Collected Poems (13 page)

(
They fasten the ladder to the parapet so that it drops to the road. Voices inside call “Open!
”)

G
UIDO
(
calls out
).    I am the prisoner to be released.

    Three minutes, friends, while I change raiment.…

    David, Felice, take the old man down,

    Ride north!

    Five minutes’ start and you are safe.

    Go, warn them that so soon must die.

D
AVID
.    But you?

G
UIDO
(
taking
D
AVID
’s
broadsword
).    I’ll hold them here.

F
ELICE
.    Master —

G
UIDO
.    Go, page of mine, Felice.

S
ERLE
.    Thou child of God!

    (D
AVID
    
falls on his knees and catches
G
UIDO
’s
hand, overcome
.)

G
UIDO
.    Go, David, quickly, quickly — God-speed!

(F
ELICE
and
D
AVID
with difficulty help
S
ERLE
over the parapet and disappear
. G
UIDO
stands before the door, leaning on his sword
.)

    How hatefully thou lovest me, God!

Voices within
. Open.

G
UIDO
.    Another minute, friends!

(
Cries of “Open,” confused noise; they batter on the door, finally breaking it in
.)

G
UIDO
.    Back, there, villains!

(G
UIDO
rushes in with the broadsword, forcing them into the passage-way. The sound of horses’ hoofs; it dies out
. G
UIDO
fights desperately; a guard rushes under his arm, stabs him. He staggers and falls. The guards enter, look around, think he is dead and go out. Enter
F
ELICE
over the edge of the parapet
.)

F
ELICE
.    Master Master!

                                                  (
Finds
G
UIDO
and lifts him in his arms
.)

G
UIDO
.    Thou, Felice? … Thou didst return to me?

F
ELICE
.    I could not leave thee.

G
UIDO
.    I’m glad.… And they have gone?

F
ELICE
.    They’re safe.… But thou art wounded!

G
UIDO
.    I’m glad we are alone. ’Tis almost like

    Dying in Sicily.

F
ELICE
.    Master, thou canst not die!

G
UIDO
.    I should not die.

    Death has mistook his quarry, and Jesus sleeps.

                                                  (
He sinks down
.)

F
ELICE
(
terrified
). I’ll fetch a priest.

G
UIDO
.    Stay here.

    I am beyond the laying on of hands.

    My deeds were not. My aspirations lacked

    Not beauty, but singleness of purpose.

    And I have lived.

    No priest can mend what’s broken here.

    
And for the rest …

    Persephone or Mary will recall

    That I on earth was young and beautiful.…

    Help me up, page, where I may see the world.

                                                  (F
ELICE
supports him to the parapet
.)

    I shall miss the iris skies and wet, clear stars

    Of these our April evenings …

    And thee, Felice …

    Can any other world be half so lovely,

    Or any other life so sweet?

    This earthly ecstasy not yet half-lived,

    This heady vintage of days and nights

    Sipped only … Perhaps it is as well.…

    When thou dost see Palermo, rising from the sea,

    Felice, think of me.…

    The bursting wave of life,

    Breast it with twofold joy, remembering me.

F
ELICE
(
sobbing
).    I am thy page. Ah, leave me not alone.

G
UIDO
.    Hush, hush! But yet, forget me never.

    Hold me — I cannot see — There, there —

    I would that now I could find words of counsel

    Which might protect thee always; but

    I, too, am young and still untaught.

    Yet treasure this:

    Pray often, as you sing, unthinkingly;

    ’Twill Jesus please, and then, it sweetens one.

    O littlest comrade of my heart,

    Doubt not the world is good and mankind mostly noble.

    That I have lived unstained

    Hath profited me surely by the gift

    Of deep delight. The lips of harlotry

    
Can never kiss the sun

    With the light rapture that was ours.…

    The rest I did not learn.

F
ELICE
.    Why didst thou fight to save those men, Master?

G
UIDO
.    Something about God — I can’t remember —

    I
had
to fight—

    Closer, Felice.… I’m sleepy.

    Sing me that song we made

    As we rode up from Sicily.

F
ELICE
.    I cannot.

G
UIDO
.    The little song …

F
ELICE
(
sings
).

                                                  Jesu,

                                        If Thou wilt make

                                        Thy peach trees bloom for me,

                                        And fringe my bridle paths both sides

                                        With tulips red and free,

                                        If Thou wilt make Thy skies as blue

                                                  As ours in Sicily,

                                        And wake the little leaves that sleep

                                                  On every bending tree,

                                        I promise not to vexen Thee

                                        That Thou shouldst make eternally

                                                     Heaven, my home.

                                                  But right contentedly —

    Master! Master!

                                                           (
Guido dies
.)

Voice of the Madman
. Son of David, have mercy on us!

                                        Now day,

Drawing his golden waters down the west,

Forsakes the loitering, low-bosomed moon.

Naked amid the unaccustomed stars

She stands, afraid, then down the shining ebb

Hastens to hide her girlish loveliness

From their too youthful wonder in the sea.

Along the sands where Ilium was proud

A crimson laurel bush, that draws, perhaps,

From Priam’s ancient buried house its blood,

Sprinkles with flame the unbeholding waste

In luxury of summer-hearted bliss.

Ah, better so its given years to burn

Unseen of maidens and young warriors

Than, plucked untimely, to have flushed an hour

The white of Helen’s bosom on a night

When Paris leaned across the lights and laughter

To drink her up with hot, unmanly eyes.

Its crimson, fading with the dawn, had been

Only a deathless tale in poets’ mouths.

To him the fate we bear was like a sea

That sweeps above the many ships that sailed,

And waits as home for all that sail again.

Bitter intolerably, and deep as death;

But shining, too, shining and full of spray,

In color stainèd lovelier than the sky,

Singing a requiem for them that die

Adventuring on its bounds, or, dauntless, sing

When roaring and inevitable wash

Heaves down the prows.… His heart was full of stars,

His prayers only to gods that deathlessly

Abide and dream no sin. And Syracuse

That builded on the sea, loved his name most.

Great mountain, swathed in blue with foamy crest

Of fire, majestic as the mighty sea,

Thy brother and immortal comrade close,

The stars except, sole comrade fitting, equal —

Only, perhaps, as dust upon the wind

Shall I behold again thy spreading might.

Yet no regret is mine. I have thee in

My soul, though lodgment base, where room the stars

And many a tide of vestal-footed ocean.

Nor waste I tears that now the Cyclops brood

Is dead, and never hoarse, heroic blast

Shall hurl again in white and purple yeast

Odysseus and the dark-eyed mariners.

Nor foe of gods nor friend thy splendor saw

Than now more dark, more high majestical.

Thy color of solemnity doth stain

The temporal and wayward thing I house.

But if, when I am sown upon the air,

Another, seeing thee against the sunken sun

In folds of wine-dark gauze and amethyst,

Should rise to exaltation more superb

Than mine, and praise with loftier flight of soul

Thy splendor that to-night is all my own —

That were regret! Lend me thy purple thought,

Eternal brooding vigilant, that I

May counsel with my soul to rival his.

Love and the lofty heart and tears — these three

Immortal are, and draw eternally

Deep from the young world’s loveliness their life.

The kiss, the prayer, the cry — the same to-day

As when the brute with noble pang distressed

Cleared the abysm and was man. Than these

Not surer come the stars, nor flooding up

The rainy slopes of spring dark violets.

More utterly than sunset cloud dissolved,

Soft Syracuse has passed. The bannered fleet

That flashed into her harbor scornfully

Left not a ghostly sail to haunt the blue.

And they that heard in Athens ere they came

Great Socrates, whose spoken word was like

The calm intoning of the lustral ocean,

Before they perished in their slavery,

Bequeathed not any dream for us to learn.

Nor shall we know the thought of those tall girls

That stood where now the yellow gorse stands high,

And in their golden, fluttering loveliness

Watched the young prisoners. Instead, remain

The bay, the bubble air, the secret dust,

These, and the mortal kinship that we own.

Kisses they whispered for I beg to-day.

Their eyes did never blur but I could guess.

And as their spirits stood, tall as the sword

Of one that guards the portal of a queen

And leans thereon in moonlight, mine hath stood.

I know their loves and wingèd hearts and tears,

And mine shall every man that lives know too;

And so the same, forever, to the close.

Perhaps some spring a thousand years from now

Two crowned ineffably with youth, their hearts

A-toss in wind-flower dance before the sun,

Loitering lover-wise across the fields

And empty places that I knew, may chance

Upon the rubble where I dream, and muse:

“Those old barbarians, dead so long ago,

Was life to them so fair, and did the sun

Shine honey-sweet into their open hearts?

Could they have ever dreamed such love as ours,

Or dared, O love, this slow, divinest kiss?”

Their words, I know, shall warm the flower roots

That were my heart. To them as now to me

May day be only blue; all moon the night;

And may enamored fate a little while

Hold back their portion due of tears and dark.

The archeress had gone;

A western hill across her path still bore

The magic of her recent footing there;

And upwards all the air was lustral pure.

The city slept, but far above shone bright

The city of the gods that never sleep.

I heard a bird at break of day

    Sing from the autumn trees

A song so mystical and calm,

    So full of certainties,

No man, I think, could listen long

    Except upon his knees.

Yet this was but a simple bird

    Alone, among dead trees.

               Far, far from here the church bells ring,

                         As when I was a child,

               And there is one I dearly love

                         Walks in the sunlight mild.

               To church she goes, and with her once

                         I went, a little child.

               The church bells ring far, far away,

                         The village streets are bright,

               The sunlight falls in slanting bars

                         And fills the church with light.

               And I remember when I knelt

                         Beside her, in delight.

               There’s something lost, there’s something lost,

                         Some wisdom has beguiled!

               My heart has flown a thousand miles

                         And in the sunlight mild

               I kneel and weep beside her there

                         As she prays for her child.