Marvellous mercies and infinite love.
+
+  In the wild fifth year of the change of things,
+    When France was glorious and blood-red, fair
+  With dust of battle and deaths of kings,
+    A queen of men, with helmeted hair,
+
+  Carrier came down to the Loire and slew,
+    Till all the ways and the waves waxed red:
+  Bound and drowned, slaying two by two,
+    Maidens and young men, naked and wed.
+
+  They brought on a day to his judgment-place
+    One rough with labour and red with fight,
+  And a lady noble by name and face,
+    Faultless, a maiden, wonderful, white.
+
+  She knew not, being for shame's sake blind,
+    If his eyes were hot on her face hard by.
+  And the judge bade strip and ship them, and bind
+    Bosom to bosom, to drown and die.
+
+  The white girl winced and whitened; but he
+    Caught fire, waxed bright as a great bright flame
+  Seen with thunder far out on the sea,
+    Laughed hard as the glad blood went and came.
+
+  Twice his lips quailed with delight, then said,
+    "I have but a word to you all, one word;
+  Bear with me; surely I am but dead;"
+    And all they laughed and mocked him and heard.
+
+  "Judge, when they open the judgment-roll,
+    I will stand upright before God and pray:
+  'Lord God, have mercy on one man's soul,
+    For his mercy was great upon earth, I say.
+
+  "'Lord, if I loved thee--Lord, if I served--
+    If these who darkened thy fair Son's face
+  I fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved
+    A hand's-breadth, Lord, in the perilous place--
+
+  "'I pray thee say to this man, O Lord,
+    _Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne_.
+  I will face thy wrath, though it bite as a sword,
+    And my soul shall burn for his soul, and atone.
+
+  "'For, Lord, thou knowest, O God most wise,
+    How gracious on earth were his deeds towards me.
+  Shall this be a small thing in thine eyes,
+    That is greater in mine than the whole great sea?'
+
+  "I have loved this woman my whole life long,
+    And even for love's sake when have I said
+  'I love you'? when have I done you wrong,
+    Living? but now I shall have you dead.
+
+  "Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love?
+    Love me or loathe, we are one not twain.
+  But God be praised in his heaven above
+    For this my pleasure and that my pain!
+
+  "For never a man, being mean like me,
+    Shall die like me till the whole world dies.
+  I shall drown with her, laughing for love; and she
+    Mix with me, touching me, lips and eyes.
+
+  "Shall she not know me and see me all through,
+    Me, on whose heart as a worm she trod?
+  You have given me, God requite it you,
+    What man yet never was given of God."
+
+  O sweet one love, O my life's delight,
+    Dear, though the days have divided us,
+  Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,
+    Not twice in the world shall the gods do thus.
+
+  Had it been so hard for my love? but I,
+    Though the gods gave all that a god can give,
+  I had chosen rather the gift to die,
+    Cease, and be glad above all that live.
+
+  For the Loire would have driven us down to the sea,
+    And the sea would have pitched us from shoal to shoal;
+  And I should have held you, and you held me,
+    As flesh holds flesh, and the soul the soul.
+
+  Could I change you, help you to love me, sweet,
+    Could I give you the love that would sweeten death,
+  We should yield, go down, locked hands and feet,
+    Die, drown together, and breath catch breath;
+
+  But you would have felt my soul in a kiss,
+    And known that once if I loved you well;
+  And I would have given my soul for this
+    To burn for ever in burning hell.
+
+
+
+
+A LEAVE-TAKING
+
+
+  Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
+  Let us go hence together without fear;
+  Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
+  And over all old things and all things dear.
+  She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
+  Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
+        She would not hear.
+
+  Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
+  Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
+  Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
+  There is no help, for all these things are so,
+  And all the world is bitter as a tear.
+  And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
+        She would not know.
+
+  Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
+  We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
+  Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
+  Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
+  All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
+  And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
+        She would not weep.
+
+  Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
+  She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
+  Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
+  Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
+  Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
+  And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
+        She would not love.
+
+  Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
+  Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
+  And the sea moving saw before it move
+  One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
+  Though all those waves went over us, and drove
+  Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
+        She would not care.
+
+  Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
+  Sing all once more together; surely she,
+  She too, remembering days and words that were,
+  Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
+  We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
+  Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
+        She would not see.
+
+
+
+
+ITYLUS
+
+
+  Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
+    How can thine heart be full of the spring?
+      A thousand summers are over and dead.
+  What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
+    What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
+      What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
+
+  O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
+    Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
+      The soft south whither thine heart is set?
+  Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
+    Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
+      Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
+
+  Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
+    Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
+      But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire,
+  Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
+    From tawny body and sweet small mouth
+      Feed the heart of the night with fire.
+
+  I the nightingale all spring through,
+    O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
+      All spring through till the spring be done,
+  Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
+    Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
+      Take flight and follow and find the sun.
+
+  Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
+    Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber,
+      How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
+  For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
+    Till life forget and death remember,
+      Till thou remember and I forget.
+
+  Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
+    I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
+      Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
+  Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
+    And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
+      But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?
+
+  O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
+    My heart in me is a molten ember
+      And over my head the waves have met.
+  But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow,
+    Could I forget or thou remember,
+      Couldst thou remember and I forget.
+
+  O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
+    The heart's division divideth us.
+      Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
+  But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
+    To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
+      The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.
+
+  O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
+    I pray thee sing not a little space.
+      Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
+  The woven web that was plain to follow,
+    The small slain body, the flowerlike face,
+      Can I remember if thou forget?
+
+  O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
+    The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
+      The voice of the child's blood crying yet
+  _Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?_
+    Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
+      But the world shall end when I forget.
+
+
+
+
+ANACTORIA
+
+            [Greek: tinos au ty peithoi
+            maps sageneusas philotata?]
+                                    SAPPHO.
+
+
+  My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
+  Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
+  Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,
+  And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.
+  I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;
+  Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.
+  I would the sea had hidden us, the fire
+  (Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)
+  Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,
+  And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.
+  I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain
+  Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.
+  Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,
+  Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.
+  Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine
+  Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?
+  I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet
+  To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,
+  I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,
+  Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss.
+  Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove,
+  Erotion or Erinna to my love.
+  I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated
+  With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.
+  I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,
+  And no mouth but some serpent's found thee sweet.
+  I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,
+  Intense device, and superflux of pain;
+  Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake
+  Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;
+  Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill,
+  Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill;
+  Relapse and reluctation of the breath,
+  Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death.
+  I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,
+  Of all love's fiery nights and all his days,
+  And all the broken kisses salt as brine
+  That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine,
+  And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours
+  That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers,
+  Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through,
+  But all the flowerlike white stained round with blue;
+  The fervent underlid, and that above
+  Lifted with laughter or abashed with love;
+  Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair,
+  And leavings of the lilies in thine hair.
+  Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways,
+  And all the fruit of nights and flower of days,
+  And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine
+  That Love was born of burns and foams like wine,
+  And eyes insatiable of amorous hours,
+  Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers,
+  Coloured like night at heart, but cloven through
+  Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue,
+  Clothed with deep eyelids under and above--
+  Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love;
+  Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair,
+  And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair.
+  Ah, take no thought for Love's sake; shall this be,
+  And she who loves thy lover not love thee?
+  Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives,
+  Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives.
+  For I beheld in sleep the light that is
+  In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss
+  Of body and soul that mix with eager tears
+  And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears;
+  Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,
+  Imperishable, upon her storied seat;
+  Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,
+  A mind of many colours, and a mouth
+  Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,
+  With all her subtle face laughing aloud,
+  Bowed down upon me, saying, "Who doth thee wrong,
+  Sappho?" but thou--thy body is the song,
+  Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,
+  Though my voice die not till the whole world die;
+  Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,
+  Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.
+  Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?
+  Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:
+  "Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,
+  And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,
+  Shall kiss that would not kiss thee" (yea, kiss me)
+  "When thou wouldst not"--when I would not kiss thee!
+  Ah, more to me than all men as thou art,
+  Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart?
+  Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death,
+  Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath?
+  Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she
+  Made earth and all the centuries of the sea,
+  Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine
+  The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine,
+  Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods,
+  The young men and the maidens and the gods?
+  Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears,
+  And summer and flower of women and of years?
+  Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon
+  Sunlight, and exaltation of the moon;
+  Waters that answer waters, fields that wear
+  Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air?
+  Beyond those flying feet of fluttered doves,
+  Are there not other gods for other loves?
+  Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake,
+  Blossom not thorns and flowers not blood should break.
+  Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed
+  To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast!
+  Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed
+  On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!
+  That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste
+  The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!
+  That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat
+  Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet
+  Thy body were abolished and consumed,
+  And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!
+  Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
+  Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
+  Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,
+  The paces and the pauses of thy feet!
+  Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air
+  The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!
+  Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,
+  Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;
+  Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,
+  And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
+  As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
+  With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells
+  And blood like purple blossom at the tips
+  Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
+  For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I
+  Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,
+  Die of thy pain and my delight, and be
+  Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!
+  Would I not plague thee dying overmuch?
+  Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch
+  Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright
+  Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light?
+  Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,
+  Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,
+  Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these
+  A lyre of many faultless agonies?
+  Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth,
+  With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth,
+  Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh,
+  And wring thy very spirit through the flesh?
+  Cruel? but love makes all that love him well
+  As wise as heaven and crueller than hell.
+  Me hath love made more bitter toward thee
+  Than death toward man; but were I made as he
+  Who hath made all things to break them one by one,
+  If my feet trod upon the stars and sun
+  And souls of men as his have alway trod,
+  God knows I might be crueller than God.
+  For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings
+  The mystery of the cruelty of things?
+  Or say what God above all gods and years
+  With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears,
+  With lamentation from strange lands, from graves
+  Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,
+  From prison, and from plunging prows of ships
+  Through flamelike foam of the sea's closing lips--
+  With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair
+  Of comets, desolating the dim air,
+  When darkness is made fast with seals and bars,
+  And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars,
+  Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings
+  Darkening, and blind inexpiable things--
+  With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light
+  And travail of the planets of the night,
+  And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven,
+  Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven?
+  Is not his incense bitterness, his meat
+  Murder? his hidden face and iron feet
+  Hath not man known, and felt them on their way
+  Threaten and trample all things and every day?
+  Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed
+  Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst
+  Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed
+  The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed,
+  Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire,
+  Pain animate the dust of dead desire,
+  And life yield up her flower to violent fate?
+  Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,
+  Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,
+  And mix his immortality with death.
+  Why hath he made us? what had all we done
+  That we should live and loathe the sterile sun,
+  And with the moon wax paler as she wanes,
+  And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins?
+  Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be
+  As the rose born of one same blood with thee,
+  As a song sung, as a word said, and fall
+  Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,
+  Nor any memory of thee anywhere;
+  For never Muse has bound above thine hair
+  The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows
+  All summer kinship of the mortal rose
+  And colour of deciduous days, nor shed
+  Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head,
+  Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief
+  With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf.
+  Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,
+  Except these kisses of my lips on thine
+  Brand them with immortality; but me--
+  Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,
+  Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold
+  Cast forth of heaven, with feet of awful gold
+  And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,
+  Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind
+  Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown,
+  But in the light and laughter, in the moan
+  And music, and in grasp of lip and hand
+  And shudder of water that makes felt on land
+  The immeasurable tremor of all the sea,
+  Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.
+  Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night,
+  When all the winds of the world for pure delight
+  Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache;
+  When nightingales are louder for love's sake,
+  And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire;
+  Like me the one star swooning with desire
+  Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon,
+  As I at thine; like me the waste white noon,
+  Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me
+  The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea.
+  I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow,
+  And by the yearning in my veins I know
+  The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes
+  Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies
+  With troubled stars and travailing things of flame;
+  And in my heart the grief consuming them
+  Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these,
+  And all the summer travail of the trees
+  And all the winter sickness; and the earth,
+  Filled full with deadly works of death and birth,
+  Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death,
+  Has pain like mine in her divided breath;
+  Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit
+  Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root
+  Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath
+  Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth
+  Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead,
+  And wild birds rend her branches overhead.
+  These, woven as raiment for his word and thought,
+  These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought
+  Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me
+  Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee.
+  As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I--
+  Lo, earth may labour, men live long and die,
+  Years change and stars, and the high God devise
+  New things, and old things wane before his eyes
+  Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than they--
+  But, having made me, me he shall not slay.
+  Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his
+  Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss
+  Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet,
+  And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet,
+  Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees--
+  And all these end; he hath his will of these.
+  Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me--
+  Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea
+  And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease
+  This soul of mine as any soul of these,
+  And give me water and great sweet waves, and make
+  The very sea's name lordlier for my sake,
+  The whole sea sweeter--albeit I die indeed
+  And hide myself and sleep and no man heed,
+  Of me the high God hath not all his will.
+  Blossom of branches, and on each high hill
+  Clear air and wind, and under in clamorous vales
+  Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales,
+  Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire,
+  The wan washed sand and the waves' vain desire,
+  Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words
+  That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds
+  Violently singing till the whole world sings--
+  I Sappho shall be one with all these things,
+  With all high things for ever; and my face
+  Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,
+  Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof
+  With gladness and much sadness and long love.
+  Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain
+  New things, and never this best thing again;
+  Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,
+  Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.
+  And they shall know me as ye who have known me here,
+  Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year
+  When I love thee; and they shall praise me, and say
+  "She hath all time as all we have our day,
+  Shall she not live and have her will"--even I?
+  Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die.
+  For these shall give me of their souls, shall give
+  Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live,
+  Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath,
+  Save me and serve me, strive for me with death.
+  Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew
+  Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through,
+  Assuage me nor allay me nor appease,
+  Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease;
+  Till time wax faint in all his periods;
+  Till fate undo the bondage of the gods,
+  And lay, to slake and satiate me all through,
+  Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew,
+  And shed around and over and under me
+  Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN TO PROSERPINE
+
+(AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)
+
+_Vicisti, Galilaee._
+
+
+  I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an
+      end;
+  Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
+  Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or
+      that weep;
+  For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
+  Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
+  But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
+  Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
+  A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
+  I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
+  To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
+  For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
+  We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
+  O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!
+  From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men
+      say.
+  New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
+  They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
+  But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
+  Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
+  Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
+  Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
+  I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
+  Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
+  Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
+  The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the
+      brake;
+  Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
+  And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
+  All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
+  Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
+  More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
+  Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
+  A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
+  For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
+  And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
+  Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?
+  Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from
+      thy breath;
+  We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
+  Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
+  But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
+  Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the
+      end;
+  For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
+  Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
+  But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the
+      tides.
+  O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
+  O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
+  Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
+  I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
+  All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
+  Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the
+      past:
+  Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
+  Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
+  Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with
+      wings,
+  And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
+  White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
+  Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
+  The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
+  In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
+  In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's
+      tears;
+  With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
+  With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
+  And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that
+      devour:
+  And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
+  And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of
+      the sea:
+  And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the
+      air:
+  And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is
+      made bare.
+  Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea
+      with rods?
+  Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye
+      Gods?
+  All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
+  Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at
+      last.
+  In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
+      things,
+  Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you
+      for kings.
+  Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our
+      forefathers trod,
+  Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
+  Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her
+      head,
+  Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee
+      dead.
+  Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
+  Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she
+      is crowned.
+  Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
+  Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering
+      seas,
+  Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the
+      foam,
+  And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
+  For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
+  Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
+  White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
+  Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her
+      name.
+  For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
+  Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the
+      sea.
+  And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
+  And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
+  Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not
+      fall.
+  Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
+  But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the
+      end;
+  Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
+  O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
+  I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
+  In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night
+      where thou art,
+  Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from
+      the heart,
+  Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose
+      is white,
+  And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of
+      the night,
+  And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
+  Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
+  In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
+  Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and
+      undone.
+  Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal
+      breath:
+  For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
+  Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
+  I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
+  For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
+  A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.[2]
+  So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
+  For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
+
+    [2] [Greek: psycharion ei bastazon nekron].
+                                          EPICTETUS.
+
+
+
+
+ILICET
+
+
+  There is an end of joy and sorrow;
+  Peace all day long, all night, all morrow,
+    But never a time to laugh or weep.
+  The end is come of pleasant places,
+  The end of tender words and faces,
+    The end of all, the poppied sleep.
+
+  No place for sound within their hearing,
+  No room to hope, no time for fearing,
+    No lips to laugh, no lids for tears.
+  The old years have run out all their measure;
+  No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,
+    No fragment of the broken years.
+
+  Outside of all the worlds and ages,
+  There where the fool is as the sage is,
+    There where the slayer is clean of blood,
+  No end, no passage, no beginning,
+  There where the sinner leaves off sinning,
+    There where the good man is not good.
+
+  There is not one thing with another,
+  But Evil saith to Good: My brother,
+    My brother, I am one with thee:
+  They shall not strive nor cry for ever:
+  No man shall choose between them: never
+    Shall this thing end and that thing be.
+
+  Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken
+  Shall shake them, and they shall not waken;
+    None that has lain down shall arise;
+  The stones are sealed across their places;
+  One shadow is shed on all their faces,
+    One blindness cast on all their eyes.
+
+  Sleep, is it sleep perchance that covers
+  Each face, as each face were his lover's?
+    Farewell; as men that sleep fare well.
+  The grave's mouth laughs unto derision
+  Desire and dread and dream and vision,
+    Delight of heaven and sorrow of hell.
+
+  No soul shall tell nor lip shall number
+  The names and tribes of you that slumber;
+    No memory, no memorial.
+  "Thou knowest"--who shall say thou knowest?
+  There is none highest and none lowest:
+    An end, an end, an end of all.
+
+  Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow
+  To these that shall not have good morrow;
+    The gods be gentle to all these.
+  Nay, if death be not, how shall they be?
+  Nay, is there help in heaven? it may be
+    All things and lords of things shall cease.
+
+  The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes;
+  The bronzed brims are deep in ashes;
+    The pale old lips of death are fed.
+  Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter?
+  Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter,
+    At sight of all these poor old dead?
+
+  Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it;
+  Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit,
+    Thy laughter shall not give thee ease;
+  Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying,
+  Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing,
+    Thou shalt not raise up one of these.
+
+  Burnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses,
+  The breathing flame's mouth curls and kisses
+    The small dried rows of frankincense;
+  All round the sad red blossoms smoulder,
+  Flowers coloured like the fire, but colder,
+    In sign of sweet things taken hence;
+
+  Yea, for their sake and in death's favour
+  Things of sweet shape and of sweet savour
+    We yield them, spice and flower and wine;
+  Yea, costlier things than wine or spices,
+  Whereof none knoweth how great the price is,
+    And fruit that comes not of the vine.
+
+  From boy's pierced throat and girl's pierced bosom
+  Drips, reddening round the blood-red blossom,
+    The slow delicious bright soft blood,
+  Bathing the spices and the pyre,
+  Bathing the flowers and fallen fire,
+    Bathing the blossom by the bud.
+
+  Roses whose lips the flame has deadened
+  Drink till the lapping leaves are reddened
+    And warm wet inner petals weep;
+  The flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure,
+  Barren of balm and purple pleasure,
+    Fumes with no native steam of sleep.
+
+  Why will ye weep? what do ye weeping?
+  For waking folk and people sleeping,
+    And sands that fill and sands that fall,
+  The days rose-red, the poppied hours,
+  Blood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers,
+    There is one end of one and all.
+
+  Shall such an one lend love or borrow?
+  Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow?
+    Shall these give thanks for words or breath?
+  Their hate is as their loving-kindness;
+  The frontlet of their brows is blindness,
+    The armlet of their arms is death.
+
+  Lo, for no noise or light of thunder
+  Shall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder;
+    He that hath taken, shall he give?
+  He hath rent them: shall he bind together?
+  He hath bound them: shall he break the tether?
+    He hath slain them: shall he bid them live?
+
+  A little sorrow, a little pleasure,
+  Fate metes us from the dusty measure
+    That holds the date of all of us;
+  We are born with travail and strong crying,
+  And from the birth-day to the dying
+    The likeness of our life is thus.
+
+  One girds himself to serve another,
+  Whose father was the dust, whose mother
+    The little dead red worm therein;
+  They find no fruit of things they cherish;
+  The goodness of a man shall perish,
+    It shall be one thing with his sin.
+
+  In deep wet ways by grey old gardens
+  Fed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens;
+    They know not what fruits wane or grow;
+  Red summer burns to the utmost ember;
+  They know not, neither can remember,
+    The old years and flowers they used to know.
+
+  Ah, for their sakes, so trapped and taken,
+  For theirs, forgotten and forsaken,
+    Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer.
+  Nay, where the heart of wrath is broken,
+  Where long love ends as a thing spoken,
+    How shall thy crying enter there?
+
+  Though the iron sides of the old world falter,
+  The likeness of them shall not alter
+    For all the rumour of periods,
+  The stars and seasons that come after,
+  The tears of latter men, the laughter
+    Of the old unalterable gods.
+
+  Far up above the years and nations,
+  The high gods, clothed and crowned with patience,
+    Endure through days of deathlike date;
+  They bear the witness of things hidden;
+  Before their eyes all life stands chidden,
+    As they before the eyes of Fate.
+
+  Not for their love shall Fate retire,
+  Nor they relent for our desire,
+    Nor the graves open for their call.
+  The end is more than joy and anguish,
+  Than lives that laugh and lives that languish,
+    The poppied sleep, the end of all.
+
+
+
+
+HERMAPHRODITUS
+
+
+  I
+
+  Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,
+    Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;
+    Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,
+  Save the long smile that they are wearied of.
+  Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,
+    Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;
+    Two loves at either blossom of thy breast
+  Strive until one be under and one above.
+  Their breath is fire upon the amorous air,
+    Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire:
+  And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,
+    Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;
+  A strong desire begot on great despair,
+    A great despair cast out by strong desire.
+
+
+  II
+
+  Where between sleep and life some brief space is,
+    With love like gold bound round about the head,
+    Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,
+  Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his
+  To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;
+    Yet from them something like as fire is shed
+    That shall not be assuaged till death be dead,
+  Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.
+  Love made himself of flesh that perisheth
+    A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;
+  But on the one side sat a man like death,
+    And on the other a woman sat like sin.
+  So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
+    Love turned himself and would not enter in.
+
+
+  III
+
+  Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light
+    That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes?
+    Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies,
+  Or like the night's dew laid upon the night.
+  Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right,
+  Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise
+    Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,
+    Or make thee woman for a man's delight.
+  To what strange end hath some strange god made fair
+    The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?
+  Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair,
+    Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers,
+  Given all the gold that all the seasons wear
+    To thee that art a thing of barren hours?
+
+
+  IV
+
+  Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear.
+    Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know;
+    Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow
+  So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear
+  Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear--
+    Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,
+    Though love and life and death should come and go,
+  So dreadful, so desirable, so dear?
+  Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise
+    Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
+    Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
+  And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
+  And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs;
+    But Love being blind, how should he know of this?
+
+    _Au Musee du Louvre, Mars 1863._
+
+
+
+
+FRAGOLETTA
+
+
+  O Love! what shall be said of thee?
+  The son of grief begot by joy?
+  Being sightless, wilt thou see?
+  Being sexless, wilt thou be
+  Maiden or boy?
+
+  I dreamed of strange lips yesterday
+  And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood
+  Was like a rose's--yea,
+  A rose's when it lay
+  Within the bud.
+
+  What fields have bred thee, or what groves
+  Concealed thee, O mysterious flower,
+  O double rose of Love's,
+  With leaves that lure the doves
+  From bud to bower?
+
+  I dare not kiss it, lest my lip
+  Press harder than an indrawn breath,
+  And all the sweet life slip
+  Forth, and the sweet leaves drip,
+  Bloodlike, in death.
+
+  O sole desire of my delight!
+  O sole delight of my desire!
+  Mine eyelids and eyesight
+  Feed on thee day and night
+  Like lips of fire.
+
+  Lean back thy throat of carven pearl,
+  Let thy mouth murmur like the dove's;
+  Say, Venus hath no girl,
+  No front of female curl,
+  Among her Loves.
+
+  Thy sweet low bosom, thy close hair,
+  Thy strait soft flanks and slenderer feet,
+  Thy virginal strange air,
+  Are these not over fair
+  For Love to greet?
+
+  How should he greet thee? what new name,
+  Fit to move all men's hearts, could move
+  Thee, deaf to love or shame,
+  Love's sister, by the same
+  Mother as Love?
+
+  Ah sweet, the maiden's mouth is cold,
+  Her breast-blossoms are simply red,
+  Her hair mere brown or gold,
+  Fold over simple fold
+  Binding her head.
+
+  Thy mouth is made of fire and wine,
+  Thy barren bosom takes my kiss
+  And turns my soul to thine
+  And turns thy lip to mine,
+  And mine it is.
+
+  Thou hast a serpent in thine hair,
+  In all the curls that close and cling;
+  And ah, thy breast-flower!
+  Ah love, thy mouth too fair
+  To kiss and sting!
+
+  Cleave to me, love me, kiss mine eyes,
+  Satiate thy lips with loving me;
+  Nay, for thou shalt not rise;
+  Lie still as Love that dies
+  For love of thee.
+
+  Mine arms are close about thine head,
+  My lips are fervent on thy face,
+  And where my kiss hath fed
+  Thy flower-like blood leaps red
+  To the kissed place.
+
+  O bitterness of things too sweet!
+  O broken singing of the dove!
+  Love's wings are over fleet,
+  And like the panther's feet
+  The feet of Love.
+
+
+
+
+RONDEL
+
+
+  These many years since we began to be,
+  What have the gods done with us? what with me,
+  What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears,
+  Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea,
+  Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers,
+    These many years.
+
+  With her, my love, with her have they done well?
+  But who shall answer for her? who shall tell
+  Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears?
+  May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell,
+  From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres
+    These many years!
+
+  But if tears ever touched, for any grief,
+  Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf,
+  Deep double shells wherethrough the eye-flower peers,
+  Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief,
+  Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears
+    These many years.
+
+
+
+
+SATIA TE SANGUINE
+
+
+  If you loved me ever so little,
+    I could bear the bonds that gall,
+  I could dream the bonds were brittle;
+    You do not love me at all.
+
+  O beautiful lips, O bosom
+    More white than the moon's and warm,
+  A sterile, a ruinous blossom
+    Is blown your way in a storm.
+
+  As the lost white feverish limbs
+    Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
+  In foam where the sea-weed swims,
+    Swam loose for the streams to lift,
+
+  My heart swims blind in a sea
+    That stuns me; swims to and fro,
+  And gathers to windward and lee
+    Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
+
+  A broken, an emptied boat,
+    Sea saps it, winds blow apart,
+  Sick and adrift and afloat,
+    The barren waif of a heart.
+
+  Where, when the gods would be cruel,
+    Do they go for a torture? where
+  Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?
+    Ah, not in the flesh, not there!
+
+  The racks of earth and the rods
+    Are weak as foam on the sands;
+  In the heart is the prey for gods,
+    Who crucify hearts, not hands.
+
+  Mere pangs corrode and consume,
+    Dead when life dies in the brain;
+  In the infinite spirit is room
+    For the pulse of an infinite pain.
+
+  I wish you were dead, my dear;
+    I would give you, had I to give
+  Some death too bitter to fear;
+    It is better to die than live.
+
+  I wish you were stricken of thunder
+    And burnt with a bright flame through,
+  Consumed and cloven in sunder,
+    I dead at your feet like you.
+
+  If I could but know after all,
+    I might cease to hunger and ache,
+  Though your heart were ever so small,
+    If it were not a stone or a snake.
+
+  You are crueller, you that we love,
+    Than hatred, hunger, or death;
+  You have eyes and breasts like a dove,
+    And you kill men's hearts with a breath
+
+  As plague in a poisonous city
+    Insults and exults on her dead,
+  So you, when pallid for pity
+    Comes love, and fawns to be fed.
+
+  As a tame beast writhes and wheedles,
+    He fawns to be fed with wiles;
+  You carve him a cross of needles,
+    And whet them sharp as your smiles.
+
+  He is patient of thorn and whip,
+    He is dumb under axe or dart;
+  You suck with a sleepy red lip
+    The wet red wounds in his heart.
+
+  You thrill as his pulses dwindle,
+    You brighten and warm as he bleeds,
+  With insatiable eyes that kindle
+    And insatiable mouth that feeds.
+
+  Your hands nailed love to the tree,
+    You stript him, scourged him with rods,
+  And drowned him deep in the sea
+    That hides the dead and their gods.
+
+  And for all this, die will he not;
+    There is no man sees him but I;
+  You came and went and forgot;
+    I hope he will some day die.
+
+
+
+
+A LITANY
+
+  [Greek: en ourano phaennas
+  krypso par' hymin augas,
+  mias pro nyktos hepta nyktas hexete, k.t.l.]
+                                       _Anth. Sac._
+
+
+  FIRST ANTIPHONE
+
+  All the bright lights of heaven
+      I will make dark over thee;
+  One night shall be as seven
+      That its skirts may cover thee;
+  I will send on thy strong men a sword,
+      On thy remnant a rod;
+  Ye shall know that I am the Lord,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  SECOND ANTIPHONE
+
+  All the bright lights of heaven
+      Thou hast made dark over us;
+  One night has been as seven
+      That its skirt might cover us;
+  Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword,
+      On our remnant a rod;
+  We know that thou art the Lord,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+  THIRD ANTIPHONE
+
+  As the tresses and wings of the wind
+      Are scattered and shaken,
+  I will scatter all them that have sinned,
+      There shall none be taken;
+  As a sower that scattereth seed,
+      So will I scatter them;
+  As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,
+      I will break and shatter them.
+
+
+  FOURTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  As the wings and the locks of the wind
+      Are scattered and shaken,
+  Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned,
+      There was no man taken;
+  As a sower that scattereth seed,
+      So hast thou scattered us;
+  As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,
+      Thou hast broken and shattered us.
+
+
+  FIFTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  From all thy lovers that love thee
+      I God will sunder thee;
+  I will make darkness above thee,
+      And thick darkness under thee;
+  Before me goeth a light,
+      Behind me a sword;
+  Shall a remnant find grace in my sight?
+      I am the Lord.
+
+
+  SIXTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  From all our lovers that love us
+      Thou God didst sunder us;
+  Thou madest darkness above us,
+      And thick darkness under us;
+  Thou hast kindled thy wrath for a light,
+      And made ready thy sword;
+  Let a remnant find grace in thy sight,
+      We beseech thee, O Lord.
+
+
+  SEVENTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  Wilt thou bring fine gold for a payment
+      For sins on this wise?
+  For the glittering of raiment
+      And the shining of eyes,
+  For the painting of faces
+      And the sundering of trust,
+  For the sins of thine high places
+      And delight of thy lust?
+
+  For your high things ye shall have lowly,
+      Lamentation for song;
+  For, behold, I God am holy,
+      I the Lord am strong;
+  Ye shall seek me and shall not reach me
+      Till the wine-press be trod;
+  In that hour ye shall turn and beseech me,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  EIGHTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  Not with fine gold for a payment,
+      But with coin of sighs,
+  But with rending of raiment
+      And with weeping of eyes,
+  But with shame of stricken faces
+      And with strewing of dust,
+  For the sin of stately places
+      And lordship of lust;
+
+  With voices of men made lowly,
+      Made empty of song,
+  O Lord God most holy,
+      O God most strong,
+  We reach out hands to reach thee
+      Ere the wine-press be trod;
+  We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+  NINTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  In that hour thou shalt say to the night,
+      Come down and cover us;
+  To the cloud on thy left and thy right,
+      Be thou spread over us;
+  A snare shall be as thy mother,
+      And a curse thy bride;
+  Thou shalt put her away, and another
+      Shall lie by thy side.
+
+  Thou shalt neither rise up by day
+      Nor lie down by night;
+  Would God it were dark! thou shalt say;
+      Would God it were light!
+  And the sight of thine eyes shall be made
+      As the burning of fire;
+  And thy soul shall be sorely afraid
+      For thy soul's desire.
+
+  Ye whom your lords loved well,
+      Putting silver and gold on you,
+  The inevitable hell
+      Shall surely take hold on you;
+  Your gold shall be for a token,
+      Your staff for a rod;
+  With the breaking of bands ye are broken,
+      Saith the Lord God.
+
+
+  TENTH ANTIPHONE
+
+  In our sorrow we said to the night,
+      Fall down and cover us;
+  To the darkness at left and at right,
+      Be thou shed over us;
+  We had breaking of spirit to mother
+      And cursing to bride;
+  And one was slain, and another
+      Stood up at our side.
+
+  We could not arise by day,
+      Nor lie down by night;
+  Thy sword was sharp in our way,
+      Thy word in our sight;
+  The delight of our eyelids was made
+      As the burning of fire;
+  And our souls became sorely afraid
+      For our soul's desire.
+
+  We whom the world loved well,
+      Laying silver and gold on us,
+  The kingdom of death and of hell
+      Riseth up to take hold on us;
+  Our gold is turned to a token,
+      Our staff to a rod;
+  Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken,
+      O Lord our God.
+
+
+
+
+A LAMENTATION
+
+
+  I
+
+  Who hath known the ways of time
+    Or trodden behind his feet?
+      There is no such man among men.
+  For chance overcomes him, or crime
+    Changes; for all things sweet
+      In time wax bitter again.
+  Who shall give sorrow enough,
+    Or who the abundance of tears?
+  Mine eyes are heavy with love
+    And a sword gone thorough mine ears,
+      A sound like a sword and fire,
+      For pity, for great desire;
+  Who shall ensure me thereof,
+    Lest I die, being full of my fears?
+
+  Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
+    The sleepless spirit, the root
+      And blossom of evil will,
+        The divine device of a god?
+  Who shall behold it or hath?
+    The twice-tongued prophets are mute,
+      The many speakers are still;
+        No foot has travelled or trod,
+  No hand has meted, his path.
+    Man's fate is a blood-red fruit,
+      And the mighty gods have their fill
+        And relax not the rein, or the rod.
+
+  Ye were mighty in heart from of old,
+    Ye slew with the spear, and are slain.
+  Keen after heat is the cold,
+    Sore after summer is rain,
+  And melteth man to the bone.
+    As water he weareth away,
+    As a flower, as an hour in a day,
+  Fallen from laughter to moan.
+  But my spirit is shaken with fear
+    Lest an evil thing begin,
+  New-born, a spear for a spear,
+    And one for another sin.
+  Or ever our tears began,
+    It was known from of old and said;
+  One law for a living man,
+    And another law for the dead.
+  For these are fearful and sad,
+    Vain, and things without breath;
+      While he lives let a man be glad,
+        For none hath joy of his death.
+
+
+  II
+
+  Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,
+    Or all the travail of the sea,
+  The many ways and waves, the birth
+  Fruitless, the labour nothing worth?
+    Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.
+  There is none shall say he hath seen,
+    There is none he hath known.
+  Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,
+    I have reaped and sown;
+  I have seen the desire of mine eyes,
+    The beginning of love,
+  The season of kisses and sighs
+    And the end thereof.
+  I have known the ways of the sea,
+    All the perilous ways,
+  Strange winds have spoken with me,
+    And the tongues of strange days.
+  I have hewn the pine for ships;
+    Where steeds run arow,
+  I have seen from their bridled lips
+    Foam blown as the snow.
+  With snapping of chariot-poles
+    And with straining of oars
+  I have grazed in the race the goals,
+    In the storm the shores;
+  As a greave is cleft with an arrow
+    At the joint of the knee,
+  I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow
+    To the heart of the sea.
+  When air was smitten in sunder
+    I have watched on high
+  The ways of the stars and the thunder
+    In the night of the sky;
+  Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,
+    As from lips that dissever;
+  One abideth the space of an hour,
+    One endureth for ever.
+  Lo, what hath he seen or known,
+    Of the way and the wave
+  Unbeholden, unsailed on, unsown,
+    From the breast to the grave?
+
+  Or ever the stars were made, or skies,
+    Grief was born, and the kinless night,
+      Mother of gods without form or name.
+  And light is born out of heaven and dies,
+    And one day knows not another's light,
+      But night is one, and her shape the same.
+
+  But dumb the goddesses underground
+    Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet
+      Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;
+  Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;
+    And sift in scales and winnow as wheat
+      Men's souls, and sorrow of manifold things.
+
+
+  III
+
+  Nor less of grief than ours
+    The gods wrought long ago
+      To bruise men one by one;
+  But with the incessant hours
+    Fresh grief and greener woe
+      Spring, as the sudden sun
+  Year after year makes flowers;
+    And these die down and grow,
+      And the next year lacks none.
+
+  As these men sleep, have slept
+    The old heroes in time fled,
+      No dream-divided sleep;
+  And holier eyes have wept
+    Than ours, when on her dead
+      Gods have seen Thetis weep,
+  With heavenly hair far-swept
+    Back, heavenly hands outspread
+      Round what she could not keep,
+
+  Could not one day withhold,
+    One night; and like as these
+      White ashes of no weight,
+  Held not his urn the cold
+    Ashes of Heracles?
+      For all things born one gate
+  Opens, no gate of gold;
+    Opens; and no man sees
+      Beyond the gods and fate.
+
+
+
+
+ANIMA ANCEPS
+
+
+  Till death have broken
+  Sweet life's love-token,
+  Till all be spoken
+    That shall be said,
+  What dost thou praying,
+  O soul, and playing
+  With song and saying,
+    Things flown and fled?
+  For this we know not--
+  That fresh springs flow not
+  And fresh griefs grow not
+    When men are dead;
+  When strange years cover
+  Lover and lover,
+  And joys are over
+    And tears are shed.
+
+  If one day's sorrow
+  Mar the day's morrow--
+  If man's life borrow
+    And man's death pay--
+  If souls once taken,
+  If lives once shaken,
+  Arise, awaken,
+    By night, by day--
+  Why with strong crying
+  And years of sighing,
+  Living and dying,
+    Fast ye and pray?
+  For all your weeping,
+  Waking and sleeping,
+  Death comes to reaping
+    And takes away.
+
+  Though time rend after
+  Roof-tree from rafter,
+  A little laughter
+    Is much more worth
+  Than thus to measure
+  The hour, the treasure,
+  The pain, the pleasure,
+    The death, the birth;
+  Grief, when days alter,
+  Like joy shall falter;
+  Song-book and psalter,
+    Mourning and mirth.
+  Live like the swallow;
+  Seek not to follow
+  Where earth is hollow
+    Under the earth.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE ORCHARD
+
+(PROVENCAL BURDEN)
+
+
+  Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;
+  Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;
+  Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon
+  Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie.
+  Kissed upon either cheek and either eye,
+  I turn to thee as some green afternoon
+  Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Lie closer, lean your face upon my side,
+  Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,
+  Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;
+  The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  O my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:
+  Is it not sweeter than a foolish kiss?
+  Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June,
+  My rose, so like a tender mouth it is:
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire,
+  Dividing my delight and my desire,
+  The crescent life and love the plenilune,
+  Love me though dusk begin and dark retire;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Ah, my heart fails, my blood draws back; I know,
+  When life runs over, life is near to go;
+  And with the slain of love love's ways are strewn,
+  And with their blood, if love will have it so;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Ah, do thy will now; slay me if thou wilt;
+  There is no building now the walls are built,
+  No quarrying now the corner-stone is hewn,
+  No drinking now the vine's whole blood is spilt;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain;
+  Pluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain,
+  Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune,
+  Slay me ere day can slay desire again;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Yea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea,
+  Take life and all, for I will die, I say;
+  Love, I gave love, is life a better boon?
+  For sweet night's sake I will not live till day;
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+  Nay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go.
+  Ah sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know
+  Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune;
+  Hold my hair fast, and kiss me through it so.
+  Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
+
+
+
+
+A MATCH
+
+
+  If love were what the rose is,
+    And I were like the leaf,
+  Our lives would grow together
+  In sad or singing weather,
+  Blown fields or flowerful closes,
+    Green pleasure or grey grief;
+  If love were what the rose is,
+    And I were like the leaf.
+
+  If I were what the words are,
+    And love were like the tune,
+  With double sound and single
+  Delight our lips would mingle,
+  With kisses glad as birds are
+    That get sweet rain at noon;
+  If I were what the words are,
+    And love were like the tune.
+
+  If you were life, my darling,
+    And I your love were death,
+  We'd shine and snow together
+  Ere March made sweet the weather
+  With daffodil and starling
+    And hours of fruitful breath;
+  If you were life, my darling,
+    And I your love were death.
+
+  If you were thrall to sorrow,
+    And I were page to joy,
+  We'd play for lives and seasons
+  With loving looks and treasons
+  And tears of night and morrow
+    And laughs of maid and boy;
+  If you were thrall to sorrow,
+    And I were page to joy.
+
+  If you were April's lady,
+    And I were lord in May,
+  We'd throw with leaves for hours
+  And draw for days with flowers,
+  Till day like night were shady
+    And night were bright like day;
+  If you were April's lady,
+    And I were lord in May.
+
+  If you were queen of pleasure,
+    And I were king of pain,
+  We'd hunt down love together,
+  Pluck out his flying-feather,
+  And teach his feet a measure,
+    And find his mouth a rein;
+  If you were queen of pleasure,
+    And I were king of pain.
+
+
+
+
+FAUSTINE
+
+_Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant._
+
+
+  Lean back, and get some minutes' peace;
+    Let your head lean
+  Back to the shoulder with its fleece
+    Of locks, Faustine.
+
+  The shapely silver shoulder stoops,
+    Weighed over clean
+  With state of splendid hair that droops
+    Each side, Faustine.
+
+  Let me go over your good gifts
+    That crown you queen;
+  A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts
+    Each week, Faustine.
+
+  Bright heavy brows well gathered up:
+    White gloss and sheen;
+  Carved lips that make my lips a cup
+    To drink, Faustine,
+
+  Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,
+    Being mixed therein
+  Since first the devil threw dice with God
+    For you, Faustine.
+
+  Your naked new-born soul, their stake,
+    Stood blind between;
+  God said "let him that wins her take
+    And keep Faustine."
+
+  But this time Satan throve, no doubt;
+    Long since, I ween,
+  God's part in you was battered out;
+    Long since, Faustine.
+
+  The die rang sideways as it fell,
+    Rang cracked and thin,
+  Like a man's laughter heard in hell
+    Far down, Faustine,
+
+  A shadow of laughter like a sigh,
+    Dead sorrow's kin;
+  So rang, thrown down, the devil's die
+    That won Faustine.
+
+  A suckling of his breed you were,
+    One hard to wean;
+  But God, who lost you, left you fair,
+    We see, Faustine.
+
+  You have the face that suits a woman
+    For her soul's screen--
+  The sort of beauty that's called human
+    In hell, Faustine.
+
+  You could do all things but be good
+    Or chaste of mien;
+  And that you would not if you could,
+    We know, Faustine.
+
+  Even he who cast seven devils out
+    Of Magdalene
+  Could hardly do as much, I doubt,
+    For you, Faustine.
+
+  Did Satan make you to spite God?
+    Or did God mean
+  To scourge with scorpions for a rod
+    Our sins, Faustine?
+
+  I know what queen at first you were,
+    As though I had seen
+  Red gold and black imperious hair
+    Twice crown Faustine.
+
+  As if your fed sarcophagus
+    Spared flesh and skin,
+  You come back face to face with us,
+    The same Faustine.
+
+  She loved the games men played with death,
+    Where death must win;
+  As though the slain man's blood and breath
+    Revived Faustine.
+
+  Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net;
+    Lithe limbs and lean
+  From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat
+    To soothe Faustine.
+
+  She drank the steaming drift and dust
+    Blown off the scene;
+  Blood could not ease the bitter lust
+    That galled Faustine.
+
+  All round the foul fat furrows reeked,
+    Where blood sank in;
+  The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked
+    All round Faustine.
+
+  But these are gone now: years entomb
+    The dust and din;
+  Yea, even the bath's fierce reek and fume
+    That slew Faustine.
+
+  Was life worth living then? and now
+    Is life worth sin?
+  Where are the imperial years? and how
+    Are you Faustine?
+
+  Your soul forgot her joys, forgot
+    Her times of teen;
+  Yea, this life likewise will you not
+    Forget, Faustine?
+
+  For in the time we know not of
+    Did fate begin
+  Weaving the web of days that wove
+    Your doom, Faustine.
+
+  The threads were wet with wine, and all
+    Were smooth to spin;
+  They wove you like a Bacchanal,
+    The first Faustine.
+
+  And Bacchus cast your mates and you
+    Wild grapes to glean;
+  Your flower-like lips were dashed with dew
+    From his, Faustine.
+
+  Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold
+    The vine's wet green,
+  Long ere they coined in Roman gold
+    Your face, Faustine.
+
+  Then after change of soaring feather
+    And winnowing fin,
+  You woke in weeks of feverish weather,
+    A new Faustine.
+
+  A star upon your birthday burned,
+    Whose fierce serene
+  Red pulseless planet never yearned
+    In heaven, Faustine.
+
+  Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew
+    Through Mitylene
+  Shook the fierce quivering blood in you
+    By night, Faustine.
+
+  The shameless nameless love that makes
+    Hell's iron gin
+  Shut on you like a trap that breaks
+    The soul, Faustine.
+
+  And when your veins were void and dead,
+    What ghosts unclean
+  Swarmed round the straitened barren bed
+    That hid Faustine?
+
+  What sterile growths of sexless root
+    Or epicene?
+  What flower of kisses without fruit
+    Of love, Faustine?
+
+  What adders came to shed their coats?
+    What coiled obscene
+  Small serpents with soft stretching throats
+    Caressed Faustine?
+
+  But the time came of famished hours,
+    Maimed loves and mean,
+  This ghastly thin-faced time of ours,
+    To spoil Faustine.
+
+  You seem a thing that hinges hold,
+    A love-machine
+  With clockwork joints of supple gold--
+    No more, Faustine.
+
+  Not godless, for you serve one God,
+    The Lampsacene,
+  Who metes the gardens with his rod;
+    Your lord, Faustine.
+
+  If one should love you with real love
+    (Such things have been,
+  Things your fair face knows nothing of,
+    It seems, Faustine);
+
+  That clear hair heavily bound back,
+    The lights wherein
+  Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black;
+    Your throat, Faustine,
+
+  Strong, heavy, throwing out the face
+    And hard bright chin
+  And shameful scornful lips that grace
+    Their shame, Faustine,
+
+  Curled lips, long-since half kissed away,
+    Still sweet and keen;
+  You'd give him--poison shall we say?
+    Or what, Faustine?
+
+
+
+
+A CAMEO
+
+
+  There was a graven image of Desire
+      Painted with red blood on a ground of gold
+      Passing between the young men and the old,
+  And by him Pain, whose body shone like fire,
+  And Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.
+      Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold,
+      The insatiable Satiety kept hold,
+  Walking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.
+  The senses and the sorrows and the sins,
+      And the strange loves that suck the breasts of Hate
+  Till lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture,
+  Followed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.
+      Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate,
+  Upon whose lock was written _Peradventure_.
+
+
+
+
+SONG BEFORE DEATH
+
+(FROM THE FRENCH)
+
+1795
+
+
+  Sweet mother, in a minute's span
+    Death parts thee and my love of thee;
+  Sweet love, that yet art living man,
+    Come back, true love, to comfort me.
+  Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!
+  But my love comes not any day.
+
+  As roses, when the warm West blows,
+    Break to full flower and sweeten spring,
+  My soul would break to a glorious rose
+    In such wise at his whispering.
+  In vain I listen; wellaway!
+  My love says nothing any day.
+
+  You that will weep for pity of love
+    On the low place where I am lain,
+  I pray you, having wept enough,
+    Tell him for whom I bore such pain
+  That he was yet, ah! wellaway!
+  My true love to my dying day.
+
+
+
+
+ROCOCO
+
+
+  Take hands and part with laughter;
+    Touch lips and part with tears;
+  Once more and no more after,
+    Whatever comes with years.
+  We twain shall not remeasure
+    The ways that left us twain;
+  Nor crush the lees of pleasure
+    From sanguine grapes of pain.
+
+  We twain once well in sunder,
+    What will the mad gods do
+  For hate with me, I wonder,
+    Or what for love with you?
+  Forget them till November,
+    And dream there's April yet;
+  Forget that I remember,
+    And dream that I forget.
+
+  Time found our tired love sleeping,
+    And kissed away his breath;
+  But what should we do weeping,
+    Though light love sleep to death?
+  We have drained his lips at leisure,
+    Till there's not left to drain
+  A single sob of pleasure,
+    A single pulse of pain.
+
+  Dream that the lips once breathless
+    Might quicken if they would;
+  Say that the soul is deathless;
+    Dream that the gods are good;
+  Say March may wed September,
+    And time divorce regret;
+  But not that you remember,
+    And not that I forget.
+
+  We have heard from hidden places
+    What love scarce lives and hears:
+  We have seen on fervent faces
+    The pallor of strange tears:
+  We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,
+    Whence, ripe to steam and stain,
+  Foams round the feet of pleasure
+    The blood-red must of pain.
+
+  Remembrance may recover
+    And time bring back to time
+  The name of your first lover,
+    The ring of my first rhyme;
+  But rose-leaves of December
+    The frosts of June shall fret,
+  The day that you remember,
+    The day that I forget.
+
+  The snake that hides and hisses
+    In heaven we twain have known;
+  The grief of cruel kisses,
+    The joy whose mouth makes moan;
+  The pulse's pause and measure,
+    Where in one furtive vein
+  Throbs through the heart of pleasure
+    The purpler blood of pain.
+
+  We have done with tears and treasons
+    And love for treason's sake;
+  Room for the swift new seasons,
+    The years that burn and break,
+  Dismantle and dismember
+    Men's days and dreams, Juliette;
+  For love may not remember,
+    But time will not forget.
+
+  Life treads down love in flying,
+    Time withers him at root;
+  Bring all dead things and dying,
+    Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,
+  Where, crushed by three days' pressure,
+    Our three days' love lies slain;
+  And earlier leaf of pleasure,
+    And latter flower of pain.
+
+  Breathe close upon the ashes,
+    It may be flame will leap;
+  Unclose the soft close lashes,
+    Lift up the lids, and weep.
+  Light love's extinguished ember,
+    Let one tear leave it wet
+  For one that you remember
+    And ten that you forget.
+
+
+
+
+STAGE LOVE
+
+
+  When the game began between them for a jest,
+  He played king and she played queen to match the best;
+  Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,
+  These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.
+
+  Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night;
+  All the sting and all the stain of long delight;
+  These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her,
+  When she played at half a love with half a lover.
+
+  Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry;
+  They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
+  Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
+  Till he died for good in play, and rose in sorrow.
+
+  What the years mean; how time dies and is not slain;
+  How love grows and laughs and cries and wanes again;
+  These were things she came to know, and take their measure,
+  When the play was played out so for one man's pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEPER
+
+
+  Nothing is better, I well think,
+    Than love; the hidden well-water
+  Is not so delicate to drink:
+    This was well seen of me and her.
+
+  I served her in a royal house;
+    I served her wine and curious meat.
+  For will to kiss between her brows,
+    I had no heart to sleep or eat.
+
+  Mere scorn God knows she had of me,
+    A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,
+  Who plucked his clerk's hood back to see
+    Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.
+
+  I vex my head with thinking this.
+    Yea, though God always hated me,
+  And hates me now that I can kiss
+    Her eyes, plait up her hair to see
+
+  How she then wore it on the brows,
+    Yet am I glad to have her dead
+  Here in this wretched wattled house
+    Where I can kiss her eyes and head.
+
+  Nothing is better, I well know,
+    Than love; no amber in cold sea
+  Or gathered berries under snow:
+    That is well seen of her and me.
+
+  Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:
+    First I take heart and think of this:
+  That knight's gold hair she chose to love,
+    His mouth she had such will to kiss.
+
+  Then I remember that sundawn
+    I brought him by a privy way
+  Out at her lattice, and thereon
+    What gracious words she found to say.
+
+  (Cold rushes for such little feet--
+    Both feet could lie into my hand.
+  A marvel was it of my sweet
+    Her upright body could so stand.)
+
+  "Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;
+    Now am I clean and whole of shame,
+  Nor shall men burn me in the face
+    For my sweet fault that scandals them."
+
+  I tell you over word by word.
+    She, sitting edgewise on her bed,
+  Holding her feet, said thus. The third,
+    A sweeter thing than these, I said.
+
+  God, that makes time and ruins it
+    And alters not, abiding God,
+  Changed with disease her body sweet,
+    The body of love wherein she abode.
+
+  Love is more sweet and comelier
+    Than a dove's throat strained out to sing.
+  All they spat out and cursed at her
+    And cast her forth for a base thing.
+
+  They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought
+    This curse to plague her, a curse of his.
+  Fools were they surely, seeing not
+    How sweeter than all sweet she is.
+
+  He that had held her by the hair,
+    With kissing lips blinding her eyes,
+  Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,
+    Sigh under him, with short mad cries
+
+  Out of her throat and sobbing mouth
+    And body broken up with love,
+  With sweet hot tears his lips were loth
+    Her own should taste the savour of,
+
+  Yea, he inside whose grasp all night
+    Her fervent body leapt or lay,
+  Stained with sharp kisses red and white,
+    Found her a plague to spurn away.
+
+  I hid her in this wattled house,
+    I served her water and poor bread.
+  For joy to kiss between her brows
+    Time upon time I was nigh dead.
+
+  Bread failed; we got but well-water
+    And gathered grass with dropping seed.
+  I had such joy of kissing her,
+    I had small care to sleep or feed.
+
+  Sometimes when service made me glad
+    The sharp tears leapt between my lids,
+  Falling on her, such joy I had
+    To do the service God forbids.
+
+  "I pray you let me be at peace,
+    Get hence, make room for me to die."
+  She said that: her poor lip would cease,
+    Put up to mine, and turn to cry.
+
+  I said, "Bethink yourself how love
+    Fared in us twain, what either did;
+  Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?
+    That I should do this, God forbid."
+
+  Yea, though God hateth us, he knows
+    That hardly in a little thing
+  Love faileth of the work it does
+    Till it grow ripe for gathering.
+
+  Six months, and now my sweet is dead
+    A trouble takes me; I know not
+  If all were done well, all well said,
+    No word or tender deed forgot.
+
+  Too sweet, for the least part in her,
+    To have shed life out by fragments; yet,
+  Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,
+    I might see something I forget.
+
+  Six months, and I sit still and hold
+    In two cold palms her cold two feet.
+  Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,
+    Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.
+
+  Love bites and stings me through, to see
+    Her keen face made of sunken bones.
+  Her worn-off eyelids madden me,
+    That were shot through with purple once.
+
+  She said, "Be good with me; I grow
+    So tired for shame's sake, I shall die
+  If you say nothing:" even so.
+    And she is dead now, and shame put by.
+
+  Yea, and the scorn she had of me
+    In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.
+  I never should have kissed her. See
+    What fools God's anger makes of men!
+
+  She might have loved me a little too,
+    Had I been humbler for her sake.
+  But that new shame could make love new
+    She saw not--yet her shame did make.
+
+  I took too much upon my love,
+    Having for such mean service done
+  Her beauty and all the ways thereof,
+    Her face and all the sweet thereon.
+
+  Yea, all this while I tended her,
+    I know the old love held fast his part:
+  I know the old scorn waxed heavier,
+    Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.
+
+  It may be all my love went wrong--
+    A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,
+  Scrawled after the blind evensong--
+    Spoilt music with no perfect word.
+
+  But surely I would fain have done
+    All things the best I could. Perchance
+  Because I failed, came short of one,
+    She kept at heart that other man's.
+
+  I am grown blind with all these things:
+    It may be now she hath in sight
+  Some better knowledge; still there clings
+    The old question. Will not God do right?[3]
+
+    [3] En ce temps-la estoyt dans ce pays grand nombre de ladres et
+    de meseaulx, ce dont le roy eut grand desplaisir, veu que Dieu
+    dust en estre moult griefvement courrouce. Ores il advint qu'une
+    noble damoyselle appelee Yolande de Sallieres estant atteincte et
+    touste guastee de ce vilain mal, tous ses amys et ses parens ayant
+    devant leurs yeux la paour de Dieu la firent issir fors de leurs
+    maisons et oncques ne voulurent recepvoir ni reconforter chose
+    mauldicte de Dieu et a tous les hommes puante et abhominable.
+    Ceste dame avoyt este moult belle et gracieuse de formes, et de
+    son corps elle estoyt large et de vie lascive. Pourtant nul des
+    amans qui l'avoyent souventesfois accollee et baisee moult
+    tendrement ne voulust plus heberger si laide femme et si
+    detestable pescheresse. Ung seul clerc qui feut premierement son
+    lacquays et son entremetteur en matiere d'amour la recut chez luy
+    et la recela dans une petite cabane. La mourut la meschinette de
+    grande misere et de male mort: et apres elle deceda ledist clerc
+    qui pour grand amour l'avoyt six mois durant soignee, lavee,
+    habillee et deshabillee tous les jours de ses mains propres. Mesme
+    dist-on que ce meschant homme et mauldict clerc se rememourant de
+    la grande beaute passee et guastee de ceste femme se delectoyt
+    maintesfois a la baiser sur sa bouche orde et lepreuse et
+    l'accoller doulcement de ses mains amoureuses. Aussy est-il mort
+    de ceste mesme maladie abhominable. Cecy advint pres
+    Fontainebellant en Gastinois. Et quand ouyt le roy Philippe ceste
+    adventure moult en estoyt esmerveille.
+
+                                 _Grandes Chroniques de France, 1505._
+
+
+
+
+A BALLAD OF BURDENS
+
+
+  The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
+    And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
+  And sorrowful old age that comes by night
+    As a thief comes that has no heart by day,
+    And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,
+  And weariness that keeps awake for hire,
+    And grief that says what pleasure used to say;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of bought kisses. This is sore,
+    A burden without fruit in childbearing;
+  Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore,
+    Threescore between the dawn and evening.
+    The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering
+  In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,
+    Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing,
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,
+    Cover thy head, and weep; for verily
+  These market-men that buy thy white and brown
+    In the last days shall take no thought for thee.
+    In the last days like earth thy face shall be,
+  Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,
+    Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea.
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear
+    Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;
+  And say at night "Would God the day were here,"
+    And say at dawn "Would God the day were dead."
+    With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,
+  And wear remorse of heart for thine attire,
+    Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see
+    Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green;
+  And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,
+    And no more as the thing beforetime seen.
+    And thou shalt say of mercy "It hath been,"
+  And living, watch the old lips and loves expire,
+    And talking, tears shall take thy breath between;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of sad sayings. In that day
+    Thou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell
+  Thy times and ways and words of love, and say
+    How one was dear and one desirable,
+    And sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell,
+  But now with lights reverse the old hours retire
+    And the last hour is shod with fire from hell;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,
+    White rain and wind among the tender trees;
+  A summer of green sorrows gathering,
+    Rank autumn in a mist of miseries,
+    With sad face set towards the year, that sees
+  The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,
+    And winter wan with many maladies;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of dead faces. Out of sight
+    And out of love, beyond the reach of hands,
+  Changed in the changing of the dark and light,
+    They walk and weep about the barren lands
+    Where no seed is nor any garner stands,
+  Where in short breaths the doubtful days respire,
+    And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+  The burden of much gladness. Life and lust
+    Forsake thee, and the face of thy delight;
+  And underfoot the heavy hour strews dust,
+    And overhead strange weathers burn and bite;
+    And where the red was, lo the bloodless white,
+  And where truth was, the likeness of a liar,
+    And where day was, the likeness of the night;
+  This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+
+  L'ENVOY
+
+  Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,
+    Heed well this rhyme before your pleasure tire;
+  For life is sweet, but after life is death.
+    This is the end of every man's desire.
+
+
+
+
+RONDEL
+
+
+  Kissing her hair I sat against her feet,
+  Wove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;
+  Made fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,
+  Deep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;
+  With her own tresses bound and found her fair,
+      Kissing her hair.
+
+  Sleep were no sweeter than her face to me,
+  Sleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;
+  What pain could get between my face and hers?
+  What new sweet thing would love not relish worse?
+  Unless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,
+      Kissing her hair?
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE THE MIRROR
+
+(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE)
+
+INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER
+
+
+  I
+
+  White rose in red rose-garden
+    Is not so white;
+  Snowdrops that plead for pardon
+    And pine for fright
+  Because the hard East blows
+  Over their maiden rows
+    Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.
+
+  Behind the veil, forbidden,
+    Shut up from sight,
+  Love, is there sorrow hidden,
+    Is there delight?
+  Is joy thy dower or grief,
+  White rose of weary leaf,
+    Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?
+
+  Soft snows that hard winds harden
+    Till each flake bite
+  Fill all the flowerless garden
+    Whose flowers took flight
+  Long since when summer ceased,
+  And men rose up from feast,
+    And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.
+
+
+  II
+
+  "Come snow, come wind or thunder
+    High up in air,
+  I watch my face, and wonder
+    At my bright hair;
+  Nought else exalts or grieves
+  The rose at heart, that heaves
+    With love of her own leaves and lips that pair.
+
+  "She knows not loves that kissed her
+    She knows not where.
+  Art thou the ghost, my sister,
+    White sister there,
+  Am I the ghost, who knows?
+  My hand, a fallen rose,
+    Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.
+
+  "I cannot see what pleasures
+    Or what pains were;
+  What pale new loves and treasures
+    New years will bear;
+  What beam will fall, what shower,
+  What grief or joy for dower;
+    But one thing-knows the flower; the flower is fair."
+
+
+  III
+
+  Glad, but not flushed with gladness,
+    Since joys go by;
+  Sad, but not bent with sadness,
+    Since sorrows die;
+  Deep in the gleaming glass
+  She sees all past things pass,
+    And all sweet life that was lie down and lie.
+
+  There glowing ghosts of flowers
+    Draw down, draw nigh;
+  And wings of swift spent hours
+    Take flight and fly;
+  She sees by formless gleams,
+  She hears across cold streams,
+    Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh.
+
+  Face fallen and white throat lifted,
+    With sleepless eye
+  She sees old loves that drifted,
+    She knew not why,
+  Old loves and faded fears
+  Float down a stream that hears
+    The flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky.
+
+
+
+
+EROTION
+
+
+  Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,
+  O love, to lay down fear at love's fair feet;
+  Shall not some fiery memory of his breath
+  Lie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?
+  Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;
+  Love me no more, but love my love of thee.
+  Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,
+  One thing I can, and one love cannot--die.
+  Pass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,
+  Feed my desire and deaden my despair.
+  Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheek
+  Whiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,
+  Yet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;
+  Keep other hours for others, save me this.
+  Yea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,
+  Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.
+  Sweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong:
+  I shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long.
+  Hast thou not given me above all that live
+  Joy, and a little sorrow shalt not give?
+  What even though fairer fingers of strange girls
+  Pass nestling through thy beautiful boy's curls
+  As mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thine
+  Meet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine;
+  And though I were not, though I be not, best,
+  I have loved and love thee more than all the rest.
+  O love, O lover, loose or hold me fast,
+  I had thee first, whoever have thee last;
+  Fairer or not, what need I know, what care?
+  To thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair.
+  Why am I fair at all before thee, why
+  At all desired? seeing thou art fair, not I.
+  I shall be glad of thee, O fairest head,
+  Alive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead;
+  I shall remember while the light lives yet,
+  And in the night-time I shall not forget.
+  Though (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave,
+  I will not, for thy love I will not, grieve;
+  Not as they use who love not more than I,
+  Who love not as I love thee though I die;
+  And though thy lips, once mine, be oftener prest
+  To many another brow and balmier breast,
+  And sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind,
+  Lull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find.
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+  Back to the flower-town, side by side,
+      The bright months bring,
+  New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
+      Freedom and spring.
+
+  The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
+      Filled full of sun;
+  All things come back to her, being free;
+      All things but one.
+
+  In many a tender wheaten plot
+      Flowers that were dead
+  Live, and old suns revive; but not
+      That holier head.
+
+  By this white wandering waste of sea,
+      Far north, I hear
+  One face shall never turn to me
+      As once this year:
+
+  Shall never smile and turn and rest
+      On mine as there,
+  Nor one most sacred hand be prest
+      Upon my hair.
+
+  I came as one whose thoughts half linger,
+      Half run before;
+  The youngest to the oldest singer
+      That England bore.
+
+  I found him whom I shall not find
+      Till all grief end,
+  In holiest age our mightiest mind,
+      Father and friend.
+
+  But thou, if anything endure,
+      If hope there be,
+  O spirit that man's life left pure,
+      Man's death set free,
+
+  Not with disdain of days that were
+      Look earthward now;
+  Let dreams revive the reverend hair,
+      The imperial brow;
+
+  Come back in sleep, for in the life
+      Where thou art not
+  We find none like thee. Time and strife
+      And the world's lot
+
+  Move thee no more; but love at least
+      And reverent heart
+  May move thee, royal and released,
+      Soul, as thou art.
+
+  And thou, his Florence, to thy trust
+      Receive and keep,
+  Keep safe his dedicated dust,
+      His sacred sleep.
+
+  So shall thy lovers, come from far,
+      Mix with thy name
+  As morning-star with evening-star
+      His faultless fame
+
+
+
+
+A SONG IN TIME OF ORDER. 1852
+
+
+  Push hard across the sand,
+      For the salt wind gathers breath;
+  Shoulder and wrist and hand,
+      Push hard as the push of death.
+
+  The wind is as iron that rings,
+      The foam-heads loosen and flee;
+  It swells and welters and swings,
+      The pulse of the tide of the sea.
+
+  And up on the yellow cliff
+      The long corn flickers and shakes;
+  Push, for the wind holds stiff,
+      And the gunwale dips and rakes.
+
+  Good hap to the fresh fierce weather,
+      The quiver and beat of the sea!
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  Out to the sea with her there,
+      Out with her over the sand;
+  Let the kings keep the earth for their share!
+      We have done with the sharers of land.
+
+  They have tied the world in a tether,
+      They have bought over God with a fee;
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  We have done with the kisses that sting,
+      The thief's mouth red from the feast,
+  The blood on the hands of the king
+      And the lie at the lips of the priest.
+
+  Will they tie the winds in a tether,
+      Put a bit in the jaws of the sea?
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  Let our flag run out straight in the wind!
+      The old red shall be floated again
+  When the ranks that are thin shall be thinned,
+      When the names that were twenty are ten;
+
+  When the devil's riddle is mastered
+      And the galley-bench creaks with a Pope,
+  We shall see Buonaparte the bastard
+      Kick heels with his throat in a rope.
+
+  While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep
+      And the emperor halters his kine,
+  While Shame is a watchman asleep
+      And Faith is a keeper of swine,
+
+  Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
+      Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+  All the world has its burdens to bear,
+      From Cayenne to the Austrian whips;
+  Forth, with the rain in our hair
+      And the salt sweet foam in our lips;
+
+  In the teeth of the hard glad weather,
+      In the blown wet face of the sea;
+  While three men hold together,
+      The kingdoms are less by three.
+
+
+
+
+A SONG IN TIME OF REVOLUTION. 1860
+
+
+  The heart of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
+  For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the
+      dead.
+
+  The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:
+  Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of
+      their feet.
+
+  The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:
+  The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like
+      reeds.
+
+  The high-priest sick from qualms, with his raiment bloodily dashed;
+  The thief with branded palms, and the liar with cheeks abashed.
+
+  They are smitten, they tremble greatly, they are pained for their
+      pleasant things:
+  For the house of the priests made stately, and the might in the mouth
+      of the kings.
+
+  They are grieved and greatly afraid; they are taken, they shall not
+      flee:
+  For the heart of the nations is made as the strength of the springs of
+      the sea.
+
+  They were fair in the grace of gold, they walked with delicate feet:
+  They were clothed with the cunning of old, and the smell of their
+      garments was sweet.
+
+  For the breaking of gold in their hair they halt as a man made lame:
+  They are utterly naked and bare; their mouths are bitter with shame.
+
+  Wilt thou judge thy people now, O king that wast found most wise?
+  Wilt thou lie any more, O thou whose mouth is emptied of lies?
+
+  Shall God make a pact with thee, till his hook be found in thy sides?
+  Wilt thou put back the time of the sea, or the place of the season of
+      tides?
+
+  Set a word in thy lips, to stand before God with a word in thy mouth:
+  That "the rain shall return in the land, and the tender dew after
+      drouth."
+
+  But the arm of the elders is broken, their strength is unbound and
+      undone:
+  They wait for a sign of a token; they cry, and there cometh none.
+
+  Their moan is in every place, the cry of them filleth the land:
+  There is shame in the sight of their face, there is fear in the thews
+      of their hand.
+
+  They are girdled about the reins with a curse for the girdle thereon:
+  For the noise of the rending of chains the face of their colour is
+      gone.
+
+  For the sound of the shouting of men they are grievously stricken at
+      heart:
+  They are smitten asunder with pain, their bones are smitten apart.
+
+  There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for
+      breath;
+  They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of
+      death.
+
+  The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;
+  As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the
+      earth.
+
+  The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;
+  The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the
+      south.
+
+  The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,
+  In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness
+      of death;
+
+  Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,
+  The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun:
+
+  Where the waters are emptied and broken, the waves of the waters are
+      stayed;
+  Where God has bound for a token the darkness that maketh afraid;
+
+  Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its
+      side,
+  A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:
+
+  The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall be
+      red,
+  For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of
+      the dead.
+
+
+
+
+TO VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+    In the fair days when God
+    By man as godlike trod,
+  And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
+    God's lightning spared, they said,
+    Alone the happier head
+  Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
+    To whom the high gods gave of right
+  Their thunders and their laurels and their light.
+
+    Sunbeams and bays before
+    Our master's servants wore,
+  For these Apollo left in all men's lands;
+    But far from these ere now
+    And watched with jealous brow
+  Lay the blind lightnings shut between God's hands,
+    And only loosed on slaves and kings
+  The terror of the tempest of their wings.
+
+    Born in those younger years
+    That shone with storms of spears
+  And shook in the wind blown from a dead world's pyre,
+    When by her back-blown hair
+    Napoleon caught the fair
+  And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,
+    And stayed with iron words and hands
+  Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:
+
+    Thou sawest the tides of things
+    Close over heads of kings,
+  And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee
+    Laurels and lightnings were
+    As sunbeams and soft air
+  Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea
+    Mixed, or as memory with desire,
+  Or the lute's pulses with the louder lyre.
+
+    For thee man's spirit stood
+    Disrobed of flesh and blood,
+  And bare the heart of the most secret hours;
+    And to thine hand more tame
+    Than birds in winter came
+  High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,
+    And from thy table fed, and sang
+  Till with the tune men's ears took fire and rang.
+
+    Even all men's eyes and ears
+    With fiery sound and tears
+  Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelid light,
+    At those high songs of thine
+    That stung the sense like wine,
+  Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,
+    Or wailed as in some flooded cave
+  Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.
+
+    But we, our master, we
+    Whose hearts, uplift to thee,
+  Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,
+    We ask not nor await
+    From the clenched hands of fate,
+  As thou, remission of the world's old wrong;
+    Respite we ask not, nor release;
+  Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.
+
+    Though thy most fiery hope
+    Storm heaven, to set wide ope
+  The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars
+    All feet of men, all eyes--
+    The old night resumes her skies,
+  Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,
+    Where nought save these is sure in sight;
+  And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.
+
+    One thing we can; to be
+    Awhile, as men may, free;
+  But not by hope or pleasure the most stern
+    Goddess, most awful-eyed,
+    Sits, but on either side
+  Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,
+    Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,
+  And memory grey with many a flowerless year.
+
+    Not that in stranger's wise
+    I lift not loving eyes
+  To the fair foster-mother France, that gave
+    Beyond the pale fleet foam
+    Help to my sires and home,
+  Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save
+    Whom from her nursing breasts and hands
+  Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.
+
+    Not without thoughts that ache
+    For theirs and for thy sake,
+  I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;
+    I whose young song took flight
+    Toward the great heat and light
+  On me a child from thy far splendour shed,
+    From thine high place of soul and song,
+  Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.
+
+    Ah, not with lessening love
+    For memories born hereof,
+  I look to that sweet mother-land, and see
+    The old fields and fair full streams,
+    And skies, but fled like dreams
+  The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;
+    And all between the skies and graves
+  The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.
+
+    She, killed with noisome air,
+    Even she! and still so fair,
+  Who said "Let there be freedom," and there was
+    Freedom; and as a lance
+    The fiery eyes of France
+  Touched the world's sleep and as a sleep made pass
+    Forth of men's heavier ears and eyes
+  Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.
+
+    Are they men's friends indeed
+    Who watch them weep and bleed?
+  Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?
+    Thou, first of men and friend,
+    Seest thou, even thou, the end?
+  Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?
+    Evils may pass and hopes endure;
+  But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.
+
+    O nursed in airs apart,
+    O poet highest of heart,
+  Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?
+    Are not the years more wise,
+    More sad than keenest eyes,
+  The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?
+    Passing we hear them not, but past
+  The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.
+
+    Thou art chief of us, and lord;
+    Thy song is as a sword
+  Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;
+    Thou art lord and king; but we
+    Lift younger eyes, and see
+  Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;
+    Hours that have borne men down so long,
+  Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.
+
+    But thine imperial soul,
+    As years and ruins roll
+  To the same end, and all things and all dreams
+    With the same wreck and roar
+    Drift on the dim same shore,
+  Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams
+    Tracks the fresh water-spring to be
+  And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.
+
+    As once the high God bound
+    With many a rivet round
+  Man's saviour, and with iron nailed him through,
+    At the wild end of things,
+    Where even his own bird's wings
+  Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,
+    From Caucasus beheld below
+  Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;
+
+    So the strong God, the chance
+    Central of circumstance,
+  Still shows him exile who will not be slave;
+    All thy great fame and thee
+    Girt by the dim strait sea
+  With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;
+    Shows us our greatest from his throne
+  Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.
+
+    Yea, he is strong, thou say'st,
+    A mystery many-faced,
+  The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
+    The blind night sees him, death
+    Shrinks beaten at his breath,
+  And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
+    We know he hath made us, and is king;
+  We know not if he care for anything.
+
+    Thus much, no more, we know;
+    He bade what is be so,
+  Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;
+    Bade hope and fear, bade ill
+    And good redeem and kill,
+  Till all men be aweary of the sun
+    And his world burn in its own flame
+  And bear no witness longer of his name.
+
+    Yet though all this be thus,
+    Be those men praised of us
+  Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned
+    For fame or fear or gold,
+    Nor waxed for winter cold,
+  Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;
+    Praised above men of men be these,
+  Till this one world and work we know shall cease.
+
+    Yea, one thing more than this,
+    We know that one thing is,
+  The splendour of a spirit without blame,
+    That not the labouring years
+    Blind-born, nor any fears,
+  Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;
+    But purer power with fiery breath
+  Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.
+
+    Praised above men be thou,
+    Whose laurel-laden brow,
+  Made for the morning, droops not in the night;
+    Praised and beloved, that none
+    Of all thy great things done
+  Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight;
+    Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend
+  Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end.
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE DAWN
+
+
+  Sweet life, if life were stronger,
+  Earth clear of years that wrong her,
+  Then two things might live longer,
+    Two sweeter things than they;
+  Delight, the rootless flower,
+  And love, the bloomless bower;
+  Delight that lives an hour,
+    And love that lives a day.
+
+  From evensong to daytime,
+  When April melts in Maytime,
+  Love lengthens out his playtime,
+    Love lessens breath by breath,
+  And kiss by kiss grows older
+  On listless throat or shoulder
+  Turned sideways now, turned colder
+    Than life that dreams of death.
+
+  This one thing once worth giving
+  Life gave, and seemed worth living;
+  Sin sweet beyond forgiving
+    And brief beyond regret:
+  To laugh and love together
+  And weave with foam and feather
+  And wind and words the tether
+    Our memories play with yet.
+
+  Ah, one thing worth beginning,
+  One thread in life worth spinning,
+  Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning
+    With all the whole soul's will;
+  To lull you till one stilled you,
+  To kiss you till one killed you,
+  To feed you till one filled you,
+    Sweet lips, if love could fill;
+
+  To hunt sweet Love and lose him
+  Between white arms and bosom,
+  Between the bud and blossom,
+    Between your throat and chin;
+  To say of shame--what is it?
+  Of virtue--we can miss it,
+  Of sin--we can but kiss it,
+    And it's no longer sin:
+
+  To feel the strong soul, stricken
+  Through fleshly pulses, quicken
+  Beneath swift sighs that thicken,
+    Soft hands and lips that smite;
+  Lips that no love can tire,
+  With hands that sting like fire,
+  Weaving the web Desire
+    To snare the bird Delight.
+
+  But love so lightly plighted,
+  Our love with torch unlighted,
+  Paused near us unaffrighted,
+    Who found and left him free;
+  None, seeing us cloven in sunder,
+  Will weep or laugh or wonder;
+  Light love stands clear of thunder,
+    And safe from winds at sea.
+
+  As, when late larks give warning
+  Of dying lights and dawning,
+  Night murmurs to the morning,
+    "Lie still, O love, lie still;"
+  And half her dark limbs cover
+  The white limbs of her lover,
+  With amorous plumes that hover
+    And fervent lips that chill;
+
+  As scornful day represses
+  Night's void and vain caresses,
+  And from her cloudier tresses
+    Unwinds the gold of his,
+  With limbs from limbs dividing
+  And breath by breath subsiding;
+  For love has no abiding,
+    But dies before the kiss;
+
+  So hath it been, so be it;
+  For who shall live and flee it?
+  But look that no man see it
+    Or hear it unaware;
+  Lest all who love and choose him
+  See Love, and so refuse him;
+  For all who find him lose him,
+    But all have found him fair.
+
+
+
+
+DOLORES
+
+(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS)
+
+
+  Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
+    Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
+  The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
+    Red mouth like a venomous flower;
+  When these are gone by with their glories,
+    What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
+  O mystic and sombre Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain?
+
+  Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
+    But thy sins, which are seventy times seven,
+  Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,
+    And then they would haunt thee in heaven:
+  Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
+    And the loves that complete and control
+  All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
+    That wear out the soul.
+
+  O garment not golden but gilded,
+    O garden where all men may dwell,
+  O tower not of ivory, but builded
+    By hands that reach heaven from hell;
+  O mystical rose of the mire,
+    O house not of gold but of gain,
+  O house of unquenchable fire,
+    Our Lady of Pain!
+
+  O lips full of lust and of laughter,
+    Curled snakes that are fed from my breast,
+  Bite hard, lest remembrance come after
+    And press with new lips where you pressed.
+  For my heart too springs up at the pressure,
+    Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;
+  Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,
+    Ere pain come in turn.
+
+  In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,
+    Out of sight though they lie of to-day,
+  There have been and there yet shall be sorrows
+    That smite not and bite not in play.
+  The life and the love thou despisest,
+    These hurt us indeed, and in vain,
+  O wise among women, and wisest,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories
+    That stung thee, what visions that smote?
+  Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,
+    When desire took thee first by the throat?
+  What bud was the shell of a blossom
+    That all men may smell to and pluck?
+  What milk fed thee first at what bosom?
+    What sins gave thee suck?
+
+  We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
+    Thou art noble and nude and antique;
+  Libitina thy mother, Priapus
+    Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
+  We play with light loves in the portal,
+    And wince and relent and refrain;
+  Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
+    Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
+  And alive after infinite changes,
+    And fresh from the kisses of death;
+  Of languors rekindled and rallied,
+    Of barren delights and unclean,
+  Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
+    And poisonous queen.
+
+  Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
+    Men touch them, and change in a trice
+  The lilies and languors of virtue
+    For the raptures and roses of vice;
+  Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
+    These crown and caress thee and chain,
+  O splendid and sterile Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  There are sins it may be to discover,
+    There are deeds it may be to delight.
+  What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
+    What new passions for daytime or night?
+  What spells that they know not a word of
+    Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
+  What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
+    Unwritten, unknown?
+
+  Ah beautiful passionate body
+    That never has ached with a heart!
+  On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,
+    Though they sting till it shudder and smart,
+  More kind than the love we adore is,
+    They hurt not the heart or the brain,
+  O bitter and tender Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  As our kisses relax and redouble,
+    From the lips and the foam and the fangs
+  Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,
+    No dream of impossible pangs?
+  With the sweet of the sins of old ages
+    Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
+  Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,
+    Too bitter the core.
+
+  Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,
+    And bared all thy beauties to one?
+  Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,
+    If the worst that can be has been done?
+  But sweet as the rind was the core is;
+    We are fain of thee still, we are fain,
+  O sanguine and subtle Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  By the hunger of change and emotion,
+    By the thirst of unbearable things,
+  By despair, the twin-born of devotion,
+    By the pleasure that winces and stings,
+  The delight that consumes the desire,
+    The desire that outruns the delight,
+  By the cruelty deaf as a fire
+    And blind as the night,
+
+  By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
+    Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
+  By the lips intertwisted and bitten
+    Till the foam has a savour of blood,
+  By the pulse as it rises and falters,
+    By the hands as they slacken and strain,
+  I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
+    The light fire in the veins of a boy?
+  But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,
+    Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;
+  Less careful of labour and glory
+    Than the elders whose hair has uncurled;
+  And young, but with fancies as hoary
+    And grey as the world.
+
+  I have passed from the outermost portal
+    To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
+  What care though the service be mortal?
+    O our Lady of Torture, what care?
+  All thine the last wine that I pour is,
+    The last in the chalice we drain,
+  O fierce and luxurious Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  All thine the new wine of desire,
+    The fruit of four lips as they clung
+  Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,
+    The foam of a serpentine tongue,
+  The froth of the serpents of pleasure,
+    More salt than the foam of the sea,
+  Now felt as a flame, now at leisure
+    As wine shed for me.
+
+  Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,
+    Marked cross from the womb and perverse!
+  They have found out the secret to cozen
+    The gods that constrain us and curse;
+  They alone, they are wise, and none other;
+    Give me place, even me, in their train,
+  O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  For the crown of our life as it closes
+    Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
+  No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
+    And love is more cruel than lust.
+  Time turns the old days to derision,
+    Our loves into corpses or wives;
+  And marriage and death and division
+    Make barren our lives.
+
+  And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
+    And satiate with comfortless hours;
+  And we know thee, how all men belie thee,
+    And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
+  The passion that slays and recovers,
+    The pangs and the kisses that rain
+  On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  The desire of thy furious embraces
+    Is more than the wisdom of years,
+  On the blossom though blood lie in traces,
+    Though the foliage be sodden with tears.
+  For the lords in whose keeping the door is
+    That opens on all who draw breath
+  Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,
+    The myrtle to death.
+
+  And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
+    And they mixed and made peace after strife;
+  Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
+    Death tingled with blood, and was life.
+  Like lovers they melted and tingled,
+    In the dusk of thine innermost fane;
+  In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  In a twilight where virtues are vices,
+    In thy chapels, unknown of the sun,
+  To a tune that enthralls and entices,
+    They were wed, and the twain were as one.
+  For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
+    Since God bade the world's work begin,
+  And the fume of thine incense abounded,
+    To sweeten the sin.
+
+  Love listens, and paler than ashes,
+    Through his curls as the crown on them slips,
+  Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
+    And laughs with insatiable lips.
+  Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
+    With music that scares the profane;
+  Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,
+    Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
+  In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,
+    In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
+  In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
+    In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;
+  Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
+    Asleep and awake.
+
+  Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses
+    With juice not of fruit nor of bud;
+  When the sense in the spirit reposes,
+    Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.
+  Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,
+    Who would live and not languish or feign,
+  O sleepless and deadly Dolores,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
+    In a lull of the fires of thy life,
+  Of the days without name, without number,
+    When thy will stung the world into strife;
+  When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion
+    Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;
+  And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,
+    Foam-white, from the foam?
+
+  When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
+    When the city lay red from thy rods,
+  And thine hands were as arrows to scatter
+    The children of change and their gods;
+  When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
+    A sand never moist from the main,
+  As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  On sands by the storm never shaken,
+    Nor wet from the washing of tides;
+  Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,
+    Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;
+  But red from the print of thy paces,
+    Made smooth for the world and its lords,
+  Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,
+    And splendid with swords.
+
+  There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
+    Drew bitter and perilous breath;
+  There torments laid hold on the treasure
+    Of limbs too delicious for death;
+  When thy gardens were lit with live torches;
+    When the world was a steed for thy rein;
+  When the nations lay prone in thy porches,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  When, with flame all around him aspirant,
+    Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
+  The implacable beautiful tyrant,
+    Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;
+  And a sound as the sound of loud water
+    Smote far through the flight of the fires,
+  And mixed with the lightning of slaughter
+   A thunder of lyres.
+
+  Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,
+    The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
+  Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,
+    For these, in a world of new things?
+  But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
+    No hunger compel to complain
+  Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
+    Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
+  The white wealth of thy body made whiter
+    By the blushes of amorous blows,
+  And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
+    And branded by kisses that bruise;
+  When all shall be gone that now lingers,
+    Ah, what shall we lose?
+
+  Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,
+    And thy limbs are as melodies yet,
+  And move to the music of passion
+    With lithe and lascivious regret.
+  What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
+    For creeds that refuse and restrain?
+  Come down and redeem us from virtue,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,
+    But the flame has not fallen from this;
+  Though obscure be the god, and though nameless
+    The eyes and the hair that we kiss;
+  Low fires that love sits by and forges
+    Fresh heads for his arrows and thine;
+  Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies
+    With kisses and wine.
+
+  Thy skin changes country and colour,
+    And shrivels or swells to a snake's.
+  Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,
+    We know it, the flames and the flakes,
+  Red brands on it smitten and bitten,
+    Round skies where a star is a stain,
+  And the leaves with thy litanies written,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
+    There are none such as knew it of old.
+  Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
+    Male ringlets or feminine gold,
+  That thy lips met with under the statue,
+    Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
+  From the eyes of the garden-god at you
+    Across the fig-leaves?
+
+  Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
+    One god had a wreath to his shrine;
+  Then love was the pearl of his oyster,[4]
+    And Venus rose red out of wine.
+  We have all done amiss, choosing rather
+    Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
+  Intercede for us thou with thy father,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  In spring he had crowns of his garden,
+    Red corn in the heat of the year,
+  Then hoary green olives that harden
+    When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
+  And milk-budded myrtles with Venus
+    And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
+  And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,
+    A visible God."
+
+  What broke off the garlands that girt you?
+    What sundered you spirit and clay?
+  Weak sins yet alive are as virtue
+    To the strength of the sins of that day.
+  For dried is the blood of thy lover,
+    Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;
+  Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,
+    Our Lady of Pain?"
+
+  Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:
+    Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
+  And rears not the bountiful token
+    And spreads not the fatherly feast.
+  From the midmost of Ida, from shady
+    Recesses that murmur at morn,
+  They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,
+    A goddess new-born.
+
+  And the chaplets of old are above us,
+    And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
+  Old poets outsing and outlove us,
+    And Catullus makes mouths at our speech.
+  Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,
+    With such lips as he sang with, again?
+  Intercede for us all of thy pity,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Out of Dindymus heavily laden
+    Her lions draw bound and unfed
+  A mother, a mortal, a maiden,
+    A queen over death and the dead.
+  She is cold, and her habit is lowly,
+    Her temple of branches and sods;
+  Most fruitful and virginal, holy,
+    A mother of gods.
+
+  She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
+    She hath hidden and marred and made sad
+  The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
+    Of gods that were goodly and glad.
+  She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
+    She moves as a moon in the wane,
+  White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  They shall pass and their places be taken,
+    The gods and the priests that are pure.
+  They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?
+    They shall perish, and shalt thou endure?
+  Death laughs, breathing close and relentless
+    In the nostrils and eyelids of lust,
+  With a pinch in his fingers of scentless
+    And delicate dust.
+
+  But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;
+    Thou shalt change and transmute as a god,
+  As the rod to a serpent that hisses,
+    As the serpent again to a rod.
+  Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
+    Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
+  And good shall die first, said thy prophet,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,
+    Now he lies out of reach, out of breath,
+  Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
+    Sin's child by incestuous Death?
+  Did he find out in fire at his waking,
+    Or discern as his eyelids lost light,
+  When the bands of the body were breaking
+    And all came in sight?
+
+  Who has known all the evil before us,
+    Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
+  Though we match not the dead men that bore us
+    At a song, at a kiss, at a crime--
+  Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
+    And our lives and our longings are twain--
+  Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
+    With spices and savours of song?
+  What is time, that his children should face thee?
+    What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
+  I could hurt thee--but pain would delight thee;
+    Or caress thee--but love would repel;
+  And the lovers whose lips would excite thee
+    Are serpents in hell.
+
+  Who now shall content thee as they did,
+    Thy lovers, when temples were built
+  And the hair of the sacrifice braided
+    And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
+  In Lampsacus fervent with faces,
+    In Aphaca red from thy reign,
+  Who embraced thee with awful embraces,
+    Our Lady of Pain?
+
+  Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,
+    Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
+  Do their hands as we touch come between us?
+    Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
+  From their lips have thy lips taken fever,
+    With the blood of their bodies grown red?
+  Hast thou left upon earth a believer
+    If these men are dead?
+
+  They were purple of raiment and golden,
+    Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,
+  Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,
+    In marvellous chambers of thine.
+  They are fled, and their footprints escape us,
+    Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
+  O daughter of Death and Priapus,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+  What ails us to fear overmeasure,
+    To praise thee with timorous breath,
+  O mistress and mother of pleasure,
+    The one thing as certain as death?
+  We shall change as the things that we cherish,
+    Shall fade as they faded before,
+  As foam upon water shall perish,
+    As sand upon shore.
+
+  We shall know what the darkness discovers,
+    If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
+  And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
+    We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
+  We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
+    Find out whether tares be not grain,
+  And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
+    Our Lady of Pain.
+
+    [4] Nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora
+        Hellespontia, caeteris ostreosior oris.
+                                      CATULL. _Carm._ xviii.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
+
+
+  Here, where the world is quiet;
+    Here, where all trouble seems
+  Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
+    In doubtful dreams of dreams;
+  I watch the green field growing
+    For reaping folk and sowing,
+  For harvest-time and mowing,
+    A sleepy world of streams.
+
+  I am tired of tears and laughter,
+    And men that laugh and weep;
+  Of what may come hereafter
+    For men that sow to reap:
+  I am weary of days and hours,
+    Blown buds of barren flowers,
+  Desires and dreams and powers
+    And everything but sleep.
+
+  Here life has death for neighbour,
+    And far from eye or ear
+  Wan waves and wet winds labour,
+    Weak ships and spirits steer;
+  They drive adrift, and whither
+    They wot not who make thither;
+  But no such winds blow hither,
+    And no such things grow here.
+
+  No growth of moor or coppice,
+    No heather-flower or vine,
+  But bloomless buds of poppies,
+    Green grapes of Proserpine,
+  Pale beds of blowing rushes
+  Where no leaf blooms or blushes
+  Save this whereout she crushes
+    For dead men deadly wine.
+
+  Pale, without name or number,
+    In fruitless fields of corn,
+  They bow themselves and slumber
+    All night till light is born;
+  And like a soul belated,
+  In hell and heaven unmated,
+  By cloud and mist abated
+    Comes out of darkness morn.
+
+  Though one were strong as seven,
+    He too with death shall dwell,
+  Nor wake with wings in heaven,
+    Nor weep for pains in hell;
+  Though one were fair as roses,
+  His beauty clouds and closes;
+  And well though love reposes,
+    In the end it is not well.
+
+  Pale, beyond porch and portal,
+    Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
+  Who gathers all things mortal
+    With cold immortal hands;
+  Her languid lips are sweeter
+  Than love's who fears to greet her
+  To men that mix and meet her
+    From many times and lands.
+
+  She waits for each and other,
+    She waits for all men born;
+  Forgets the earth her mother,
+    The life of fruits and corn;
+  And spring and seed and swallow
+  Take wing for her and follow
+  Where summer song rings hollow
+    And flowers are put to scorn.
+
+  There go the loves that wither,
+    The old loves with wearier wings;
+  And all dead years draw thither,
+    And all disastrous things;
+  Dead dreams of days forsaken,
+  Blind buds that snows have shaken,
+  Wild leaves that winds have taken,
+    Red strays of ruined springs.
+
+  We are not sure of sorrow,
+    And joy was never sure;
+  To-day will die to-morrow;
+    Time stoops to no man's lure;
+  And love, grown faint and fretful,
+  With lips but half regretful
+  Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
+    Weeps that no loves endure.
+
+  From too much love of living,
+    From hope and fear set free,
+  We thank with brief thanksgiving
+    Whatever gods may be
+  That no life lives for ever;
+  That dead men rise up never;
+  That even the weariest river
+    Winds somewhere safe to sea.
+
+  Then star nor sun shall waken,
+    Nor any change of light:
+  Nor sound of waters shaken,
+    Nor any sound or sight:
+  Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
+  Nor days nor things diurnal;
+  Only the sleep eternal
+    In an eternal night.
+
+
+
+
+HESPERIA
+
+
+  Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,
+    Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,
+  As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of
+        stories,
+    Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,
+  Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,
+    Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,
+  Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or
+        pleasant,
+    Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?
+  For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the
+        water,
+    Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
+  Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
+    Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.
+  Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,
+    Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead
+  Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number
+    Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the
+        dead,
+  Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten
+        caresses,
+    One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures;
+  The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of
+        thy tresses,
+    And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.
+  But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower,
+    Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odour that fades in a flame;
+  Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful
+        hour
+    That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it
+        shame.
+  Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that
+        are loving,
+    Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;
+  And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee, and
+        moving
+    As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,
+  Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,
+    That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,
+  Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost rearisen,
+    Pale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen in me.
+  From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places
+    Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,
+  Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,
+    And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is
+        red,
+  Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and
+        represses,
+    That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his
+        fill;
+  From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive
+        caresses
+    That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.
+  Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as a
+        rose is,
+    Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud;
+  And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it
+        encloses,
+    Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the
+        blood.
+  As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her
+        bosom,
+    So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame;
+  I have loved overmuch in my life; when the live bud bursts with the
+        blossom,
+    Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame.
+  As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder;
+    As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that
+        allure;
+  And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a
+        wonder;
+    And the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to
+        endure.
+  Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared not for
+        glory's:
+    Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair.
+  Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?
+    Was it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee
+        fair?
+  For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her
+        fuel;
+    She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage of
+        her reign;
+  Who behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth growing
+        cruel,
+    And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of
+        Pain.
+  Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves in
+        the summer,
+    In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I
+        knew;
+  And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their mouths
+        overcome her,
+    And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert with
+        dew.
+  With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be so
+        bitter,
+    With the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and redden and
+        smile;
+  And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her eyelashes
+        glitter,
+    And she laughs with a savour of blood in her face, and a savour of
+        guile.
+  She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and
+        hisses,
+    As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap;
+  Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses,
+    To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep.
+  Ah daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison,
+    Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly;
+  Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon
+        unarisen,
+    Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die.
+  They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there is
+        none that hath ridden,
+    None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride;
+  By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore that is
+        hidden,
+    Where life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide;
+  By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and
+        sterile,
+    By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel of
+        years,
+  Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and
+        peril,
+    Labour and listen and pant not or pause for the peril that nears;
+  And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow
+        asunder,
+    And slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with its glimpses of
+        grass,
+  Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder,
+    Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass;
+  Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a
+        maiden,
+    Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we
+        past;
+  And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-laden,
+    As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah love, shall we win at the
+        last?
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AT SEA
+
+
+  We are in love's land to-day;
+      Where shall we go?
+  Love, shall we start or stay,
+      Or sail or row?
+  There's many a wind and way,
+  And never a May but May;
+  We are in love's hand to-day;
+      Where shall we go?
+
+  Our landwind is the breath
+  Of sorrows kissed to death
+      And joys that were;
+  Our ballast is a rose;
+  Our way lies where God knows
+      And love knows where.
+            We are in love's hand to-day--
+
+  Our seamen are fledged Loves,
+  Our masts are bills of doves,
+      Our decks fine gold;
+  Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
+  Our stores are love-shafts fair
+      And manifold.
+            We are in love's land to-day--
+
+  Where shall we land you, sweet?
+  On fields of strange men's feet,
+      Or fields near home?
+  Or where the fire-flowers blow,
+  Or where the flowers of snow
+      Or flowers of foam?
+            We are in love's hand to-day--
+
+  Land me, she says, where love
+  Shows but one shaft, one dove,
+      One heart, one hand.
+  --A shore like that, my dear,
+  Lies where no man will steer,
+      No maiden land.
+
+        _Imitated from Theophile Gautier._
+
+
+
+
+APRIL
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF THE VIDAME DE CHARTRES
+
+12--?
+
+
+  When the fields catch flower
+    And the underwood is green,
+  And from bower unto bower
+    The songs of the birds begin,
+    I sing with sighing between.
+  When I laugh and sing,
+    I am heavy at heart for my sin;
+  I am sad in the spring
+    For my love that I shall not win,
+  For a foolish thing.
+
+  This profit I have of my woe,
+    That I know, as I sing,
+  I know he will needs have it so
+    Who is master and king,
+    Who is lord of the spirit of spring.
+  I will serve her and will not spare
+    Till her pity awake
+  Who is good, who is pure, who is fair,
+    Even her for whose sake
+  Love hath ta'en me and slain unaware.
+
+  O my lord, O Love,
+    I have laid my life at thy feet;
+  Have thy will thereof,
+    Do as it please thee with it,
+    For what shall please thee is sweet.
+  I am come unto thee
+    To do thee service, O Love;
+  Yet cannot I see
+    Thou wilt take any pity thereof,
+  Any mercy on me.
+
+  But the grace I have long time sought
+    Comes never in sight,
+  If in her it abideth not,
+    Through thy mercy and might,
+    Whose heart is the world's delight.
+  Thou hast sworn without fail I shall die,
+    For my heart is set
+  On what hurts me, I wot not why,
+    But cannot forget
+  What I love, what I sing for and sigh.
+
+  She is worthy of praise,
+    For this grief of her giving is worth
+  All the joy of my days
+    That lie between death's day and birth,
+    All the lordship of things upon earth.
+  Nay, what have I said?
+    I would not be glad if I could;
+  My dream and my dread
+    Are of her, and for her sake I would
+  That my life were fled.
+
+  Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you,
+    Then were I dead;
+  If I sang not a little to say to you,
+    (Could it be said)
+    O my love, how my heart would be fed;
+  Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart,
+    For thy love's sake I live,
+  Do but tell me, ere either depart,
+    What a lover may give
+  For a woman so fair as thou art.
+
+
+  The lovers that disbelieve,
+    False rumours shall grieve
+  And evil-speaking shall part.
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE PARTING
+
+
+  A month or twain to live on honeycomb
+  Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
+  Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
+  And that strong purple under juice and foam
+  Where the wine's heart has burst;
+  Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
+
+  Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
+  Even to change the bitterness of it,
+  The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
+  To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
+  All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
+  Over my face and eyes.
+
+  And yet who knows what end the scythed wheat
+  Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
+  These were not sown, these are not harvested,
+  They grow a month and are cast under feet
+  And none has care thereof,
+  As none has care of a divided love.
+
+  I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
+  Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
+  The fashion of fair temples tremulous
+  With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
+  I know not how love is gone out of this,
+  Seeing that all was his.
+
+  Love's likeness there endures upon all these:
+  But out of these one shall not gather love.
+  Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
+  To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
+  As some bee-builded cell
+  Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.
+
+  I know not how this last month leaves your hair
+  Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
+  And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
+  Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
+  And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
+  Worth patience to regret.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNDEW
+
+
+  A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
+  And pricked at lip with tender red.
+  Tread close, and either way you tread
+  Some faint black water jets between
+  Lest you should bruise the curious head.
+
+  A live thing maybe; who shall know?
+  The summer knows and suffers it;
+  For the cool moss is thick and sweet
+  Each side, and saves the blossom so
+  That it lives out the long June heat.
+
+  The deep scent of the heather burns
+  About it; breathless though it be,
+  Bow down and worship; more than we
+  Is the least flower whose life returns,
+  Least weed renascent in the sea.
+
+  We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight
+  With wants, with many memories;
+  These see their mother what she is,
+  Glad-growing, till August leave more bright
+  The apple-coloured cranberries.
+
+  Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,
+  Blown all one way to shelter it
+  From trample of strayed kine, with feet
+  Felt heavier than the moorhen was,
+  Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.
+
+  You call it sundew: how it grows,
+  If with its colour it have breath,
+  If life taste sweet to it, if death
+  Pain its soft petal, no man knows:
+  Man has no sight or sense that saith.
+
+  My sundew, grown of gentle days,
+  In these green miles the spring begun
+  Thy growth ere April had half done
+  With the soft secret of her ways
+  Or June made ready for the sun.
+
+  O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,
+  I have a secret halved with thee.
+  The name that is love's name to me
+  Thou knowest, and the face of her
+  Who is my festival to see.
+
+  The hard sun, as thy petals knew,
+  Coloured the heavy moss-water:
+  Thou wert not worth green midsummer
+  Nor fit to live to August blue,
+  O sundew, not remembering her.
+
+
+
+
+FELISE
+
+_Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?_
+
+
+  What shall be said between us here
+    Among the downs, between the trees,
+  In fields that knew our feet last year,
+    In sight of quiet sands and seas,
+    This year, Felise?
+
+  Who knows what word were best to say?
+    For last year's leaves lie dead and red
+  On this sweet day, in this green May,
+    And barren corn makes bitter bread.
+    What shall be said?
+
+  Here as last year the fields begin,
+    A fire of flowers and glowing grass;
+  The old fields we laughed and lingered in,
+    Seeing each our souls in last year's glass,
+    Felise, alas!
+
+  Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,
+    Not we, though this be as it is?
+  For love awake or love asleep
+    Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,
+    A song like this.
+
+  I that have slept awake, and you
+    Sleep, who last year were well awake,
+  Though love do all that love can do,
+    My heart will never ache or break
+    For your heart's sake.
+
+  The great sea, faultless as a flower,
+    Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,
+  And laughs with love of the amorous hour.
+    I found you fairer once, Felise,
+    Than flowers or seas.
+
+  We played at bondsman and at queen;
+    But as the days change men change too;
+  I find the grey sea's notes of green,
+    The green sea's fervent flakes of blue,
+    More fair than you.
+
+  Your beauty is not over fair
+    Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.
+  The smell of flowers in all your hair
+    Allures not now; no sigh replies
+    If your heart sighs.
+
+  But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,
+    You find love's new name good enough.
+  Less sweet I find it than I found
+    The sweetest name that ever love
+    Grew weary of.
+
+  My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake
+    Grown tame and glad to be caressed,
+  With lips athirst for mine to slake
+    Their tender fever! who had guessed
+    You loved me best?
+
+  I had died for this last year, to know
+    You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?
+  I care not if love come or go
+    Now, though your love seek mine for mate.
+    It is too late.
+
+  The dust of many strange desires
+    Lies deep between us; in our eyes
+  Dead smoke of perishable fires
+    Flickers, a fume in air and skies,
+    A steam of sighs.
+
+  You loved me and you loved me not;
+    A little, much, and overmuch.
+  Will you forget as I forgot?
+    Let all dead things lie dead; none such
+    Are soft to touch.
+
+  I love you and I do not love,
+    Too much, a little, not at all;
+  Too much, and never yet enough.
+    Birds quick to fledge and fly at call
+    Are quick to fall.
+
+  And these love longer now than men,
+    And larger loves than ours are these.
+  No diver brings up love again
+    Dropped once, my beautiful Felise,
+    In such cold seas.
+
+  Gone deeper than all plummets sound,
+    Where in the dim green dayless day
+  The life of such dead things lies bound
+    As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray
+    And castaway.
+
+  Can I forget? yea, that can I,
+    And that can all men; so will you,
+  Alive, or later, when you die.
+    Ah, but the love you plead was true?
+    Was mine not too?
+
+  I loved you for that name of yours
+    Long ere we met, and long enough.
+  Now that one thing of all endures--
+    The sweetest name that ever love
+    Waxed weary of.
+
+  Like colours in the sea, like flowers,
+    Like a cat's splendid circled eyes
+  That wax and wane with love for hours,
+    Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,
+    And soft like sighs--
+
+  And all these only like your name,
+    And your name full of all of these.
+  I say it, and it sounds the same--
+    Save that I say it now at ease,
+    Your name, Felise.
+
+  I said "she must be swift and white,
+    And subtly warm, and half perverse,
+  And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
+    And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."
+    Men have guessed worse.
+
+  What was the song I made of you
+    Here where the grass forgets our feet
+  As afternoon forgets the dew?
+    Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,
+    Such fleet things sweet!
+
+  As afternoon forgets the dew,
+    As time in time forgets all men,
+  As our old place forgets us two,
+    Who might have turned to one thing then
+    But not again.
+
+          O lips that mine have grown into
+            Like April's kissing May,
+          O fervent eyelids letting through
+          Those eyes the greenest of things blue,
+            The bluest of things grey,
+
+          If you were I and I were you,
+            How could I love you, say?
+          How could the roseleaf love the rue,
+          The day love nightfall and her dew,
+            Though night may love the day?
+
+  You loved it may be more than I;
+    We know not; love is hard to seize.
+  And all things are not good to try;
+    And lifelong loves the worst of these
+    For us, Felise.
+
+  Ah, take the season and have done,
+    Love well the hour and let it go:
+  Two souls may sleep and wake up one,
+    Or dream they wake and find it so,
+    And then--you know.
+
+  Kiss me once hard as though a flame
+    Lay on my lips and made them fire;
+  The same lips now, and not the same;
+    What breath shall fill and re-inspire
+    A dead desire?
+
+  The old song sounds hollower in mine ear
+    Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech--
+  A noise one hears and would not hear;
+    Too strong to die, too weak to reach
+    From wave to beach.
+
+  We stand on either side the sea,
+    Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean
+  I toward you, you toward me;
+    But what hears either save the keen
+    Grey sea between?
+
+  A year divides us, love from love,
+    Though you love now, though I loved then.
+  The gulf is strait, but deep enough;
+    Who shall recross, who among men
+    Shall cross again?
+
+  Love was a jest last year, you said,
+    And what lives surely, surely dies.
+  Even so; but now that love is dead,
+    Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,
+    From subtle sighs?
+
+  For many loves are good to see;
+    Mutable loves, and loves perverse;
+  But there is nothing, nor shall be,
+    So sweet, so wicked, but my verse
+    Can dream of worse.
+
+  For we that sing and you that love
+    Know that which man may, only we.
+  The rest live under us; above,
+    Live the great gods in heaven, and see
+    What things shall be.
+
+  So this thing is and must be so;
+    For man dies, and love also dies.
+  Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro
+    The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,
+    And laughs, and lies.
+
+  Eyes coloured like a water-flower,
+    And deeper than the green sea's glass;
+  Eyes that remember one sweet hour--
+    In vain we swore it should not pass;
+    In vain, alas!
+
+  Ah my Felise, if love or sin,
+    If shame or fear could hold it fast,
+  Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,
+    And they laugh well who laugh the last.
+    Is it not past?
+
+  The gods, the gods are stronger; time
+    Falls down before them, all men's knees
+  Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb
+    Like incense towards them; yea, for these
+    Are gods, Felise.
+
+  Immortal are they, clothed with powers,
+    Not to be comforted at all;
+  Lords over all the fruitless hours;
+    Too great to appease, too high to appal,
+    Too far to call.
+
+  For none shall move the most high gods,
+    Who are most sad, being cruel; none
+  Shall break or take away the rods
+    Wherewith they scourge us, not as one
+    That smites a son.
+
+  By many a name of many a creed
+    We have called upon them, since the sands
+  Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed
+    Of life; and out of many lands
+    Have we stretched hands.
+
+  When have they heard us? who hath known
+    Their faces, climbed unto their feet,
+  Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,
+    Doth heaven remurmur and repeat
+    Sad sounds or sweet?
+
+  Do the stars answer? in the night
+    Have ye found comfort? or by day
+  Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,
+    Falls from the farthest starriest way
+    On you that pray?
+
+  Are the skies wet because we weep,
+    Or fair because of any mirth?
+  Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;
+    Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,
+    Thou dust and earth.
+
+  O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;
+    O laughing lips and lips that mourn,
+  Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight
+    Of God's intolerable scorn,
+    Not to be borne.
+
+  Behold, there is no grief like this;
+    The barren blossom of thy prayer,
+  Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.
+    O fools and blind, what seek ye there,
+    High up in the air?
+
+  Ye must have gods, the friends of men,
+    Merciful gods, compassionate,
+  And these shall answer you again.
+    Will ye beat always at the gate,
+    Ye fools of fate?
+
+  Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,
+    That all ye shall not live, but die.
+  Lo, what thing have ye found endure?
+    Or what thing have ye found on high
+    Past the blind sky?
+
+  The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,
+    Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.
+  Ye fools; for which among you deems
+    His prayer can alter green to red
+    Or stones to bread?
+
+  Why should ye bear with hopes and fears
+    Till all these things be drawn in one,
+  The sound of iron-footed years,
+    And all the oppression that is done
+    Under the sun?
+
+  Ye might end surely, surely pass
+    Out of the multitude of things,
+  Under the dust, beneath the grass,
+    Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,
+    No record clings.
+
+  No memory more of love or hate,
+    No trouble, nothing that aspires,
+  No sleepless labour thwarting fate,
+    And thwarted; where no travail tires,
+    Where no faith fires.
+
+  All passes, nought that has been is,
+    Things good and evil have one end.
+  Can anything be otherwise
+    Though all men swear all things would mend
+    With God to friend?
+
+  Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,
+    Can ye move mountains? bid the flower
+  Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?
+    Can ye hold fast for shine or shower
+    One wingless hour?
+
+  Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring
+    One sigh back, bid one smile revive?
+  Can God restore one ruined thing,
+    Or he who slays our souls alive
+    Make dead things thrive?
+
+  Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,
+    Though sad things stay and glad things fly;
+  Two gifts he has given us, to forget
+    All glad and sad things that go by,
+    And then to die.
+
+  We know not whether death be good,
+    But life at least it will not be:
+  Men will stand saddening as we stood,
+    Watch the same fields and skies as we
+    And the same sea.
+
+  Let this be said between us here,
+    One love grows green when one turns grey;
+  This year knows nothing of last year;
+    To-morrow has no more to say
+    To yesterday.
+
+  Live and let live, as I will do,
+    Love and let love, and so will I.
+  But, sweet, for me no more with you:
+    Not while I live, not though I die.
+    Goodnight, goodbye.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+
+  In the greenest growth of the Maytime,
+    I rode where the woods were wet,
+  Between the dawn and the daytime;
+    The spring was glad that we met.
+
+  There was something the season wanted,
+    Though the ways and the woods smelt sweet;
+  The breath at your lips that panted,
+  The pulse of the grass at your feet.
+
+  You came, and the sun came after,
+    And the green grew golden above;
+  And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,
+    And the meadow-sweet shook with love.
+
+  Your feet in the full-grown grasses
+    Moved soft as a weak wind blows;
+  You passed me as April passes,
+    With face made out of a rose.
+
+  By the stream where the stems were slender,
+    Your bright foot paused at the sedge;
+  It might be to watch the tender
+    Light leaves in the springtime hedge,
+
+  On boughs that the sweet month blanches
+    With flowery frost of May:
+  It might be a bird in the branches,
+    It might be a thorn in the way.
+
+  I waited to watch you linger
+    With foot drawn back from the dew,
+  Till a sunbeam straight like a finger
+    Struck sharp through the leaves at you.
+
+  And a bird overhead sang _Follow_,
+    And a bird to the right sang _Here_;
+  And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
+    And the meaning of May was clear.
+
+  I saw where the sun's hand pointed,
+    I knew what the bird's note said;
+  By the dawn and the dewfall anointed,
+    You were queen by the gold on your head.
+
+  As the glimpse of a burnt-out ember
+    Recalls a regret of the sun,
+  I remember, forget, and remember
+    What Love saw done and undone.
+
+  I remember the way we parted,
+    The day and the way we met;
+  You hoped we were both broken-hearted,
+    And knew we should both forget.
+
+  And May with her world in flower
+    Seemed still to murmur and smile
+  As you murmured and smiled for an hour;
+    I saw you turn at the stile.
+
+  A hand like a white wood-blossom
+    You lifted, and waved, and passed,
+  With head hung down to the bosom,
+    And pale, as it seemed, at last.
+
+  And the best and the worst of this is
+    That neither is most to blame
+  If you've forgotten my kisses
+    And I've forgotten your name.
+
+
+
+
+HENDECASYLLABICS
+
+
+  In the month of the long decline of roses
+  I, beholding the summer dead before me,
+  Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
+  Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
+  Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
+  Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
+  Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
+  Moving tremulous under feet of angels
+  Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
+  Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
+  Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
+  And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
+  Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
+  Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
+  Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
+  Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
+  Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
+  Heard between them a voice of exultation,
+  "Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
+  Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
+  All the fruits of the day from all her branches
+  Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
+  All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
+  All are taken away; the season wasted,
+  Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
+  Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
+  Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
+  We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
+  Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
+  Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
+  Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
+  When low light was upon the windy reaches
+  Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
+  Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
+  And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
+  Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
+  All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
+  Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."
+
+
+
+
+SAPPHICS
+
+
+  All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
+  Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
+  Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
+    Stood and beheld me.
+
+  Then to me so lying awake a vision
+  Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
+  Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
+    Full of the vision,
+
+  Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
+  Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
+  Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
+    Saw the reluctant
+
+  Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,
+  Looking always, looking with necks reverted,
+  Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder
+    Shone Mitylene;
+
+  Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her
+  Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,
+  As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing
+    Wings of a great wind.
+
+  So the goddess fled from her place, with awful
+  Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;
+  While behind a clamour of singing women
+    Severed the twilight.
+
+  Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!
+  All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,
+  Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
+    Fear was upon them,
+
+  While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.
+  Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,
+  None endured the sound of her song for weeping;
+    Laurel by laurel,
+
+  Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,
+  Round her woven tresses and ashen temples
+  White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,
+    Ravaged with kisses,
+
+  Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.
+  Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite
+  Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.
+    Yea, by her name too
+
+  Called her, saying, "Turn to me, O my Sappho;"
+  Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not
+  Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,
+    Heard not about her
+
+  Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing,
+  Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite
+  Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment,
+    Saw not her hands wrung;
+
+  Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten
+  Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings,
+  Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen,
+    Fairer than all men;
+
+  Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers,
+  Full of songs and kisses and little whispers,
+  Full of music; only beheld among them
+    Soar, as a bird soars
+
+  Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel,
+  Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion,
+  Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders,
+    Clothed with the wind's wings.
+
+  Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered
+  Roses, awful roses of holy blossom;
+  Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces
+    Round Aphrodite,
+
+  Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent;
+  Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song.
+  All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion,
+    Fled from before her.
+
+  All withdrew long since, and the land was barren,
+  Full of fruitless women and music only.
+  Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset,
+    Lulled at the dewfall,
+
+  By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of,
+  Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight,
+  Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting,
+    Purged not in Lethe,
+
+  Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing
+  Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
+  Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
+    Hearing, to hear them.
+
+
+
+
+AT ELEUSIS
+
+
+  Men of Eleusis, ye that with long staves
+  Sit in the market-houses, and speak words
+  Made sweet with wisdom as the rare wine is
+  Thickened with honey; and ye sons of these
+  Who in the glad thick streets go up and down
+  For pastime or grave traffic or mere chance;
+  And all fair women having rings of gold
+  On hands or hair; and chiefest over these
+  I name you, daughters of this man the king,
+  Who dipping deep smooth pitchers of pure brass
+  Under the bubbled wells, till each round lip
+  Stooped with loose gurgle of waters incoming,
+  Found me an old sick woman, lamed and lean,
+  Beside a growth of builded olive-boughs
+  Whence multiplied thick song of thick-plumed throats--
+  Also wet tears filled up my hollow hands
+  By reason of my crying into them--
+  And pitied me; for as cold water ran
+  And washed the pitchers full from lip to lip,
+  So washed both eyes full the strong salt of tears.
+  And ye put water to my mouth, made sweet
+  With brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke
+  And gathered my loose knees from under me.
+  Moreover in the broad fair halls this month
+  Have I found space and bountiful abode
+  To please me. I Demeter speak of this,
+  Who am the mother and the mate of things:
+  For as ill men by drugs or singing words
+  Shut the doors inward of the narrowed womb
+  Like a lock bolted with round iron through,
+  Thus I shut up the body and sweet mouth
+  Of all soft pasture and the tender land,
+  So that no seed can enter in by it
+  Though one sow thickly, nor some grain get out
+  Past the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel
+  To widen the sealed lips of them for use.
+  None of you is there in the peopled street
+  But knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache
+  With no green spot made count of in the black:
+  How the wind finds no comfortable grass
+  Nor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs;
+  And in hot autumn when ye house the stacks,
+  All fields are helpless in the sun, all trees
+  Stand as a man stripped out of all but skin.
+  Nevertheless ye sick have help to get
+  By means and stablished ordinance of God;
+  For God is wiser than a good man is.
+  But never shall new grass be sweet in earth
+  Till I get righted of my wound and wrong
+  By changing counsel of ill-minded Zeus.
+  For of all other gods is none save me
+  Clothed with like power to build and break the year.
+  I make the lesser green begin, when spring
+  Touches not earth but with one fearful foot;
+  And as a careful gilder with grave art
+  Soberly colours and completes the face,
+  Mouth, chin and all, of some sweet work in stone,
+  I carve the shapes of grass and tender corn
+  And colour the ripe edges and long spikes
+  With the red increase and the grace of gold,
+  No tradesman in soft wools is cunninger
+  To kill the secret of the fat white fleece
+  With stains of blue and purple wrought in it.
+  Three moons were made and three moons burnt away
+  While I held journey hither out of Crete
+  Comfortless, tended by grave Hecate
+  Whom my wound stung with double iron point;
+  For all my face was like a cloth wrung out
+  With close and weeping wrinkles, and both lids
+  Sodden with salt continuance of tears.
+  For Hades and the sidelong will of Zeus
+  And that lame wisdom that has writhen feet,
+  Cunning, begotten in the bed of Shame,
+  These three took evil will at me, and made
+  Such counsel that when time got wing to fly
+  This Hades out of summer and low fields
+  Forced the bright body of Persephone:
+  Out of pure grass, where she lying down, red flowers
+  Made their sharp little shadows on her sides,
+  Pale heat, pale colour on pale maiden flesh--
+  And chill water slid over her reddening feet,
+  Killing the throbs in their soft blood; and birds,
+  Perched next her elbow and pecking at her hair,
+  Stretched their necks more to see her than even to sing.
+  A sharp thing is it I have need to say;
+  For Hades holding both white wrists of hers
+  Unloosed the girdle and with knot by knot
+  Bound her between his wheels upon the seat,
+  Bound her pure body, holiest yet and dear
+  To me and God as always, clothed about
+  With blossoms loosened as her knees went down.
+  Let fall as she let go of this and this
+  By tens and twenties, tumbled to her feet,
+  White waifs or purple of the pasturage.
+  Therefore with only going up and down
+  My feet were wasted, and the gracious air,
+  To me discomfortable and dun, became
+  As weak smoke blowing in the under world.
+  And finding in the process of ill days
+  What part had Zeus herein, and how as mate
+  He coped with Hades, yokefellow in sin,
+  I set my lips against the meat of gods
+  And drank not neither ate or slept in heaven.
+  Nor in the golden greeting of their mouths
+  Did ear take note of me, nor eye at all
+  Track my feet going in the ways of them.
+  Like a great fire on some strait slip of land
+  Between two washing inlets of wet sea
+  That burns the grass up to each lip of beach
+  And strengthens, waxing in the growth of wind,
+  So burnt my soul in me at heaven and earth,
+  Each way a ruin and a hungry plague,
+  Visible evil; nor could any night
+  Put cool between mine eyelids, nor the sun
+  With competence of gold fill out my want.
+  Yea so my flame burnt up the grass and stones,
+  Shone to the salt-white edges of thin sea,
+  Distempered all the gracious work, and made
+  Sick change, unseasonable increase of days
+  And scant avail of seasons; for by this
+  The fair gods faint in hollow heaven: there comes
+  No taste of burnings of the twofold fat
+  To leave their palates smooth, nor in their lips
+  Soft rings of smoke and weak scent wandering;
+  All cattle waste and rot, and their ill smell
+  Grows alway from the lank unsavoury flesh
+  That no man slays for offering; the sea
+  And waters moved beneath the heath and corn
+  Preserve the people of fin-twinkling fish,
+  And river-flies feed thick upon the smooth;
+  But all earth over is no man or bird
+  (Except the sweet race of the kingfisher)
+  That lacks not and is wearied with much loss.
+  Meantime the purple inward of the house
+  Was softened with all grace of scent and sound
+  In ear and nostril perfecting my praise;
+  Faint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake
+  And the just grain with dues of the shed salt
+  Made me content: yet my hand loosened not
+  Its gripe upon your harvest all year long.
+  While I, thus woman-muffled in wan flesh
+  And waste externals of a perished face,
+  Preserved the levels of my wrath and love
+  Patiently ruled; and with soft offices
+  Cooled the sharp noons and busied the warm nights
+  In care of this my choice, this child my choice,
+  Triptolemus, the king's selected son:
+  That this fair yearlong body, which hath grown
+  Strong with strange milk upon the mortal lip
+  And nerved with half a god, might so increase
+  Outside the bulk and the bare scope of man:
+  And waxen over large to hold within
+  Base breath of yours and this impoverished air,
+  I might exalt him past the flame of stars,
+  The limit and walled reach of the great world.
+  Therefore my breast made common to his mouth
+  Immortal savours, and the taste whereat
+  Twice their hard life strains out the coloured veins
+  And twice its brain confirms the narrow shell.
+  Also at night, unwinding cloth from cloth
+  As who unhusks an almond to the white
+  And pastures curiously the purer taste,
+  I bared the gracious limbs and the soft feet,
+  Unswaddled the weak hands, and in mid ash
+  Laid the sweet flesh of either feeble side,
+  More tender for impressure of some touch
+  Than wax to any pen; and lit around
+  Fire, and made crawl the white worm-shapen flame,
+  And leap in little angers spark by spark
+  At head at once and feet; and the faint hair
+  Hissed with rare sprinkles in the closer curl,
+  And like scaled oarage of a keen thin fish
+  In sea-water, so in pure fire his feet
+  Struck out, and the flame bit not in his flesh,
+  But like a kiss it curled his lip, and heat
+  Fluttered his eyelids; so each night I blew
+  The hot ash red to purge him to full god.
+  Ill is it when fear hungers in the soul
+  For painful food, and chokes thereon, being fed;
+  And ill slant eyes interpret the straight sun,
+  But in their scope its white is wried to black:
+  By the queen Metaneira mean I this;
+  For with sick wrath upon her lips, and heart
+  Narrowing with fear the spleenful passages,
+  She thought to thread this web's fine ravel out,
+  Nor leave her shuttle split in combing it;
+  Therefore she stole on us, and with hard sight
+  Peered, and stooped close; then with pale open mouth
+  As the fire smote her in the eyes between
+  Cried, and the child's laugh, sharply shortening
+  As fire doth under rain, fell off; the flame
+  Writhed once all through and died, and in thick dark
+  Tears fell from mine on the child's weeping eyes,
+  Eyes dispossessed of strong inheritance
+  And mortal fallen anew. Who not the less
+  From bud of beard to pale-grey flower of hair
+  Shall wax vinewise to a lordly vine, whose grapes
+  Bleed the red heavy blood of swoln soft wine,
+  Subtle with sharp leaves' intricacy, until
+  Full of white years and blossom of hoary days
+  I take him perfected; for whose one sake
+  I am thus gracious to the least who stands
+  Filleted with white wool and girt upon
+  As he whose prayer endures upon the lip
+  And falls not waste: wherefore let sacrifice
+  Burn and run red in all the wider ways;
+  Seeing I have sworn by the pale temples' band
+  And poppied hair of gold Persephone
+  Sad-tressed and pleached low down about her brows,
+  And by the sorrow in her lips, and death
+  Her dumb and mournful-mouthed minister,
+  My word for you is eased of its harsh weight
+  And doubled with soft promise; and your king
+  Triptolemus, this Celeus dead and swathed
+  Purple and pale for golden burial,
+  Shall be your helper in my services,
+  Dividing earth and reaping fruits thereof
+  In fields where wait, well-girt, well-wreathen, all
+  The heavy-handed seasons all year through;
+  Saving the choice of warm spear-headed grain,
+  And stooping sharp to the slant-sided share
+  All beasts that furrow the remeasured land
+  With their bowed necks of burden equable.
+
+
+
+
+AUGUST
+
+
+  There were four apples on the bough,
+  Half gold half red, that one might know
+  The blood was ripe inside the core;
+  The colour of the leaves was more
+  Like stems of yellow corn that grow
+  Through all the gold June meadow's floor.
+
+  The warm smell of the fruit was good
+  To feed on, and the split green wood,
+  With all its bearded lips and stains
+  Of mosses in the cloven veins,
+  Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
+  In sunshine or in happy rains.
+
+  There were four apples on the tree,
+  Red stained through gold, that all might see
+  The sun went warm from core to rind;
+  The green leaves made the summer blind
+  In that soft place they kept for me
+  With golden apples shut behind.
+
+  The leaves caught gold across the sun,
+  And where the bluest air begun
+  Thirsted for song to help the heat;
+  As I to feel my lady's feet
+  Draw close before the day were done;
+  Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.
+
+  In the mute August afternoon
+  They trembled to some undertune
+  Of music in the silver air;
+  Great pleasure was it to be there
+  Till green turned duskier and the moon
+  Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.
+
+  That August time it was delight
+  To watch the red moons wane to white
+  'Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
+  A sense of heavy harmonies
+  Grew on the growth of patient night,
+  More sweet than shapen music is.
+
+  But some three hours before the moon
+  The air, still eager from the noon,
+  Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
+  Against the stem I leant my head;
+  The colour soothed me like a tune,
+  Green leaves all round the gold and red.
+
+  I lay there till the warm smell grew
+  More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
+  Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
+  The rind with stain and wet; I heard
+  A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
+  Too weak to alter its one word.
+
+  The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
+  Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
+  Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
+  (As water feels the slow gold melt
+  Right through it when the day burns mute)
+  The peace of time wherein love dwelt.
+
+  There were four apples on the tree,
+  Gold stained on red that all might see
+  The sweet blood filled them to the core:
+  The colour of her hair is more
+  Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
+  Mown from the harvest's middle floor.
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL[5]
+
+    [5] Suggested by a drawing of Mr. D. G. Rossetti's.
+
+
+  Three damsels in the queen's chamber,
+      The queen's mouth was most fair;
+  She spake a word of God's mother
+      As the combs went in her hair.
+          Mary that is of might,
+          Bring us to thy Son's sight.
+
+  They held the gold combs out from her,
+      A span's length off her head;
+  She sang this song of God's mother
+      And of her bearing-bed.
+          Mary most full of grace,
+          Bring us to thy Son's face.
+
+  When she sat at Joseph's hand,
+      She looked against her side;
+  And either way from the short silk band
+      Her girdle was all wried.
+          Mary that all good may,
+          Bring us to thy Son's way.
+
+  Mary had three women for her bed,
+      The twain were maidens clean;
+  The first of them had white and red,
+      The third had riven green.
+          Mary that is so sweet,
+          Bring us to thy Son's feet.
+
+  She had three women for her hair,
+      Two were gloved soft and shod;
+  The third had feet and fingers bare,
+      She was the likest God.
+          Mary that wieldeth land,
+          Bring us to thy Son's hand.
+
+  She had three women for her ease,
+      The twain were good women:
+  The first two were the two Maries,
+      The third was Magdalen.
+          Mary that perfect is,
+          Bring us to thy Son's kiss.
+
+  Joseph had three workmen in his stall,
+      To serve him well upon;
+  The first of them were Peter and Paul,
+      The third of them was John.
+          Mary, God's handmaiden,
+          Bring us to thy Son's ken.
+
+  "If your child be none other man's,
+      But if it be very mine,
+  The bedstead shall be gold two spans,
+      The bedfoot silver fine."
+          Mary that made God mirth,
+          Bring us to thy Son's birth.
+
+  "If the child be some other man's,
+      And if it be none of mine,
+  The manger shall be straw two spans,
+      Betwixen kine and kine."
+          Mary that made sin cease,
+          Bring us to thy Son's peace.
+
+  Christ was born upon this wise,
+      It fell on such a night,
+  Neither with sounds of psalteries,
+      Nor with fire for light.
+          Mary that is God's spouse,
+          Bring us to thy Son's house.
+
+  The star came out upon the east
+      With a great sound and sweet:
+  Kings gave gold to make him feast
+      And myrrh for him to eat.
+          Mary, of thy sweet mood,
+          Bring us to thy Son's good.
+
+  He had two handmaids at his head,
+      One handmaid at his feet;
+  The twain of them were fair and red,
+      The third one was right sweet.
+          Mary that is most wise,
+          Bring us to thy Son's eyes. Amen.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASQUE OF QUEEN BERSABE
+
+A MIRACLE-PLAY
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Knights mine, all that be in hall,
+  I have a counsel to you all,
+  Because of this thing God lets fall
+      Among us for a sign.
+  For some days hence as I did eat
+  From kingly dishes my good meat,
+  There flew a bird between my feet
+      As red as any wine.
+  This bird had a long bill of red
+  And a gold ring above his head;
+  Long time he sat and nothing said,
+  Put softly down his neck and fed
+      From the gilt patens fine:
+  And as I marvelled, at the last
+  He shut his two keen eyen fast
+  And suddenly woxe big and brast
+      Ere one should tell to nine.
+
+
+  PRIMUS MILES
+
+  Sir, note this that I will say;
+  That Lord who maketh corn with hay
+  And morrows each of yesterday,
+      He hath you in his hand,
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES (_Paganus quidam_)
+
+  By Satan I hold no such thing;
+  For if wine swell within a king
+  Whose ears for drink are hot and ring,
+  The same shall dream of wine-bibbing
+      Whilst he can lie or stand.
+
+
+  QUEEN BERSABE
+
+  Peace now, lords, for Godis head,
+  Ye chirk as starlings that be fed
+  And gape as fishes newly dead;
+  The devil put your bones to bed,
+      Lo, this is all to say.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  By Mahound, lords, I have good will
+  This devil's bird to wring and spill;
+  For now meseems our game goes ill,
+      Ye have scant hearts to play.
+
+
+  TERTIUS MILES
+
+  Lo, sirs, this word is there said,
+  That Urias the knight is dead
+  Through some ill craft; by Poulis head,
+  I doubt his blood hath made so red
+  This bird that flew from the queen's bed
+      Whereof ye have such fear.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Yea, my good knave, and is it said
+  That I can raise men from the dead?
+  By God I think to have his head
+  Who saith words of my lady's bed
+      For any thief to hear.
+    _Et percutiat eum in capite._
+
+
+  QUEEN BERSABE
+
+  I wis men shall spit at me,
+  And say, it were but right for thee
+  That one should hang thee on a tree;
+  Ho! it were a fair thing to see
+  The big stones bruise her false body;
+      Fie! who shall see her dead?
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  I rede you have no fear of this,
+  For, as ye wot, the first good kiss
+  I had must be the last of his;
+  Now are ye queen of mine, I wis,
+  And lady of a house that is
+      Full rich of meat and bread.
+
+
+  PRIMUS MILES
+
+  I bid you make good cheer to be
+  So fair a queen as all men see.
+  And hold us for your lieges free;
+  By Peter's soul that hath the key,
+      Ye have good hap of it.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  I would that he were hanged and dead
+  Who hath no joy to see your head
+  With gold about it, barred on red;
+  I hold him as a sow of lead
+      That is so scant of wit.
+
+
+  _Tunc dicat NATHAN propheta_
+
+  O king, I have a word to thee;
+  The child that is in Bersabe
+  Shall wither without light to see;
+  This word is come of God by me
+      For sin that ye have done.
+  Because herein ye did not right,
+  To take the fair one lamb to smite
+  That was of Urias the knight;
+      Ye wist he had but one.
+  Full many sheep I wot ye had,
+  And many women, when ye bade,
+  To do your will and keep you glad,
+  And a good crown about your head
+      With gold to show thereon.
+  This Urias had one poor house
+  With low-barred latoun shot-windows
+  And scant of corn to fill a mouse;
+  And rusty basnets for his brows,
+      To wear them to the bone.
+  Yea the roofs also, as men sain,
+  Were thin to hold against the rain;
+  Therefore what rushes were there lain
+  Grew wet withouten foot of men;
+  The stancheons were all gone in twain
+      As sick man's flesh is gone.
+  Nathless he had great joy to see
+  The long hair of this Bersabe
+  Fall round her lap and round her knee
+  Even to her small soft feet, that be
+  Shod now with crimson royally
+      And covered with clean gold.
+  Likewise great joy he had to kiss
+  Her throat, where now the scarlet is
+  Against her little chin, I wis,
+      That then was but cold.
+  No scarlet then her kirtle had
+  And little gold about it sprad;
+  But her red mouth was always glad
+  To kiss, albeit the eyes were sad
+      With love they had to hold.
+
+
+  SECUNDUS MILES
+
+  How! old thief, thy wits are lame;
+  To clip such it is no shame;
+  I rede you in the devil's name,
+  Ye come not here to make men game;
+  By Termagaunt that maketh grame,
+      I shall to-bete thine head.
+    _Hic Diabolus capiat eum._
+  This knave hath sharp fingers, perfay;
+  Mahound you thank and keep alway,
+  And give you good knees to pray;
+  What man hath no lust to play,
+  The devil wring his ears, I say;
+  There is no more but wellaway,
+      For now am I dead.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Certes his mouth is wried and black,
+  Full little pence be in his sack;
+  This devil hath him by the back,
+      It is no boot to lie.
+
+
+  NATHAN
+
+  Sitteth now still and learn of me;
+  A little while and ye shall see
+  The face of God's strength presently.
+  All queens made as this Bersabe,
+  All that were fair and foul ye be,
+      Come hither; it am I.
+
+      _Et hic omnes cantabunt._
+
+
+  HERODIAS
+
+  I am the queen Herodias.
+  This headband of my temples was
+      King Herod's gold band woven me.
+  This broken dry staff in my hand
+  Was the queen's staff of a great land
+      Betwixen Perse and Samarie.
+  For that one dancing of my feet,
+  The fire is come in my green wheat,
+      From one sea to the other sea.
+
+
+  AHOLIBAH
+
+  I am the queen Aholibah.
+  My lips kissed dumb the word of _Ah_
+      Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.
+  God wrought to me my royal bed;
+  The inner work thereof was red,
+      The outer work was ivory.
+  My mouth's heat was the heat of flame
+  For lust towards the kings that came
+      With horsemen riding royally.
+
+
+  CLEOPATRA
+
+  I am the queen of Ethiope.
+  Love bade my kissing eyelids ope
+      That men beholding might praise love.
+  My hair was wonderful and curled;
+  My lips held fast the mouth o' the world
+      To spoil the strength and speech thereof.
+  The latter triumph in my breath
+  Bowed down the beaten brows of death,
+      Ashamed they had not wrath enough.
+
+
+  ABIHAIL
+
+  I am the queen of Tyrians.
+  My hair was glorious for twelve spans,
+      That dried to loose dust afterward.
+  My stature was a strong man's length:
+  My neck was like a place of strength
+      Built with white walls, even and hard,
+  Like the first noise of rain leaves catch
+  One from another, snatch by snatch,
+      Is my praise, hissed against and marred.
+
+
+  AZUBAH
+
+  I am the queen of Amorites.
+  My face was like a place of lights
+      With multitudes at festival.
+  The glory of my gracious brows
+  Was like God's house made glorious
+      With colours upon either wall.
+  Between my brows and hair there was
+  A white space like a space of glass
+      With golden candles over all.
+
+
+  AHOLAH
+
+  I am the queen of Amalek.
+  There was no tender touch or fleck
+      To spoil my body or bared feet.
+  My words were soft like dulcimers,
+  And the first sweet of grape-flowers
+      Made each side of my bosom sweet.
+  My raiment was as tender fruit
+  Whose rind smells sweet of spice-tree root,
+      Bruised balm-blossom and budded wheat.
+
+
+  AHINOAM
+
+  I am the queen Ahinoam.
+  Like the throat of a soft slain lamb
+      Was my throat, softer veined than his:
+  My lips were as two grapes the sun
+  Lays his whole weight of heat upon
+      Like a mouth heavy with a kiss:
+  My hair's pure purple a wrought fleece,
+  My temples therein as a piece
+      Of a pomegranate's cleaving is.
+
+
+  ATARAH
+
+  I am the queen Sidonian.
+  My face made faint the face of man,
+      And strength was bound between my brows
+  Spikenard was hidden in my ships,
+  Honey and wheat and myrrh in strips,
+      White wools that shine as colour does,
+  Soft linen dyed upon the fold,
+  Split spice and cores of scented gold,
+      Cedar and broken calamus.
+
+
+  SEMIRAMIS
+
+  I am the queen Semiramis.
+  The whole world and the sea that is
+      In fashion like a chrysopras,
+  The noise of all men labouring,
+  The priest's mouth tired through thanksgiving,
+      The sound of love in the blood's pause,
+  The strength of love in the blood's beat,
+  All these were cast beneath my feet
+      And all found lesser than I was.
+
+
+  HESIONE
+
+  I am the queen Hesione.
+  The seasons that increased in me
+      Made my face fairer than all men's.
+  I had the summer in my hair;
+  And all the pale gold autumn air
+      Was as the habit of my sense.
+  My body was as fire that shone;
+  God's beauty that makes all things one
+      Was one among my handmaidens.
+
+
+  CHRYSOTHEMIS
+
+  I am the queen of Samothrace.
+  God, making roses, made my face
+      As a rose filled up full with red.
+  My prows made sharp the straitened seas
+  From Pontus to that Chersonese
+      Whereon the ebbed Asian stream is shed.
+  My hair was as sweet scent that drips;
+  Love's breath begun about my lips
+      Kindled the lips of people dead.
+
+
+  THOMYRIS
+
+  I am the queen of Scythians.
+  My strength was like no strength of man's,
+      My face like day, my breast like spring.
+  My fame was felt in the extreme land
+  That hath sunshine on the one hand
+      And on the other star-shining.
+  Yea, and the wind there fails of breath;
+  Yea, and there life is waste like death;
+      Yea, and there death is a glad thing.
+
+
+  HARHAS
+
+  I am the queen of Anakim.
+  In the spent years whose speech is dim,
+      Whose raiment is the dust and death,
+  My stately body without stain
+  Shone as the shining race of rain
+      Whose hair a great wind scattereth.
+  Now hath God turned my lips to sighs,
+  Plucked off mine eyelids from mine eyes,
+      And sealed with seals my way of breath.
+
+
+  MYRRHA
+
+  I am the queen Arabian.
+  The tears wherewith mine eyelids ran
+      Smelt like my perfumed eyelids' smell.
+  A harsh thirst made my soft mouth hard,
+  That ached with kisses afterward;
+      My brain rang like a beaten bell.
+  As tears on eyes, as fire on wood,
+  Sin fed upon my breath and blood,
+      Sin made my breasts subside and swell.
+
+
+  PASIPHAE
+
+  I am the queen Pasiphae.
+  Not all the pure clean-coloured sea
+      Could cleanse or cool my yearning veins;
+  Nor any root nor herb that grew,
+  Flag-leaves that let green water through,
+      Nor washing of the dews and rains.
+  From shame's pressed core I wrung the sweet
+  Fruit's savour that was death to eat,
+      Whereof no seed but death remains.
+
+
+  SAPPHO
+
+  I am the queen of Lesbians.
+  My love, that had no part in man's,
+      Was sweeter than all shape of sweet.
+  The intolerable infinite desire
+  Made my face pale like faded fire
+      When the ashen pyre falls through with heat.
+  My blood was hot wan wine of love,
+  And my song's sound the sound thereof,
+      The sound of the delight of it.
+
+
+  MESSALINA
+
+  I am the queen of Italy.
+  These were the signs God set on me;
+      A barren beauty subtle and sleek,
+  Curled carven hair, and cheeks worn wan
+  With fierce false lips of many a man,
+      Large temples where the blood ran weak,
+  A mouth athirst and amorous
+  And hungering as the grave's mouth does
+      That, being an-hungred, cannot speak.
+
+
+  AMESTRIS
+
+  I am the queen of Persians.
+  My breasts were lordlier than bright swans.
+      My body as amber fair and thin.
+  Strange flesh was given my lips for bread,
+  With poisonous hours my days were fed,
+      And my feet shod with adder-skin.
+  In Shushan toward Ecbatane
+  I wrought my joys with tears and pain,
+      My loves with blood and bitter sin.
+
+
+  EPHRATH
+
+  I am the queen of Rephaim.
+  God, that some while refraineth him,
+      Made in the end a spoil of me.
+  My rumour was upon the world
+  As strong sound of swoln water hurled
+      Through porches of the straining sea.
+  My hair was like the flag-flower,
+  And my breasts carven goodlier
+      Than beryl with chalcedony.
+
+
+  PASITHEA
+
+  I am the queen of Cypriotes.
+  Mine oarsmen, labouring with brown throats,
+      Sang of me many a tender thing.
+  My maidens, girdled loose and braced
+  With gold from bosom to white waist,
+      Praised me between their wool-combing.
+  All that praise Venus all night long
+  With lips like speech and lids like song
+      Praised me till song lost heart to sing.
+
+
+  ALACIEL
+
+  I am the queen Alaciel.
+  My mouth was like that moist gold cell
+      Whereout the thickest honey drips.
+  Mine eyes were as a grey-green sea;
+  The amorous blood that smote on me
+      Smote to my feet and finger-tips.
+  My throat was whiter than the dove,
+  Mine eyelids as the seals of love,
+      And as the doors of love my lips.
+
+
+  ERIGONE
+
+  I am the queen Erigone.
+  The wild wine shed as blood on me
+      Made my face brighter than a bride's.
+  My large lips had the old thirst of earth,
+  Mine arms the might of the old sea's girth
+      Bound round the whole world's iron sides.
+  Within mine eyes and in mine ears
+  Were music and the wine of tears,
+      And light, and thunder of the tides.
+        _Et hic exeant, et dicat Bersabe regina_;
+
+  Alas, God, for thy great pity
+  And for the might that is in thee,
+  Behold, I woful Bersabe
+  Cry out with stoopings of my knee
+  And thy wrath laid and bound on me
+      Till I may see thy love.
+  Behold, Lord, this child is grown
+  Within me between bone and bone
+  To make me mother of a son,
+  Made of my body with strong moan;
+  There shall not be another one
+      That shall be made hereof.
+
+
+  KING DAVID
+
+  Lord God, alas, what shall I sain?
+  Lo, thou art as an hundred men
+  Both to break and build again:
+  The wild ways thou makest plain,
+  Thine hands hold the hail and rain,
+  And thy fingers both grape and grain;
+  Of their largess we be all well fain,
+      And of their great pity:
+  The sun thou madest of good gold,
+  Of clean silver the moon cold,
+  All the great stars thou hast told
+  As thy cattle in thy fold
+  Every one by his name of old;
+  Wind and water thou hast in hold,
+      Both the land and the long sea;
+  Both the green sea and the land,
+  Lord God, thou hast in hand,
+  Both white water and grey sand;
+  Upon thy right or thy left hand
+  There is no man that may stand;
+      Lord, thou rue on me.
+  O wise Lord, if thou be keen
+  To note things amiss that been,
+  I am not worth a shell of bean
+  More than an old mare meagre and lean;
+  For all my wrong-doing with my queen,
+  It grew not of our heartes clean,
+      But it began of her body.
+  For it fell in the hot May
+  I stood within a paven way
+  Built of fair bright stone, perfay,
+  That is as fire of night and day
+      And lighteth all my house.
+  Therein be neither stones nor sticks,
+  Neither red nor white bricks,
+  But for cubits five or six
+  There is most goodly sardonyx
+      And amber laid in rows.
+  It goes round about my roofs,
+  (If ye list ye shall have proofs)
+  There is good space for horse and hoofs,
+      Plain and nothing perilous.
+  For the fair green weather's heat,
+  And for the smell of leaves sweet,
+  It is no marvel, well ye weet,
+      A man to waxen amorous.
+  This I say now by my case
+  That spied forth of that royal place;
+  There I saw in no great space
+  Mine own sweet, both body and face,
+  Under the fresh boughs.
+  In a water that was there
+  She wesshe her goodly body bare
+  And dried it with her owen hair:
+  Both her arms and her knees fair,
+      Both bosom and brows;
+  Both shoulders and eke thighs
+  Tho she wesshe upon this wise;
+  Ever she sighed with little sighs,
+    And ever she gave God thank.
+  Yea, God wot I can well see yet
+  Both her breast and her sides all wet
+  And her long hair withouten let
+  Spread sideways like a drawing net;
+  Full dear bought and full far fet
+  Was that sweet thing there y-set;
+  It were a hard thing to forget
+  How both lips and eyen met,
+      Breast and breath sank.
+  So goodly a sight as there she was,
+  Lying looking on her glass
+  By wan water in green grass,
+      Yet saw never man.
+  So soft and great she was and bright
+  With all her body waxen white,
+  I woxe nigh blind to see the light
+  Shed out of it to left and right;
+  This bitter sin from that sweet sight
+      Between us twain began.
+
+
+  NATHAN
+
+  Now, sir, be merry anon,
+  For ye shall have a full wise son,
+  Goodly and great of flesh and bone;
+  There shall no king be such an one,
+      I swear by Godis rood.
+  Therefore, lord, be merry here,
+  And go to meat withouten fear,
+  And hear a mass with goodly cheer;
+  For to all folk ye shall be dear,
+      And all folk of your blood.
+
+      _Et tunc dicant Laudamus._
+
+
+
+
+ST. DOROTHY
+
+
+  It hath been seen and yet it shall be seen
+  That out of tender mouths God's praise hath been
+  Made perfect, and with wood and simple string
+  He hath played music sweet as shawm-playing
+  To please himself with softness of all sound;
+  And no small thing but hath been sometime found
+  Full sweet of use, and no such humbleness
+  But God hath bruised withal the sentences
+  And evidence of wise men witnessing;
+  No leaf that is so soft a hidden thing
+  It never shall get sight of the great sun;
+  The strength of ten has been the strength of one,
+  And lowliness has waxed imperious.
+    There was in Rome a man Theophilus
+  Of right great blood and gracious ways, that had
+  All noble fashions to make people glad
+  And a soft life of pleasurable days;
+  He was a goodly man for one to praise,
+  Flawless and whole upward from foot to head;
+  His arms were a red hawk that alway fed
+  On a small bird with feathers gnawed upon,
+  Beaten and plucked about the bosom-bone
+  Whereby a small round fleck like fire there was:
+  They called it in their tongue lampadias;
+  This was the banner of the lordly man.
+  In many straits of sea and reaches wan
+  Full of quick wind, and many a shaken firth,
+  It had seen fighting days of either earth,
+  Westward or east of waters Gaditane
+  (This was the place of sea-rocks under Spain
+  Called after the great praise of Hercules)
+  And north beyond the washing Pontic seas,
+  Far windy Russian places fabulous,
+  And salt fierce tides of storm-swoln Bosphorus.
+    Now as this lord came straying in Rome town
+  He saw a little lattice open down
+  And after it a press of maidens' heads
+  That sat upon their cold small quiet beds
+  Talking, and played upon short-stringed lutes;
+  And other some ground perfume out of roots
+  Gathered by marvellous moons in Asia;
+  Saffron and aloes and wild cassia,
+  Coloured all through and smelling of the sun;
+  And over all these was a certain one
+  Clothed softly, with sweet herbs about her hair
+  And bosom flowerful; her face more fair
+  Than sudden-singing April in soft lands:
+  Eyed like a gracious bird, and in both hands
+  She held a psalter painted green and red.
+    This Theophile laughed at the heart, and said,
+  Now God so help me hither and St. Paul,
+  As by the new time of their festival
+  I have good will to take this maid to wife.
+  And herewith fell to fancies of her life
+  And soft half-thoughts that ended suddenly.
+  This is man's guise to please himself, when he
+  Shall not see one thing of his pleasant things,
+  Nor with outwatch of many travailings
+  Come to be eased of the least pain he hath
+  For all his love and all his foolish wrath
+  And all the heavy manner of his mind.
+  Thus is he like a fisher fallen blind
+  That casts his nets across the boat awry
+  To strike the sea, but lo, he striketh dry
+  And plucks them back all broken for his pain
+  And bites his beard and casts across again
+  And reaching wrong slips over in the sea.
+  So hath this man a strangled neck for fee,
+  For all his cost he chuckles in his throat.
+    This Theophile that little hereof wote
+  Laid wait to hear of her what she might be:
+  Men told him she had name of Dorothy,
+  And was a lady of a worthy house.
+  Thereat this knight grew inly glorious
+  That he should have a love so fair of place.
+  She was a maiden of most quiet face,
+  Tender of speech, and had no hardihood
+  But was nigh feeble of her fearful blood;
+  Her mercy in her was so marvellous
+  From her least years, that seeing her school-fellows
+  That read beside her stricken with a rod,
+  She would cry sore and say some word to God
+  That he would ease her fellow of his pain.
+  There is no touch of sun or fallen rain
+  That ever fell on a more gracious thing.
+    In middle Rome there was in stone-working
+  The church of Venus painted royally.
+  The chapels of it were some two or three,
+  In each of them her tabernacle was
+  And a wide window of six feet in glass
+  Coloured with all her works in red and gold.
+  The altars had bright cloths and cups to hold
+  The wine of Venus for the services,
+  Made out of honey and crushed wood-berries
+  That shed sweet yellow through the thick wet red,
+  That on high days was borne upon the head
+  Of Venus' priest for any man to drink;
+  So that in drinking he should fall to think
+  On some fair face, and in the thought thereof
+  Worship, and such should triumph in his love.
+  For this soft wine that did such grace and good
+  Was new trans-shaped and mixed with Love's own blood,
+  That in the fighting Trojan time was bled;
+  For which came such a woe to Diomed
+  That he was stifled after in hard sea.
+  And some said that this wine-shedding should be
+  Made of the falling of Adonis' blood,
+  That curled upon the thorns and broken wood
+  And round the gold silk shoes on Venus' feet;
+  The taste thereof was as hot honey sweet
+  And in the mouth ran soft and riotous.
+  This was the holiness of Venus' house.
+    It was their worship, that in August days
+  Twelve maidens should go through those Roman ways
+  Naked, and having gold across their brows
+  And their hair twisted in short golden rows,
+  To minister to Venus in this wise:
+  And twelve men chosen in their companies
+  To match these maidens by the altar-stair,
+  All in one habit, crowned upon the hair.
+  Among these men was chosen Theophile.
+    This knight went out and prayed a little while,
+  Holding queen Venus by her hands and knees;
+  I will give thee twelve royal images
+  Cut in glad gold, with marvels of wrought stone
+  For thy sweet priests to lean and pray upon,
+  Jasper and hyacinth and chrysopras,
+  And the strange Asian thalamite that was
+  Hidden twelve ages under heavy sea
+  Among the little sleepy pearls, to be
+  A shrine lit over with soft candle-flame
+  Burning all night red as hot brows of shame,
+  So thou wilt be my lady without sin.
+  Goddess that art all gold outside and in,
+  Help me to serve thee in thy holy way.
+  Thou knowest, Love, that in my bearing day
+  There shone a laughter in the singing stars
+  Round the gold-ceiled bride-bed wherein Mars
+  Touched thee and had thee in your kissing wise.
+  Now therefore, sweet, kiss thou my maiden's eyes
+  That they may open graciously towards me;
+  And this new fashion of thy shrine shall be
+  As soft with gold as thine own happy head.
+    The goddess, that was painted with face red
+  Between two long green tumbled sides of sea,
+  Stooped her neck sideways, and spake pleasantly:
+  Thou shalt have grace as thou art thrall of mine.
+  And with this came a savour of shed wine
+  And plucked-out petals from a rose's head:
+  And softly with slow laughs of lip she said,
+  Thou shalt have favour all thy days of me.
+    Then came Theophilus to Dorothy,
+  Saying: O sweet, if one should strive or speak
+  Against God's ways, he gets a beaten cheek
+  For all his wage and shame above all men.
+  Therefore I have no will to turn again
+  When God saith "go," lest a worse thing fall out.
+  Then she, misdoubting lest he went about
+  To catch her wits, made answer somewhat thus:
+  I have no will, my lord Theophilus,
+  To speak against this worthy word of yours;
+  Knowing how God's will in all speech endures,
+  That save by grace there may no thing be said,
+  Then Theophile waxed light from foot to head,
+  And softly fell upon this answering.
+  It is well seen you are a chosen thing
+  To do God service in his gracious way.
+  I will that you make haste and holiday
+  To go next year upon the Venus stair,
+  Covered none else, but crowned upon your hair,
+  And do the service that a maiden doth.
+  She said: but I that am Christ's maid were loth
+  To do this thing that hath such bitter name.
+  Thereat his brows were beaten with sore shame
+  And he came off and said no other word.
+  Then his eyes chanced upon his banner-bird,
+  And he fell fingering at the staff of it
+  And laughed for wrath and stared between his feet,
+  And out of a chafed heart he spake as thus:
+  Lo how she japes at me Theophilus,
+  Feigning herself a fool and hard to love;
+  Yet in good time for all she boasteth of
+  She shall be like a little beaten bird.
+  And while his mouth was open in that word
+  He came upon the house Janiculum,
+  Where some went busily, and other some
+  Talked in the gate called the gate glorious.
+  The emperor, which was one Gabalus,
+  Sat over all and drank chill wine alone.
+  To whom is come Theophilus anon,
+  And said as thus: _Beau sire, Dieu vous aide_.
+  And afterward sat under him, and said
+  All this thing through as ye have wholly heard.
+    This Gabalus laughed thickly in his beard.
+  Yea, this is righteousness and maiden rule.
+  Truly, he said, a maid is but a fool.
+  And japed at them as one full villainous,
+  In a lewd wise, this heathen Gabalus,
+  And sent his men to bind her as he bade.
+  Thus have they taken Dorothy the maid,
+  And haled her forth as men hale pick-purses:
+  A little need God knows they had of this,
+  To hale her by her maiden gentle hair.
+  Thus went she lowly, making a soft prayer,
+  As one who stays the sweet wine in his mouth,
+  Murmuring with eased lips, and is most loth
+  To have done wholly with the sweet of it.
+    Christ king, fair Christ, that knowest all men's wit
+  And all the feeble fashion of my ways,
+  O perfect God, that from all yesterdays
+  Abidest whole with morrows perfected,
+  I pray thee by thy mother's holy head
+  Thou help me to do right, that I not slip:
+  I have no speech nor strength upon my lip,
+  Except thou help me who art wise and sweet.
+  Do this too for those nails that clove thy feet,
+  Let me die maiden after many pains.
+  Though I be least among thy handmaidens,
+  Doubtless I shall take death more sweetly thus.
+    Now have they brought her to King Gabalus,
+  Who laughed in all his throat some breathing-whiles:
+  By God, he said, if one should leap two miles,
+  He were not pained about the sides so much.
+  This were a soft thing for a man to touch.
+  Shall one so chafe that hath such little bones?
+  And shook his throat with thick and chuckled moans
+  For laughter that she had such holiness.
+  What aileth thee, wilt thou do services?
+  It were good fare to fare as Venus doth.
+    Then said this lady with her maiden mouth,
+  Shamefaced, and something paler in the cheek:
+  Now, sir, albeit my wit and will to speak
+  Give me no grace in sight of worthy men,
+  For all my shame yet know I this again,
+  I may not speak, nor after downlying
+  Rise up to take delight in lute-playing,
+  Nor sing nor sleep, nor sit and fold my hands,
+  But my soul in some measure understands
+  God's grace laid like a garment over me.
+  For this fair God that out of strong sharp sea
+  Lifted the shapely and green-coloured land,
+  And hath the weight of heaven in his hand
+  As one might hold a bird, and under him
+  The heavy golden planets beam by beam
+  Building the feasting-chambers of his house,
+  And the large world he holdeth with his brows,
+  And with the light of them astonisheth
+  All place and time and face of life and death
+  And motion of the north wind and the south,
+  And is the sound within his angel's mouth
+  Of singing words and words of thanksgiving,
+  And is the colour of the latter spring
+  And heat upon the summer and the sun,
+  And is beginning of all things begun
+  And gathers in him all things to their end,
+  And with the fingers of his hand doth bend
+  The stretched-out sides of heaven like a sail,
+  And with his breath he maketh the red pale
+  And fills with blood faint faces of men dead,
+  And with the sound between his lips are fed
+  Iron and fire and the white body of snow,
+  And blossom of all trees in places low,
+  And small bright herbs about the little hills,
+  And fruit pricked softly with birds' tender bills,
+  And flight of foam about green fields of sea,
+  And fourfold strength of the great winds that be
+  Moved always outward from beneath his feet,
+  And growth of grass and growth of sheaved wheat
+  And all green flower of goodly-growing lands;
+  And all these things he gathers with his hands
+  And covers all their beauty with his wings;
+  The same, even God that governs all these things,
+  Hath set my feet to be upon his ways.
+  Now therefore for no painfulness of days
+  I shall put off this service bound on me.
+  Also, fair sir, ye know this certainly,
+  How God was in his flesh full chaste and meek
+  And gave his face to shame, and either cheek
+  Gave up to smiting of men tyrannous.
+    And here with a great voice this Gabalus
+  Cried out and said: By God's blood and his bones,
+  This were good game betwixen night and nones
+  For one to sit and hearken to such saws:
+  I were as lief fall in some big beast's jaws
+  As hear these women's jaw-teeth clattering;
+  By God a woman is the harder thing,
+  One may not put a hook into her mouth.
+  Now by St. Luke I am so sore adrouth
+  For all these saws I must needs drink again.
+  But I pray God deliver all us men
+  From all such noise of women and their heat.
+  That is a noble scripture, well I weet,
+  That likens women to an empty can;
+  When God said that he was a full wise man,
+  I trow no man may blame him as for that.
+    And herewithal he drank a draught, and spat,
+  And said: Now shall I make an end hereof.
+  Come near all men and hearken for God's love,
+  And ye shall hear a jest or twain, God wot.
+  And spake as thus with mouth full thick and hot;
+  But thou do this thou shalt be shortly slain.
+  Lo, sir, she said, this death and all this pain
+  I take in penance of my bitter sins.
+  Yea now, quoth Gabalus, this game begins.
+  Lo, without sin one shall not live a span.
+  Lo, this is she that would not look on man
+  Between her fingers folded in thwart wise.
+  See how her shame hath smitten in her eyes
+  That was so clean she had not heard of shame.
+  Certes, he said, by Gabalus my name,
+  This two years back I was not so well pleased.
+  This were good mirth for sick men to be eased
+  And rise up whole and laugh at hearing of.
+  I pray thee show us something of thy love,
+  Since thou wast maid thy gown is waxen wide.
+  Yea, maid I am, she said, and somewhat sighed,
+  As one who thought upon the low fair house
+  Where she sat working, with soft bended brows
+  Watching her threads, among the school-maidens.
+  And she thought well now God had brought her thence
+  She should not come to sew her gold again.
+    Then cried King Gabalus upon his men
+  To have her forth and draw her with steel gins.
+  And as a man hag-ridden beats and grins
+  And bends his body sidelong in his bed,
+  So wagged he with his body and knave's head,
+  Gaping at her, and blowing with his breath.
+  And in good time he gat an evil death
+  Out of his lewdness with his cursed wives:
+  His bones were hewn asunder as with knives
+  For his misliving, certes it is said.
+  But all the evil wrought upon this maid,
+  It were full hard for one to handle it.
+  For her soft blood was shed upon her feet,
+  And all her body's colour bruised and faint.
+  But she, as one abiding God's great saint,
+  Spake not nor wept for all this travail hard.
+  Wherefore the king commanded afterward
+  To slay her presently in all men's sight.
+  And it was now an hour upon the night
+  And winter-time, and a few stars began.
+  The weather was yet feeble and all wan
+  For beating of a weighty wind and snow.
+  And she came walking in soft wise and slow,
+  And many men with faces piteous.
+  Then came this heavy cursing Gabalus,
+  That swore full hard into his drunken beard;
+  And faintly after without any word
+  Came Theophile some paces off the king.
+  And in the middle of this wayfaring
+  Full tenderly beholding her he said:
+    There is no word of comfort with men dead
+  Nor any face and colour of things sweet;
+  But always with lean cheeks and lifted feet
+  These dead men lie all aching to the blood
+  With bitter cold, their brows withouten hood
+  Beating for chill, their bodies swathed full thin:
+  Alas, what hire shall any have herein
+  To give his life and get such bitterness?
+  Also the soul going forth bodiless
+  Is hurt with naked cold, and no man saith
+  If there be house or covering for death
+  To hide the soul that is discomforted.
+    Then she beholding him a little said:
+  Alas, fair lord, ye have no wit of this;
+  For on one side death is full poor of bliss
+  And as ye say full sharp of bone and lean:
+  But on the other side is good and green
+  And hath soft flower of tender-coloured hair
+  Grown on his head, and a red mouth as fair
+  As may be kissed with lips; thereto his face
+  Is as God's face, and in a perfect place
+  Full of all sun and colour of straight boughs
+  And waterheads about a painted house
+  That hath a mile of flowers either way
+  Outward from it, and blossom-grass of May
+  Thickening on many a side for length of heat,
+  Hath God set death upon a noble seat
+  Covered with green and flowered in the fold,
+  In likeness of a great king grown full old
+  And gentle with new temperance of blood;
+  And on his brows a purfled purple hood,
+  They may not carry any golden thing;
+  And plays some tune with subtle fingering
+  On a small cithern, full of tears and sleep
+  And heavy pleasure that is quick to weep
+  And sorrow with the honey in her mouth;
+  And for this might of music that he doth
+  Are all souls drawn toward him with great love
+  And weep for sweetness of the noise thereof
+  And bow to him with worship of their knees;
+  And all the field is thick with companies
+  Of fair-clothed men that play on shawms and lutes
+  And gather honey of the yellow fruits
+  Between the branches waxen soft and wide:
+  And all this peace endures in either side
+  Of the green land, and God beholdeth all.
+  And this is girdled with a round fair wall
+  Made of red stone and cool with heavy leaves
+  Grown out against it, and green blossom cleaves
+  To the green chinks, and lesser wall-weed sweet,
+  Kissing the crannies that are split with heat,
+  And branches where the summer draws to head.
+    And Theophile burnt in the cheek, and said:
+  Yea, could one see it, this were marvellous.
+  I pray you, at your coming to this house,
+  Give me some leaf of all those tree-branches;
+  Seeing how so sharp and white our weather is,
+  There is no green nor gracious red to see.
+    Yea, sir, she said, that shall I certainly.
+  And from her long sweet throat without a fleck
+  Undid the gold, and through her stretched-out neck
+  The cold axe clove, and smote away her head:
+  Out of her throat the tender blood full red
+  Fell suddenly through all her long soft hair.
+  And with good speed for hardness of the air
+  Each man departed to his house again.
+    Lo, as fair colour in the face of men
+  At seed-time of their blood, or in such wise
+  As a thing seen increaseth in men's eyes,
+  Caught first far off by sickly fits of sight,
+  So a word said, if one shall hear aright,
+  Abides against the season of its growth.
+  This Theophile went slowly, as one doth
+  That is not sure for sickness of his feet;
+  And counting the white stonework of the street,
+  Tears fell out of his eyes for wrath and love,
+  Making him weep more for the shame thereof
+  Than for true pain: so went he half a mile.
+  And women mocked him, saying: Theophile,
+  Lo, she is dead; what shall a woman have
+  That loveth such an one? so Christ me save,
+  I were as lief to love a man new-hung.
+  Surely this man has bitten on his tongue,
+  This makes him sad and writhled in his face.
+    And when they came upon the paven place
+  That was called sometime the place amorous
+  There came a child before Theophilus
+  Bearing a basket, and said suddenly:
+  Fair sir, this is my mistress Dorothy
+  That sends you gifts; and with this he was gone.
+  In all this earth there is not such an one
+  For colour and straight stature made so fair.
+  The tender growing gold of his pure hair
+  Was as wheat growing, and his mouth as flame.
+  God called him Holy after his own name;
+  With gold cloth like fire burning he was clad.
+  But for the fair green basket that he had,
+  It was filled up with heavy white and red;
+  Great roses stained still where the first rose bled,
+  Burning at heart for shame their heart withholds:
+  And the sad colour of strong marigolds
+  That have the sun to kiss their lips for love;
+  The flower that Venus' hair is woven of,
+  The colour of fair apples in the sun,
+  Late peaches gathered when the heat was done
+  And the slain air got breath; and after these
+  The fair faint-headed poppies drunk with ease,
+  And heaviness of hollow lilies red.
+    Then cried they all that saw these things, and said
+  It was God's doing, and was marvellous.
+  And in brief while this knight Theophilus
+  Is waxen full of faith, and witnesseth
+  Before the king of God and love and death,
+  For which the king bade hang him presently.
+  A gallows of a goodly piece of tree
+  This Gabalus hath made to hang him on.
+  Forth of this world lo Theophile is gone
+  With a wried neck, God give us better fare
+  Than his that hath a twisted throat to wear;
+  But truly for his love God hath him brought
+  There where his heavy body grieves him nought
+  Nor all the people plucking at his feet;
+  But in his face his lady's face is sweet,
+  And through his lips her kissing lips are gone:
+  God send him peace, and joy of such an one.
+    This is the story of St. Dorothy.
+  I will you of your mercy pray for me
+  Because I wrote these sayings for your grace,
+  That I may one day see her in the face.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO DREAMS
+
+(FROM BOCCACCIO)
+
+
+  I will that if I say a heavy thing
+  Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring
+  Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,
+  And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet.
+  Moreover it sounds often well to let
+  One string, when ye play music, keep at fret
+  The whole song through; one petal that is dead
+  Confirms the roses, be they white or red;
+  Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear
+  As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;
+  The sick sound aching in a lifted throat
+  Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note;
+  And though the rain falls often, and with rain
+  Late autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain,
+  I deem that God is not disquieted.
+  Also while men are fed with wine and bread,
+  They shall be fed with sorrow at his hand.
+    There grew a rose-garden in Florence land
+  More fair than many; all red summers through
+  The leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew
+  Sideways with tender wind; and therein fell
+  Sweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible,
+  As a bird's will to sing disturbed his throat
+  And set the sharp wings forward like a boat
+  Pushed through soft water, moving his brown side
+  Smooth-shapen as a maid's, and shook with pride
+  His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun's
+  Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once.
+  The ways were clean to walk and delicate;
+  And when the windy white of March grew late,
+  Before the trees took heart to face the sun
+  With ravelled raiment of lean winter on,
+  The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.
+    Some roods away a lordly house there was,
+  Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet
+  From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,
+  Sown close among the strewings of the floor;
+  And either wall of the slow corridor
+  Was dim with deep device of gracious things;
+  Some angel's steady mouth and weight of wings
+  Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole
+  And beard cut black against the aureole
+  That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby
+  Mary's gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie
+  Wherein was bound a child with tender feet;
+  Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.
+    Within this house a righteous lord abode,
+  Ser Averardo; patient of his mood,
+  And just of judgment; and to child he had
+  A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad
+  Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;
+  And where she came, the lips that pain made strait
+  Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew
+  Tender as those that sleep brings patience to.
+  Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin
+  She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.
+  Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise;
+  Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,
+  Filled with clear light and fire and large repose
+  Like a fair hound's; no man there is but knows
+  Her face was white, and thereto she was tall;
+  In no wise lacked there any praise at all
+  To her most perfect and pure maidenhood;
+  No sin I think there was in all her blood.
+    She, where a gold grate shut the roses in,
+  Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green
+  Flushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there
+  Love made him room and space to worship her
+  With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought
+  Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not
+  For weariness, but at one taste undoes
+  The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous
+  Of all the hidden honey; words and sense
+  Fail through the tune's imperious prevalence.
+    In a poor house this lover kept apart,
+  Long communing with patience next his heart
+  If love of his might move that face at all,
+  Tuned evenwise with colours musical;
+  Then after length of days he said thus: "Love,
+  For love's own sake and for the love thereof
+  Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood;
+  For good it were, if anything be good,
+  To comfort me in this pain's plague of mine;
+  Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine
+  Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is
+  Seems pleasant to me; only I know this,
+  Love's ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet
+  To travel, but the end of such is sweet:
+  Now do with me as seemeth you the best."
+  She mused a little, as one holds his guest
+  By the hand musing, with her face borne down:
+  Then said: "Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,
+  Have no more care of all that you have said;
+  Since if there is no sleep will bind your head,
+  Lo, I am fain to help you certainly;
+  Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;
+  There is no pleasure when a man is dead."
+  Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head
+  And clipped her fair long body many times;
+  I have no wit to shape in written rhymes
+  A scanted tithe of this great joy they had.
+    They were too near love's secret to be glad;
+  As whoso deems the core will surely melt
+  From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt
+  Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:
+  Or as sweet music sharpens afterward,
+  Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;
+  As sea-water, having killed over-heat
+  In a man's body, chills it with faint ache;
+  So their sense, burdened only for love's sake,
+  Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,
+  They saved each day some gold reserves of it,
+  Being wiser in love's riddle than such be
+  Whom fragments feed with his chance charity.
+  All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;
+  The rose-thorn's prickle dangerous to touch,
+  And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;
+  Too keen the breathed honey of the rose,
+  Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;
+  They were so far gone in love's histories,
+  Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath,
+  Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,
+  And strength of soul and body waxen blind
+  For weariness, and flesh entailed with mind,
+  When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.
+    Even this green place the summer caught them in
+  Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves
+  In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumed eves
+  Burnt out to make the sun's love-offering,
+  The midnoon's prayer, the rose's thanksgiving,
+  The trees' weight burdening the strengthless air,
+  The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,
+  Her body's balance from the moving feet--
+  All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet
+  It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth
+  On May's new lip the tender April breath:
+  So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in
+  All April through, and all their latter kin
+  Of languid leaves whereon the Autumn blows--
+  The dead red raiment of the last year's rose--
+  The last year's laurel, and the last year's love,
+  Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of.
+    What man will gather in red summer-time
+  The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme
+  Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,
+  Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit
+  The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through
+  With colour, make all broken beauties new
+  For love's new lesson--shall not such find pain
+  When the marred music labouring in his brain
+  Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip
+  One word that might leave satisfied his lip--
+  One touch that might put fire in all the chords?
+  This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words
+  Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate--
+  Some speech the old love found out to compensate
+  For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness--
+  Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless
+  Passionless months and undelighted weeks.
+  The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,
+  Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath:
+  The year was plagued with instances of death.
+    So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass
+  With leaves about, and many a bird there was
+  Where the green shadow thickliest impleached
+  Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached
+  Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white:
+  Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright
+  With purple as purple water and gold wrought in.
+  One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,
+  Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade
+  The breast's bright plaited work: but nothing frayed
+  The sun's large kiss on the luxurious hair.
+  Her beauty was new colour to the air
+  And music to the silent many birds.
+  Love was an-hungred for some perfect words
+  To praise her with; but only her low name
+  "Andrevuola" came thrice, and thrice put shame
+  In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red
+  That for pure love straightway shame's self was dead.
+    Then with lids gathered as who late had wept
+  She began saying: "I have so little slept
+  My lids drowse now against the very sun;
+  Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun
+  Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,
+  And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous
+  Almost away." He said thus, kissing them:
+  "O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,
+  My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore
+  Shall not the waking time increase much more
+  With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?
+  Has any heat too hard and insolent
+  Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone
+  The maiden grass shut under from the sun?
+  Where in this world is room enough for pain?"
+    The feverish finger of love had touched again
+  Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek
+  In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek
+  With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth
+  Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,
+  Making it humble as weak hunger is.
+  She lay close to him, bade do this and this,
+  Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe
+  Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe
+  The old record out of old things done and dead,
+  She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red
+  For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;
+  Saying "Though my wits be weak, this is no shame
+  For a poor maid whom love so punisheth
+  With heats of hesitation and stopped breath
+  That with my dreams I live yet heavily
+  For pure sad heart and faith's humility.
+  Now be not wroth and I will show you this.
+    "Methought our lips upon their second kiss
+  Met in this place, and a fair day we had
+  And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad
+  With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;
+  When I, beholding ever how your mouth
+  Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back,
+  Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black
+  Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,
+  A devil's hide with foul flame-writhen grail
+  Fashioned where hell's heat festers loathsomest;
+  And that brief speech may ease me of the rest,
+  Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing.
+  My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering
+  On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,
+  Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,
+  As if the palpitating dawn drew breath
+  For horror, breathing between life and death,
+  Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent."
+    So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,
+  She gazed each way, lest some brute-hooved thing,
+  The timeless travail of hell's childbearing,
+  Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he,
+  For relish of her tasted misery
+  And tender little thornprick of her pain,
+  Laughed with mere love. What lover among men
+  But hath his sense fed sovereignly 'twixt whiles
+  With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles
+  And soft disaster of a pained face?
+  What pain, established in so sweet a place,
+  But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?
+  What colour burning man's wide-open eye
+  But may be pleasurably seen? what sense
+  Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence
+  No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood
+  And emptied flesh in their most broken mood
+  Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus
+  Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous.
+    Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began,
+  Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan
+  Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath.
+  "Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death
+  And in death's service wears out half his age,
+  Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,
+  Shadow and sound of things ungracious;
+  Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,
+  And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had
+  As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.
+    "This dream I tell you came three nights ago;
+  In full mid sleep I took a whim to know
+  How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;
+  But save my dream all sweet availed me not.
+  First came a smell of pounded spice and scent
+  Such as God ripens in some continent
+  Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea;
+  And breaths as though some costly rose could be
+  Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire
+  To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire
+  The flower's poor heart with heat and waste, to make
+  Strong magic for some perfumed woman's sake.
+  Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet
+  Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat
+  As if a lute should play of its own heart
+  And fearfully, not smitten of either part;
+  And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet
+  As gold swoln grain fills out the husked wheat;
+  So I rose naked from the bed, and stood
+  Counting the mobile measure in my blood
+  Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came
+  Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame,
+  Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much
+  As the outer curls that feel the comb's first touch
+  Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;
+  And blind between my dream and my desire
+  I seemed to stand and held my spirit still
+  Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill
+  Honey from cells forgotten of the bee
+  Is less afraid to stir the hive and see
+  Some wasp's bright back inside, than I to feel
+  Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.
+  I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here
+  So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear
+  And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would
+  Have here some colour and smooth shape as good
+  As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides
+  With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides
+  And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind
+  Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind
+  To touch their hair they see not, neither fly;
+  This would I see in heaven and not die.
+  So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,
+  So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt
+  In the dumb night's warm weight of glowing gloom
+  Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,
+  And made it like a green low place wherein
+  Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin
+  Against a ripple, that the angry pearl
+  May flow like flame about her: the next curl
+  Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun
+  To wash the dust well out; another one
+  Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings
+  With lavish body sidelong, so that rings
+  Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail
+  All round her fine and floated body pale,
+  Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side
+  Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,
+  As taken in some underflow of sea
+  Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she
+  Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head
+  Clear of the river: even from wall to bed,
+  I tell you, was my room transfigured so.
+  Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know
+  If there were walls or leaves, or if there was
+  No bed's green curtain, but mere gentle grass.
+  There were set also hard against the feet
+  Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,
+  With the cool water's noise to hear in rhymes:
+  And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes
+  And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills
+  To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.
+  Next the grave walking of a woman's feet
+  Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat
+  Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:
+  And I thought ever, surely it were wise
+  Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)
+  Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose
+  Because it turns a face to her, the wind
+  Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,
+  I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,
+  I played with pleasures, made them to my mind,
+  Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed,
+  First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed
+  On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last
+  Touched me between the cheek and lip and past
+  Over my face with kisses here and there
+  Sown in and out across the eyes and hair.
+  Still I said nothing; till she set her face
+  More close and harder on the kissing-place,
+  And her mouth caught like a snake's mouth, and stung
+  So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung
+  More than a bird's foot: yet a wound it grew,
+  A great one, let this red mark witness you
+  Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof
+  So clove my sense that I woke out of love
+  And knew not what this dream was nor had wit;
+  But now God knows if I have skill of it."
+    Hereat she laid one palm against her lips
+  To stop their trembling; as when water slips
+  Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise
+  And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys
+  The carven rims with murmuring, so came
+  Words in her lips with no word right of them,
+  A beaten speech thick and disconsolate,
+  Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate
+  Of her sore fear that grew from anything--
+  The sound of the strong summer thickening
+  In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees:
+  The day's breath felt about the ash-branches,
+  And noises of the noon whose weight still grew
+  On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew
+  Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached;
+  For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked
+  And soothed with shade: but westward all its growth
+  Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth
+  Who feels his temples newly feverous.
+  And even with such motion in her brows
+  As that man hath in whom sick days begin,
+  She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin
+  As a sick man's, sudden and tremulous;
+  "Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us,
+  Let us love more;" and held his mouth with hers.
+  As the first sound of flooded hill-waters
+  Is heard by people of the meadow-grass,
+  Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass
+  With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream
+  Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him
+  She felt before tears came her eyelids wet,
+  Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet,
+  Heard his throat's harsh last moan before it clomb:
+  And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb,
+  Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech,
+  Each grasping other, and the eyes of each
+  Fed in the other's face: till suddenly
+  He cried out with a little broken cry
+  This word, "O help me, sweet, I am but dead."
+  And even so saying, the colour of fair red
+  Was gone out of his face, and his blood's beat
+  Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet
+  And pointed hands; and without moan he died.
+  Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side,
+  Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes:
+  For the pure sharpness of her miseries
+  She had no heart's pain, but mere body's wrack;
+  But at the last her beaten blood drew back
+  Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows
+  Suddenly grown aware and piteous
+  Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath
+  Came as though one nigh dead came back from death;
+  Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair.
+    And in brief while she thought to bury there
+  The dead man that her love might lie with him
+  In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim
+  And soft earth round the branched apple-trees,
+  Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease,
+  And no man entering divide him thence.
+  Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens
+  To be her help to do upon this wise.
+  And saying so the tears out of her eyes
+  Fell without noise and comforted her heart:
+  Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part
+  Began to soften in her sense of it.
+  There under all the little branches sweet
+  The place was shapen of his burial;
+  They shed thereon no thing funereal,
+  But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom,
+  Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some
+  Fair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider
+  Of marigold and great spent sunflower.
+    And afterward she came back without word
+  To her own house; two days went, and the third
+  Went, and she showed her father of this thing.
+  And for great grief of her soul's travailing
+  He gave consent she should endure in peace
+  Till her life's end; yea, till her time should cease,
+  She should abide in fellowship of pain.
+  And having lived a holy year or twain
+  She died of pure waste heart and weariness.
+  And for love's honour in her love's distress
+  This word was written over her tomb's head;
+  "Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead."
+
+
+
+
+AHOLIBAH
+
+
+  In the beginning God made thee
+      A woman well to look upon,
+  Thy tender body as a tree
+      Whereon cool wind hath always blown
+      Till the clean branches be well grown.
+
+  There was none like thee in the land;
+      The girls that were thy bondwomen
+  Did bind thee with a purple band
+      Upon thy forehead, that all men
+      Should know thee for God's handmaiden.
+
+  Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,
+      With silk to wear on hands and feet
+  And plates of gold on either side:
+      Wine made thee glad, and thou didst eat
+      Honey, and choice of pleasant meat.
+
+  And fishers in the middle sea
+      Did get thee sea-fish and sea-weeds
+  In colour like the robes on thee;
+      And curious work of plaited reeds,
+      And wools wherein live purple bleeds.
+
+  And round the edges of thy cup
+      Men wrought thee marvels out of gold,
+  Strong snakes with lean throats lifted up,
+      Large eyes whereon the brows had hold,
+      And scaly things their slime kept cold.
+
+  For thee they blew soft wind in flutes
+      And ground sweet roots for cunning scent;
+  Made slow because of many lutes,
+      The wind among thy chambers went
+      Wherein no light was violent.
+
+  God called thy name Aholibah,
+      His tabernacle being in thee,
+  A witness through waste Asia;
+      Thou wert a tent sewn cunningly
+      With gold and colours of the sea.
+
+  God gave thee gracious ministers
+      And all their work who plait and weave:
+  The cunning of embroiderers
+      That sew the pillow to the sleeve,
+      And likeness of all things that live.
+
+  Thy garments upon thee were fair
+      With scarlet and with yellow thread;
+  Also the weaving of thine hair
+      Was as fine gold upon thy head,
+      And thy silk shoes were sewn with red.
+
+  All sweet things he bade sift, and ground
+      As a man grindeth wheat in mills
+  With strong wheels alway going round;
+      He gave thee corn, and grass that fills
+      The cattle on a thousand hills.
+
+  The wine of many seasons fed
+      Thy mouth, and made it fair and clean;
+  Sweet oil was poured out on thy head
+      And ran down like cool rain between
+      The strait close locks it melted in.
+
+  The strong men and the captains knew
+      Thy chambers wrought and fashioned
+  With gold and covering of blue,
+      And the blue raiment of thine head
+      Who satest on a stately bed.
+
+  All these had on their garments wrought
+      The shape of beasts and creeping things,
+  The body that availeth not,
+      Flat backs of worms and veined wings,
+      And the lewd bulk that sleeps and stings.
+
+  Also the chosen of the years,
+      The multitude being at ease,
+  With sackbuts and with dulcimers
+      And noise of shawms and psalteries
+      Made mirth within the ears of these.
+
+  But as a common woman doth,
+      Thou didst think evil and devise;
+  The sweet smell of thy breast and mouth
+      Thou madest as the harlot's wise,
+      And there was painting on thine eyes.
+
+  Yea, in the woven guest-chamber
+      And by the painted passages
+  Where the strange gracious paintings were,
+      State upon state of companies,
+      There came on thee the lust of these.
+
+  Because of shapes on either wall
+      Sea-coloured from some rare blue shell
+  At many a Tyrian interval,
+      Horsemen on horses, girdled well,
+      Delicate and desirable,
+
+  Thou saidest: I am sick of love:
+      Stay me with flagons, comfort me
+  With apples for my pain thereof
+      Till my hands gather in his tree
+      That fruit wherein my lips would be.
+
+  Yea, saidest thou, I will go up
+      When there is no more shade than one
+  May cover with a hollow cup,
+      And make my bed against the sun
+      Till my blood's violence be done.
+
+  Thy mouth was leant upon the wall
+      Against the painted mouth, thy chin
+  Touched the hair's painted curve and fall;
+      Thy deep throat, fallen lax and thin,
+      Worked as the blood's beat worked therein.
+
+  Therefore, O thou Aholibah,
+      God is not glad because of thee;
+  And thy fine gold shall pass away
+      Like those fair coins of ore that be
+      Washed over by the middle sea.
+
+  Then will one make thy body bare
+      To strip it of all gracious things,
+  And pluck the cover from thine hair,
+      And break the gift of many kings,
+      Thy wrist-rings and thine ankle-rings.
+
+  Likewise the man whose body joins
+      To thy smooth body, as was said,
+  Who hath a girdle on his loins
+      And dyed attire upon his head--
+      The same who, seeing, worshipped,
+
+  Because thy face was like the face
+      Of a clean maiden that smells sweet,
+  Because thy gait was as the pace
+      Of one that opens not her feet
+      And is not heard within the street--
+
+  Even he, O thou Aholibah,
+      Made separate from thy desire,
+  Shall cut thy nose and ears away
+      And bruise thee for thy body's hire
+      And burn the residue with fire.
+
+  Then shall the heathen people say,
+      The multitude being at ease;
+  Lo, this is that Aholibah
+      Whose name was blown among strange seas.
+      Grown old with soft adulteries.
+
+  Also her bed was made of green,
+      Her windows beautiful for glass
+  That she had made her bed between:
+      Yea, for pure lust her body was
+      Made like white summer-coloured grass.
+
+  Her raiment was a strong man's spoil;
+      Upon a table by a bed
+  She set mine incense and mine oil
+      To be the beauty of her head
+      In chambers walled about with red.
+
+  Also between the walls she had
+      Fair faces of strong men portrayed;
+  All girded round the loins, and clad
+      With several cloths of woven braid
+      And garments marvellously made.
+
+  Therefore the wrath of God shall be
+      Set as a watch upon her way;
+  And whoso findeth by the sea
+      Blown dust of bones will hardly say
+      If this were that Aholibah.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND SLEEP
+
+
+  Lying asleep between the strokes of night
+    I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
+    Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
+  Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
+  Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
+    But perfect-coloured without white or red.
+    And her lips opened amorously, and said--
+  I wist not what, saving one word--Delight.
+  And all her face was honey to my mouth,
+    And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
+      The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
+  The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
+    The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
+      And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.
+
+
+
+
+MADONNA MIA
+
+
+  Under green apple-boughs
+  That never a storm will rouse,
+  My lady hath her house
+    Between two bowers;
+  In either of the twain
+  Red roses full of rain;
+  She hath for bondwomen
+    All kind of flowers.
+
+  She hath no handmaid fair
+  To draw her curled gold hair
+  Through rings of gold that bear
+    Her whole hair's weight;
+  She hath no maids to stand
+  Gold-clothed on either hand;
+  In all the great green land
+    None is so great.
+
+  She hath no more to wear
+  But one white hood of vair
+  Drawn over eyes and hair,
+    Wrought with strange gold,
+  Made for some great queen's head,
+  Some fair great queen since dead;
+  And one strait gown of red
+    Against the cold.
+
+  Beneath her eyelids deep
+  Love lying seems asleep,
+  Love, swift to wake, to weep,
+    To laugh, to gaze;
+  Her breasts are like white birds,
+  And all her gracious words
+  As water-grass to herds
+    In the June-days.
+
+  To her all dews that fall
+  And rains are musical;
+  Her flowers are fed from all,
+    Her joy from these;
+  In the deep-feathered firs
+  Their gift of joy is hers,
+  In the least breath that stirs
+    Across the trees.
+
+  She grows with greenest leaves,
+  Ripens with reddest sheaves,
+  Forgets, remembers, grieves,
+    And is not sad;
+  The quiet lands and skies
+  Leave light upon her eyes;
+  None knows her, weak or wise,
+    Or tired or glad.
+
+  None knows, none understands,
+  What flowers are like her hands;
+  Though you should search all lands
+    Wherein time grows,
+  What snows are like her feet,
+  Though his eyes burn with heat
+  Through gazing on my sweet,
+    Yet no man knows.
+
+  Only this thing is said;
+  That white and gold and red,
+  God's three chief words, man's bread
+    And oil and wine,
+  Were given her for dowers,
+  And kingdom of all hours,
+  And grace of goodly flowers
+    And various vine.
+
+  This is my lady's praise:
+  God after many days
+  Wrought her in unknown ways,
+    In sunset lands;
+  This was my lady's birth;
+  God gave her might and mirth
+  And laid his whole sweet earth
+    Between her hands.
+
+  Under deep apple-boughs
+  My lady hath her house;
+  She wears upon her brows
+    The flower thereof;
+  All saying but what God saith
+  To her is as vain breath;
+  She is more strong than death,
+    Being strong as love.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+  We were ten maidens in the green corn,
+    Small red leaves in the mill-water:
+  Fairer maidens never were born,
+    Apples of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  We were ten maidens by a well-head,
+    Small white birds in the mill-water:
+  Sweeter maidens never were wed,
+    Rings of red for the king's daughter.
+
+  The first to spin, the second to sing,
+    Seeds of wheat in the mill-water;
+  The third may was a goodly thing,
+    White bread and brown for the king's daughter.
+
+  The fourth to sew and the fifth to play,
+    Fair green weed in the mill-water;
+  The sixth may was a goodly may,
+    White wine and red for the king's daughter.
+
+  The seventh to woo, the eighth to wed,
+    Fair thin reeds in the mill-water;
+  The ninth had gold work on her head,
+    Honey in the comb for the king's daughter.
+
+  The ninth had gold work round her hair,
+    Fallen flowers in the mill-water;
+  The tenth may was goodly and fair,
+    Golden gloves for the king's daughter.
+
+  We were ten maidens in a field green,
+    Fallen fruit in the mill-water;
+  Fairer maidens never have been,
+    Golden sleeves for the king's daughter.
+
+  By there comes the king's young son,
+    A little wind in the mill-water;
+  "Out of ten maidens ye'll grant me one,"
+    A crown of red for the king's daughter.
+
+  "Out of ten mays ye'll give me the best,"
+    A little rain in the mill-water;
+  A bed of yellow straw for all the rest,
+    A bed of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's ta'en out the goodliest,
+    Rain that rains in the mill-water;
+  A comb of yellow shell for all the rest,
+    A comb of gold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's made her bed to the goodliest,
+    Wind and hail in the mill-water;
+  A grass girdle for all the rest,
+    A girdle of arms for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's set his heart to the goodliest,
+    Snow that snows in the mill-water;
+  Nine little kisses for all the rest,
+    An hundredfold for the king's daughter.
+
+  He's ta'en his leave at the goodliest,
+    Broken boats in the mill-water;
+  Golden gifts for all the rest,
+    Sorrow of heart for the king's daughter.
+
+  "Ye'll make a grave for my fair body,"
+    Running rain in the mill-water;
+  "And ye'll streek my brother at the side of me,"
+    The pains of hell for the king's daughter.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER DEATH
+
+
+  The four boards of the coffin lid
+  Heard all the dead man did.
+
+  The first curse was in his mouth,
+  Made of grave's mould and deadly drouth.
+
+  The next curse was in his head,
+  Made of God's work discomfited.
+
+  The next curse was in his hands,
+  Made out of two grave-bands.
+
+  The next curse was in his feet,
+  Made out of a grave-sheet.
+
+  "I had fair coins red and white,
+  And my name was as great light;
+
+  I had fair clothes green and red,
+  And strong gold bound round my head.
+
+  But no meat comes in my mouth,
+  Now I fare as the worm doth;
+
+  And no gold binds in my hair,
+  Now I fare as the blind fare.
+
+  My live thews were of great strength,
+  Now am I waxen a span's length;
+
+  My live sides were full of lust,
+  Now are they dried with dust."
+
+  The first board spake and said:
+  "Is it best eating flesh or bread?"
+
+  The second answered it:
+  "Is wine or honey the more sweet?"
+
+  The third board spake and said:
+  "Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"
+
+  The fourth made answer thus:
+  "All these things are as one with us."
+
+  The dead man asked of them:
+  "Is the green land stained brown with flame?
+
+  Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,
+  And my wife's body for beasts' meat?
+
+  Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,
+  And built a gallows to hang my man?"
+
+  The boards said to him:
+  "This is a lewd thing that ye deem.
+
+  Your wife has gotten a golden bed,
+  All the sheets are sewn with red.
+
+  Your son has gotten a coat of silk,
+  The sleeves are soft as curded milk.
+
+  Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,
+  All the skirt has braids of blue.
+
+  Your man has gotten both ring and glove,
+  Wrought well for eyes to love."
+
+  The dead man answered thus:
+  "What good gift shall God give us?"
+
+  The boards answered him anon:
+  "Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."
+
+
+
+
+MAY JANET
+
+(BRETON)
+
+
+  "Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,
+    And go to the wars with me."
+  He's drawn her by both hands
+    With her face against the sea.
+
+  "He that strews red shall gather white,
+    He that sows white reap red,
+  Before your face and my daughter's
+    Meet in a marriage-bed.
+
+  "Gold coin shall grow in the yellow field,
+    Green corn in the green sea-water,
+  And red fruit grow of the rose's red,
+    Ere your fruit grow in her."
+
+  "But I shall have her by land," he said,
+    "Or I shall have her by sea,
+  Or I shall have her by strong treason
+    And no grace go with me."
+
+  Her father's drawn her by both hands,
+    He's rent her gown from her,
+  He's ta'en the smock round her body,
+    Cast in the sea-water.
+
+  The captain's drawn her by both sides
+    Out of the fair green sea;
+  "Stand up, stand up, thou May Janet,
+    And come to the war with me."
+
+  The first town they came to
+    There was a blue bride-chamber;
+  He clothed her on with silk
+    And belted her with amber.
+
+  The second town they came to
+    The bridesmen feasted knee to knee;
+  He clothed her on with silver,
+    A stately thing to see.
+
+  The third town they came to
+    The bridesmaids all had gowns of gold;
+  He clothed her on with purple,
+    A rich thing to behold.
+
+  The last town they came to
+    He clothed her white and red,
+  With a green flag either side of her
+    And a gold flag overhead.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLOODY SON
+
+(FINNISH)
+
+
+  "O where have ye been the morn sae late,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  O where have ye been the morn sae late?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "By the water-gate, by the water-gate,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "I watered my steeds with water frae the lake,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "Why is your coat sae fouled the day,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  Why is your coat sae fouled the day?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The steeds were stamping sair by the weary banks of clay,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And where gat ye thae sleeves of red,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And where gat ye thae sleeves of red?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "I have slain my ae brither by the weary waterhead,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And where will ye gang to mak your mend,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And where will ye gang to mak your mend?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The warldis way, to the warldis end,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your father dear,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your father dear?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The wood to fell and the logs to bear,
+  For he'll never see my body mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your mither dear,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your mither dear?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "The wool to card and the wool to wear,
+  For ye'll never see my body mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave for your wife to take,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave for your wife to take?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "A goodly gown and a fair new make,
+  For she'll do nae mair for my body's sake,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your young son fair,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your young son fair?
+    And I wot ye hae not anither."
+  "A twiggen school-rod for his body to bear,
+  Though it garred him greet he'll get nae mair,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And what will ye leave your little daughter sweet?
+    And I wot ye hae not anither."
+  "Wild mulberries for her mouth to eat,
+  She'll get nae mair though it garred her greet,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "And when will ye come back frae roamin',
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  And when will ye come back frae roamin'?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When the sunrise out of the north is comen,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall the sunrise on the north side be,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall the sunrise on the north side be?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When chuckie-stanes shall swim in the sea,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall stanes in the sea swim,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall stanes in the sea swim?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When birdies' feathers are as lead therein,
+    O dear mither."
+
+  "When shall feathers be as lead,
+    My merry son, come tell me hither?
+  When shall feathers be as lead?
+    And I wot I hae not anither."
+  "When God shall judge between the quick and dead,
+    O dear mither."
+
+
+
+
+THE SEA-SWALLOWS
+
+
+  This fell when Christmas lights were done,
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  But before the Easter lights begun;
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  Two lovers sat where the rowan blows
+    And all the grass is heavy and fine,
+  By the gathering-place of the sea-swallows
+    When the wind brings them over Tyne.
+
+  Blossom of broom will never make bread,
+    Red rose leaves will never make wine;
+  Between her brows she is grown red,
+    That was full white in the fields by Tyne.
+
+  "O what is this thing ye have on,
+    Show me now, sweet daughter of mine?"
+  "O father, this is my little son
+    That I found hid in the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "O what will ye give my son to eat,
+    Red rose leaves will never make wine?"
+  "Fen-water and adder's meat."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye get my son to wear?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "A weed and a web of nettle's hair."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye take to line his bed?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Two black stones at the kirkwall's head."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye give my son for land?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Three girl's paces of red sand."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Or what will ye give me for my son?"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
+  "Six times to kiss his young mouth on."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "But what have ye done with the bearing-bread,
+    And what have ye made of the washing-wine?
+  Or where have ye made your bearing-bed,
+    To bear a son in the sides of Tyne?"
+
+  "The bearing-bread is soft and new,
+    There is no soil in the straining wine;
+  The bed was made between green and blue,
+    It stands full soft by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "The fair grass was my bearing-bread,
+    The well-water my washing-wine;
+  The low leaves were my bearing-bed,
+    And that was best in the sides of Tyne."
+
+  "O daughter, if ye have done this thing,
+    I wot the greater grief is mine;
+  This was a bitter child-bearing,
+    When ye were got by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "About the time of sea-swallows
+    That fly full thick by six and nine,
+  Ye'll have my body out of the house,
+    To bury me by the sides of Tyne.
+
+  "Set nine stones by the wall for twain,"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  "For the bed I take will measure ten."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+  "Tread twelve girl's paces out for three,"
+    (Red rose leaves will never make wine)
+  "For the pit I made has taken me."
+    The ways are sair fra' the Till to the Tyne.
+
+
+
+
+THE YEAR OF LOVE
+
+
+  There were four loves that one by one,
+  Following the seasons and the sun,
+  Passed over without tears, and fell
+  Away without farewell.
+
+  The first was made of gold and tears,
+  The next of aspen-leaves and fears,
+  The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,
+  The last love of strange fruits.
+
+  These were the four loves faded. Hold
+  Some minutes fast the time of gold
+  When our lips each way clung and clove
+  To a face full of love.
+
+  The tears inside our eyelids met,
+  Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet
+  The faces cleaving each to each
+  Where the blood served for speech.
+
+  The second, with low patient brows
+  Bound under aspen-coloured boughs
+  And eyes made strong and grave with sleep
+  And yet too weak to weep--
+
+  The third, with eager mouth at ease
+  Fed from late autumn honey, lees
+  Of scarce gold left in latter cells
+  With scattered flower-smells--
+
+  Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet
+  Of ruined roses, wrists and feet
+  Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves
+  Hold in stray poppy-leaves--
+
+  The fourth, with lips whereon has bled
+  Some great pale fruit's slow colour, shed
+  From the rank bitter husk whence drips
+  Faint blood between her lips--
+
+  Made of the heat of whole great Junes
+  Burning the blue dark round their moons
+  (Each like a mown red marigold)
+  So hard the flame keeps hold--
+
+  These are burnt thoroughly away.
+  Only the first holds out a day
+  Beyond these latter loves that were
+  Made of mere heat and air.
+
+  And now the time is winterly
+  The first love fades too: none will see,
+  When April warms the world anew,
+  The place wherein love grew.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+1865
+
+
+  The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
+    The earth gives her streams to the sea:
+  They are many, but my gift is single,
+    My verses, the firstfruits of me.
+  Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf,
+    Cast forth without fruit upon air;
+  Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf
+    Blown loose from the hair.
+
+  The night shakes them round me in legions,
+    Dawn drives them before her like dreams;
+  Time sheds them like snows on strange regions,
+    Swept shoreward on infinite streams;
+  Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy,
+    Dead fruits of the fugitive years;
+  Some stained as with wine and made bloody,
+    And some as with tears.
+
+  Some scattered in seven years' traces,
+    As they fell from the boy that was then;
+  Long left among idle green places,
+    Or gathered but now among men;
+  On seas full of wonder and peril,
+    Blown white round the capes of the north;
+  Or in islands where myrtles are sterile
+    And loves bring not forth.
+
+  O daughters of dreams and of stories
+    That life is not wearied of yet,
+  Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
+    Felise and Yolande and Juliette,
+  Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
+    When sleep, that is true or that seems,
+  Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
+    O daughters of dreams?
+
+  They are past as a slumber that passes,
+    As the dew of a dawn of old time;
+  More frail than the shadows on glasses,
+    More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.
+  As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
+    When their hollows are full of the night,
+  So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
+    Recede out of sight.
+
+  The songs of dead seasons, that wander
+    On wings of articulate words;
+  Lost leaves that the shore-wind may squander,
+    Light flocks of untameable birds;
+  Some sang to me dreaming in class-time
+    And truant in hand as in tongue;
+  For the youngest were born of boy's pastime,
+    The eldest are young.
+
+  Is there shelter while life in them lingers,
+    Is there hearing for songs that recede,
+  Tunes touched from a harp with man's fingers
+    Or blown with boy's mouth in a reed?
+  Is there place in the land of your labour,
+    Is there room in your world of delight,
+  Where change has not sorrow for neighbour
+    And day has not night?
+
+  In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,
+    Will you spare not a space for them there
+  Made green with the running of rivers
+    And gracious with temperate air;
+  In the fields and the turreted cities,
+    That cover from sunshine and rain
+  Fair passions and bountiful pities
+    And loves without stain?
+
+  In a land of clear colours and stories,
+    In a region of shadowless hours,
+  Where earth has a garment of glories
+    And a murmur of musical flowers;
+  In woods where the spring half uncovers
+    The flush of her amorous face,
+  By the waters that listen for lovers,
+    For these is there place?
+
+  For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle
+    Their music as clouds do their fire:
+  For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle
+    Wild wings in a wind of desire;
+  In the stream of the storm as it settles
+    Blown seaward, borne far from the sun,
+  Shaken loose on the darkness like petals
+    Dropt one after one?
+
+  Though the world of your hands be more gracious
+    And lovelier in lordship of things
+  Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
+    Warm heaven of her imminent wings,
+  Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
+    For the love of old loves and lost times;
+  And receive in your palace of painting
+    This revel of rhymes.
+
+  Though the seasons of man full of losses
+    Make empty the years full of youth,
+  If but one thing be constant in crosses,
+    Change lays not her hand upon truth;
+  Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
+    That the grief as the joy of them ends
+  Ere time that breaks all men has broken
+    The faith between friends.
+
+  Though the many lights dwindle to one light,
+    There is help if the heaven has one;
+  Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight
+    And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
+  They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,
+    When, refreshed as a bride and set free,
+  With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
+    Night sinks on the sea.
+
+
+
+  PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS
+  WEST NORWOOD
+  LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems & Ballads (First Series), by
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
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