The Fourth Movement

Impression: Le Reveillon

    • 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 gray,
    • 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 the 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 beloved 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 gorged 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! had’st 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 sums that go to make one speedwell blue!

Silentium Amoris

    • As oftentimes 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 thistledowns, 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 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 heart’s 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 hath paled my lip’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 knife, 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 thistle-down 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.