Part 6

"Within the webs of darkness and of day The spider Hours spin about thy world, Who now finds time to even laugh or pray, Cramped in a term of years that are uncurled Like coils of some huge monster, head uphurled To fang when the last fold falls! Slope on slope The night environs thee with space, empearled With hopeless stars by which men symbol Hope, Beneath whose light they breed and curse and pray and grope."

XIV

And so she brought me to the river's brink To plunge me downward. All the night was mine; And so, exulting, to Death's darker drink I stooped and drank.--What better drink divine, O man, hast thou? what wiser way is thine? Who find'st me carrion on a hungry coast, Sand in mine eyeballs, in my hair the brine, And o'er my corpse with bitter lips dost boast-- "Poor fool! poor ghost! Alas! poor, melancholy ghost!"

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD

I

As to my soul--'tis pathos and passion. As to my life--'t hath a flavor of sin. What would you have when such is the fashion, Was and will be of the world we are in? Yes, I have loved. And have you?--Have you reckoned The cost of all love?--I can tell you: as much As a soul!--Is it worth it?--You'll know it that second You know that you love; and God pity all such!

II

My lover dissembled that ardor's pure beauty. I endured undeceived nor pretended; and gave All that his passion demanded--my duty, For I loved. And the world?--why, I was his slave!-- Should it worry I pleased him?--Propriety sorrowed, Uprolling her eyes as occasion, and--well, That lie, overglossed with a modesty borrowed, Assisted my fall and the end was--I fell.

III

Through love? No; the woman! that visible woman Men usually know.--None knows how we know Of an innermore beauty! that part of the human We designate character.--Look at the bow Of the moon that is new; that bears in its crescent A world.--So the flesh gleams the slenderest line Of soul; that is love; the unevanescent, Making the mortal immortal, divine.

IV

Yes; I know what I am. Have outlasted my season Of pleasure and folly.--You think it is strange That I let you, say--love me? But why not?--my reason Requires illusions. They give me that change Which quiets remembrance. You kiss me--I wonder.-- When you say, "You are beautiful,"--well, am I glad If I laugh?--You declaim on my form, "How no blunder Of nature discords,"--If I sigh, am I sad?

V

How you stare at my eyes!--Well! my lips!--must they languish For kisses to redden?--"My eyes are as bright As the jewel I drown in my hair, with its anguish Of tortuous fire that quivers to-night"? Tears may be.--This showy?--That silly white flower Were better?--For me its simplicity? no!-- The gem I prefer to the lily.--The hour Has struck: I am ready: my fan: let us go.

A GUINEVERE

Sullen gold down all the sky; Roses and their sultry musk; Whippoorwills deep in the dusk Yonder sob and sigh.--

You are here; and I could weep, Weep for joy and suffering.... "Where is he"?--He'd have me sing-- There he sits, asleep.

Think not of him! he is dead For the moment to us twain-- Hold me in your arms again, Rest on mine your head.

"Am I happy?" ask the fire When it bursts its bounds and thrills Some mad hours as it wills If those hours tire.

He had gold. As for the rest-- Well you know how _they_ were set, Saying that I must forget And 'twas for the best.

_I_ forget?--But let it go!-- Kiss me as you used of old. There; your kisses are not cold! Can you love me so?

Knowing what I am to him, To that gouty gray one there, On the wide verandah, where Fitful fireflies swim.

Is it tears? or what? that wets Eyes and cheeks;--on brow and lip Kisses! soft as bees that sip Sweets from violets.

See! the moon has risen; white As this open lily here, Rocking on the dusky mere, Like a silent light.

Let us walk... So soon to part!-- All too soon! But he may miss. Give me but another kiss-- It will heat my heart

And the bitter winter there.-- So; we part, my Launcelot, My true knight! and am I not Your true Guinevere?

Oft they parted thus, they tell, In that mystical romance... Were they placed, think you, perchance, For such love, in Hell?

No! it can not, can not be! Love is God, and God is love: And they live and love above, Guinevere and he.

I must go now.--See! there fell, Molten into purple light, One wild star. Kiss me good night, And once more. Farewell.

PERLE DES JARDINS

What am I, and what is he, Who can take and break a heart, As one might a rose, for sport, In its royalty?

What am I that he has made All this love a bitter foam Blown about the wreck-filled gloam Of a soul betrayed?

He who of my heart could make Hollow crystal, where his face, Like a passion, had its place, Holy, and then break!

Shatter with neglect and sneers!-- But these weary eyes are dry, Tearless clear; and if I die They shall know no tears.

But my soul weeps. Let it weep! Let it weep, and let the pain In my heart and in my brain Cry itself to sleep.--

Ah! the afternoon is warm; And the fields are green and fair; Many happy creatures there Through the woodland swarm.

All the summer land is still, And the woodland stream is dark Where the lily rocks its barque Just below the mill....

If they found me icy there 'Mid the lilies, and pale whorls Of the cresses in my curls, Wet, of raven hair!--

Poor Ophelia! are you such? Would you have him thus to know That you died of utter woe And despair o'ermuch?

No!--such acts are obsolete: Other things we now must learn:-- Though the broken heart will burn, Let it show no heat.

So I'll write him as he wrote, Coldly, with no word of scorn-- He shall never know a thorn Rankles here!... Now note:--

"You'll forget," he says; "and I Feel 'tis better for us twain: It may give you some small pain, But, 'twill soon be by.

"You are dark and Maud is light. I am dark. And it is said Opposites are better wed.-- So I think I'm right."

"You are dark and Maud is fair"!-- I could laugh at his excuse If the bitter, mad abuse Were not more than hair!

But I'll write him, as if glad, Some few happy words--that might Touch upon some past delight That last year we had.

Not one line of broken vows, Sighs or hurtful tears--unshed! Faithless hearts--far better dead! Nor a withered rose.

But a rose! this rose to wear,-- Perle des Jardins, all elate With sweet life and delicate,-- When he weds her there.

So; 'tis finished. It is well-- Go, thou rose. I have no tear, Word or kiss for thee to bear, And no woe to tell.

Only be thus full of life, Cold and proud, dispassionate, Filled with neither love nor hate, When he calls her wife.

FACE TO FACE

Dead! and all the haughty fate Fair on throat and face of wax, Calm on hands, crossed still and lax, Cold, dispassionate.

Dead! and no word whispered low At the dull ear now would wake One responsive chord or make One wan temple glow.

Dead! and no hot tear would stir Aught of woman, sweet and fair, Woman soul in feet and hair, Once that smiled in her.

She is dead, oh God! and I-- I must live! though life be but One long, hard, monotonous rut For me till I die.

Creeds might help in such a case: But no sermon could have wrought More of faith than you have taught With your pale dead face.

Now I see, oh, now I see My mistake!--so very small, Yet so great it bungled all, _All_ for you and me.

Oft I said, "I feel, I'm sure She could never live that life! She is still my own true wife, She is good and pure!"

You were pure and I bemoiled! That you loathed me, it was just; Weak of soul and left of lust Vulgar, low, and soiled....

Closed--the eyes once filled with dreams! Great, proud eyes!... I see them yet, Miniature nights of lucid jet Filled with starry gleams.

Sealed--the lips; poor, faded lips! Once as red as life could make-- Sweet wild roses, half awake, Dewy to their tips.

Hair!--imperial still, and warm As a Grace's; where one stone, Jeweled, lay ensnared and shone Like a star in storm.

Eyes!--at parting big with pain... God! I see them still! the tear In them!--big as eyes of deer Led by lights and slain....

Woman true, I falsely blamed; Whom I killed with scorn and pride; Woman pure, of whom I lied; With the nameless named:

All you said, Sweet, has come true!-- Ah! this life had woe enough For the little dole of love Giv'n to me and you.

Do you hear me? do you know What I feel now? how it came? You, beyond me like a flame, You, before me like the snow....

Dead! and all my heart's a cup Hollowed for repentant tears, Bitter in the bitter years, Slowly brimming up.

Peace! 'tis well! But might have been Better.--Yes, God's time makes right!-- Better for me in His sight With my soul washed clean.

Do you hear me? do you know How my heart was all your own? How my life is left alone Now with naught but woe?

Peace! be still!--I kiss your hair. Sweet, good-by. Upon your breast Let this long white lily rest-- God will find it there:

There beyond the sad world and Clouds and stars and silent skies, Where your eyes shall meet His eyes, And--He'll understand.

THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS

I

This is the tale they tell Of an Hallowe'en; This is the thing that befell Me and the village belle, Beautiful Amy Dean.

II

Did I love her? God and she, They know and I! Ah, she was the life of me-- Whatever else may be Would God that I could die!

III

That Hallowe'en was dim; The frost lay white Under strange stars and a slim Moon in the graveyard grim, Pale with its slender light.

IV

They told her: "Go alone, With never a word, To the burial-plot's unknown Grave with the oldest stone, When the clock on twelve is heard.

V

"Three times around it pass, With never a sound; Each time a wisp of grass And myrtle pluck; then pass Out of the ghostly ground.

VI

"And the bridegroom that's to be, At smiling wait, With a face like mist to see, With graceful gallantry Will bow you to the gate."

VII

She laughed at this and so Bespoke us how To the burial-place she'd go.-- And I was glad to know, For I'd be there to bow.

VIII

An acre from the farm The village dead Lay walled from sun and storm; Old cedars, of priestly form, Waved darkly overhead.

IX

I loved; but never could say The words to her; And waited, day by day, Nursing the hope that lay Under the doubts that were.--

X

She passed 'neath the iron arch Of the legended ground;-- And the moon, like a twisted torch, Burned over one lonesome larch;-- She passed with never a sound.

XI

Three times the circle traced; Three times she bent To the grave that the myrtle graced; Three times--then softly faced Homeward and slowly went.

XII

Had the moonlight changed me so? Or fear undone Her stepping soft and slow? Did she see and did not know? Or loved she another one?

XIII

Who knows?--She turned to flee With a face so white It haunts and will haunt me:-- The wind blew gustily: The graveyard gate clanged tight.

XIV

Did she think it I or--what, Clutching her dress? Her face so wild that not A star in a stormy spot Shows half so much distress.

XV

I spoke; but she answered naught. "Amy," I said, "'Tis I!"--as her form I caught... Then laughed like one distraught, For the beautiful girl was dead!...

XVI

This is the tale they tell Of that Hallowe'en; This is the thing that befell Me and the village belle, Beautiful Amy Dean.

MATER DOLOROSA

The nuns sing, "_Ora pro nobis_;" The casements glitter above; And the beautiful Virgin, whose robe is Woven of infinite love, Infinite love and sorrow, Prays for them there on high-- Who has most need of her prayers,--to-morrow Shall tell them!--they or I?

Up in the hills together We loved, where the world was true; Our world of the whin and heather, Our skies of a nearer blue; A blue from which one borrows A faith that helps one die-- O Mother, thou Mother of Sorrows, None needs such more than I!

We lived, we loved unwedded-- Love's sin and its shame that slays!-- No ill of the years we dreaded, No day of their coming days; Their coming days, their many Trials by noon and night-- And I know no land, not any Where the sun shines half so bright.

Was he false to me, my Mother! Or I to him, my God!-- Who gave thee right, O brother! To take God's right and rod! God's rod of avenging morrows-- And the life here in my side!-- O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows, Would that I, too, had died!

By the wall of the Chantry kneeling I pray, and the organ rings, "_Gloria! gloria!_" pealing, "_Sancta Maria!_" sings. They will find us dead to-morrow By the wall of their nunnery-- O Mother, thou Mother of Sorrow, His unborn babe and me.

LOVE AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV

I

Thrice on the lips and twice on the eyes I kiss you or ever I kiss your bosom.-- When love is young would you have it wise, Wise as the world goes?--No! 'tis a blossom Lovely and wise since it's lovely; content To live or to die as its folly pleases: Life is a rose and the rose's scent Is love, that grows as the rose increases.

II

If I tell you the Marquis will die, will you smile? And laugh when he's dead?--This powder, my lily, That seems but an innocent sweet in this phial-- Do not touch it! breathe distant!--a poison Exili Used a life to discover. Its formula left To a pupil (well worthy the master!), the prudent And pious Sainte Croix. Him, of teacher bereft, The Devil, I deem, must have taken as student.

III

Quite a dealer in death. And ours was a case That those difficult drugs of his laboratory Demanded. I visited; found him; his face, Bent over a sublimate,--safe from the hoary Light particles,--masked with a mask of fine glass. I told him your danger, Marie, and expounded Our passion, despair, with many an "Alas!" He smiled while a paste in a mortar he pounded.

IV

Three fistfuls of Louis!--"He'd do it," he said.-- A delicate dust, gum, liquid and metal Crushed, crucibled.... "Stay! tie this mask on your head. You see, but a grain on your rose's pink petal Has shriveled and blasted it--look, how it dries!-- A perilous pulver ... could Satan make better?... To mix with that present of perfumes--she dies, And who is the wiser? Or, say in a letter

V

"To the husband of her who has smiled on you since Another grows bald?"--And he poured in a bottle The subtlety.--"Bah! be he beggar or prince, If he kiss but the seal the venom will throttle."-- "Well," I thought, "I will test ere I risk." Slyly drew My dagger; approached to the bandlet, that tightly Supported his mask, its keen point.... It was true!-- When it cracked he fell dead; he but breathed of it lightly.

VI

Your letter is sealed and is sent. You are mine!-- By now he has broken the wax.... If there flutters Some dust in his nostrils, who, who will divine That thus it was poisoned?--Our alchemist utters No word!--You are happy? and I?--Oh, I feel That I love and am loved.--The tidings comes heavy To-night to the King; you are there; you will reel-- Will faint!--Now away to the royal levee.

Note.--In this poem, which originally appeared in a volume of mine entitled _Lyrics and Idylls_, published in 1890, some hypercritical critic in the New York _Nation_ accused me of imitating Browning's _The Laboratory_. The truth of the matter is that the poem was written ten months before I had ever read Browning's _Dramatic Lyrics_, and was suggested to me by the reading of the following passage in one of E. T. W. Hoffman's (the German Poe's) stories. The passage occurs in _Mademoiselle De Scuderi_ and is as follows: "The poisons which Sainte Croix prepared were of so subtle a nature that if the powder (called by the Parisians _Poudre de Succession_, or Succession Powder) were prepared with the face exposed, a single inhalation of it might cause instantaneous death. Sainte Croix therefore, when engaged in its manufacture, always wore a mask of fine glass. One day, just as he was pouring a prepared powder into a phial, his mask fell off, and inhaling the fine particles of the poison, he fell dead on the spot."

THE TROUBADOUR

He stood where all the rare voluptuous west, Like some mad Mænad, wine-stained to the breast, Laughed with delirious lips of ruby must, Wherein, it seemed, the fierceness of all lust Burnt like a feverish wine, exultant whirled High in a golden goblet, gem-impearled. And all the west, and all the amorous west, Caressed his beauty, dreamed upon his breast; And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows, A passion-flower of men of snowy rose, Beneath the casement of her old red tower, Whereat the lady sat, as fair a flower As ever bloomed in Provence; and the lace Mist-like about her hair, half-hid her face And the emotions that his singing raised, So that he knew not if she blamed or praised. And where the white rose, climbing over and over Up to her wide-flung lattice, like a lover, And stalks of lavender and fleurs-de-lis Held honey-cups up for the violent bee, Within her garden by the ivied wall, Where many a fountain, falling musical, Flamed rubies in the eve against it flung, Like some wild nightingale the minstrel sung:--

"The passion, oh, of gently smoothing through Long locks of brown, soft hands as lovers do! Thy dark, deep locks, rich-jeweled as the dusk Is scintillant with stars! Oh, frenzy rare Of clasping slender fingers round thy hair!-- What balm, what breath of winds from summer seas! What silken softness and what sorceries Doth it contain!--Ah God! ah God! to lie Wrapped strand on strand deep in thy hair and die! Ay me, oh, ay!

"Oh, happy madness and, oh, rapturous pain, With white hands smoothing back thy locks, to drain Into thine eyes my soul!--Oh, perilous eyes! As agates polished; where the thoughts that rise, Within thy heart are imaged; thoughts that pass As magic pictures in a witch's glass.-- What siren sweetness, wailed to lyres of gold, What naked beauty that the Greeks of old, God-bosomed, through the bursting foam did see, Could sway my soul with half their mastery! Ay, ay, ay me!

"Far o'er the sea, of old time, once a witch, The fair Ææan, Circe, dwelt; so rich In marvellous magic, she was like a god, And made or unmade mortals with a nod: Turned all her lovers into bird or brute.-- More cruel thou, who mak'st my heart a lute, That lies before thee, hushed and sadly mute! Who let'st it lie, yet from its soul might draw More magic music than Acrasia, Or Circe knew, that filled them with its bliss, Didst thou but take me to thine arms and kiss! Ay, ay, I wis!"

Knee-deep amid the dews, the flowers there, Beneath the stars that now were everywhere Flung through the perfumed heavens of angel hands, And, linked in tangled labyrinths and bands Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled One vast immensity of mazy gold, He sang; like some hurt creature, desolate, Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate Hounded and speared to death of heartless men In old romantic Arden waste; and then Turned to the moon that, like a polished stone Of precious worth, low in the heaven shone, A pale poetic face and passed away From the urned terrace and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in dim drapery, High in the old red tower--did she sigh To see him fading through the purple night, His lute faint-twinkling in th' uncertain light, Then lost amid the rose-pleached avenues, Dark walls of ivy, hedged with low-clipped yews? And left alone with but the whispering rush Of fountains and the evening's hyacinth hush, Did she complain unto the stars above, All the lone night, of that forbidden love? Or down the rush-strewn stairs, where arras old Waved with her mantled passage, fold on fold, Beyond the tower's iron-studded gate, That snarled with rust, did she steal forth and wait Deep in the dingled lavender and rose For him, her troubadour?... Who knows? who knows?

MY ROMANCE

If it so befalls that the midnight hovers In mist no moonlight breaks, The leagues of the years my spirit covers, And my self myself forsakes.

And I live in a land of stars and flowers, White cliffs by a silver sea; And the pearly points of her opal towers From the mountains beckon me.

And I think that I know that I hear her calling From a casement bathed with light-- Thro' music of waters in waters falling 'Mid palms from a mountain height.

And I feel that I think my love's awaited By the romance of her charms; That her feet are early and mine belated In a world that chains my arms.

But I break my chains and the rest is easy-- In the shadow of the rose, Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy, We meet and no one knows.

We dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses; The world--it may live or die! The world that forgets; that never misses The life that has long gone by.

We speak old vows that have long been spoken, And weep a long-gone woe,-- For you must know our hearts were broken Hundreds of years ago.

THE EPIC

"To arms!" the battle bugles blew. The daughter of their Chief was she,-- Lord of a thousand spears and true;-- He but a squire of low degree.

The horns of war blew up to horse: He kissed her mouth; her face was white: "God grant they bear thee back no corse!" "God give I win my spurs to-night!"

The watch-towers' blazing beacons scarred With blood-red wounds the face of night: She heard men gallop battleward; She saw their armor gleam with light.

"My God, deliver me and mine! My child! my love!"--all night she prayed: She watched the battle beacons shine; She watched the battle beacons fade....

They brought him on a bier of spears.-- For him, the death-won spurs and name; For her, the grief of lonely years, And donjon walls to hide her shame.

THE MINSTREL AND THE PRINCESS

I