Vivien

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools

Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled

Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world.

Her robes were gauzes -- - gold and green and gules,

All furry things flocked round her, from her hand

Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet.

Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat

Beside a fountain in Broceliande.

Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot

Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here,

Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas,

Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . .

But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere,

Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.

I Loved . . .

I loved illustrious cities and the crowds

That eddy through their incandescent nights.

I loved remote horizons with far clouds

Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights.

I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways

Of wearing among hands that covet and plead

The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base

That bounds the world's desire and all its need.

Nature I worshipped, whose fecundity

Embraces every vision the most fair,

Of perfect benediction. From a boy

I gloated on existence. Earth to me

Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there

One trembling opportunity for joy.

Virginibus Puerisque . . .

I care not that one listen if he lives

For aught but life's romance, nor puts above

All life's necessities the need to love,

Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives.

But sometime on an afternoon in spring,

When dandelions dot the fields with gold,

And under rustling shade a few weeks old

'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing,

Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the power

Of being young and winsome have prepared

For life's last privilege that really pays,

Make the companion of an idle hour

These relics of the time when I too fared

Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.

With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College

As one of some fat tillage dispossessed,

Weighing the yield of these four faded years,

If any ask what fruit seems loveliest,

What lasting gold among the garnered ears, -- -

Ah, then I'll say what hours I had of thine,

Therein I reaped Time's richest revenue,

Read in thy text the sense of David's line,

Through thee achieved the love that Shakespeare knew.

Take then his book, laden with mine own love

As flowers made sweeter by deep-drunken rain,

That when years sunder and between us move

Wide waters, and less kindly bonds constrain,

Thou may'st turn here, dear boy, and reading see

Some part of what thy friend once felt for thee.

Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles

Be my companion under cool arcades

That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square

Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades

White belfries burn in the blue tropic air.

Lie near me in dim forests where the croon

Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows,

Or musing late till the midsummer moon

Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose.

Sweetest of those to-day whose pious hands

Tend the sequestered altar of Romance,

Where fewer offerings burn, and fewer kneel,

Pour there your passionate beauty on my heart,

And, gladdening such solitudes, impart

How sweet the fellowship of those who feel!

Coucy

The rooks aclamor when one enters here

Startle the empty towers far overhead;

Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,

Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.

The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss

Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown

The gate where banners blazoned with a cross

Rolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon.

Decay consumes it. The old causes fade.

And fretting for the contest many a heart

Waits their Tyrtaeus to chant on the new.

Oh, pass him by who, in this haunted shade

Musing enthralled, has only this much art,

To love the things the birds and flowers love too.

Tezcotzinco

Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold,

Thou wert sometime the garden of a king.

The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing.

The flowers are few. It was not so of old.

It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled

Through arbors perfumed with undying Spring

Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening,

Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold.

Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hears

Vague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale ray

From those old, old, far-off, forgotten years?

Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held sway

He stands. Their names are strangers to his ears.

Even their memory has passed away.

The Old Lowe House, Staten Island

Another prospect pleased the builder's eye,

And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes)

Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes

When first these gables rose against the sky.

Relic of a romantic taste gone by,

This stately monument alone remains,

Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes

Blank as the windows of a skull. But I,

On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred

In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle

Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard,

As from the hollow of a stranded shell,

Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred)

Things indistinct, but not insensible.

Oneata

A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze

That loves the melody of murmuring boughs,

Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house

Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these

Old monks built never for the spirit's ease

Cloisters more calm -- - not Cluny nor Clairvaux;

Sweet are the noises from the bay below,

And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees.

Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train,

Beloved Poesy, great joy was mine

To while a listless spell of summer days,

Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain,

When evenings found me richer by one line,

One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase.

On the Cliffs, Newport

Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er

Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom

A savor steals from linden trees in bloom

And gardens ranged at many a palace door.

Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour

Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line,

Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine,

Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore.

How sweet, to such a place, on such a night,

From halls with beauty and festival a-glare,

To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf,

Yield to some fond, improbable delight,

While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the air

Sighs with the muffled tumult of the surf!

To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War

A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er.

The world takes sides: whether for impious aims

With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames

A generous people to heroic war;

Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore,

Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress

Still offer hearts that thirst for Righteousness

A glorious cause to strike or perish for.

England, which side is thine? Thou hast had sons

Would shrink not from the choice however grim,

Were Justice trampled on and Courage downed;

Which will they be -- - cravens or champions?

Oh, if a doubt intrude, remember him

Whose death made Missolonghi holy ground.

At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America -- November, 1912

I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame,

Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast,

Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast

Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame.

Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim

No hero now, no man with whom men side

As with their hearts' high needs personified?

There are will say, One such our lips could name;

Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most

Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man

Lift their low calumny and sneering cries

The Pharisaic multitude, the host

Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes

Know not what greatness is and never can.

The Rendezvous

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.

      Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,

In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,

      Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.

Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.

      He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates -- -

Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves.

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Braided with streams of silver incense rise

      The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones.

Gloria Patri echoes to the skies;

      Nunc et in saecula the choir intones.

He marks not the monotonous refrain,

      The priest that serves nor him that celebrates,

But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain!

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

How like a flower seemed the perfumed place

      Where the sweet flesh lay loveliest to kiss;

And her white hands in what delicious ways,

      With what unfeigned caresses, answered his!

Each tender charm intolerable to lose,

      Each happy scene his fancy recreates.

And he calls out her name and spreads his arms . . . No use!

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

But the long vespers close. The priest on high

      Raises the thing that Christ's own flesh enforms;

And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows by

      And through the portal's carven entry swarms.

Maddened he peers upon each passing face

      Till the long drab procession terminates.

No princess passes out with proud majestic pace.

      She has not come, the woman that he waits.

Back in the empty silent church alone

      He walks with aching heart. A white-robed boy

Puts out the altar-candles one by one,

      Even as by inches darkens all his joy.

He dreams of the sweet night their lips first met,

      And groans -- - and turns to leave -- - and hesitates . . .

Poor stricken heart, he will, he can not fancy yet

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

But in an arch where deepest shadows fall

      He sits and studies the old, storied panes,

And the calm crucifix that from the wall

      Looks on a world that quavers and complains.

Hopeless, abandoned, desolate, aghast,

      On modes of violent death he meditates.

And the tower-clock tolls five, and he admits at last,

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Through the stained rose the winter daylight dies,

      And all the tide of anguish unrepressed

Swells in his throat and gathers in his eyes;

      He kneels and bows his head upon his breast,

And feigns a prayer to hide his burning tears,

      While the satanic voice reiterates

`Tonight, tomorrow, nay, nor all the impending years,

      She will not come,' the woman that he waits.

Fond, fervent heart of life's enamored spring,

      So true, so confident, so passing fair,

That thought of Love as some sweet, tender thing,

      And not as war, red tooth and nail laid bare,

How in that hour its innocence was slain,

      How from that hour our disillusion dates,

When first we learned thy sense, ironical refrain,

      She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Do You Remember Once . . .

Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,

      The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays

And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,

      Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?

The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters

      Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.

Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us

      Far promise of the spring already northward turned.

And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire

      My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.

I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher

      To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.

There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure,

      The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes,

I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure

      Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies.

Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them

      Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides

Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them

      Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides,

Out of the past's remote delirious abysses

      Shine forth once more as then you shone, -- - beloved head,

Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses,

      Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.

And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it,

      My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame.

And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit

      The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.

You loved me on that moonlit night long since.

You were my queen and I the charming prince

Elected from a world of mortal men.

You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then,

You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west,

Like a returning caravel caressed

By breezes that load all the ambient airs

With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears

From harbors where the caravans come down,

I see over the roof-tops of the town

The new moon back again, but shall not see

The joy that once it had in store for me,

Nor know again the voice upon the stair,

The little studio in the candle-glare,

And all that makes in word and touch and glance

The bliss of the first nights of a romance

When will to love and be beloved casts out

The want to question or the will to doubt.

You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas

The pale moon settles and the Pleiades.

The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan -- -

The hour advances, and I sleep alone.

Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing!

      If I have erred I plead but one excuse -- -

The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing

      That cost a lesser agony to lose.

I had not bid for beautifuller hours

      Had I not found the door so near unsealed,

Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers,

      For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.

If I have wept, it was because, forsaken,

      I felt perhaps more poignantly than some

The blank eternity from which we waken

      And all the blank eternity to come.

And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender

      (In the regret with which my lip was curled)

Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor

      My transit through the beauty of the world.

The Bayadere

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays

More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid

By the light veils they burned and blushed amid,

Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,

And there was invitation in her voice

And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,

As though above the gates of Paradise

Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red

Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom,

Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,

She floated with delicious arms outspread.

There was no pose she took, no move she made,

But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh

Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh

And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled

Fierce exhalations of hot human love, -- -

Around her beauty valuable above

The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world;

Flowing as ever like a dancing fire

Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists,

Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists

The nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire.

Eudaemon

O happiness, I know not what far seas,

      Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround,

That thus in Music's wistful harmonies

      And concert of sweet sound

A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore,

Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:

Whether thy beams be pitiful and come,

      Across the sundering of vanished years,

From childhood and the happy fields of home,

      Like eyes instinct with tears

Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough

Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;

Or yet if prescience of unrealized love

      Startle the breast with each melodious air,

And gifts that gentle hands are donors of

      Still wait intact somewhere,

Furled up all golden in a perfumed place

Within the folded petals of forthcoming days.

Only forever, in the old unrest

      Of winds and waters and the varying year,

A litany from islands of the blessed

      Answers, Not here . . . not here!

And over the wide world that wandering cry

Shall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die.

Broceliande

Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade,

Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned.

Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade

                                          Broceliande.

Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband,

Vanishing where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade,

Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland -- ---

Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed,

Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned,

Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed:

                                          Broceliande -- -

                                          Broceliande -- -

                                          Broceliande. . . .

Lyonesse

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say:

Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess,

And fertile lowlands lengthening far away,

                                          In Lyonesse.

Came a term to that land's old favoredness:

Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray,

Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.

Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay,

Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces,

The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day,

                                          In Lyonesse.