Chapter I

THERE
WILL
BE
STARS

_On the Sussex Downs_

Over the downs there were birds flying,
Far off glittered the sea,
And toward the north the weald of Sussex
Lay like a kingdom under me.

I was happier than the larks
That nest on the downs and sing to the sky,
Over the downs the birds flying
Were not so happy as I.

It was not you, though you were near,
Though you were good to hear and see,
It was not earth, it was not heaven
It was myself that sang in me.

_August Night_

On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.

I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, “Look down, see the glow-worm!”
It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.

We watched while it brightened as though it were breathed on and
burning,
This tiny creature moving over earth’s floor--
“‘_L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle_,’”
You said, and no more.

_Two Minds_

Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
They ride above us in extreme delight;
We see them, we look up with a lone envy
And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
That changes not for winter or the night.

_Words for An Old Air_

Your heart is bound tightly, let
Beauty beware,
It is not hers to set
Free from the snare.

Tell her a bleeding hand
Bound it and tied it,
Tell her the knot will stand
Though she deride it;

One who withheld so long
All that you yearned to take,
Has made a snare too strong
For Beauty’s self to break.

_Mountain Water_

You have taken a drink from a wild fountain
Early in the year;
There is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year.

_At Tintagil_

Iseult, Iseult, by the long waterways
Watching the wintry moon, white as a flower,
I have remembered how once in Tintagil
You heard the tread of Time hour after hour.

By casements hung with night, while all your women slept
You turned toward Brittany, awake, alone,
In the high chamber hushed, save where the candle dripped
With the slow patient sound of blood on stone.

The ache of empty arms was an old tale to you,
And all the tragic tunes that love can play,
Yet with no woman born would you have changed your lot,
Though there were greater queens who had been gay.

“_There Will Be Stars_”

There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.