Richard Le Gallienne - A Jongleur Strayed
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Richard Le Gallienne >> A Jongleur Strayed
Thou gavest me thy lips, thine eyes, thine hair;
I brought thee worship--was it not thy due?
If thou art cruel--still art thou not fair?
Roses thou gavest--shalt thou not bring rue?
Alas! have I not brought thee sorrow too?
How dare I face the future and its drouth,
Missing that golden honeycomb thy mouth?
Kiss and make up--'tis the wise ancient way;
Back to my arms, O bountiful deep breast!
No more of words that know not what they say;
To kiss is wisdom--folly all the rest.
Dear loveliness so mercifully pressed
Against my heart--I shake with sudden fear
To think--to losing thee I came so near.
SHADOWS
Shadows! the only shadows that I know
Are happy shadows of the light of you,
The radiance immortal shining through
Your sea-deep eyes up from the soul below;
Your shadow, like a rose's, on the grass
Where your feet pass.
The shadow of the dimple in your chin,
The shadow of the lashes of your eyes,
As on your cheek, soft as a moth, it lies;
And, as a church, I softly enter in
The solemn twilight of your mighty hair,
Down falling there.
These are Love's shadows, Love knows none but these:
Shadows that are the very soul of light,
As morning and the morning blossom bright,
Or jewelled shadows of moon-haunted seas;
The darkest shadows in this world of ours
Are made of flowers.
AFTER TIBULLUS
_Illius est nobis lege colendus amor_
On her own terms, O lover, must thou take
The heart's beloved: be she kind, 'tis well,
Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake
But for the fire in thee that melts her snows
For a brief spell
She loves thee--"loves" thee! Though thy heart should break,
Though thou shouldst lie athirst for her in hell,
She could not pity thee: who of the Rose,
Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return
Of love for love? and she is even as those.
Beauty is she, thou Love, and thou must learn,
O lover, this:
Thine is she for the music thou canst pour
Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream;
Thine, while thy kiss
Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream
That is not thou nor she but merely bliss;
The music ended, she is thine no more.
In her Eternal Beauty bends o'er thee,
Be thou content;
She is the evening star in thy hushed lake
Mirrored,--be glad;
A soul-less creature of the element,
Nor good, nor bad;
That which thou callest to in the far skies
Comes to thee in her eyes;
That thou mayst slake
Thy love of lilies, lo! her breasts! Be wise,
Ask not that she, as thou, should human be,
She that doth smell so sweet of distant heaven;
Pity is mortal leaven,
Dews know it not, nor morning on the hills,
And who hath yet found pity of the sea
That blesses, knowing not, and, not knowing, kills;
And sister unto all of these is she,
Whose face, as theirs, none reads; whose heart none knows;
Whose words are as the wind's words, and whose ways,
O lover, learn,
Swerve not, or turn
Aside for prayers, or broken-hearted praise:
The young moon looks not back as on she goes.
On their own terms, O lover!--Girl, Moon, Rose.
A WARNING
We that were born, beloved, so far apart,
So many seas and lands,
The gods, one sudden day, joined heart to heart,
Locked hands in hands,
Distance relented and became our friend,
And met, for our sakes, world's end with world's end.
The earth was centred in one flowering plot
Beneath thy feet, and all the rest was not.
Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again
Bring distance back, and place
Poles and equators, mountain range and plain,
Between me and thy face,
Undoing what the gods divinely planned;
Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand?
Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow;
Bethink thee well, beloved, ere thou dost go.
PRIMUM MOBILE
When thou art gone, then all the rest will go;
Mornings no more shall dawn,
Roses no more shall blow,
Thy lovely face withdrawn--
Nor woods grow green again after the snow;
For of all these thy beauty was the dream,
The soul, the sap, the song;
To thee the bloom and beam
Of flower and star belong,
And all the beauty thine of bird and stream.
Thy bosom was the moonrise, and the morn
The roses of thy cheek,
No lovely thing was born
But of thy face did speak--
How shall all these endure, of thee forlorn?
The sad heart of the world grew glad through thee,
Happy, men toiled and spun
That had thy smile for fee;
So flowers seek the sun,
So singing rivers hasten to the sea.
Yet, though the world, bereft, should bleakly bloom,
And wanly make believe
Against the general doom,
For me the earth you leave
Shall be for ever but a haunted room;
Yea! though my heart beat on a little space,
When thou art strangely gone
To thy far hiding-place,
Soon shall I follow on,
Out-footing Death to over-take thy face.
THE LAST TRYST
The cowbells wander through the woods,
'Neath arching boughs a stream slips by,
In all the ferny solitude
A chipmunk and a butterfly
Are all that is--and you and I.
This summer day, with all its flowers,
With all its green and gold and blue,
Just for a little while is ours,
Just for a little--I and you:
Till the stars rise and bring the dew.
One perfect day to us is given;
Tomorrow--all the aching years;
This is our last short day in heaven,
The last of all our kisses nears--
Then life too arid even for tears.
Here, as the day ends, we two end,
Two that were one, we said, for ever;
We had Eternity to spend,
And laughed for joy to know that never
Two so divinely one could sever.
A year ago--how rich we seemed!
Like piles of gold our kisses lay,
Enough to last our lives we dreamed,
And lives to come, we used to say--
Yet are we at the last to-day.
The last, I say, yet scarce believe
What all my heart is black with knowing;
Doomed, I yet watch for some reprieve,
But know too well that love is going,
As sure as yonder stream is flowing.
Look round us how the hot sun burns
In plots of glory here and there,
Pouring its gold among the ferns:
So burned my lips upon your hair,
So rained our kisses, love, last year.
We saw not where a shadow loomed,
That, from its first auroral hour,
Our happy paradise fore-doomed;
A Fate within whose icy power
Love blooms as helpless as a flower.
Its shadow by the dial stands,
The golden moments shudder past,
Soon shall he smite apart our hands,
In vain we hold each other fast,
And the last kiss must come at last.
The last! then be it charged with fire,
With sacred passion wild and white,
With such a glory of desire,
We two shall vanish in its light,
And find each other in God's sight.
THE HEART ON THE SLEEVE
I wore my heart upon my sleeve,
Tis most unwise, they say, to do--
But then how could I but believe
The foolish thing was safe with you?
Yet, had I known, 'twas safer far
With wolves and tigers, the wild sea
Were kinder to it than you are--
Sweetheart, how you must laugh at me!
Yet am I glad I did not know
That creatures of such tender bloom,
Beneath their sanctuary snow,
Were such cold ministers of doom;
For had I known, as I began
To love you, ere we flung apart,
I had not been so glad a man
As holds his lady to his heart.
And am I lonely here to-night
With empty eyes, the cause is this,
Your face it was that gave me sight,
My heart ran over with your kiss.
Still do I think that what I laid
Before the altar of your face,
Flower of words that shall not fade,
Were worthy of a moment's grace;
Some thoughtless, lightly dropped largesse,
A touch of your immortal hand
Laid on my brow in tenderness,
Though you could never understand.
And yet with hungered lips to touch
Your feet of pearl and in your face
To look a little was over-much--
In heaven is no such fair a place
As, broken-hearted, at your feet
To lie there and to kiss them, sweet.
AT HER FEET
My head is at your feet,
Two Cytherean doves,
The same, O cruel sweet,
As were the Queen of Love's;
They brush my dreaming brows
With silver fluttering beat,
Here in your golden house,
Beneath your feet.
No man that draweth breath
Is in such happy case:
My heart to itself saith--
Though kings gaze on her face,
I would not change my place;
To lie here is more sweet,
Here at her feet.
As one in a green land
Beneath a rose-bush lies,
Two petals in his hand,
With shut and dreaming eyes,
And hears the rustling stir,
As the young morning goes,
Shaking abroad the myrrh
Of each awakened rose;
So to me lying there
Comes the soft breath of her,--
O cruel sweet!--
There at her feet.
O little careless feet
That scornful tread
Upon my dreaming head,
As little as the rose
Of him who lies there knows
Nor of what dreams may be
Beneath your feet;
Know you of me,
Ah! dreams of your fair head,
Its golden treasure spread,
And all your moonlit snows,
Yea! all your beauty's rose
That blooms to-day so fair
And smells so sweet--
Shoulders of ivory,
And breasts of myrrh--
Under my feet.
RELIQUIAE
This is all that is left--this letter and this rose!
And do you, poor dreaming things, for a moment suppose
That your little fire shall burn for ever and ever on,
And this great fire be, all but these ashes, gone?
Flower! of course she is--but is she the only flower?
She must vanish like all the rest at the funeral hour,
And you that love her with brag of your all-conquering thew,
What, in the eyes of the gods, tall though you be, are you?
You and she are no more--yea! a little less than we;
And what is left of our loving is little enough to see;
Sweet the relics thereof--a rose, a letter, a glove--
That in the end is all that remains of the mightiest love.
Six-foot two! what of that? for Death is taller than he;
And, every moment, Death gathers flowers as fair as she;
And nothing you two can do, or plan or purpose or dream,
But will go the way of the wind and go the way of the stream.
LOVE'S PROUD FAREWELL
I am too proud of loving thee, too proud
Of the sweet months and years that now have end,
To feign a heart indifferent to this loss,
Too thankful-happy that the gods allowed
Our orbits cross,
Beloved and lovely friend;
And though I wend
Lonely henceforth along a road grown gray,
I shall not be all lonely on the way,
Companioned with the attar of thy rose,
Though in my garden it no longer blows.
Thou canst not give elsewhere thy gifts to me,
Or only seem to give;
Yea, not so fugitive
The glory that hath hallowed me and thee,
Not thou or I alone that marvel wrought
Immortal is the paradise of thought,
Nor ours to destroy,
Born of our hearts together, where bright streams
Ran through the woods for joy,
That heaven of our dreams.
There shall it shine
Under green boughs,
So long as May and June bring leaves and flowers,
Couches of moss and fern and woven bowers,
Still thine and mine,
A golden house;
And, perchance, e'er the winter that takes all,
I, there alone in the deep listening wood,
Shall hear thy lost foot-fall,
And, scarce believing the beatitude,
Shall know thee there,
Wild heart to wild heart pressed,
And wrap me in the splendour of thine hair,
And laugh within thy breast.
THE ROSE HAS LEFT THE GARDEN
The Rose has left the garden,
Here she but faintly lives,
Lives but for me,
Within this little urn of pot-pourri
Of all that was
And never more can be,
While her black berries harden
On the wind-shaken tree.
Yet if my song a little fragrance gives,
'Tis not all loss,
Something I save
From the sweet grave
Wherein she lies,
Something she gave
That never dies,
Something that may still live
In these my words
That draw from her their breath,
And fain would be her birds
Still in her death.
II
THE GARDENS OF ADONIS
Beloved, I would tell a ghostly thing
That hides beneath the simple name of Spring;
Wild beyond hope the news--the dead return,
The shapes that slept, their breath a frozen mist,
Ascend from out sarcophagus and urn,
Lips that were dust new redden to be kissed,
Fires that were quenched re-burn.
The gardens of Adonis bloom again,
Proserpina may hold the lad no more,
That in her arms the winter through hath lain;
Up flings he from the hollow-sounding door,
Where Love hath bruised her rosy breast in vain:
Ah! through their tears--the happy April rain--
They, like two stars aflame, together run,
Then lift immortal faces in the sun.
A faint far music steals from underground,
And to the spirit's ear there comes the sound,
The whisper vague, and rustle delicate,
Of myriad atoms stirring in their trance
That for the lifted hand of Order wait,
Taking their stations in the cosmic dance,
Mate linked to mystic mate.
And perished shapes rebuild themselves anew,
Nourished on essences of fire and dew,
And in earth's cheek, but now so wistful wan,
The colour floods, and from deep wells of power
Rises the sap of resurrection;
The dead branch buds, the dry staff breaks in flower,
The grass comes surging on.
These ghostly things that in November died,
How come they thus again adream with pride?
I saw the Red Rose lying in her tomb,
Yet comes she lovelier back, a redder rose;
What paints upon her cheek this vampire bloom?
Beloved, when to the dark thy beauty goes,
Thee too will Spring re-lume?
Verily, nothing dies; a brief eclipse
Is all; and this blessed union of our lips
Shall bind us still though we have lips no more:
For as the Rose and as the gods are we,
Returning ever; but the shapes we wore
Shall have some look of immortality
More shining than before.
Make we our offerings at Adonis' shrine,
For this is Love's own resurrection day,
Bring we the honeyed cakes, the sacred wine,
And myrtle garlands on his altars lay:
_O Thou, beloved alike of Proserpine
And Aphrodite, to our prayers incline;
Be thou propitious to this love of ours,
And we, the summer long, shall bring thee flowers._
NATURE THE HEALER
When all the world has gone awry,
And I myself least favour find
With my own self, and but to die
And leave the whole sad coil behind,
Seems but the one and only way;
Should I but hear some water falling
Through woodland veils in early May,
And small bird unto small bird calling--
O then my heart is glad as they.
Lifted my load of cares, and fled
My ghosts of weakness and despair,
And, unafraid, I raise my head
And Life to do its utmost dare;
Then if in its accustomed place
One flower I should chance find blowing,
With lovely resurrected face
From Autumn's rust and Winter's snowing--
I laugh to think of my disgrace.
A simple brook, a simple flower,
A simple wood in green array,--
What, Nature, thy mysterious power
To bind and heal our mortal clay?
What mystic surgery is thine,
Whose eyes of us seem all unheeding,
That even so sad a heart as mine
Laughs at the wounds that late were bleeding?--
Yea! sadder hearts, O Power Divine.
I think we are not otherwise
Than all the children of thy knee;
For so each furred and winged one flies,
Wounded, to lay its heart on thee;
And, strangely nearer to thy breast,
Knows, and yet knows not, of thy healing,
Asking but there awhile to rest,
With wisdom beyond our revealing--
Knows and yet knows not, and is blest.
LOVE ETERNAL
The human heart will never change,
The human dream will still go on,
The enchanted earth be ever strange
With moonlight and the morning sun,
And still the seas shall shout for joy,
And swing the stars as in a glass,
The girl be angel for the boy,
The lad be hero for the lass.
The fashions of our mortal brains
New names for dead men's thoughts shall give,
But we find not for all our pains
Why 'tis so wonderful to live;
The beauty of a meadow-flower
Shall make a mock of all our skill,
And God, upon his lonely tower
Shall keep his secret--secret still.
The old magician of the skies,
With coloured and sweet-smelling things,
Shall charm the sense and trance the eyes,
Still onward through a million springs;
And nothing old and nothing new
Into the magic world be born,
Yea! nothing older than the dew,
And nothing younger than the morn.
Delight and Destiny and Death
Shall still the mortal story weave,
Man shall not lengthen out his breath,
Nor stay when it is time to leave;
And all in vain for him to ask
His little meaning in the Whole,
Done well or ill his tiny task,
The mystic making of his soul.
Ah! love, and is it not enough
To have our part in this romance
Made of such planetary stuff,
Strange partners in the cosmic dance?
Though Life be all too swift a dream,
And its fair rose must fade and fall,
Life has no sorrow in its scheme
As never to have lived at all.
This fire that through our being runs,
When our two hearts together beat,
Is one with yonder burning sun's,
Two atoms that in glory meet;
What unimagined loss it were,
If that dread power in which we trust
Had left your eyes, your lips, your hair,
Nought but un-animated dust.
Unknown the thrilling touch divine
That sets our magic clay aflame,
That wrought your beauty to be mine,
And joy enough to speak your name;
Thanks be to Life that did this thing,
Unsought, beloved, for you and me,
Gave us the rose, and birds to sing,
The golden earth, the blue-robed sea.
THE LOVELIEST FACE AND THE WILD ROSE
The loveliest face! I turned to her
Shut in 'mid savage rocks and trees;--
'Twas in the May-time of the year,
And our two hearts were filled with ease--
And pointed where a wild-rose grew,
Suddenly fair in that grim place:
"We should know all, if we but knew
Whence came this flower, and whence--this face."
The loveliest face! My thoughts went around:
"Strange sister of this little rose,
So softly 'scaped from underground;
O tell me if your beauty knows,
Being itself so fair a thing,
How came this lovely thing so fair,
How came it to such blossoming,
Leaning so strangely from the air?
"The wonder of its being born,
So lone and lovely--even as you--
Half maiden-moon, half maiden-morn,
And delicately sad with dew;
How came it in this rocky place?
Or shall I ask the rose if she
Knows how this marvel of your face
On this harsh planet came to be?"
Earth's bluest eyes gazed into mine,
And on her head Earth's brightest gold
Made all the rocks with glory shine--
But still the secret went untold;
For rose nor girl, no more than I,
Their own mysterious meaning knew,
Save that alike from earth and sky
Each her enchanted being drew.
Both from deep wells of wonder sprang,
Both children of the cosmic dream,
Alike with yonder bird that sang,
And little lives that flit and gleam;
Sparks from the central rose of fire
That at the heart of being burns,
That draws the lily from the mire
And trodden dust to beauty turns.
Strange wand of Beauty--that transforms
Old dross to dreams, that softly glows
On the fierce rainbowed front of storms,
And smiles on unascended snows,
That from the travail of lone seas
Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl,
And gathers up all sorceries
In the white being of one girl.
AS IN THE WOODLAND I WALK
As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn--
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;
How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek
of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;
How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape
must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf
of the night;
How, when the great tree falls, with its empire
of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives,
And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves
Splendours anew and arabesques and tints on his swaying loom,
Soft as the eyes of April, and black as the brows of doom,
And the fires give back in blue-eyed flowers the woodland
they consume;
How when the streams run dry, the thunder calls on the hills,
And the clouds spout silver showers in the laps
of the little rills,
And each spring brims with the morning star,
and each thirsty fountain fills;
And how, when the songs seemed ended, and all the music mute,
There is always somewhere a secret tune, some string
of a hidden lute,
Lonely and undismayed that has faith in the flower
and the fruit.
So I learn in the woods--that all things come again,
That sorrow turns to joy, and that laughter is born of pain,
That the burning gold of June is the gray of December's rain.
TO A MOUNTAIN SPRING
Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,
Gentle, resistless, welling, welling, welling;
Through what blind ways, we know not whence
You darkling come to dance and dimple--
Strange little spring!
Nature hath no such innocence,
And no more secret thing--
So mysterious and so simple;
Earth hath no such fairy daughter
Of all her witchcraft shapes of water.
When all the land with summer burns,
And brazen noon rides hot and high,
And tongues are parched and grasses dry,
Still are you green and hushed with ferns,
And cool as some old sanctuary;
Still are you brimming o'er with dew
And stars that dipped their feet in you.
And I believe when none is by,
Only the young moon in the sky--
The Greeks of old were right about you--
A naiad, like a marble flower,
Lifts up her lovely shape from out you,
Swaying like a silver shower.
So in old years dead and gone
Brimmed the spring on Helicon,
Just a little spring like you--
Ferns and moss and stars and dew--
Nigh the sacred Muses' dwelling,
Dancing, dimpling, welling, welling.
NOON
Noon like a naked sword lies on the grass,
Heavy with gold, and Time itself doth drowse;
The little stream, too indolent to pass,
Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs,
That build amid the glare a shadowy house,
And with a Paradisal freshness brims
Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade;
The antic water-fly above it skims,
And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade,
Or knee-deep in the grassy glimmer wade.
The earth in golden slumber dreaming lies,
Idly abloom, and nothing sings or moves,
Nor bird, nor bee; and even the butterflies,
Languid with noon, forget their painted loves,
Nor hath the woodland any talk of doves.
Only at times a little breeze will stir,
And send a ripple o'er the sleeping stream,
Or run its fingers through the willows' hair,
And sway the rushes momently agleam--
Then all fall back again into a dream.
A RAINY DAY
The beauty of this rainy day,
All silver-green and dripping gray,
Has stolen quite my heart away
From all the tasks I meant to do,
Made me forget the resolute blue
And energetic gold of things . . .
So soft a song the rain-bird sings.
Yet am I glad to miss awhile
The sun's huge domineering smile,
The busy spaces mile on mile,
Shut in behind this shimmering screen
Of falling pearls and phantom green;
As in a cloister walled with rain,
Safe from intrusions, voices vain,
And hurry of invading feet,
Inviolate in my retreat:
Myself, my books, my pipe, my fire--
So runs my rainy-day desire.
Or I old letters may con o'er,
And dream on faces seen no more,
The buried treasure of the years,
Too visionary now for tears;
Open old cupboards and explore
Sometimes, for an old sweetheart's sake,
A delicate romantic ache,
Sometimes a swifter pang of pain
To read old tenderness again,
As though the ink were scarce yet dry,
And She still She and I still I.
What if I were to write as though
Her letter came an hour ago!
An hour ago!--This post-mark says . . .
But out upon these rainy days!
Come tie the packet up again,
The sun is back--enough of rain.