Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (250 page)

Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long’d so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
  
460
Stopt, and then with a riding whip
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.
  
465

Why sits he here in his father’s chair?
That old man never comes to his place:
Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street,
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,
  
470
A gray old wolf and a lean.
Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat:
For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet:
  
475
Tho’ I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side;
Her mother has been a thing complete,
However she came to be so allied.
And fair without, faithful within,
  
480
Maud to him is nothing akin:
Some peculiar mystic grace
Made her only the child of her mother,
And heap’d the whole inherited sin
On that huge scapegoat of the race,
  
485
All, all upon the brother.

Peace, angry spirit, and let him be!
Has not his sister smiled on me?

XIV

MAUD has a garden of roses
And lilies fair on a lawn;
  
490
There she walks in her state
And tends upon bed and bower,
And thither I climb’d at dawn
And stood by her garden-gate;
A lion ramps at the top,
  
495
He is claspt by a passion-flower.

Maud’s own little oak-room
(Which Maud, like a precious stone
Set in the heart of the carven gloom,
Lights with herself, when alone
  
500
She sits by her music and books,
And her brother lingers late
With a roystering company) looks
Upon Maud’s own garden gate:
And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white
  
505
As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid
On the hasp of the window, and my Delight
Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide,
Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side,
There were but a step to be made.
  
510

The fancy flatter’d my mind,
And again seem’d overbold;
Now I thought that she cared for me,
Now I thought she was kind
Only because she was cold.
  
515

I heard no sound where I stood
But the rivulet on from the lawn
Running down to my own dark wood;
Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell’d
Now and then in the dim-gray dawn;
  
520
But I look’d, and round, all round the house I beheld
The death-white curtain drawn;
Felt a horror over me creep,
Prickle my skin and catch my breath,
Knew that the death-white curtain meant but sleep,
  
525
Yet I shudder’d and thought like a fool of the sleep of death.

XV

SO dark a mind within me dwells,
 
And I make myself such evil cheer,
That if
I
be dear to some one else
 
Then some one else may have much to fear;
  
530
But if
I
be dear to some one else,
 
Then I should be to myself more dear.
Shall I not take care of all that I think,
Yea ev’n of wretched meat and drink,
If I be dear,
  
535
If I be dear to some one else.

XVI

THIS lump of earth has left his estate
The lighter by the loss of his weight;
And so that he find what he went to seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown
  
540
His heart in the gross mud-honey of town,
He may stay for a year who has gone for a week.
But this is the day when I must speak,
And I see my Oread coming down,
O this is the day!
  
545
O beautiful creature, what am I
That I dare to look her way;
Think I may hold dominion sweet,
Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast,
And dream of her beauty with tender dread,
  
550
From the delicate Arab arch of her feet
To the grace that, bright and light as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head,
And she knows it not: O, if she knew it,
To know her beauty might half undo it.
  
555
I know it the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of Time,
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime,
Perhaps from a selfish grave.

What, if she be fasten’d to this fool lord,
  
560
Dare I bid her abide by her word?
Should I love her so well if she
Had given her word to a thing so low?
Shall I love her as well if she
Can break her word were it even for me?
  
565
I trust that it is not so.

Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart,
Let not my tongue be a thrall to my eye
For I must tell her before we part,
I must tell her, or die.
  
570

XVII

GO not, happy day,
 
From the shining fields,
Go not, happy day,
 
Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West,
  
575
 
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
 
And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes
 
Falters from her lips,
  
580
Pass and blush the news
 
O’er the blowing ships.
Over blowing seas,
 
Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,
  
585
 
Blush it thro’ the West;
Till the red man dance
 
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man’s babe
 
Leap, beyond the sea.
  
590
Blush from West to East,
 
Blush from East to West,
Till the West is East,
 
Blush it thro’ the West.
Rosy is the West,
  
595
 
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
 
And a rose her mouth.

XVIII

I HAVE led her home, my love, my only friend.
There is none like her, none.
  
600
And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on
Calming itself to the long-wish’d-for end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

None like her, none.
  
605
Just now the dry-tongued laurel’s pattering talk
Seem’d her light foot along the garden walk,
And shook my heart to think she comes once more,
But even then I heard her close the door,
The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.
  
610

There is none like her, none.
Nor will be when our summers have deceased.
O, art thou sighing for Lebanon
In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,
Sighing for Lebanon,
  
615
Dark cedar, tho’ thy limbs have here increased,
Upon a pastoral slope as fair,
And looking to the South, and fed
With honey’d rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head
  
620
Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there
  
625
Shadowing the snow-limb’d Eve from whom she came.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway,
And you fair stars that crown a happy day
Go in and out as if at merry play,
Who am no more so all forlorn
  
630
As when it seem’d far better to be born
To labour and the mattock-harden’d hand,
Than nursed at ease and brought to understand
A sad astrology, the boundless plan
That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,
  
635
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,
Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man.

But now shine on, and what care I,
Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl
  
640
The countercharm of space and hollow sky,
And do accept my madness, and would die
To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to love than is or ever was
  
645
In our low world, where yet ’tis sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.
  
650

Not die; but live a life of truest breath,
And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.
O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?
Make answer, Maud my bliss,
  
655
Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss,
Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?
“The dusky strand of Death inwoven here
With dear Love’s tie, makes Love himself more dear.”

Is that enchanted moan only the swell
  
660
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight
  
665
And given false death her hand, and stol’n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
  
670
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart’s heart, my ownest own, farewell;
It is but for a little space I go:
And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night!
  
675
Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow
Of your soft splendours that you look so bright?
I
have climb’d nearer out of lonely Hell.
Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,
Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell,
  
680
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe
That seems to draw — but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well.

XIX

HER brother is coming back to-night,
Breaking up my dream of delight.
  
685

My dream? do I dream of bliss?
I have walk’d awake with Truth.
O when did a morning shine
So rich in atonement as this
For my dark-dawning youth,
  
690
Darken’d watching a mother decline
And that dead man at her heart and mine:
For who was left to watch her but I?
Yet so did I let my freshness die.

I trust that I did not talk
  
695
To gentle Maud in our walk
(For often in lonely wanderings
I have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father’s sin:
  
700
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother’s faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying
Vext with lawyers and harass’d with debt:
  
705
For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing,
A world of trouble within!

And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
  
710
As one scarce less forlorn,
Dying abroad and it seems apart
From him who had ceased to share her heart,
And ever mourning over the feud,
The household Fury sprinkled with blood
  
715
By which our houses are torn:
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed —
That Maud’s dark father and mine
  
720
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,
On the day when Maud was born;
Seal’d her mine from her first sweet breath.
Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death
  
725
Mine, mine — our fathers have sworn.