I
We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are,--but well enough we know How thick about us root, how rankly grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters go We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere Receives the Table's ruin through her door, Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear, Lets fall the colored book upon the floor.
II
Into the golden vessel of great song Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;
Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue Of all the world: the churning blood, the long Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed Sharply together upon the escaping guest, The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.
Longing alone is singer to the lute;
Let still on nettles in the open sigh The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute As any man, and love be far and high, That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit Found on the ground by every passer-by.
III
Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove, Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after The launching of the colored moths of Love.
Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone We bound about our irreligious brows, And fettered him with garlands of our own, And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear Though we should break our bodies in his flame, And pour our blood upon his altar, here Henceforward is a grove without a name, A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan, Whence flee forever a woman and a man.
IV
Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
V
Once more into my arid days like dew, Like wind from an oasis, or the sound Of cold sweet water bubbling underground, A treacherous messenger, the thought of you Comes to destroy me; once more I renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.
VI
No rose that in a garden ever grew, In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine, Though buried under centuries of fine Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew Forever, and forever lost from view, But must again in fragrance rich as wine The grey aisles of the air incarnadine When the old summers surge into a new.
Thus when I swear, "I love with all my heart,"
'Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear, 'Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;
And thus as well my love must lose some part Of what it is, had Helen been less fair, Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.
VII
