What are these tears of loneliness to-night?
Hark! In my neighbour's house the music swells,
Joins with the wind and fills the empty skies
And dies away, like echo of old age
Sighing and dying in the heart that fails.
Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps
Into my home, into my waiting heart!
Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas,
Where is the old content of maidenhood,
The calmness and the laughter and the song,
The patient hands unshaken as the needle
Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips
Murmured, untroubled girlhood at their brink?
Was that but yesterday?... How long ago,
How the swift moments flow along the flood.
For yesterday was sweet indifference;
These little drooping breasts had never known
This pain that swells them out and makes them ache
For Love to touch them, for the nestling lips
To trouble them as a warm lifting wind
Murmurs between two swelled and ripening grapes
Whispering of future wines of mad delight.
Ah, let me learn of this! A rapture fills
My limbs, and in my womb there stirs a craving
For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows
About me in such radiance, the light, the strife
Of music, hue and perfume of the rose.
Oh garden of desire, where one awaits
My coming with the sudden knowledge glowing
Deep in my eyes, made sombre as the day
Is somber in the summer noon of light.
Now I perceive I am a sacred temple
Long closed about the hidden flame of life,
Closed with white ivories and gliding shapes
Of river waves, and waves upon the sea
Rising and gliding. Every magic curve
Of these unheeded arms, this supple waist —
So are my eyes set on the infinite —
Are ministering music unto life
Calling love forth to worship in my shrine,
To fill this temple with the prophecy
Of further, wider, deeper life to come.
Hark! The music of the night is rising up!
My neighbour's house is all a flame of song.
I must abide until the prelude closes,
Until his heart has ceased its preparation
And he comes forth into the dying year,
Leaves his house of inspiration empty,
And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth
Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way
With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home,
Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips
Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again
Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying
To call me forth, who am waiting in my home,
Waiting in sweet imprisonment, the bonds
Of love restraining me from running forth
To greet him and to lead him to my soul.
Oh the swift pain, the agony of waiting,
Galled with these terrible sweet bonds of love
That will not let me rise, though my cold hands
Are wrung with grief ... for do I not behold
Upon the outer night the rising fire,
The danger and the terror of love's flight;
Do I not know my lover; that his eyes
Are blinded by this madness of the skies.
Do I not hear him moaning in the night
For one to lead him to his waiting love,
To lead him to the temple of delight,
To the white ivory casket where his soul
Is set with lovely secrets? Do I not hear
The little echoes roll, and fade, and fret
About the murmuring foliage of the garden
Wherein the temple lies? Do I not fear
Lest in the outer glories he be lost
And thwarted of his heart's desire, that flies
Like a dove before his coming, and alights
Within the inner courtyard of my soul
Bearing such messages of him who comes
That all the altars of my love are kindled
To flame ere he approaches, which fades away
And counterfeits the sweetest death that ever
Sighed the approach of day, and left the stars
More bright to be entranced of the dawn?
Be patient, Oh, my heart! A little while
And he shall pierce the darkness of the night
That flows between my home and his. The song
The youth, the early light that he has lost
Are as a little strength submerged and drowned
In this fierce rage that bids him seek me out
And take me in the darkness of my home,
And change, and fill me, as the virgin night
Is changed to day, and as the moonlight sky
Is emptied of her sterile ray, and filled
With overflooding light that spills to earth
A golden augury of later fruits
And a diviner birth.
Hark! Hark!... He comes
He has found the temple of his soul's desire ...,
Be still, Oh beating heart, be still ... be still,
Lest he be troubled now his sacred fire
Creeps through this temple to your inmost shrine.
And I at last am his, and he is mine!
