Collected Poems (18 page)

You cannot understand, you are a Jew!

Your pores, unsentient, have never drunk

The perfume of a bush that’s red by dawn,

And were you here upon this roof tonight

With Corinth at your feet, you’d never know

It was a night of summer, never feel

The straining on the slender leash of will

At all the murmurs and warm silences.

There’s a girl’s laugh … and footsteps loitering.

You’d never guess why they are slow, nor hear

The half-words breathed, nor smile to find yourself

Wondering if the kiss were mouth or throat.…

Perfumes! …

The night-wind wakes but to caress,

And kissing sleeps … the lover’s way.…

Gods, gods! This fool would have the harlots’ mouth

Immortal as the soul of Socrates!

Forgive me, follower of Jesus. I

Am Greek, all Greek; I know the loveliness

Of flesh and its sweet snare, and I am hurt

At finding nothing where I sought for much.

O Paul, had you been more as other men

Your wisdom had been wiser! Christ, perhaps —

But I was born too late and so miss all.

I see no aim nor end. And yet myself

Hopeless of aught of profit from the fight

Fight on.… Perhaps there’s something truer than

The truth we can deduce.… And after all

Our best is but a turning toward the stars,

An upward gaze.…

Diverging paths we climb
,

But if you find a flower

I will applaud its perfume
,

I will confess its power.

I seek an amaranth

More lovely than its name
,

For me a very heart’s rue
,

For your hearts not the same.

It blows above the blue

Far-vistaed Paphian sea
,

Or so the woman said

Whose green eyes ‘sorcelled me
.

Joy to you in your meadows
,

But I’ll search mine alone

And find an amaranth
—

Or else a quiet stone.

These are the days, too few, that I would hold

Of birds that pause before they seek the south,

Of leaves that rustle not, but, dying, fall

In richer beauty than they ever lived,

Of light that is too merciful at last

To be all gold, but aureoles with blue

Or such dim purple as the moon exhales

The wasted brambles and the wounded trees.

Now are untended ways made beautiful

By cobweb flowers, the wistfullest I know,

Rememberers of all forgotten dead —

Wild asters in my country they are called.

At last it is too late for all regret,

Too late for deeds, and dreams hold no reproach,

And might have been is vague as what may be,

And all is well though much has never been.

Lovely is daytime when the joyful sun goes singing,

Lovely is night with stars and round or sickled moon,

Lovely are trees, forever lovely, whether in winter

Or musical midsummer or when they bud and tassel

Or crown themselves with stormy splendors in the fall.

But lovelier than day or night or trees in blossom

Is there no secret infinite loveliness behind?

Beautiful is water, running on rocks in mountains,

Or bosoming sunsets where the valley rivers ponder;

Beautiful is ocean with its myriad colors,

Its southern blues and purples, its arctic gray and silver,

Blown into green frost-fretted or wine-dark in the evening.

But still more beautiful than waters calm or cloven,

Than ocean thunder-maned or floored for delicate springtime,

Is there no beauty visible save to our eyes?

Marvellous is the grass, friendly and very clean,

Though intimate with all the dead, the ceaseless dead,

It has great heart and makes the ancient earth forgetful;

It is not troubled by the wind and from the storm

It learns a radiance; all night it wears the dew

And in the morning it is glad with a pure gladness.

More marvellous than dew-strown morning grasses, is there

No brave immortal joyousness that wrought the grass?

Who lifteth in the eastern sky the dark, gold moon?

Who painteth green and purple on the blackbird’s throat?

What hand of rapture scattereth sunshine through the rain

And flingeth round the barren boughs of spring returned

Dim fire? Who stenciled with caught breath the moth’s wide wing

And lit the ruby in his eyes? Whose ecstasy

Set silver ripples on the racing thunder-cloud

And flared the walls of storm with terrible dead green?

What dreamer fretted dew upon the flat-leafed corn

And twined in innocence of useless perfect art

The morning-glory with its bubble blue, soon gone?

Was there no hand that braided autumn branches in

Their solemn brede and stained them with a sombre rust?

Was there no love conceived the one-starred, rivered evening,

And dipped in crocus fire the gray horns of the moon?

They say there never was a god men loved but died —

Dead is Astarte, Astoreth is dead, and Baal;

Zeus and Jehovah share a single grave and deep;

Olympus hears no laughter, Sinai no voice;

Spring comes, but Freia comes not nor Persephone:

On temple plinth and porch the random grasses run;

Of all their priests alone the white-stoled stars are faithful.

Dead are the gods, forever dead! And yet — and yet —

Who lifteth in the eastern sky the dark, gold moon? …

There is a loveliness outlasts the temporal gods,

A beauty that, when all we know as beautiful

Is gone, will fashion in delight the forms it loves,

In that wide room where all our stars are but a drift

Of glimmering petals down an air from far away.

When you are gone the stars will be content,

Gazing as always in the deep of ocean;

There will not be a fluttering bird that cries

With anguish more importunate beneath the moon;

The rolling seasons with unhindered flow

Of bloom and scarlet tatterings and feathered ice

Will fold the world in loveliness as now.

But I shall have but these, and these with glory shorn

And half invisible because you went.…

Then I shall pass. And none because of me

Will be less glad of spring or watch with eyes that blur

The evening’s one bright star.

Only, I think, in some remote demesne

That you have learned to love regretfully

There will be added brightness and a cry

Of patient waiting done.

Into a brown wood flew a brown bird

    In the winter time:

The sky was dark with snow unfallen,

    The leaves were bent with rime.

Once north he flew, once south he flew,

    He perched in a naked tree.

He looked into the dismal dusk

    And whistled merrily.

I love to think of them at dawn

Beneath the frail pink sky

Casting their nets in Galilee

And fish-hawks circling by.

Casting their nets in Galilee

Just off the hills of brown,

Such happy, simple fisherfolk

Before the Lord walked down.

Contented, peaceful fishermen,

Before they ever knew

The peace of God that filled their hearts

Brim-full, and broke them too.

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,

Homeless, in Patmos died.

Peter who hauled the teeming net,

Head-down, was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace,

But strife closed in the sod.

Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing,

The marvellous peace of God.

I could not see the morning stars He made,

Nor hear the morning birds who pray aloud;

The flowers were not my brothers nor the winds

Who blow the silver-linèd trees to cloud.

No light upon the hills, no purple bloom

Behind the lifting moon in summer time;

No sweetness in the everyday of life,

No peace, no tears, no rest in Fancy’s clime.

But now my sin is done and I can lift

Mine eyes unto the mansions that He made,

And I am wrapped about with holiness

And drenched in glories that can never fade.

Yea, I have put mine olden sin away

And broke and strewn my heart beneath His feet;

His wisdom robbeth me of any fear,

His tenderness upon my mouth is sweet.

O holy light upon the sacred hills,

O birds that flash above the flowered sod,

O clean, immortal beauty of the earth,

I have returned to you and to my God!

Impatiently she drew her breath,

    So new was life, so wild:

But patiently she waited death

    And when he touched her, smiled.

She who had never wished to die,

    Who had such fear of pain,

Was tranquil as an evening sky

    That flowers from spent rain.

For us her loss was different

    From all we could suppose:

The calm of Spartan stars she lent

    Who only seemed a rose.

Time was when billowy autumn skies

    And red rain-dabbled leaves

Would fling the tears across my eyes.

    ’Tis happiness that grieves.

Now lengths of scarlet-littered rain

    May lash the howling eaves;

My eyes are casual as pain.

    ’Tis happiness that grieves.

How shall you ever know the adoration

I spread like samite cloths beneath your feet?

How shall you guess the brooding desolation

Learned from your eyes so passionless and sweet?

There must be some word like the star that pauses

In summer’s rose transparency of dusk,

Or like the bird-note heard through slumber’s gauzes

The unsilvering hour before dew warms to musk.

There must be some one word that is more tender

Than any word my lips have ever learned,

Without which I can never, never render

In speech the love your cool sweet love has earned.

You know as none my heart’s forlorn distresses,

Its passionate tides, its daily tint and glow, —

Why must there be within obscure recesses

This tenderness of love you cannot know?

I will carry terrible things to the grave with me:

    So much must never be told.

My eyes will be ready for sleep and my heart for dust

    With all the secrets they hold.

The piteous things alive in my memory

    Will be safe in that soundless dwelling:

In the clean loam, in the dark where the dumb roots rust

    I can sleep without fear of telling.

When I look on the youth of the world I weep:

Their eyes are so shadowless and candid,

They run so eagerly to meet the future,

They are so beautiful even in their passions —

So restless to live, so fickle, so yearning;

They have such faith in happiness,

Such songs in their hearts, such dreams in their eyes.

The light of them shines like light on the meadows,

Their laughter is sturdy and full of innocence;

Their vehemence, their proud assurance,

And most, their sweetness and their happiness

I watch till my eyes are blurred with pity.

For they will learn and wither with their learning;

Their flower look will die a flower’s death.

And one will learn of love and one of want

And one of death and one of weakened will,

But all will learn and all will weep alone.

There will be no shining left for death to darken,

And their lovely throats and eyes will not be lovely

Before the dust corrodes them, long before.

Cold pain will kiss them and they will not smile

As once they smiled when peach-blow kisses fell;

And fear will blanch the red run of their blood,

And doubt uncurve the bow of their sweet mouths,

And tears that were a gust of gold-shot rain

Will turn a brackish drink for their poor hearts,

And they will know what we have known too long.

Spare them, O heartless gods who spared not us!