Chapter III

Now the sky of December gray drips and drips,
And eaves of the barn the icicle tips,
And the cackling hen on the snow-path slips,
And the cattle shiver the fields among:
Now the ears of the milkmaid the north-wind nips,
And the red-chapped cheeks of the farm-boy whips,
What, what shall be said or be sung,
With my lips pressed warm to your lips!

MIDWINTER

The dewdrop from the rose that drips
Hath not the sparkle of her lips,
My lady's lips.

Than her long braids of yellow hold
The dandelion hath not more gold,
Her braids of gold.

The blue-bell hints not more of skies
Than do the flowers of her eyes,
My lady's eyes.

The sweet-pea bloom shows not more grace
Of delicate pink than doth her face,
My lady's face.

So, heigh-ho! then, though skies be gray,
Spring blossoms in my heart to-day,
This winter day!

IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA

TO GERTRUDE

_These are the flowers I bring to thee,
Heart's-ease, euphrasy and rue,
Grown in my Garden of Poetry;
Wear them, sweet, on thy breast for me:
The first for thoughts; and the other two
For spiritual vision, that's always true,
So thou with thy soul mayst ever see
The love in my heart I keep for thee._

THE GARDENS OF FALERINA

Her hills and vales are dimmer
Than sunset's shadowy shimmer;
Thin mists, that curl, of poppy and pearl,
Above her bowers glimmer;
And, silvered o'er with sails of faery galleys,
Far off the sea gleams, glimpsed through fountained valleys.

The moon floats never higher
Than one white peak of fire;
And in its beams pale Beauty dreams,
And Music tunes her lyre;
And, Siren-like, beside the moonlit waters,
Fair Fancy sits singing with Memory's daughters.

A cloud, above and under
The ocean, white with wonder,
Looms, starry steep; and, opening deep,
Grows gold with silent thunder;
Revealing far within, immeasurable,
Lost Avalons of old Romance and Fable.

Ah! could my spirit shatter
These bonds of flesh and matter,
And, at a word, mount like a bird
To her through mists that scatter;
And, raimented in love and inspiration,
Look down on Earth from that exalted station:

No mortal might inveigle
My soul, that, like an eagle,
Would soar and soar from shore to shore
Of her, the rare and regal;
And by her love made all a lyric rapture,
A wild desire, wing far beyond all capture.

ROMANCE

Thus have I pictured her:--In Arden old
A white-browed maiden with a falcon eye,
And rose-flushed face, and locks of wind-blown gold,
Teaching her hawks to fly.

Or, 'mid her boar-hounds, panting with the heat,
In huntsman green, she sounds the hunt's wild prize,
Plumed, dagger-belted, while beneath her feet
The spear-pierced monster dies.

Or in Brécèliand, on some high tower,
Clad soft in samite, last of her lost race,
I have beheld her, lovelier than a flower,
Turn from the world her face.

Or, robed in raiment of romantic lore,
Like Oriana, dark of eye and hair,
Riding through Realms of Legend evermore,
And ever young and fair.

Or now like Bradamant, as brave as just,
In complete steel, her pure face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, dens of demon lust,
Winding her bugle-horn.

Another Una; and in chastity
A second Britomart; in beauty far
O'er her who led King Charles's chivalry
And Paynim lands to war....

Now she, from Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,--
'Mid which white stars and never-waning moons
Make marriage; and dim lips of musk-mouthed flowers
Sigh faint and fragrant tunes,--

Implores me follow; and, in shadowy shapes
Of sunset, shows me,--mile on misty mile
Of purple precipice,--all the haunted capes
Of her enchanted isle.

Where, bowered in bosks and overgrown with vine,
Upon a headland breasting violet seas,
Her castle towers, like a dream divine,
With stairs and galleries.

And at her casement, Circe-beautiful,
Above the surgeless reaches of the deep,
She sits, while, in her gardens, fountains lull
The perfumed wind to sleep.

Or, round her brow a diadem of spars,
She leans to hearken, from her raven height,
The nightingales that, choiring to the stars,
Haunt with wild song the night.

Or, where the moon is mirrored in the waves,
To mark, deep down, the Sea King's city rolled,
Wrought of huge shells and labyrinthine caves,
Ribbed pale with pearl and gold.

There doth she wait forever; and the kings
Of all the world have wooed her: but she cares
For none but him, the Heart, that dreams and sings,
That sings and dreams and dares.

THE VALLEY OF MUSIC

I

Oh, cool as the flutter of fountains,
And fresh as the fall of the dew,
Wet as the hues of the rain-arch,
In that vale, is the dawn, when, o'er mountains,
Pearl-peaked and hyaline blue,
Through the Memnonian blue,
Her spirit, like music, comes slowly,
A music of light and of fire,
Leaving her footsteps in roses
There on its summits, while holy,
Fair on her brow is her tire,
Gemmed with the morning-star's fire.

II

And still as the incense of altars,
And dim as the deeps of a cloud,
Mystic as winds of the woodlands,
In that vale, is the night when she falters
In the sorrowful folds of her shroud,
The far-blowing dusk of her shroud,
By the scarlet-strewn bier of her lover,
The day, lying faded and fair
In his chamber of purple and vair.--
When, above it, you see her uncover
Her star-girdled darkness of hair--
Gold-hooped with the gold of the even--
And for the day's burial prepare,
The spirit of night in the heaven,
O'er that vale, is most hauntingly fair;
So fair that you wish it were given
That you in the rays of her hair,
Might die! in her gold-girdled hair.

III

There lies in a valley, where mountains
Have walled it from all that is ours,
A garden entangled with flowers;
Where the whisper of echoing fountains
Makes song in the balm-breathing bowers:
Where torrents, plunged down from wild masses
Of granite, from cavern-pierced steeps,
With thunders sonorous cleave passes,
And madden the world with their leaps,
The clamorous foam of their leaps.

IV

And, oh! when the sunlight comes heaping
With glitter the mist of those chasms,
The foam of those musical chasms,
You may hear a lamenting and weeping,
And see in the vastness far sweeping,
In wild and æolian spasms,
Down, down in those voluble chasms,
The Spirits of Light and of Darkness.
And the wave from the gray-hearted granite
In rivers rolls rippling around;
Meanders through shade-haunted forests,
Where many rock-barriers can span it,
And dash it in froth and in sound;
Where the nights with their great moons can wan it,
Or star its dark stillness profound.

V

And here with her harp doth she wander,
That daughter of music, twice kissed
Of the Spirits of Love and of Sorrow:
Yea, here doth she wander and ponder,
That maiden of moonlight and mist,
With starlight on hair and on wrist;
Yea, here doth she ponder and wander
'Mid blossoms with loveliness whist,
'Mid moonlight with fragrances kissed.
And ever her being grows fonder
Of forests where phantoms keep tryst,
The people of moon and of mist:
And often they troop to her singing,
As she sits 'mid the undulant cedars--
All savage of wildness and scent--
Whose tops to her beauty are bent,
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In worship and testament:
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
All ragged with battle and rent.

VI

And oft when the moon, like a palace
Of witchcraft, shines white overhead,
Making pearl of the foam of the torrent,
She wakes her wild harp in the valleys
Where the blossoms have built her a bed:
She sits where a fountain of flowers
Rains fragrance from branches around,
The blossomed lianas around,
Keeping time with their petal-sweet showers
To her harp; with its strain interwound;
Unfolding, it seems, to the sound:
While her song is as redolence round her,
And their fragrance as music, it seems,
Whose touch and enchantment have bound her
With shadows and whispers of dreams,
And she seems but a part of her dreams,
A creature created of dreams.

VII

One night as she whispered and wandered
In her garden of music and flowers,
She saw, in a ray of the moonlight,
A youth fast asleep 'mid the flowers;
A youth on a mantle of satin,
A poppy-red robe 'mid the flowers.

VIII

Love housed 'neath his eyelids, that, slender
As petals of roses, were pale:
She bent and she kissed them and, tender,
She murmured and bade them unveil,
The blossoms beneath them unveil.
And he woke and beheld her and panted:--
"At last I behold thee, O Song!
O beautiful, pitiless Song!
Thou, thou, who so wildly enchanted,
And led me, eluded me long!
Evaded and lured me so long!"

IX

Then she knelt on the mantle of satin,
And plunged a long look in his eyes:
She knelt on the mantle of scarlet,
And kissed him on mouth and on eyes,
And mingled her soul with his sighs.
And then in a moment she knew it,--
He deemed her a part of his dream;
And she smiled and she said, "I am Music!
And thy soul--'twas my spirit that drew it,
Thy soul, with a mystical gleam,
A brightness, a glimmer, a gleam."

X

And he gazed at her strangely; and, sobbing,
Cried out, "Yea; thy harp!--is it strung?
Thy harp of wild gold, is it strung?
With fingers of silver set throbbing
Its chords with that song thou hast sung,
So oft in my dreams thou hast sung."

XI

Then he ceased:--and his eyes--how they glistened!
His eyes, that were haunted with pain,
With longing and beauty and pain:
And again he cried out, "Oh, that music!
That proud and that perilous music!
O God! for that tyrannous strain,
To which in my dreams I have listened,
Ah, God! I have listened in vain!"
And he tossed on the mantle of satin
His deep raven darkness of hair;
And the song at her lips was ungathered,
And she sat there to marvel and stare;
Like marble, to wonder and stare.

XII

Then there welled from her lips all the glory
Of music delirious with words;
Of music that told the heart's story,
And trembled with God-given words,
And rang like the crossing of swords.
And it seemed that the spirit of Beauty
Swept through it with farewells and sighs;
The spirits of Beauty and Duty,
And Love with his beautiful eyes;
And Heaven, and Hell with its cries;
Sad Hell with a tempest of cries.

XIII

The rapture was there of all passion;
The heartache of all we have lost:
The sweetness was there that we fashion
From love we have won or have lost,
Its terror, its torment, and cost.
And over it all was a fury
Of wings that seemed beating above,
Of stars and of winds and the glory
Of God and the splendor of love,
The splendor and triumph of love.

XIV

And then, from her poppy wings, Slumber
Dropped petals of sleep on his eyes;
The Spirit of Slumber with pinions
Of vaporous silver, whose flutter
Had mixed with the music's wild number,
Lured down from the shadowy skies;
Lured down from her drowsy dominions,
To nest in his tired-out eyes.

XV

And in sleep he cried out to her,--stilling
A moment the rush of her song,
The rainbowing torrent of song,--
"Cease! cease! for the rapture is killing!
The glory of light is too strong!--
Oh, cease! make an end of thy song!"--
But she, with the frenzy o'erflowing,
Cried out in an anguish of passion,
"Thy soul shall be one with my song,
With me and the soul of my song.
Take my hand! let us walk in the glowing
Sweet heaven and hell of all song;
Where the torrents of music are flowing,
The rivers of music and song.
Take my hand! Dost thou hear? We are going!
We, too, to God's splendor belong!
Let us walk in the light of His song,
The thunder and flame of His song."

XVI

Then she flung in her song the emotion,
Triumphant, of heart and of soul;
Till the passion and pain were an ocean
That swept her with billowing roll,
As it seemed, to abysses of dole,
Abysses of infinite dole.

XVII

And paler than moonlight and marble
He lay on the red of that robe,
Lay white at her feet on the scarlet,
With silence-sealed lips and the glitter
Of tears in each violet globe
Of his eyes.--And she said: "It is bitter
To see him so still on this robe,
Like marble so still on this robe."
Then she knelt and cried out, "Art thou living?
Or dead?--Have I slain thee with song?--
I gave thee the best in my giving,
But all that I gave thee seems wrong!--
No blessing, a curse was my song!
A curse and a sorrow my song!"

XVIII

And she shattered her harp in her madness,
And rent at her breasts and her hair;
Then kissed him on mouth and on temples,
And spoke to him smoothing the sadness,
The calm of his brow that was fair,
Was perfect and hopelessly fair.
Then she wailed to the stars in the heaven,
And railed at her song as a thief,
Calling out, "For a curse wast thou given!
Yea, thou! for a curse and a grief!
A curse and an infinite grief!"