  CYNICS AND ROMANTICSIn club and messroom let them sit
At skirmish of ingenious wit; Deriding Love, yet not with hearts Accorded to those healthier parts Of grim self-mockery, but with mean And burrowing search for things unclean, Pretended deafness, twisted sense, Sharp innuendoes rising thence, And affectation of prude-shame That shrinks from using the short name. We are not envious of their sour Disintegrations of Love’s power, Their swift analysis of the stabs Devised by virgins and by drabs (Powder or lace or scent) to excite A none-too-jaded appetite. They never guess of Love as we Have found the amazing Art to be, Pursuit of dazzling flame, or flight From web-hung blackness of night, With laughter only to express Care overborne by carelessness; They never bridge from small to great, From nod or glance to ideal Fate, From clouded forehead or slow sigh To doubt and agony looming by, From shining gaze and hair flung free To infinity and to eternity— They sneer and poke a treacherous joke With scorn for our rusticity. UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE‘Alone Through forests evergreen, By legend known, By no eye seen, Unmated Unbaited Untrembling between The shifting shadows The sudden echoes, Deathless I go Unheard, unseen,’ Says the White Doe. Unicorn with bursting heart Breath of love has drawn On his desolate crags apart At rumour of dawn, Has volleyed forth his pride Twenty thousand years mute, Tossed his horn from side to side Lunged with his foot. ‘Like a storm of sand I run Breaking the desert’s boundaries, I go in hiding from the sun In thick shade of trees Straight was the track I took Across the plains, but here with briar And mire the tangled alleys crook Baulking my desire. Ho, there! what glinted white? (A bough still shakes) What was it darted from my sight Through the forest brakes? Where are you fled from me? I pursue, you fade; I run, you hide from me In the dark glade. Towering straight the trees grow, The grass grows thick. Where you are, I do not know, You fly so quick.’ ‘Seek me not here Lodged among mortal deer,’ Says the White Doe, ‘Keeping one place Held by the ties of space,’ Says the White Doe. ‘I Equally In air Above your bare Hill crest, your basalt lair, At the clear pool’s brink With tigers at play In the glare of day Blithely I stray, Under shadow of myrtle With Phoenix and his Turtle For all time true, With Gryphons at grass Under the Upas, Sipping warm dew That falls hourly new, I, unattainable Complete, incomprehensible No mate for you. In sun’s beam Or star-gleam, No mate for you No mate for you,’ Says the White Doe. SULLEN MOODSLove, do not count your labour lost Though I turn sullen, grim, retired Even at your side; my thought is crossed With fancies by old longings fired. And when I answer you, some days Vaguely and wildly, do not fear That my love goes forbidden ways Hating the laws that bind it here. If I speak gruffly, this mood is Mere indignation at my own Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties; I forget the gentler tone. ‘You,’ now that you have come to be My one beginning, prime and end, I count at last as wholly ‘me,’ Lover no longer nor yet friend. Friendship is flattery, though close hid; Must I then flatter my own mind? And must (which laws of shame forbid) Blind love of you make self-love blind? Do not repay me my own coin, The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan; But stir my memory to disjoin Your emanation from my own. Help me to see you as before When overwhelmed and dead, almost, I stumbled on that secret door Which saves the live man from the ghost. Be once again the distant light, Promise of glory, not yet known In full perfection—wasted quite When on my imperfection thrown. HENRY AND MARYHenry was a worthy king, Mary was his queen, He gave to her a snowdrop Upon a stalk of green. Then all for his kindness And all for his care She gave him a new-laid egg In the garden there. Love, can you sing? I cannot sing. Or story-tell? Not one I know. Then let us play at queen and king, As down the garden walks we go. ON THE RIDGEBelow the ridge a raven flew, And we heard the lost curlew Mourning out of sight below Mountain tops were touched with snow; Even the long dividing plain Showed no wealth of sheep or grain, But fields of boulders lay like corn And raven’s croak was shepherd’s horn To slow cloud shadow strayed across A pasture of thin heath and moss. The North Wind rose; I saw him press With lusty force against your dress, Moulding your body’s inward grace, And streaming off from your set face, So now no longer flesh and blood But poised in marble thought you stood; O wingless Victory, loved of men, Who could withstand your triumph then? A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOODTangled in thought am I, Stumble in speech do I? Do I blunder and blush for the reason why? Wander aloof do I, Lean over gates and sigh, Making friends with the bee and the butterfly? If thus and thus I do Dazed by the thought of you, Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew, My heart pierced through and through By this despair of you, Starved for a word or a look will my hope renew. Give then a thought for me Walking so miserably, Wanting relief in the friendship or flower or tree, Do but remember, we Once could in love agree Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be. |
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