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Shall I not take care of all that I think,
Yea ev'n of wretched meat and drink,
If I be dear,

If I be dear to some one else,

XVI
I

THIS lump of earth has left his estate
The lighter by the loss of his weight;
And so that he find what he went to seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown
His heart in the gross mud-honey of town,
He may stay for a year who has gone for a week:
But this is the day when I must speak,
And I see my Oread coming down,

O this is the day!

O beautiful creature, what am I
That I dare to look her way;

Think I may hold dominion sweet,

Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast,
And dream of her beauty with tender dread,
From the delicate Arab arch of her feet

To the grace that, bright and light as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head,
And she knows it not: O, if she knew it,
To know her beauty might half undo it.
I know it the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of Time,
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime,
Perhaps from a selfish grave.

2

What, if she be fasten'd to this fool lord,
Dare I bid her abide by her word?

Should I love her so well if she

Had given her word to a thing so low?

Shall I love her as well if she

Can break her word were it even for me?
I trust that it is not so.

3

Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart,
Let not my tongue be a thrall to my eye,
For I must tell her before we part,
I must tell her, or die.

XVII

Go not, happy day,
From the shining fields,
Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes
Falters from her lips,
Pass and blush the news
O'er the blowing ships.
Over blowing seas,

Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,

Blush it thro' the West ;
Till the red man dance
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man's babe
Leap, beyond the sea.
Blush from West to East,
Blush from East to West,
Till the West is East,

Blush it thro' the West.

Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,

Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.

XVIII

I

I HAVE led her home, my love, my only friend. There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood

And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end,

Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

None like her, none.

2

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk,

And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door,

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.

3

There is none like her, none

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there

Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came.

4

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway,

And you fair stars that crown a happy day

Go in and out as if at merry play,

Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seem'd far better to be born

To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand,
Than nursed at ease and brought to understand
A sad astrology, the boundless plan

That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man.

5

But now shine on, and what care I,

Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl
The countercharm of space and hollow sky,
And do accept my madness, and would die
To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

6

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to Love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to live.

Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

7

Not die; but live a life of truest breath,

And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.
O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?
Make answer, Maud my bliss,

Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss,
Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?

"The dusky strand of Death inwoven here

With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear."

8

Is that enchanted moan only the swell

Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart's heart and ownest own, farewell;
It is but for a little space I go

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell

Beat to the noiseless music of the night!

Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow

Of your soft splendours that you look so bright?
I have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell.

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell,
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe

That seems to draw-but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well.

XIX

I

HER brother is coming back to-night,
Breaking up my dream of delight.

2

My dream? do I dream of bliss?
I have walk'd awake with Truth.
O when did a morning shine
So rich in atonement as this
For my dark-dawning youth,

Darken'd watching a mother decline

And that dead man at her heart and mine:
For who was left to watch her but I?
Yet so did I let my freshness die

3

I trust that I did not talk

To gentle Maud in our walk

(For often in lonely wanderings

Ì have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father's sin:
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother's faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying

Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt:
For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing
A world of trouble within!

4

And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
As one scarce less forlorn,

Dying abroad and it seems apart

From him who had ceased to share her heart,

And ever mourning over the feud,

The household Fury sprinkled with blood

By which our houses are torn :
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed-

That Maud's dark father and mine
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,

On the day when Maud was born;

Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath.

Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death, Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn.

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