Authors: William Alexander Percy
Sleep of the coolèd lids and breath of flowers,
O sleep of youth, dew-sandaled from the leas,
Throated with music of ensilvered showers
And silken winds that flash against the trees;
O summer sleep of passionate innocence,
Clean as the morning stars of doubt and pain,
If dreamful, not, oh, not at the expense
Of tears, but fresh with news from fancy’s Spain —
Revisit with thy trancèd healing sweet
These eyes that have forgot almost thy spell,
Sail back with all thy joyous-freighted fleet
Down the long azure of my spirit’s swell.
And for thy traffic with that brooding stream
Bring back the purple to my hills of dream.
Immortal boy! whose years scarce reached my own,
And yet were filled with all the kinless grief
Devolving on old age, without relief
Of stagnant brain, of nerveless blood and bone —
At dusk, when wind-swept autumn woods are lone,
I, who of Fortune’s bounty am the thief,
Gold-filled, I muse upon thy life, so brief,
So passionate, and, envying thee, I moan.
For dreaming thus, there comes a specter thought
Which fastens on my soul and leaves it grey
With fear. If Death, who found thy field so fraught
With golden harvest, now to me should say
“Enough, ’tis Autumn” — God! no harvest yet
Have I, and still my fields are green and wet.
And Proserpine, still fragrant of the air
And upper brightness, bore him children — him
Whose heart, not knowing Sicily, was bare
Of songs, whose sunless mouth was dumb. That grim
Illimitable cold was alien
Always; and always, hopeful of the song
Of birds, she leaned and thought to find again
Those blooms that watch the tearless stars so long
They weep. When to her kingdom came the dead,
Still glistening with tears and asphodel,
Forgetting all save home, their eyes she read,
Wherein the sweet, far earth seemed yet to dwell.
. . . . .
Behold, the blue South in our hearts like wine —
But Pluto’s mouth, O Mother Proserpine!
When naked winter on the midnight falls
With icy macerations, hook and flail,
They come — with rush of wings and signal calls —
The mighty birds that home the north, full sail
Upon the blast. Their unseen cohorts high,
Breasting the stars, make purpose proud to shun
All pausing, till beneath them, tranquil, lie
Day and the silver marshes of the sun.
But should the floor of darkness festal grow,
As far beneath some town unbraids its lights,
Routed, deceived, heart-set to gain the glow,
They drop; nor join again the sunward flights.
Was it their cries I heard, remote, withdrawn,
Or spirit choirs dark-flying towards some dawn?
For them that on the mountain fight beneath
The visioned ensigns of the unknown God,
Tho’ battle-anguish be their only wreath,
Failure their palm, their victory the sod —
I have no tears. Compassion not that band,
Patriots, poets, dreamers, men of prayer,
The common reachers after right. The hand
Impelling them thus blindly to lay bare
Their hearts to that unequal contest, grants
Solace divine for their divine attempt.
For them that know not strife, nor hear the chants
Precedent to the bloody end’s contempt —
For them unloose your tears! Their life is sleep,
Unvigilant, unwounded; they but sheep!
Not for more hours of bliss I make demand,
O life! So many thou hast flung with hand
Of summer. Grant instead for winter’s hem
Of sunshine, certain memory of them.
As well house up the homeless Bedouin stars
And tent them permanent on the night’s great desert,
As thy steep thoughts to circumscribe and fix
With human tears or home or human love; —
Thou nomad of God’s universal night!
Pause we within the sunset, love;
Rare is such time — so lovely and so passionless —
And sweeter far than when the proud, gold morning
Withers the dew with scorn and in his youth.
Pause here and let me speak
As lover never spoke to one he loved.
How clear the west, unpinionable, and all gold,
As tho’ to cleanse us for the coming of the stars!
Now even we are worthy of the truth; —
I, to lay bare, and thou, to hear.
But yet, the words may stab; nor am I brave —
So, pr’ythee, turn from me thine eyes,
Nor let me see thy perilous, curved mouth,
Crimson as flame, and cold as blooms at dawn.
So. (My words seem shackled —
Sluggish with frosty truth).…
That moment long ago when thee I saw,
And straight the whole world ‘came invisible,
That time of passionate oblivion,
Once seemed to me the incarnation time
Of love, the heaven-sent, the Paraclete!
Thus have I told thee; thus believed.
But, ignorant, I lied.
No spirit of the Lord anointed paused
Within the portals of my heart on hallowed feet.
Not that, but some young god,
With blown, bright hair and fillet golden, came,
And, stretching forth the blossoming rod of beauty,
Upon me wrought a pagan spell.
Not love, not love, — nor then, nor now!
If Christ should halt beside this spot to touch my hand,
It would not be to claim my soul as friend;
But I should hear the sound of fearful things
That rush into the sea.
This fierce obsession of my waking hours,
This visioning that makes night ecstasy,
It is not love. And this the proof. —
Ah, heart’s desire, should thy strong beauty fail
As fails the beauty of the fields,
Or foam blown where the seas are beachless,
To me long, sweet forgetfulness would come,
And summer’s ease, once known, now long ago.
Thy words are music rich within mine ear,
But yet, I listen not if there be meaning in them.
Thine eyes, like winter seas,
Dim grey, with thought of green and fear of blue,
Thy listening eyes, immeasurably still —
Oh, are they still with dreams, and sleep
Deeper than waking? Or with the drowse
Of inner lassitude and sheer vacuity of soul?
I dare not guess,
But, careless, drink their cool, Circean sorcery.
Hast thou a heart? I cannot say;
For, where it may not be I once did watch
A thought surge, flaming all thy wintry white
To blossoming spring.
Mayhap, thy soul twines deep with God’s.
Mayhap … I know
Thy body’s whiteness and old Grecian grace …
As to one seeking glimpse of the huge sea,
Might come as hindrance on the slopes
An almond tree,
Leaning in ecstasy of petalled beauty, so
Betwixt thy soul and mine riseth alway
This barrier — thy loveliness!
Where leads my way?
By trees that flutter in the wind,
By fields half blind
With dew, by halls where I may find
At afterday,
Heathen or fay.
I pass and sing.
With cool-eyed youth and all delight
I am bedight —
From morning light to morning light
Adventuring.
One song I sing.
Beneath the blue,
The lithe trees lean my song to hear.
It is so clear
Even their blytheness it can cheer —
For fresh and true,
’Tis all of you!
The rain has come.
Gone the empurpled air
Which hung upon the golden wreckage of the trees.
The rain has come,
And one no longer sees
The sun. The radiance that lay upon the vair
And crimson of the earth is vanishèd with these.
The wind is up.
It greits; nor dazzles now
The quiet lanes with ruined autumn’s gorgeousness.
The wind is up,
But tho’ the boughs confess
Its potency, of jeweled tribute they allow
No leaf. The earth, Danaë once, is treasureless.
Winter is come —
The night-cursed, fearful days,
Stainèd and blurred with tears and querulous with pain.
Winter is come,
And if my heart refrain
Most bitterly from backward looks when pitying stays
The sun, then, God! what agony these days of rain!
The nightingale has a golden heart,
And a silver heart the wren;
But, oh, for me the bold, bright bird
That sings with the heart of men!
His music is not of seas forlorn,
His magic is not of tears;
From tilted throat his raptures float
And tumble in laughter and jeers.
He does not cease when daylight dies,
But he sings right on to the dark;
The stars or moon may die or swoon,
In the drip of the rain — O hark!
He does not cease when spring is done,
And his mate with love is fled;
A fairer thing than love or spring
Is life. And the fall is red.
Sing, nightingales and silver wrens
And fairy throats that can;
But the bird I love is the darling bird
With the free, proud heart of a man.
Still burning, let me cast the cup of youth aside,
Or else, with one deep, purple draught,
Crush it and toss its unregretted pieces wide
To windwards, and the latter days abide.
What if the spicery of summer be forspent,
And night’s own argent madness gone?
The shining Bacchanal of youth was always rent
By cries the circling dark and stars had sent.
And tho’ warm-lidded lechery was sweet, I knew
The discontent of higher dreams,
And how the red-lipped sweetness changed and staled and grew
A thing the dewy dancers feared to view.
O loveliest of all the wreathèd revellers,
Break, break the cup, the wine forswear.
Courageous, thee and me a lordlier vintage stirs —
The blood of life’s unraptured warriors.
The wind has reverenced the splendor of the night.
Westward upon the green and saffron light
Of dusk it passed, with vasty wings and voice not low,
Fleeing with awe the splendor of the night.
Were I the wind to-night, the tangled stars and snow
My aweless wings’ unfettered might would know.
O joy, the trancèd splendor of the air to shake
And starward hurl like spray the errant snow!
Ah, for the tyranny of furious wings, to wake
Superb, this ecstasy of calm; to slake
My passion-winnowed heart with tempests’ windy woe!
I would to-night the storms were all awake!
And so we part!
You with your vague, sweet smile,
I with a breaking heart;
You to your vague, sweet ways,
I where the failures start.
We lingered long!
You for mere idleness,
I for your mouth like song;
You for the flattery,
I for your beauty strong.
Our lips’ last touch!
Yours cold as mere consent,
Mine colder were there such.
And you will never know,
And I have known too much.
. . . .
Parting sublime!
Already you’ve forgot,
I will forget in time.
You sigh without regret,
And I have heart to rhyme.
Breath of the dawn, breath of the dawn,
Breathe on my heart of thine eagerness.
Up from the sea, youthful with thee,
Be drawn
For a spell and a healing to me
In my stress.