So when men bury us beneath the yew

  Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be,

  And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,

  And when the white narcissus wantonly

  Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy

  Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

  And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain

  In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,

  And from the linnet’s throat will sing again,

  And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run

  Over our graves, or as two tigers creep

  Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

  And give them battle! How my heart leaps up

  To think of that grand living after death

  In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,

  Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,

  And with the pale leaves of some autumn day

  The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.

  O think of it! We shall inform ourselves

  Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,

  The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves

  That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn

  Upon the meadows, shall not be more near

  Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

  The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,

  And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun

  On sunless days in winter, we shall know

  By whom the silver gossamer is spun,

  Who paints the diapered fritillaries,

  On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

  Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows

  If yonder daffodil had lured the bee

  Into its gilded womb, or any rose

  Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!

  Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,

  But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing.

  Is the light vanished from our golden sun,

  Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,

  That we are nature’s heritors, and one

  With every pulse of life that beats the air?

  Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,

  New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

  And we two lovers shall not sit afar,

  Critics of nature, but the joyous sea

  Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star

  Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be

  Part of the mighty universal whole,

  And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

  We shall be notes in that great Symphony

  Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,

  And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be

  One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years

  Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,

  The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

  The Fourth Movement

  Impression

  Le Réveillon

  The sky is laced with fitful red,

  The circling mists and shadows flee,

  The dawn is rising from the sea,

  Like a white lady from her bed.

  And jagged brazen arrows fall

  Athwart the feathers of the night,

  And a long wave of yellow light

  Breaks silently on tower and hall,

  And spreading wide across the wold

  Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,

  And all the chestnut tops are stirred,

  And all the branches streaked with gold.

  At Verona

  How steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are

  For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,

  And O how salt and bitter is the bread

  Which falls from this Hound’s table—better far

  That I had died in the red ways of war,

  Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,

  Than to live thus, by all things comraded

  Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

  “Curse God and die: what better hope than this?

  He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss

  Of his gold city, and eternal day”—

  Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars

  I do possess what none can take away,

  My love, and all the glory of the stars.

  Apologia

  Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,

  Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,

  And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain

  Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

  Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—

  That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot

  Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell

  The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

  Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,

  And sell ambition at the common mart,

  And let dull failure be my vestiture,

  And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

  Perchance it may be better so—at least

  I have not made my heart a heart of stone,

  Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,

  Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

  Many a man hath done so; sought to fence

  In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,

  Trodden the dusty road of common sense,

  While all the forest sang of liberty,

  Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight

  Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,

  To where some steep untrodden mountain height

  Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.

  Or how the little flower he trod upon,

  The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,

  Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun

  Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

  But surely it is something to have been

  The best belovèd for a little while,

  To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen

  His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

  Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed

  On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,

  Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed

  The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!

  Quia Multum Amavi

  Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest

  When first he takes from out the hidden shrine

  His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,

  And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

  Feels not such awful wonder as I felt

  When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,

  And all night long before thy feet I knelt

  Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

  Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,

  Through all those summer days of joy and rain,

  I had not now been sorrow’s heritor,

  Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

  Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal,

  Tread on my heels with all his retinue,

  I am most glad I loved thee—think of all

  The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

  Silentium Amoris

  As often-times the too resplendent sun

  Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon

  Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won

  A single ballad from the nightingale,

  So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,

  And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

  And as at dawn across the level mead

  On wings impetuous some wind will come,

  And with its too harsh kisses break the reed

  Which was its only instrument of song,

  So my too stormy passions work me wrong,

  And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

  But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show

  Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;

  Else it were better we should part, and go,

  Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,

  And I to nurse the barren memory

  Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

  Her Voice

  The wild bee reels from bough to bough

  With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,

  Now in a lily-cup, and now

  Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,

  In his wandering;

  Sit closer love: it was here I trow

  I made that vow,

  Swore that two lives should be like one

  As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,

  As long as the sunflower sought the sun—

  It shall be, I said, for eternity

  ’Twixt you and me!

  Dear friend, those times are over and done;

  Love’s web is spun.

  Look upward where the poplar trees

  Sway and sway in the summer air,

  Here in the valley never a breeze

  Scatters the thistledown, but there

  Great winds blow fair

  From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,

  And the wave-lashed leas.

  Look upward where the white gull screams,

  What does it see that we do not see?

  Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams

  On some outward voyaging argosy—

  Ah! can it be

  We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!

  How sad it seems.

  Sweet, there is nothing left to say

  But this, that love is never lost,

  Keen winter stabs the breasts of May

  Whose crimson roses burst his frost,

  Ships tempest-tossed

  Will find a harbour in some bay,

  And so we may.

  And there is nothing left to do

  But to kiss once again, and part,

  Nay, there is nothing we should rue,

  I have my beauty—you your Art,

  Nay, do not start,

  One world was not enough for two

  Like me and you.

  My Voice

  Within this restless, hurried, modern world

  We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,

  And now the white sails of our ship are furled,

  And spent the lading of our argosy.

  Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,

  For very weeping is my gladness fled,

  Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,

  And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

  But all this crowded life has been to thee

  No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell

  Of viols, or the music of the sea

  That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

  Taedium Vitae

  To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear

  This paltry age’s gaudy livery,

  To let each base hand filch my treasury,

  To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,

  And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom—I swear

  I love it not! these things are less to me

  Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,

  Less than the thistledown of summer air

  Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof

  Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life

  Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof

  Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,

  Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife

  Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

  Humanitad

  It is full winter now: the trees are bare,

  Save where the cattle huddle from the cold

  Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear

  The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold

  Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true

  To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

  From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay

  Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain

  Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day

  From the low meadows up the narrow lane;

  Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep

  Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

  From the shut stable to the frozen stream

  And back again disconsolate, and miss

  The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;

  And overhead in circling listlessness

  The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,

  Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

  Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds

  And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,

  And hoots to see the moon; across the meads

  Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;

  And a stray seamew with its fretful cry

  Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

  Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings

  His load of faggots from the chilly byre,

  And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings

  The sappy billets on the waning fire,

  And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare

  His children at their play, and yet—the Spring is in the air;

  Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,

  And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again

  With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,

  For with the first warm kisses of the rain

  The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,

  And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

  From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,

  And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs

  Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly

  Across our path at evening, and the suns

  Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see

  Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

  Dance through the hedges till the early rose,

  (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)

  Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose

  The little quivering disk of golden fire

  Which the bees know so well, for with it come

  Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

  Then up and down the field the sower goes,

  While close behind the laughing younker scares

  With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,

  And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,

  And on the grass the creamy blossom falls

  In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals

  Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons

  Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,

  That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons

  With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine