POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE THE WAR |
VITA NUOVA I watched you in the distance tall and pale,
Like a swift swallow in a pearly sky;
Your eyelids drooped like petals wearily,
Your face was like a lily of the vale.
You had the softness of all Summer days,
The silver radiance of the twilight hour,
The mystery of bluebell-haunted ways,
The passion of the white syringa’s flower.
I watched you, and I knew that I had found
The long-delaying, long-expected Spring;
I knew my heart had found a tune to sing;
That strength to soar was in my spirit’s wing;
That life was full of a triumphant sound,
That death could only be a little thing.
O ???a, ? ?a??essa
I saw you by the Summer candlelight:—
You put to shame the sparkle of the gems,
The lights, the flashing of the diadems,
The moon and all the stars of Summer night.
I saw you in the radiant morning hour:—
You put to shame the white rose and the red;
Your chiselled lips, your little lovely head,
Were fairer than the petals of a flower.
And on the shaven surface of the lawn,
You moved like music, and you smiled like dawn,—
The leaves, the flowers, the dragon-flies, the dew,
Beside you seemed the stuff of coarser clay;
And all the glory of the Summer day
A background for the wonder that was you.
ITALY The almond trees of Tuscany in flower,
Narcissus and the tulip growing wild;
White oxen; and like a lily undefiled,
Beyond the misty plain, the marble tower;
The roses and the corn upon the hill,
The Judas-tree against the solid blue;
The fire-flies, and the downy owl’s too-whoo,
Thy Aziola, Shelley, plaintive still.
The lisp of BaiÆ’s phosphorescent foam;
And Venice like a bubble made of dew,
A shell transfigured with the rainbow’s hue;
The Appian Way beneath a sullen sky,
(The shepherd’s pipe is like a seagull’s cry)
And in a silver rift, eternal Rome.
SEVILLE The orange blossoms in the Alcazar,
Where roses and syringas are in flower;
The blinding glory of the morning hour;
The eyes that gleam behind a twisted bar;
The women on the balconies,—a smile;
The barrel-organs, and the blazing heat;
The awning hanging high across the street;
A dark mantilla in a sombre aisle.
A fountain tinkling in a shady court;
The gold arena of the bull-ring’s feast;
The coloured crowd acclaiming perilous sport;
The sudden silence when they hold their breath,
While the torero gently plays with death,
And flicks the horns of the tremendous beast.
GREECE The Spring had scattered poppies on the land,
The Spring was saying her secret to the breeze;
In the translucent shallows of green seas,
A fisherman, a trident in his hand,
Was casting shining fishes to the sand,
And wading in the water to his knees;
And still I hear the crickets and the bees,
The hidden hoofs, the ringing saraband.
I see the temples above the breaking foam,
The pillars pink as dawn in the silver dust;
The Parthenon at sunset large and dim,
Smouldering against the purple mountain’s crust;
And far away on the ocean’s blazing rim,
The phantom ship that brought Ulysses home.
RUSSIA What can the secret link between us be?
Why does your song’s unresting ebb and flow
Speak to me in a language that I know?
Why does the burden of your mystery
Come like the message of a friend to me?
Why do I love your vasts of corn or snow,
The tears and laughter of your sleepless woe,
The murmur of your brown immensity?
I cannot say, I only know that when
I hear your soldiers singing in the street,
I know it is with you that I would dwell;
And when I see your peasants reaping wheat,
Your children playing on the road, your men
At prayer before a shrine, I wish them well.
A JUNE NIGHT IN RUSSIA A concert. Hark to the prelude’s opening bar!
Played by the sheep bells tinkling on the hill;
Dogs bark and frogs are croaking near the mill,
The watchman’s rattle beats the time afar.
Like water bubbling in a magic jar,
The nightingale begins a liquid trill,
Another answers; and the world’s so still,
You’d think that you could hear that falling star.
I scarcely see for light the stars that swim
Aloof in skies not dark but only dim.
The women’s voices echo far away.
And on the road two lovers sing a song:
They sing the joy of love that lasts a day:
The sorrow of love that lasts a whole life long.
HARVEST IN RUSSIA The breeze has come at last. The day was long;
And in the lustrous air the dark bats fly;
And Hark! It is the reapers passing by,
I hear the burden of their peaceful song.
A voice intones; and swift the answering throng
Take up the theme and build the harmony;
The music swells and soars into the sky
And dies away intense, and clear and strong.
Now through the trees the stately shapes I see
Of women with the attributes of toil,
Calm in their sacerdotal majesty;
And backward, through the drifting mist of years,
I see the festal rites that blessed the soil,
As old as the first drop of mortal tears.
DOSTOYEVSKY You healed the sore, you made the fearful brave,
They bless you for your lasting legacy;
The balm, the tears, the fragrant charity
You sought and treasured in your living grave.
The gifts you humbly took you greatly gave,
For solace of the soul in agony,
When through the bars the brutal passions pry,
And mock the bonds of the celestial slave.
You wandered in the uttermost abyss;
And there, amidst the ashes and the dust,
You spoke no word of anger or of pride;
You found the prints of steps divine to kiss;
You looked right upwards to the stars, you cried:
“Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just.”
BEETHOVEN More mighty than the hosts of mortal kings,
I hear the legions gathering to their goal;
The tramping millions drifting from one pole,
The march, the counter-march, the flank that swings.
I hear the beating of tremendous wings,
The shock of battle and the drums that roll;
And far away the solemn belfries toll,
And in the field the careless shepherd sings.
There is an end unto the longest day.
The echoes of the fighting die away.
The evening breathes a benediction mild.
The sunset fades. There is no need to weep,
For night has come, and with the night is sleep,
And now the fiercest foes are reconciled.
MOZART
WAGNER O strange awakening to a world of gloom,
And baffled moonbeams and delirious stars,
Of souls that moan behind forbidden bars,
And waving forests swept by wings of doom;
Of heroes falling in unhappy fight,
And winged messengers from eyries dim;
And mountains ringed with flame, and shapes that swim
In the deep river’s green translucent night.
O restless soul, for ever seeking bliss,
Thirsty for ever and unsatisfied,
Whether the woodland starts to the echoing horn,
Or dying Tristram moans by shores forlorn,
Or Siegfried rides through fire to wake his bride,
And shakes the whirling planets with a kiss.
SHELLEY Singer of cloud and star and rushing stream,
Let me bring but one garland to thy shrine,
For when a boy I drank of the dews divine
That in thy rainbow-coloured chalice gleam.
I scaled the silver ladder of thy dream,
And dizzy with the wonder of that wine,
I heard the song, and saw the eyes that shine
Unveiled, within the sanctuary supreme.
Then, like ActÆon I became the prey,
The hunted quarry of remorseless hounds;
Hark! in the distance I can hear them bay!
But in my heart the vision and the voice
Endure; and though they slay me, I rejoice—
I saw that light, I heard those starry sounds.
PHÈDRE Her gesture is the soaring of a hymn,
Her voice has robbed the spoil of Hybla’s bees;
And like the frozen music of a frieze,
Calm, as she moves majestic, every limb.
Clear as a crystal beaker’s sounding rim,
Her heart gives voice to sobbing melodies,
And her frame trembles, swept by passion’s breeze,
And sultry clouds her blazing eyes bedim.
A faery caught in her own fatal snare,
A wounded eagle struggling to be free,
Whose Kingdom was the snow and the sun’s flame
More queenly than all empresses is she,
Discrowned albeit, defeated and in despair;
The stricken lily puts the rose to shame.
THE WOUNDED The wounded lie and groan upon the plain;
And one there is whom it is vain to lift;
So give him water. It is the last gift,
And very soon he shall not thirst again.
All white and gold the Chief with a troop of horse
Trots by. The soldier opens smiling eyes;
And at the latest gasp of life he cries:
“Long live!” with all his feeble flickering force.
Before he said his say he died content.
And we, the wounded on life’s battlefield,
Enrolled and sent to war to fight and die,
When conquered by our mortal wound, we cry
“Long live!” obedient to our sacrament,
When God with all His universe rides by.
Manchuria, 1904.
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