Chapter IV

Long after both of us are scattered dust
And some strange souls perchance shall read of thee,
Finding the yearnings that have crushed from me
These poor confessions of my love and trust,
I know how misinterpreted will be
These lines, for men will laugh, or more unjust,
Thinking not once of love, but only lust,
Will stain the vesture of our memory.

And yet a few there may be who will feel
My deep devotion and my true desires,
And know that these unhappy words reveal
Only new images in changeless fires;
And they perchance will linger with a sigh
To think that beauty such as thine must die.

A SEA GULL

Grey wings, O grey wings against a cloud,
Over the rough waves flashing,
Whose was the scream, startling and loud,
Keen through the skies,--was it thine,
Over the moaning wind and the whine
Of the wide seas dashing?
Whose was the scream that I heard
In the midst of the hurrying air?
Was it thine, lost bird,
Or the voice of an old despair
Chanting from years long dead,
Inexorable spirit flying
On tempest wings that passed and fled
Through the storm crying?

DOMESDAY

The garlands and the songs of May
Shall welcome in the Judgment Day;
About the basking country-side
Blossom the souls of them that died.
O Dead awake! Arise in bloom
Upon the joyous dawn of doom.

They rise up from the bleeding earth
In gracious legions of re-birth,
Each as a flower or a tree
Of verdant immortality.
And hosts of glad-voiced angels sing
In the rippling groves of spring.

From the grave of youth there grows
A passionately-petaled rose,
Where the virgin whitely lies
A lily fair as Paradise.
And in that old oak's leafy glee
Some gouty sire makes sport of me.

O Dead of yore and yesterday
All hail the resurrecting May!
Beside you in the flowering grass
The feet of youth and love shall pass,
And we that greet you with a smile
Shall join you in a little while.

TO A PASSEPIED BY SCARLATTI

Strange little tune so thin and rare
Like scents of roses of long ago,
Quavering lightly upon the strings
Of a violin, and dying there
With a dancing flutter of delicate wings;
Thy courtly joy and thy gentle woe,
Thy gracious gladness and plaintive fears
Are lost in the clamorous age we know,
And pale like a moon in the lurid day;
A phantom of music, strangely fled
From the princely halls of the quiet dead,
Down the long lanes of the vanished years
Echoing frailly and far away.

ELEGY FOR ANTINOUS

Come, let us hasten hence and weep no more,
The sinking sea flows on its tranquil ways,
Night looms serenely at the eastern door
And trails the last cloud into lifeless haze.
Antinous is dead, we kneel before
The portals of our past in vain, nor raise
The laughing phantoms of our yesterdays
Upon this desolate and empty shore.

Now deepening pools of shadow overflow
Into the sea of dark; a far-off bell
Sobs with a sweet vibration long and slow
A last farewell, forevermore, farewell;
And will He wake and hear? We cannot tell;
And will He answer? Ah, we do not know.

SONG

O crimson rose, O crimson rose,
Crushed lightly in two little hands;
A child's soft kiss was in your heart,
A child's warm breath was in your soul.

The child is gone, O crimson rose,
And stained and hardened are the hands,
And who shall find your golden heart
And who shall kiss your withered soul?

Happy are you, O crimson rose,
But I have stains upon my hands;
You died with kisses in your heart,
I live with sorrow in my soul.

"MY PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU"

He pondered long, and watched the darkening space
Close the red portals whence the hours had run,
As like young wistful angels, one by one,
The stars cast timid flowers about His face.
"Yea, now another scarlet day is done!"
He cried in anguish, and with sudden grace
Stretched forth His arms, as though He would erase
The few, dim embers of the scattered sun.

"The scarlet day is done, and soon the light
Will wake again my desecrated skies.
Oh, that another dawn might never rise!--
My foolish children!" Through the vast of night
The young stars shivered in a silver horde
Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord.

THE RECOMPENSE

When the last song is sung, and the last spark
Of light dies out forever, and the dark,
The voiceless dark eternal shrouds the earth;
When the last cries of pain and shouts of mirth
Sink in the desolate silences of space;
Where then shall flower the beauty of your face,
O Love the laughing, Youth the rose-in-hand,
In what unknown and undiscovered land
Shall flower then the beauty of your face?

I know not but I know that all returns
At last unchanged, and to the heart that yearns
Shall be repaid all loneliness and loss.
Sometime with shadowy sails shall fly across
The shoreless ocean of infinity
A ship from out the past, and the great sea
Of life shall bear you from the strange worlds over
The waves, and back again to the old lover.

Yes, in some future far beyond surmise
You will dream here with half-remembering eyes,
And I shall write these words, content awhile
In the slow round of time to see you smile.

* * * * *

R. S. MITCHELL

POPPY SONG