OTHER SONNETS. THREE SONNETS OF LOVE. I. |
AT NOONTIDE SEEKING. CAN love being love and therefore magical
When summer and the roses lie between,
Find back to spring? Or shall he know at all
The places where his golden feet have been
At noontide seeking. Shall he know again
The tune of dawn, the unconditioned sky,
The world before the coming of the rain,
That like a shadow waited and went by,
Soft like a God and like a God aflame?
Ah will he find that murmur at your lips,
Still see you standing, as the morning stands,
With fingers stretched that touched and fled and came
To mine again, warm to the tender lips
Once lilies and now roses—Oh your hands?
II. AN ACCUSATION. WHAT have you given, love, to those who gave
All for your sake? What gift to weigh the worth
Of those who, having all, did nothing save,
But for a kiss made jetsam of the earth?
What answer have you for the thronging ghosts—
Gentlemen of high heart, who were not brave
Because of you? What for the stricken hosts
Of those who, seeking truth, embraced the grave
Your magic sets about the brain? What way
Of answer have you for the fallen tears
Of those who heard you calling, and, once strong
As being pure, became the body’s prey?
What answer, O sweet God, to all the years
That worshipped you and crowned you, and were wrong?
III. THE TREMBLING BRIM. LOVE, if remorseless, needeth no defence,
(You say) for though he waste our lives it seems
A moment spent with love is recompense,
For all the might have beens of all our dreams.
Yet is there something in the might have been
Was never yet in love. O trembling brim
Of the far country, that our eyes have seen,
Have seen and turned from for the sake of him.
Are there no pleasant places, no strange deeds
Waiting the comer? Is there no great sea
Watched by immaculate angels who attend
Our sails that linger? No red star that leads
To where beyond all passion shaken free
We follow the great road that has no end?
THE REPLY. ALL things are true of love, save these things only,
That at the long day’s end when love is over,
He’s of love cheated who was once a lover,
And she, by love once visited, left lonely.
The dream is done, but here’s no cause for sorrow
When beauty’s seal is on the dream descending.
Beauty is mortal, beauty has an ending,
Beauty and love alone need no to-morrow.
All other things—courage and truth and virtue—
Have the one doom, the lust for the immortal.
Love only, with lost beauty, life outpaces,
Cold, though they burn, untroubled, though they hurt you,
And white, like gods, when through the sculptured portal
The starshine enter and the moon’s cold graces.
GOD GAVE US BODIES.... GOD gave us bodies for suffering and for strangers,
To have their will of. We divided waken
To find the heart that won through all its dangers
By the stained body at the dawn forsaken.
We said of love “The body, and its langours
Are but a little thing, though sweet. Unshaken
Behold the heart!” Fools! Who forgot the angers
Of blood despised and the heart overtaken
By the gross hands of lust even at the portal
Of bliss. And not for any tears is altered
Love thus betrayed, yet though betrayed, immortal,
Struggling for ever and for ever haltered.
God gave us bodies; let them write in heaven
“Love we forgive, but God is not forgiven.”
RONSARD AND HELENE. YOU sang, Ronsard, in your imperial lay
HÉlÈne, and sang as only you would dare
That she would cry, in reading, old and grey
“Ronsard sang this of me when I was fair.”
That was youth spoke, Ronsard, who will not stay
To wonder if his own divine despair
May not with losing loveliness outweigh
Kisses, that given, melt upon the air.
If youth but knew, Ronsard! The things that seem
Would he not barter for the things that are,
And leave his mistress to embrace her dream
Exchange her lips for her lost beauty’s star?
Losing HÉlÈne youth finds the lovelier truth,
If youth but knew! But then he were not youth.
THE DRIFT OF THE LUTE. LOVE, lay aside your lute and leave the roses
That with the bays are twined. No time for sweeping
The strings now in the hush of the heart, nor reaping
Summer’s fulfilment. For the daylight closes
With laying on of hands and the heart shriven,
And mystical washing away of sorrow,
So there is neither yesterday nor morrow
But quiet and the world to healing given.
And if such peace o’er lute and roses drifted
Would seem to beggar love of coronation
Thus in the darkness fallen on an ending,
See! Than the sun, whose golden hands were lifted
In heaven, now cloaked, more lovely seek her station,
The moon consummate in her place ascending.
LOVE AND BEAUTY. EVEN tho’ love were done, shall we complain
If in the world there’s hidden loveliness
Born of that love, and not a lost caress
But makes us poorer to the common gain?
This beauty may adorn with deeper stain
The cool first jonquil, or with light redress
The vision of a star, and thus confess
That love, though lost, is never lost in vain.
And if for others we have lit this flame,
While us the gloom invests of dying embers,
Being so separate, your heart remembers,
As mine, the world before the wonder came,
For that sweet change we spent our hearts in heaven,
Thus briefly won, thus lost, and thus forgiven.
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