And I shall weep and worship, as before.

  Fantaisies Décoratives

  I

  Le Panneau

  Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade

  There stands a little ivory girl,

  Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl

  With pale green nails of polished jade.

  The red leaves fall upon the mould,

  The white leaves flutter, one by one,

  Down to a blue bowl where the sun,

  Like a great dragon, writhes in gold.

  The white leaves float upon the air,

  The red leaves flutter idly down,

  Some fall upon her yellow gown,

  And some upon her raven hair.

  She takes an amber lute and sings,

  And as she sings a silver crane

  Begins his scarlet neck to strain,

  And flap his burnished metal wings.

  She takes a lute of amber bright,

  And from the thicket where he lies

  Her lover, with his almond eyes,

  Watches her movements in delight.

  And now she gives a cry of fear,

  And tiny tears begin to start:

  A thorn has wounded with its dart

  The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear.

  And now she laughs a merry note:

  There has fallen a petal of the rose

  Just where the yellow satin shows

  The blue-veined flower of her throat.

  With pale green nails of polished jade,

  Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl,

  There stands a little ivory girl

  Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade.

  II

  Les Ballons

  Against these turbid turquoise skies

  The light and luminous balloons

  Dip and drift like satin moons,

  Drift like silken butterflies;

  Reel with every windy gust,

  Rise and reel like dancing girls,

  Float like strange transparent pearls,

  Fall and float like silver dust.

  Now to the low leaves they cling,

  Each with coy fantastic pose,

  Each a petal of a rose

  Straining at a gossamer string.

  Then to the tall trees they climb,

  Like thin globes of amethyst,

  Wandering opals keeping tryst

  With the rubies of the lime.

  Canzonet

  I have no store

  Of gryphon-guarded gold;

  Now, as before,

  Bare is the shepherd’s fold.

  Rubies nor pearls

  Have I to gem thy throat;

  Yet woodland girls

  Have loved the shepherd’s note.

  Then, pluck a reed

  And bid me sing to thee,

  For I would feed

  Thine ears with melody,

  Who art more fair

  Than fairest fleur-de-lys,

  More sweet and rare

  Than sweetest ambergris.

  What dost thou fear?

  Young Hyacinth is slain,

  Pan is not here,

  And will not come again.

  No hornèd Faun

  Treads down the yellow leas,

  No God at dawn

  Steals through the olive trees.

  Hylas is dead,

  Nor will he e’er divine

  Those little red

  Rose-petalled lips of thine.

  On the high hill

  No ivory dryads play,

  Silver and still

  Sinks the sad autumn day.

  Symphony in Yellow

  An omnibus across the bridge

  Crawls like a yellow butterfly,

  And, here and there, a passer-by

  Shows like a little restless midge.

  Big barges full of yellow hay

  Are moored against the shadowy wharf,

  And, like a yellow silken scarf,

  The thick fog hangs along the quay.

  The yellow leaves begin to fade

  And flutter from the Temple elms,

  And at my feet the pale green Thames

  Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

  In the Forest

  Out of the mid-wood’s twilight

  Into the meadow’s dawn,

  Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,

  Flashes my Faun!

  He skips through the copses singing,

  And his shadow dances along,

  And I know not which I should follow,

  Shadow or song!

  O Hunter, snare me his shadow!

  O Nightingale, catch me his strain!

  Else moonstruck with music and madness

  I track him in vain!

  To My Wife

  With a Copy of My Poems

  I can write no stately proem

  As a prelude to my lay;

  From a poet to a poem

  I would dare to say.

  For if of these fallen petals

  One to you seem fair,

  Love will waft it till it settles

  On your hair.

  And when wind and winter harden

  All the loveless land,

  It will whisper of the garden,

  You will understand.

  With a Copy of A House of Pomegranates

  Go, little book,

  To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,

  Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:

  And bid him look

  Into thy pages: it may hap that he

  May find that golden maidens dance through thee.

  Roses and Rue

  To L. L.

  Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,

  Were it worth the pleasure,

  We never could learn love’s song,

  We are parted too long.

  Could the passionate past that is fled

  Call back its dead,

  Could we live it all over again,

  Were it worth the pain!

  I remember we used to meet

  By an ivied seat,

  And you warbled each pretty word

  With the air of a bird;

  And your voice had a quaver in it,

  Just like a linnet,

  And shook, as the blackbird’s throat

  With its last big note;

  And your eyes, they were green and grey

  Like an April day,

  But lit into amethyst

  When I stooped and kissed;

  And your mouth, it would never smile

  For a long, long while,

  Then it rippled all over with laughter

  Five minutes after.

  You were always afraid of a shower,

  Just like a flower:

  I remember you started and ran

  When the rain began.

  I remember I never could catch you,

  For no one could match you,

  You had wonderful, luminous, fleet,

  Little wings to your feet.

  I remember your hair—did I tie it?

  For it always ran riot—

  Like a tangled sunbeam of gold:

  These things are old.

  I remember so well the room,

  And the lilac bloom

  That beat at the dripping pane

  In the warm June rain;

  And the colour of your gown,

  It was amber-brown,

  And two yellow satin bows

  From your shoulders rose.

  And the handkerchief of French lace

  Which you held to your face—

  Had a small tear left a stain?

  Or was it the rain?

  On your hand as it waved adieu

  There were veins of blue;

  In your voice as it said good-bye

  Was a petulant cry,

  “You have only wasted your life.”

  (Ah, that was the knife!)

  When I rushed through the garden gate

  It was all too late.

  Could we live it over again,

  Were it worth the pain,

  Could the passionate past that is fled

  Call back its dead!

  Well, if my heart must break,

  Dear love, for your sake,

  It will break in music, I know,

  Poets’ hearts break so.

  But strange that I was not told

  That the brain can hold

  In a tiny ivory cell

  God’s heaven and hell.

  Désespoir

  The seasons send their ruin as they go,

  For in the spring the narciss shows its head

  Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,

  And in the autumn purple violets blow,

  And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow;

  Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again

  And this grey land grow green with summer rain

  And send up cowslips for some boy to mow.

  But what of life whose bitter hungry sea

  Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night

  Covers the days which never more return?

  Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn

  We lose too soon, and only find delight

  In withered husks of some dead memory.

  Pan

  Double Villanelle

  I

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  This modern world is grey and old,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  No more the shepherd lads in glee

  Throw apples at thy wattled fold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Nor through the laurels can one see

  Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  And dull and dead our Thames would be,

  For here the winds are chill and cold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Then keep the tomb of Helicé,

  Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  Though many an unsung elegy

  Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Ah, what remains to us of thee?

  II

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,

  Thy satyrs and their wanton play,

  This modern world hath need of thee.

  No nymph or Faun indeed have we,

  For Faun and nymph are old and grey,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

  This is the land where liberty

  Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  A land of ancient chivalry

  Where gentle Sidney saw the day,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

  This fierce sea-lion of the sea,

  This England lacks some stronger lay,

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  Then blow some trumpet loud and free,

  And give thine oaten pipe away,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  The Sphinx

  To Marcel Schwob in Friendship and in Admiration

  In a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks

  A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom.

  Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir

  For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel.

  Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow

  But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there.

  Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious cat

  Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.

  Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her

  Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears.

  Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque!

  Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal!

  Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and put your head upon my knee!

  And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx!

  And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp

  The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws!

  A thousand weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen

  Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn’s gaudy liveries.

  But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks,

  And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have looked on Hippogriffs.

  O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt?

  And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony

  And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend her head in mimic awe

  To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny from the brine?

  And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon on his catafalque?

  And did you follow Amenalk, the God of Heliopolis?

  And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep?

  And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

  Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!

  Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories!

  Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child,

  And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your shade.

  Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge

  You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter of Antinous

  And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and hungry stare

  The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth!

  Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled!

  Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple’s granite plinth

  When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew

  In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores,

  And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears,

  And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile,

  And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seized their snake

  And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms.

  Who were your lovers? who were they who wrestled for you in the dust?