Fruitage

For her the proud stars bend, she sees,
As never yet, dim sorceries
Breaking in silver magic wide
On the blue midnight's swirling tide,
With arrowy mist and spearing flame
That out of central beauty came.
The innumerate splendours of the skies
Are thronging in her shining eyes;
Her body is a fount of light
In the plumed garden of the night;
Her lily breasts have known the bliss
Of the cool air's unfaltering kiss.
She is made one with loveliness,
Enfranchised from the world's distress,
Given utterly to joy, a bride
With a bride's hunger satisfied.
Now, though she heavily walk, and know
The sharp premonitory throe
And the life leaping in the gloom
Of her most blessed and chosen womb,
It is as though foot never was
So light upon the glimmering grass.
She is shot through with the stars' light,
Helped by their calm, unwavering might.
In tall, lone-swaying gravity
Stoops to her there the eternal tree
Whose myriad fruitage ripens on
Beneath the light of moon and sun.

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In the Wood

Lone shadows move,
The night air stirs;
This hour of dying
Dreams was hers.
In this dusk place
Her throat gleamed white
In glimmering beauty
Of starlight.
Nightingales sang
Exultant bliss;
The snared stars saw us
Sway, and kiss.
Now the bats whirr,
The barn owls hoot,
Her loveliness
Is dust, is mute.
Peace comes not here,
No dream-bird trills:
They haunt her lodging
In the hills.

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Siesta

Bring me some oranges on blue china,
With a jade-and-silver spoon,
And drowse on your silken mats beside me
In the burning noon.
Bring me red wine in cups of crystal,
With melons on chrysoprase,
And place them softly with jewelled fingers
Before my gaze.
Hasten, my dove of scented whisperings,
My lily, my XacÁn!
Bring bubbling pipes for the cool shadows,
And my peacock fan.
And bid IsÁrrib, my chief musician,
Weave quiet songs within,
That my soul in the circles of a great glamour
May float and spin.
And O, you gaudy and whistling parrots
In your high, flowered maze,
Still your harsh, petulant quarrelling
With the mocking jays.

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To One Who Eats Larks

Ah, my brave Vitellius!
Ah, your tastes are marvellous!
When you eat your singing birds
Do you leave the bones — and words,
The proud music in the throat?...
Not a note, not a note?
Doubtless they were not so pleasant
As the brains of a young pheasant,
Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty
Never was to utter beauty.
But they sang, but they fluted
And your rasping lies confuted,
And your ugliness laid bare
With a lyric in the air.
So you bought them on a string,
Dangling balls that used to sing,
And you gave them to the cook
With a fat and happy look.
But you ask me why this fuss!
Ah, my brave Vitellius,
I am never sure your stringers
May not string you other singers,
May not tire of lark and wren
And attempt to sell you men.
Please forgive me, but I've made
Certain songs ... and I'm afraid!

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If Beauty Came to You

If Beauty came to you,
Ah, would you know her grace,
And could you in your shadowed prison view
Unscathed her face?
Stepping as noiselessly
As moving moth-wings, so
Might she come suddenly to you or me
And we not know.
Amid these clangs and cries,
Alas, how should we hear
The shy, dim-woven music of her sighs
As she draws near.
Threading through monstrous, black,
Uncharitable hours,
Where the soul shapes its own abhorrÈd rack
Of wasted powers?

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