{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_400/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_400","id":"gutenberg_400","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/400","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Classics of Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Helen, of Troy, Queen of Sparta -- Poetry","Lyric poetry","Mythology, Greek -- Poetry"],"text":"Produced by A. Light and L. Bowser.  For Gwenette.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Note on text:  Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.  Italicized\nwords or phrases are capitalized.  Lines longer than 78 characters are\nbroken, and the continuation is indented two spaces.  Some obvious\nerrors may be corrected.]\n\n[This etext has been transcribed from the original edition, which was\npublished in New York in 1911.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHelen of Troy And Other Poems\n\nBy\n\nSara Teasdale\n\n[American (Missouri & New York) Poet]\n\n\nAuthor of \"Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems\"\n\n\n\n\nTo Marion Cummings Stanley\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\nHelen of Troy\n\nBeatrice\n\nSappho\n\nMarianna Alcoforando\n\nGuenevere\n\nErinna\n\nLove Songs\n   Song\n   The Rose and the Bee\n   The Song Maker\n   Wild Asters\n   When Love Goes\n   The Wayfarer\n   The Princess in the Tower\n   When Love Was Born\n   The Shrine\n   The Blind\n   Love Me\n   The Song for Colin\n   Four Winds\n   Roundel\n   Dew\n   A Maiden\n   \"I Love You\"\n   But Not to Me\n   Hidden Love\n   Snow Song\n   Youth and the Pilgrim\n   The Wanderer\n   I Would Live in Your Love\n   May\n   Rispetto\n   Less than the Cloud to the Wind\n   Buried Love\n   Song\n   Pierrot\n   At Night\n   Song\n   Love in Autumn\n   The Kiss\n   November\n   A Song of the Princess\n   The Wind\n   A Winter Night\n   The Metropolitan Tower\n   Gramercy Park\n   In the Metropolitan Museum\n   Coney Island\n   Union Square\n   Central Park at Dusk\n   Young Love\n\nSonnets and Lyrics\n   Primavera Mia\n   Soul's Birth\n   Love and Death\n   For the Anniversary of John Keats' Death\n   Silence\n   The Return\n   Fear\n   Anadyomene\n   Galahad in the Castle of the Maidens\n   To an Aeolian Harp\n   To Erinna\n   To Cleis\n   Paris in Spring\n   Madeira from the Sea\n   City Vignettes\n   By the Sea\n   On the Death of Swinburne\n   Triolets\n   Vox Corporis\n   A Ballad of Two Knights\n   Christmas Carol\n   The Faery Forest\n   A Fantasy\n   A Minuet of Mozart's\n   Twilight\n   The Prayer\n   Two Songs for a Child\n\nOn the Tower\n\n\n\n\nHelen of Troy and Other Poems\n\n\n\n\nHelen of Troy\n\n\nWild flight on flight against the fading dawn\nThe flames' red wings soar upward duskily.\nThis is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead\nThat sparkled so the day I saw it first,\nAnd darkened slowly after.  I am she\nWho loves all beauty--yet I wither it.\nWhy have the high gods made me wreak their wrath--\nForever since my maidenhood to sow\nSorrow and blood about me?  Lo, they keep\nTheir bitter care above me even now.\nIt was the gods who led me to this lair,\nThat tho' the burning winds should make me weak,\nThey should not snatch the life from out my lips.\nOlympus let the other women die;\nThey shall be quiet when the day is done\nAnd have no care to-morrow.  Yet for me\nThere is no rest.  The gods are not so kind\nTo her made half immortal like themselves.\nIt is to you I owe the cruel gift,\nLeda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,\nTo you the beauty and to you the bale;\nFor never woman born of man and maid\nHad wrought such havoc on the earth as I,\nOr troubled heaven with a sea of flame\nThat climbed to touch the silent whirling stars\nAnd blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.\nHave I not made the world to weep enough?\nGive death to me.  Yet life is more than death;\nHow could I leave the sound of singing winds,\nThe strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,\nOr shut my eyes forever to the spring?\nI will not give the grave my hands to hold,\nMy shining hair to light oblivion.\nHave those who wander through the ways of death,\nThe still wan fields Elysian, any love\nTo lift their breasts with longing, any lips\nTo thirst against the quiver of a kiss?\nLo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,\nTo make the people love, who hate me now.\nMy dreams are over, I have ceased to cry\nAgainst the fate that made men love my mouth\nAnd left their spirits all too deaf to hear\nThe little songs that echoed through my soul.\nI have no anger now.  The dreams are done;\nYet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see\nAught but my body's fairness, till the end,\nIn all the islands set in all the seas,\nAnd all the lands that lie beneath the sun,\nTill light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,\nMen's lives shall waste with longing after me,\nFor I shall be the sum of their desire,\nThe whole of beauty, never seen again.\nAnd they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake\nWith \"Helen!\" on their lips, and in their eyes\nThe vision of me.  Always I shall be\nLimned on the darkness like a shaft of light\nThat glimmers and is gone.  They shall behold\nEach one his dream that fashions me anew;--\nWith hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars\nDark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow\nLike burnished gold that still retains the fire.\nYea, I shall haunt until the dusk of time\nThe heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.\n\nI wait for one who comes with sword to slay--\nThe king I wronged who searches for me now;\nAnd yet he shall not slay me.  I shall stand\nWith lifted head and look within his eyes,\nBaring my breast to him and to the sun.\nHe shall not have the power to stain with blood\nThat whiteness--for the thirsty sword shall fall\nAnd he shall cry and catch me in his arms,\nBearing me back to Sparta on his breast.\nLo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!\n\n\n\n\nBeatrice\n\n\nSend out the singers--let the room be still;\nThey have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep.\nClose out the sun, for I would have it dark\nThat I may feel how black the grave will be.\nThe sun is setting, for the light is red,\nAnd you are outlined in a golden fire,\nLike Ursula upon an altar-screen.\nCome, leave the light and sit beside my bed,\nFor I have had enough of saints and prayers.\nStrange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,\nThey come and vanish and again they come.\nIt is the fever driving out my soul,\nAnd Death stands waiting by the arras there.\n\nOrnella, I will speak, for soon my lips\nShall keep a silence till the end of time.\nYou have a mouth for loving--listen then:\nKeep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;\nFor I, who die, could wish that I had lived\nA little closer to the world of men,\nNot watching always thro' the blazoned panes\nThat show the world in chilly greens and blues\nAnd grudge the sunshine that would enter in.\nI was no part of all the troubled crowd\nThat moved beneath the palace windows here,\nAnd yet sometimes a knight in shining steel\nWould pass and catch the gleaming of my hair,\nAnd wave a mailed hand and smile at me,\nWhereat I made no sign and turned away,\nAffrighted and yet glad and full of dreams.\nAh, dreams and dreams that asked no answering!\nI should have wrought to make my dreams come true,\nBut all my life was like an autumn day,\nFull of gray quiet and a hazy peace.\n\nWhat was I saying?  All is gone again.\nIt seemed but now I was the little child\nWho played within a garden long ago.\nBeyond the walls the festal trumpets blared.\nPerhaps they carried some Madonna by\nWith tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers,\nA painted Virgin with a painted Child,\nWho saw for once the sweetness of the sun\nBefore they shut her in an altar-niche\nWhere tapers smoke against the windy gloom.\nI gathered roses redder than my gown\nAnd played that I was Saint Elizabeth,\nWhose wine had turned to roses in her hands.\nAnd as I played, a child came thro' the gate,\nA boy who looked at me without a word,\nAs tho' he saw stretch far behind my head\nLong lines of radiant angels, row on row.\nThat day we spoke a little, timidly,\nAnd after that I never heard the voice\nThat sang so many songs for love of me.\nHe was content to stand and watch me pass,\nTo seek for me at matins every day,\nWhere I could feel his eyes the while I prayed.\nI think if he had stretched his hands to me,\nOr moved his lips to say a single word,\nI might have loved him--he had wondrous eyes.\n\nOrnella, are you there?  I cannot see--\nIs every one so lonely when he dies?\n\nThe room is filled with lights--with waving lights--\nWho are the men and women 'round the bed?\nWhat have I said, Ornella?  Have they heard?\nThere was no evil hidden in my life,\nAnd yet, and yet, I would not have them know--\n\nAm I not floating in a mist of light?\nO lift me up and I shall reach the sun!\n\n\n\n\nSappho\n\n\nThe twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,\nAnd in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,\nThe temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.\nTwilight has veiled the little flower face\nHere on my heart, but still the night is kind\nAnd leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.\nAm I that Sappho who would run at dusk\nAlong the surges creeping up the shore\nWhen tides came in to ease the hungry beach,\nAnd running, running, till the night was black,\nWould fall forespent upon the chilly sand\nAnd quiver with the winds from off the sea?\nAh, quietly the shingle waits the tides\nWhose waves are stinging kisses, but to me\nLove brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.\nI crept and touched the foam with fevered hands\nAnd cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,\nFrom whom the sea is bitterer than death.\nAh, Aphrodite, if I sing no more\nTo thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,\nIt is that thou hast made my life too sweet\nTo hold the added sweetness of a song.\nThere is a quiet at the heart of love,\nAnd I have pierced the pain and come to peace.\nI hold my peace, my Cleis, on my heart;\nAnd softer than a little wild bird's wing\nAre kisses that she pours upon my mouth.\nAh, never any more when spring like fire\nWill flicker in the newly opened leaves,\nShall I steal forth to seek for solitude\nBeyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre,\nBeyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice.\nAh, never with a throat that aches with song,\nBeneath the white uncaring sky of spring,\nShall I go forth to hide awhile from Love\nThe quiver and the crying of my heart.\nStill I remember how I strove to flee\nThe love-note of the birds, and bowed my head\nTo hurry faster, but upon the ground\nI saw two winged shadows side by side,\nAnd all the world's spring passion stifled me.\nAh, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,\nNo lonely place where thou hast never trod,\nNo desert thou hast left uncarpeted\nWith flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.\nIn many guises didst thou come to me;\nI saw thee by the maidens while they danced,\nPhaon allured me with a look of thine,\nIn Anactoria I knew thy grace,\nI looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;\nBut never wholly, soul and body mine,\nDidst thou bid any love me as I loved.\nNow I have found the peace that fled from me;\nClose, close, against my heart I hold my world.\nAh, Love that made my life a lyric cry,\nAh, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,\nI taught the world thy music, now alone\nI sing for one who falls asleep to hear.\n\n\n\n\nMarianna Alcoforando\n\n(The Portuguese Nun--1640-1723)\n\n\nThe sparrows wake beneath the convent eaves;\nI think I have not slept the whole night through.\nBut I am old; the aged scarcely know\nThe times they wake and sleep, for life burns down;\nThey breathe the calm of death before they die.\nThe long night ends, the day comes creeping in,\nShowing the sorrows that the darkness hid,\nThe bended head of Christ, the blood, the thorns,\nThe wall's gray stains of damp, the pallet bed\nWhere little Sister Marta dreams of saints,\nWaking with arms outstretched imploringly\nThat seek to stay a vision's vanishing.\nI never had a vision, yet for me\nOur Lady smiled while all the convent slept\nOne winter midnight hushed around with snow--\nI thought she might be kinder than the rest,\nAnd so I came to kneel before her feet,\nSick with love's sorrow and love's bitterness.\nBut when I would have made the blessed sign,\nI found the water frozen in the font,\nAnd touched but ice within the carved stone.\nThe saints had hid themselves away from me,\nLeaving the windows black against the night;\nAnd when I sank upon the altar steps,\nBefore the Virgin Mother and her Child,\nThe last, pale, low-burnt taper flickered out,\nBut in the darkness, smooth and fathomless,\nStill twinkled like a star the holy lamp\nThat cast a dusky glow upon her face.\nThen through the numbing cold peace fell on me,\nSubmission and the gracious gift of tears,\nFor when I looked, Oh! blessed miracle,\nHer lips had parted and Our Lady smiled!\nAnd then I knew that Love is worth its pain\nAnd that my heart was richer for his sake,\nSince lack of love is bitterest of all.\n\nThe day is broad awake--the first long beam\nOf level sun finds Sister Marta's face,\nAnd trembling there it lights a timid smile\nUpon the lips that say so many prayers,\nAnd have no words for hate and none for love.\nBut when she passes where her prayers have gone,\nWill God not smile a little sadly then,\nAnd send her back with gentle words to earth\nThat she may hold a child against her breast\nAnd feel its little hands upon her hair?\nWe weep before the Blessed Mother's shrine,\nTo think upon her sorrows, but her joys\nWhat nun could ever know a tithing of?\nThe precious hours she watched above His sleep\nWere worth the fearful anguish of the end.\nYea, lack of love is bitterest of all;\nYet I have felt what thing it is to know\nOne thought forever, sleeping or awake;\nTo say one name whose sweetness grows so strange\nThat it might work a spell on those who weep;\nTo feel the weight of love upon my heart\nSo heavy that the blood can scarcely flow.\nLove comes to some unlooked-for, quietly,\nAs when at twilight, with a soft surprise,\nWe see the new-born crescent in the blue;\nAnd unto others love is planet-like,\nA cold and placid gleam that wavers not,\nAnd there are those who wait the call of love\nExpectant of his coming, as we watch\nTo see the east grow pallid ere the moon\nLifts up her flower-like head against the night.\nLove came to me as comes a cruel sun,\nThat on some rain-drenched morning, when the leaves\nAre bowed beneath their clinging weight of drops,\nTears through the mist, and burns with fervent heat\nThe tender grasses and the meadow flowers;\nThen suddenly the heavy clouds close in\nAnd through the dark the thunder's muttering\nIs drowned amid the dashing of the rain.\n\nBut I have seen my day grow calm again.\nThe sun sets slowly on a peaceful world,\nAnd sheds a quiet light across the fields.\n\n\n\n\nGuenevere\n\n\nI was a queen, and I have lost my crown;\nA wife, and I have broken all my vows;\nA lover, and I ruined him I loved:--\nThere is no other havoc left to do.\nA little month ago I was a queen,\nAnd mothers held their babies up to see\nWhen I came riding out of Camelot.\nThe women smiled, and all the world smiled too.\nAnd now, what woman's eyes would smile on me?\nI still am beautiful, and yet what child\nWould think of me as some high, heaven-sent thing,\nAn angel, clad in gold and miniver?\nThe world would run from me, and yet am I\nNo different from the queen they used to love.\nIf water, flowing silver over stones,\nIs forded, and beneath the horses' feet\nGrows turbid suddenly, it clears again,\nAnd men will drink it with no thought of harm.\nYet I am branded for a single fault.\n\nI was the flower amid a toiling world,\nWhere people smiled to see one happy thing,\nAnd they were proud and glad to raise me high;\nThey only asked that I should be right fair,\nA little kind, and gowned wondrously,\nAnd surely it were little praise to me\nIf I had pleased them well throughout my life.\n\nI was a queen, the daughter of a king.\nThe crown was never heavy on my head,\nIt was my right, and was a part of me.\nThe women thought me proud, the men were kind,\nAnd bowed right gallantly to kiss my hand,\nAnd watched me as I passed them calmly by,\nAlong the halls I shall not tread again.\nWhat if, to-night, I should revisit them?\nThe warders at the gates, the kitchen-maids,\nThe very beggars would stand off from me,\nAnd I, their queen, would climb the stairs alone,\nPass through the banquet-hall, a loathed thing,\nAnd seek my chambers for a hiding-place,\nAnd I should find them but a sepulchre,\nThe very rushes rotted on the floors,\nThe fire in ashes on the freezing hearth.\nI was a queen, and he who loved me best\nMade me a woman for a night and day,\nAnd now I go unqueened forevermore.\nA queen should never dream on summer eves,\nWhen hovering spells are heavy in the dusk:--\nI think no night was ever quite so still,\nSo smoothly lit with red along the west,\nSo deeply hushed with quiet through and through.\nAnd strangely clear, and deeply dyed with light,\nThe trees stood straight against a paling sky,\nWith Venus burning lamp-like in the west.\n\nI walked alone amid a thousand flowers,\nThat drooped their heads and drowsed beneath the dew,\nAnd all my thoughts were quieted to sleep.\nBehind me, on the walk, I heard a step--\nI did not know my heart could tell his tread,\nI did not know I loved him till that hour.\nWithin my breast I felt a wild, sick pain,\nThe garden reeled a little, I was weak,\nAnd quick he came behind me, caught my arms,\nThat ached beneath his touch; and then I swayed,\nMy head fell backward and I saw his face.\n\nAll this grows bitter that was once so sweet,\nAnd many mouths must drain the dregs of it.\nBut none will pity me, nor pity him\nWhom Love so lashed, and with such cruel thongs.\n\n\n\n\nErinna\n\n\nThey sent you in to say farewell to me,\nNo, do not shake your head; I see your eyes\nThat shine with tears.  Sappho, you saw the sun\nJust now when you came hither, and again,\nWhen you have left me, all the shimmering\nGreat meadows will laugh lightly, and the sun\nPut round about you warm invisible arms\nAs might a lover, decking you with light.\nI go toward darkness tho' I lie so still.\nIf I could see the sun, I should look up\nAnd drink the light until my eyes were blind;\nI should kneel down and kiss the blades of grass,\nAnd I should call the birds with such a voice,\nWith such a longing, tremulous and keen,\nThat they would fly to me and on the breast\nBear evermore to tree-tops and to fields\nThe kiss I gave them.  Sappho, tell me this,\nWas I not sometimes fair?  My eyes, my mouth,\nMy hair that loved the wind, were they not worth\nThe breath of love upon them?  Yet he passed,\nAnd he will pass to-night when all the air\nIs blue with twilight; but I shall not see.\nI shall have gone forever.  Hold my hands,\nHold fast that Death may never come between;\nSwear by the gods you will not let me go;\nMake songs for Death as you would sing to Love--\nBut you will not assuage him.  He alone\nOf all the gods will take no gifts from men.\nI am afraid, afraid.\n\n                      Sappho, lean down.\nLast night the fever gave a dream to me,\nIt takes my life and gives a little dream.\nI thought I saw him stand, the man I love,\nHere in my quiet chamber, with his eyes\nFixed on me as I entered, while he drew\nSilently toward me--he who night by night\nGoes by my door without a thought of me--\nNeared me and put his hand behind my head,\nAnd leaning toward me, kissed me on the mouth.\nThat was a little dream for Death to give,\nToo short to take the whole of life for, yet\nI woke with lips made quiet by a kiss.\nThe dream is worth the dying.  Do not smile\nSo sadly on me with your shining eyes,\nYou who can set your sorrow to a song\nAnd ease your hurt by singing.  But to me\nMy songs are less than sea-sand that the wind\nDrives stinging over me and bears away.\nI have no care what place the grains may fall,\nNor of my songs, if Time shall blow them back,\nAs land-wind breaks the lines of dying foam\nAlong the bright wet beaches, scattering\nThe flakes once more against the laboring sea,\nInto oblivion.  What care have I\nTo please Apollo since Love hearkens not?\nYour words will live forever, men will say\n\"She was the perfect lover\"--I shall die,\nI loved too much to live.  Go Sappho, go--\nI hate your hands that beat so full of life,\nGo, lest my hatred hurt you.  I shall die,\nBut you will live to love and love again.\nHe might have loved some other spring than this;\nI should have kept my life--I let it go.\nHe would not love me now tho' Cypris bound\nHer girdle round me.  I am Death's, not Love's.\nGo from me, Sappho, back to find the sun.\n\n\nI am alone, alone.  O Cyprian . . .\n\n\n\n\nLove Songs\n\n\n\n   Song\n\n\nYou bound strong sandals on my feet,\n You gave me bread and wine,\nAnd bade me out, 'neath sun and stars,\n For all the world was mine.\n\nOh take the sandals off my feet,\n You know not what you do;\nFor all my world is in your arms,\n My sun and stars are you.\n\n\n\n\n   The Rose and the Bee\n\n\nIf I were a bee and you were a rose,\nWould you let me in when the gray wind blows?\nWould you hold your petals wide apart,\nWould you let me in to find your heart,\n    If you were a rose?\n\n\"If I were a rose and you were a bee,\nYou should never go when you came to me,\nI should hold my love on my heart at last,\nI should close my leaves and keep you fast,\n    If you were a bee.\"\n\n\n\n\n   The Song Maker\n\n\nI made a hundred little songs\n That told the joy and pain of love,\nAnd sang them blithely, tho' I knew\n No whit thereof.\n\nI was a weaver deaf and blind;\n A miracle was wrought for me,\nBut I have lost my skill to weave\n Since I can see.\n\nFor while I sang--ah swift and strange!\n Love passed and touched me on the brow,\nAnd I who made so many songs\n Am silent now.\n\n\n\n\n   Wild Asters\n\n\nIn the spring I asked the daisies\n If his words were true,\nAnd the clever little daisies\n Always knew.\n\nNow the fields are brown and barren,\n Bitter autumn blows,\nAnd of all the stupid asters\n Not one knows.\n\n\n\n\n   When Love Goes\n\n\n  I\n\nO mother, I am sick of love,\n I cannot laugh nor lift my head,\nMy bitter dreams have broken me,\n I would my love were dead.\n\n\"Drink of the draught I brew for thee,\nThou shalt have quiet in its stead.\"\n\n\n  II\n\nWhere is the silver in the rain,\n Where is the music in the sea,\nWhere is the bird that sang all day\n To break my heart with melody?\n\n\"The night thou badst Love fly away,\nHe hid them all from thee.\"\n\n\n\n\n   The Wayfarer\n\n\nLove entered in my heart one day,\n A sad, unwelcome guest;\nBut when he begged that he might stay,\n I let him wait and rest.\n\nHe broke my sleep with sorrowing,\n And shook my dreams with tears,\nAnd when my heart was fain to sing,\n He stilled its joy with fears.\n\nBut now that he has gone his way,\n I miss the old sweet pain,\nAnd sometimes in the night I pray\n That he may come again.\n\n\n\n\n   The Princess in the Tower\n\n\n  I\n\nThe Princess sings:\n\n  I am the princess up in the tower\n   And I dream the whole day thro'\n  Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear\n   And a waving plume of blue.\n\n  I am the princess up in the tower,\n   And I dream my dreams by day,\n  But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,\n   When the dusk is deep and gray.\n\n  For the peasant lovers go by beneath,\n   I hear them laugh and kiss,\n  And I forget my day-dream knight,\n   And long for a love like this.\n\n\n  II\n\nThe Minstrel sings:\n\n  I lie beside the princess' tower,\n   So close she cannot see my face,\n  And watch her dreaming all day long,\n   And bending with a lily's grace.\n\n  Her cheeks are paler than the moon\n   That sails along a sunny sky,\n  And yet her silent mouth is red\n   Where tender words and kisses lie.\n\n  I am a minstrel with a harp,\n   For love of her my songs are sweet,\n  And yet I dare not lift the voice\n   That lies so far beneath her feet.\n\n\n  III\n\nThe Knight sings:\n\n  O princess cease your dreams awhile\n   And look adown your tower's gray side--\n  The princess gazes far away,\n   Nor hears nor heeds the words I cried.\n\n  Perchance my heart was overbold,\n   God made her dreams too pure to break,\n  She sees the angels in the air\n   Fly to and fro for Mary's sake.\n\n  Farewell, I mount and go my way,\n  --But oh her hair the sun sifts thro'--\n  The tilts and tourneys wait my spear,\n   I am the Knight of the Plume of Blue.\n\n\n\n\n   When Love Was Born\n\n\nWhen Love was born I think he lay\n Right warm on Venus' breast,\nAnd whiles he smiled and whiles would play\n And whiles would take his rest.\n\nBut always, folded out of sight,\n The wings were growing strong\nThat were to bear him off in flight\n Erelong, erelong.\n\n\n\n\n   The Shrine\n\n\nThere is no lord within my heart,\n Left silent as an empty shrine\n Where rose and myrtle intertwine,\nWithin a place apart.\n\nNo god is there of carven stone\n To watch with still approving eyes\n My thoughts like steady incense rise;\nI dream and weep alone.\n\nBut if I keep my altar fair,\n Some morning I shall lift my head\n From roses deftly garlanded\nTo find the god is there.\n\n\n\n\n   The Blind\n\n\nThe birds are all a-building,\n They say the world's a-flower,\nAnd still I linger lonely\n Within a barren bower.\n\nI weave a web of fancies\n Of tears and darkness spun.\nHow shall I sing of sunlight\n Who never saw the sun?\n\nI hear the pipes a-blowing,\n But yet I may not dance,\nI know that Love is passing,\n I cannot catch his glance.\n\nAnd if his voice should call me\n And I with groping dim\nShould reach his place of calling\n And stretch my arms to him,\n\nThe wind would blow between my hands\n For Joy that I shall miss,\nThe rain would fall upon my mouth\n That his will never kiss.\n\n\n\n\n   Love Me\n\n\nBrown-thrush singing all day long\n In the leaves above me,\nTake my love this little song,\n \"Love me, love me, love me!\"\n\nWhen he harkens what you say,\n Bid him, lest he miss me,\nLeave his work or leave his play,\n And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!\n\n\n\n\n   The Song for Colin\n\n\nI sang a song at dusking time\n Beneath the evening star,\nAnd Terence left his latest rhyme\n To answer from afar.\n\nPierrot laid down his lute to weep,\n And sighed, \"She sings for me,\"\nBut Colin slept a careless sleep\n Beneath an apple tree.\n\n\n\n\n   Four Winds\n\n\n\"Four winds blowing thro' the sky,\nYou have seen poor maidens die,\nTell me then what I shall do\nThat my lover may be true.\"\nSaid the wind from out the south,\n\"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,\"\nAnd the wind from out the west,\n\"Wound the heart within his breast,\"\nAnd the wind from out the east,\n\"Send him empty from the feast,\"\nAnd the wind from out the north,\n\"In the tempest thrust him forth,\nWhen thou art more cruel than he,\nThen will Love be kind to thee.\"\n\n\n\n\n   Roundel\n\n\nIf he could know my songs are all for him,\nAt silver dawn or in the evening glow,\nWould he not smile and think it but a whim,\n    If he could know?\n\nOr would his heart rejoice and overflow,\nAs happy brooks that break their icy rim\nWhen April's horns along the hillsides blow?\n\nI may not speak till Eros' torch is dim,\nThe god is bitter and will have it so;\nAnd yet to-night our fate would seem less grim\n    If he could know.\n\n\n\n\n   Dew\n\n\nI dream that he is mine,\n I dream that he is true,\nAnd all his words I keep\n As rose-leaves hold the dew.\n\nO little thirsty rose,\n O little heart beware,\nLest you should hope to hold\n A hundred roses' share.\n\n\n\n\n   A Maiden\n\n\nOh if I were the velvet rose\n Upon the red rose vine,\nI'd climb to touch his window\n And make his casement fine.\n\nAnd if I were the little bird\n That twitters on the tree,\nAll day I'd sing my love for him\n Till he should harken me.\n\nBut since I am a maiden\n I go with downcast eyes,\nAnd he will never hear the songs\n That he has turned to sighs.\n\nAnd since I am a maiden\n My love will never know\nThat I could kiss him with a mouth\n More red than roses blow.\n\n\n\n\n   \"I Love You\"\n\n\nWhen April bends above me\n And finds me fast asleep,\nDust need not keep the secret\n A live heart died to keep.\n\nWhen April tells the thrushes,\n The meadow-larks will know,\nAnd pipe the three words lightly\n To all the winds that blow.\n\nAbove his roof the swallows,\n In notes like far-blown rain,\nWill tell the little sparrow\n Beside his window-pane.\n\nO sparrow, little sparrow,\n When I am fast asleep,\nThen tell my love the secret\n That I have died to keep.\n\n\n\n\n   But Not to Me\n\n\nThe April night is still and sweet\n With flowers on every tree;\nPeace comes to them on quiet feet,\n    But not to me.\n\nMy peace is hidden in his breast\n Where I shall never be,\nLove comes to-night to all the rest,\n    But not to me.\n\n\n\n\n   Hidden Love\n\n\nI hid the love within my heart,\n And lit the laughter in my eyes,\nThat when we meet he may not know\n My love that never dies.\n\nBut sometimes when he dreams at night\n Of fragrant forests green and dim,\nIt may be that my love crept out\n And brought the dream to him.\n\nAnd sometimes when his heart is sick\n And suddenly grows well again,\nIt may be that my love was there\n To free his life of pain.\n\n\n\n\n   Snow Song\n\n\nFairy snow, fairy snow,\nBlowing, blowing everywhere,\n Would that I\n Too, could fly\nLightly, lightly through the air.\n\nLike a wee, crystal star\nI should drift, I should blow\n Near, more near,\n To my dear\nWhere he comes through the snow.\n\nI should fly to my love\nLike a flake in the storm,\n I should die,\n I should die,\nOn his lips that are warm.\n\n\n\n\n   Youth and the Pilgrim\n\n\nGray pilgrim, you have journeyed far,\n I pray you tell to me\nIs there a land where Love is not,\n By shore of any sea?\n\nFor I am weary of the god,\n And I would flee from him\nTho' I must take a ship and go\n Beyond the ocean's rim.\n\n\"I know a port where Love is not,\n The ship is in your hand,\nThen plunge your sword within your breast\n And you will reach the land.\"\n\n\n\n\n   The Wanderer\n\n\nI saw the sunset-colored sands,\n The Nile like flowing fire between,\n Where Rameses stares forth serene,\nAnd Ammon's heavy temple stands.\n\nI saw the rocks where long ago,\n Above the sea that cries and breaks,\n Bright Perseus with Medusa's snakes\nSet free the maiden white like snow.\n\nAnd many skies have covered me,\n And many winds have blown me forth,\n And I have loved the green bright north,\nAnd I have loved the cold sweet sea.\n\nBut what to me are north and south,\n And what the lure of many lands,\n Since you have leaned to catch my hands\nAnd lay a kiss upon my mouth.\n\n\n\n\n   I Would Live in Your Love\n\n\nI would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,\nBorne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;\nI would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,\nI would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul\n  as it leads.\n\n\n\n\n   May\n\n\nThe wind is tossing the lilacs,\n The new leaves laugh in the sun,\nAnd the petals fall on the orchard wall,\n But for me the spring is done.\n\nBeneath the apple blossoms\n I go a wintry way,\nFor love that smiled in April\n Is false to me in May.\n\n\n\n\n   Rispetto\n\n\nWas that his step that sounded on the stair?\n Was that his knock I heard upon the door?\nI grow so tired I almost cease to care,\n And yet I would that he might come once more.\n\nIt was the wind I heard, that mocks at me,\nThe bitter wind that is more cruel than he;\nIt was the wind that knocked upon the door,\nBut he will never knock nor enter more.\n\n\n\n\n   Less than the Cloud to the Wind\n\n\nLess than the cloud to the wind,\n Less than the foam to the sea,\nLess than the rose to the storm\n   Am I to thee.\n\nMore than the star to the night,\n More than the rain to the lea,\nMore than heaven to earth\n   Art thou to me.\n\n\n\n\n   Buried Love\n\n\nI shall bury my weary Love\n Beneath a tree,\nIn the forest tall and black\n Where none can see.\n\nI shall put no flowers at his head,\n Nor stone at his feet,\nFor the mouth I loved so much\n Was bittersweet.\n\nI shall go no more to his grave,\n For the woods are cold.\nI shall gather as much of joy\n As my hands can hold.\n\nI shall stay all day in the sun\n Where the wide winds blow,\nBut oh, I shall weep at night\n When none will know.\n\n\n\n\n   Song\n\n\nO woe is me, my heart is sad,\n For I should never know\nIf Love came by like any lad,\n Without his silver bow.\n\nOr if he left his arrows sharp\n And came a minstrel weary,\nI'd never tell him by his harp\n Nor know him for my dearie.\n\n\"O go your ways and have no fear,\n For tho' Love passes by,\nHe'll come a hundred times, my dear,\n Before your turn to die.\"\n\n\n\n\n   Pierrot\n\n\nPierrot stands in the garden\n Beneath a waning moon,\nAnd on his lute he fashions\n A little silver tune.\n\nPierrot plays in the garden,\n He thinks he plays for me,\nBut I am quite forgotten\n Under the cherry tree.\n\nPierrot plays in the garden,\n And all the roses know\nThat Pierrot loves his music,\n But I love Pierrot.\n\n\n\n\n   At Night\n\n\nLove said, \"Wake still and think of me,\"\n Sleep, \"Close your eyes till break of day,\"\nBut Dreams came by and smilingly\n Gave both to Love and Sleep their way.\n\n\n\n\n   Song\n\n\nWhen Love comes singing to his heart\n That would not wake for me,\nI think that I shall know his joy\n By my own ecstasy.\n\nAnd tho' the sea were all between,\n The time their hands shall meet,\nMy heart will know his happiness,\n So wildly it will beat.\n\nAnd when he bends above her mouth,\n Rejoicing for his sake,\nMy soul will sing a little song,\n But oh, my heart will break.\n\n\n\n\n   Love in Autumn\n\n\nI sought among the drifting leaves,\n The golden leaves that once were green,\nTo see if Love were hiding there\n And peeping out between.\n\nFor thro' the silver showers of May\n And thro' the summer's heavy heat,\nIn vain I sought his golden head\n And light, fast-flying feet.\n\nPerhaps when all the world is bare\n And cruel winter holds the land,\nThe Love that finds no place to hide\n Will run and catch my hand.\n\nI shall not care to have him then,\n I shall be bitter and a-cold--\nIt grows too late for frolicking\n When all the world is old.\n\nThen little hiding Love, come forth,\n Come forth before the autumn goes,\nAnd let us seek thro' ruined paths\n The garden's last red rose.\n\n\n\n\n   The Kiss\n\n\nI hoped that he would love me,\n And he has kissed my mouth,\nBut I am like a stricken bird\n That cannot reach the south.\n\nFor tho' I know he loves me,\n To-night my heart is sad;\nHis kiss was not so wonderful\n As all the dreams I had.\n\n\n\n\n   November\n\n\nThe world is tired, the year is old,\n The little leaves are glad to die,\nThe wind goes shivering with cold\n Among the rushes dry.\n\nOur love is dying like the grass,\n And we who kissed grow coldly kind,\nHalf glad to see our poor love pass\n Like leaves along the wind.\n\n\n\n\n   A Song of the Princess\n\n\nThe princess has her lovers,\n A score of knights has she,\nAnd each can sing a madrigal,\n And praise her gracefully.\n\nBut Love that is so bitter\n Hath put within her heart\nA longing for the scornful knight\n Who silent stands apart.\n\nAnd tho' the others praise and plead,\n She maketh no reply,\nYet for a single word from him,\n I ween that she would die.\n\n\n\n\n   The Wind\n\n\nA wind is blowing over my soul,\n I hear it cry the whole night thro'--\nIs there no peace for me on earth\n Except with you?\n\nAlas, the wind has made me wise,\n Over my naked soul it blew,--\nThere is no peace for me on earth\n Even with you.\n\n\n\n\n   A Winter Night\n\n\nMy window-pane is starred with frost,\n The world is bitter cold to-night,\nThe moon is cruel and the wind\n Is like a two-edged sword to smite.\n\nGod pity all the homeless ones,\n The beggars pacing to and fro.\nGod pity all the poor to-night\n Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.\n\nMy room is like a bit of June,\n Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,\nBut somewhere, like a homeless child,\n My heart is crying in the cold.\n\n\n\n\n   The Metropolitan Tower\n\n\nWe walked together in the dusk\n To watch the tower grow dimly white,\nAnd saw it lift against the sky\n Its flower of amber light.\n\nYou talked of half a hundred things,\n I kept each little word you said;\nAnd when at last the hour was full,\n I saw the light turn red.\n\nYou did not know the time had come,\n You did not see the sudden flower,\nNor know that in my heart Love's birth\n Was reckoned from that hour.\n\n\n\n\n   Gramercy Park\n\n     For W. P.\n\n\nThe little park was filled with peace,\n The walks were carpeted with snow,\nBut every iron gate was locked.\n Lest if we entered, peace would go.\n\nWe circled it a dozen times,\n The wind was blowing from the sea,\nI only felt your restless eyes\n Whose love was like a cloak for me.\n\nOh heavy gates that fate has locked\n To bar the joy we may not win,\nPeace would go out forevermore\n If we should dare to enter in.\n\n\n\n\n   In the Metropolitan Museum\n\n\nWithin the tiny Pantheon\n We stood together silently,\nLeaving the restless crowd awhile\n As ships find shelter from the sea.\n\nThe ancient centuries came back\n To cover us a moment's space,\nAnd thro' the dome the light was glad\n Because it shone upon your face.\n\nAh, not from Rome but farther still,\n Beyond sun-smitten Salamis,\nThe moment took us, till you stooped\n To find the present with a kiss.\n\n\n\n\n   Coney Island\n\n\nWhy did you bring me here?\nThe sand is white with snow,\nOver the wooden domes\nThe winter sea-winds blow--\nThere is no shelter near,\n Come, let us go.\n\nWith foam of icy lace\nThe sea creeps up the sand,\nThe wind is like a hand\nThat strikes us in the face.\nDoors that June set a-swing\nAre bolted long ago;\nWe try them uselessly--\nAlas, there cannot be\nFor us a second spring;\n Come, let us go.\n\n\n\n\n   Union Square\n\n\nWith the man I love who loves me not,\n I walked in the street-lamps' flare;\nWe watched the world go home that night\n In a flood through Union Square.\n\nI leaned to catch the words he said\n That were light as a snowflake falling;\nAh well that he never leaned to hear\n The words my heart was calling.\n\nAnd on we walked and on we walked\n Past the fiery lights of the picture shows--\nWhere the girls with thirsty eyes go by\n On the errand each man knows.\n\nAnd on we walked and on we walked,\n At the door at last we said good-bye;\nI knew by his smile he had not heard\n My heart's unuttered cry.\n\nWith the man I love who loves me not\n I walked in the street-lamps' flare--\nBut oh, the girls who can ask for love\n In the lights of Union Square.\n\n\n\n\n   Central Park at Dusk\n\n\nBuildings above the leafless trees\n Loom high as castles in a dream,\nWhile one by one the lamps come out\n To thread the twilight with a gleam.\n\nThere is no sign of leaf or bud,\n A hush is over everything--\nSilent as women wait for love,\n The world is waiting for the spring.\n\n\n\n\n   Young Love\n\n\n  I\n\nI cannot heed the words they say,\n The lights grow far away and dim,\nAmid the laughing men and maids\n My eyes unbidden seek for him.\n\nI hope that when he smiles at me\n He does not guess my joy and pain,\nFor if he did, he is too kind\n To ever look my way again.\n\n\n  II\n\nI have a secret in my heart\n No ears have ever heard,\nAnd still it sings there day by day\n Most like a caged bird.\n\nAnd when it beats against the bars,\n I do not set it free,\nFor I am happier to know\n It only sings for me.\n\n\n  III\n\nI wrote his name along the beach,\n I love the letters so.\nFar up it seemed and out of reach,\n For still the tide was low.\n\nBut oh, the sea came creeping up,\n And washed the name away,\nAnd on the sand where it had been\n A bit of sea-grass lay.\n\nA bit of sea-grass on the sand,\n Dropped from a mermaid's hair--\nAh, had she come to kiss his name\n And leave a token there?\n\n\n  IV\n\nWhat am I that he should love me,\nHe who stands so far above me,\n What am I?\nI am like a cowslip turning\n Toward the sky,\nWhere a planet's golden burning\nBreaks the cowslip's heart with yearning,\nWhat am I that he should love me,\n What am I?\n\n\n  V\n\nO dreams that flock about my sleep,\n I pray you bring my love to me,\nAnd let me think I hear his voice\n Again ring free.\n\nAnd if you care to please me well,\n And live to-morrow in my mind,\nLet him who was so cold before,\n To-night seem kind.\n\n\n  VI\n\nI plucked a daisy in the fields,\n And there beneath the sun\nI let its silver petals fall\n    One after one.\n\nI said, \"He loves me, loves me not,\"\n And oh, my heart beat fast,\nThe flower was kind, it let me say\n   \"He loves me,\" last.\n\nI kissed the little leafless stem,\n But oh, my poor heart knew\nThe words the flower had said to me,\n   They were not true.\n\n\n  VII\n\nI sent my love a letter,\n And if he loves me not,\nHe shall not find my love for him\n In any line or dot.\n\nBut if he loves me truly,\n He'll find it hidden deep,\nAs dawn gleams red thro' chilly clouds\n To eyes awaked from sleep.\n\n\n  VIII\n\nThe world is cold and gray and wet,\nAnd I am heavy-hearted, yet\nWhen I am home and look to see\nThe place my letters wait for me,\nIf I should find ONE letter there,\nI think I should not greatly care\nIf it were rainy or were fair,\nFor all the world would suddenly\nSeem like a festival to me.\n\n\n  IX\n\nI hid three words within my heart,\n That longed to fly to him,\nAt dawn they woke me with a start,\n They sang till day was dim.\n\nAnd now at last I let them fly,\n As little birds should do,\nAnd he will know the first is \"I\",\n The others \"Love\" and \"You\".\n\n\n  X\n\nAcross the twilight's violet\n His curtained window glimmers gold;\nOh happy light that round my love\n   Can fold.\n\nOh happy book within his hand,\n Oh happy page he glorifies,\nOh happy little word beneath\n   His eyes.\n\nBut oh, thrice happy, happy I\n Who love him more than songs can tell,\nFor in the heaven of his heart\n   I dwell.\n\n\n\n\nSonnets and Lyrics\n\n\n\n\n   Primavera Mia\n\n\nAs kings who see their little life-day pass,\nTake off the heavy ermine and the crown,\nSo had the trees that autumn-time laid down\nTheir golden garments on the faded grass,\nWhen I, who watched the seasons in the glass\nOf mine own thoughts, saw all the autumn's brown\nLeap into life and don a sunny gown\nOf leafage such as happy April has.\nGreat spring came singing upward from the south;\nFor in my heart, far carried on the wind,\nYour words like winged seeds took root and grew,\nAnd all the world caught music from your mouth;\nI saw the light as one who had been blind,\nAnd knew my sun and song and spring were you.\n\n\n\n\n   Soul's Birth\n\n\nWhen you were born, beloved, was your soul\nNew made by God to match your body's flower,\nAnd were they both at one same precious hour\nSent forth from heaven as a perfect whole?\nOr had your soul since dim creation burned,\nA star in some still region of the sky,\nThat leaping earthward, left its place on high\nAnd to your little new-born body yearned?\nNo words can tell in what celestial hour\nGod made your soul and gave it mortal birth,\nNor in the disarray of all the stars\nIs any place so sweet that such a flower\nMight linger there until thro' heaven's bars,\nIt heard God's voice that bade it down to earth.\n\n\n\n\n   Love and Death\n\n\nShall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep,\nAnd shall my soul that lies within your hand\nRemember nothing, as the blowing sand\nForgets the palm where long blue shadows creep\nWhen winds along the darkened desert sweep?\nOr would it still remember, tho' it spanned\nA thousand heavens, while the planets fanned\nThe vacant ether with their voices deep?\nSoul of my soul, no word shall be forgot,\nNor yet alone, beloved, shall we see\nThe desolation of extinguished suns,\nNor fear the void wherethro' our planet runs,\nFor still together shall we go and not\nFare forth alone to front eternity.\n\n\n\n\n   For the Anniversary of John Keats' Death\n\n     (February 23, 1821)\n\n\nAt midnight when the moonlit cypress trees\nHave woven round his grave a magic shade,\nStill weeping the unfinished hymn he made,\nThere moves fresh Maia like a morning breeze\nBlown over jonquil beds when warm rains cease.\nAnd stooping where her poet's head is laid,\nSelene weeps while all the tides are stayed\nAnd swaying seas are darkened into peace.\nBut they who wake the meadows and the tides\nHave hearts too kind to bid him wake from sleep\nWho murmurs sometimes when his dreams are deep,\nStartling the Quiet Land where he abides,\nAnd charming still, sad-eyed Persephone\nWith visions of the sunny earth and sea.\n\n\n\n\n   Silence\n\n     (To Eleonora Duse)\n\n\nWe are anhungered after solitude,\nDeep stillness pure of any speech or sound,\nSoft quiet hovering over pools profound,\nThe silences that on the desert brood,\nAbove a windless hush of empty seas,\nThe broad unfurling banners of the dawn,\nA faery forest where there sleeps a Faun;\nOur souls are fain of solitudes like these.\nO woman who divined our weariness,\nAnd set the crown of silence on your art,\nFrom what undreamed-of depth within your heart\nHave you sent forth the hush that makes us free\nTo hear an instant, high above earth's stress,\nThe silent music of infinity?\n\n\n\n\n   The Return\n\n\nI turned the key and opened wide the door\nTo enter my deserted room again,\nWhere thro' the long hot months the dust had lain.\nWas it not lonely when across the floor\nNo step was heard, no sudden song that bore\nMy whole heart upward with a joyous pain?\nWere not the pictures and the volumes fain\nTo have me with them always as before?\nBut Giorgione's Venus did not deign\nTo lift her lids, nor did the subtle smile\nOf Mona Lisa deepen.  Madeleine\nStill wept against the glory of her hair,\nNor did the lovers part their lips the while,\nBut kissed unheeding that I watched them there.\n\n\n\n\n   Fear\n\n\nI am afraid, oh I am so afraid!\nThe cold black fear is clutching me to-night\nAs long ago when they would take the light\nAnd leave the little child who would have prayed,\nFrozen and sleepless at the thought of death.\nMy heart that beats too fast will rest too soon;\nI shall not know if it be night or noon,--\nYet shall I struggle in the dark for breath?\nWill no one fight the Terror for my sake,\nThe heavy darkness that no dawn will break?\nHow can they leave me in that dark alone,\nWho loved the joy of light and warmth so much,\nAnd thrilled so with the sense of sound and touch,--\nHow can they shut me underneath a stone?\n\n\n\n\n   Anadyomene\n\n\nThe wide, bright temple of the world I found,\nAnd entered from the dizzy infinite\nThat I might kneel and worship thee in it;\nLeaving the singing stars their ceaseless round\nOf silver music sound on orbed sound,\nFor measured spaces where the shrines are lit,\nAnd men with wisdom or with little wit\nImplore the gods that mercy may abound.\nAh, Aphrodite, was it not from thee\nMy summons came across the endless spaces?\nMother of Love, turn not thy face from me\nNow that I seek for thee in human faces;\nAnswer my prayer or set my spirit free\nAgain to drift along the starry places.\n\n\n\n\n   Galahad in the Castle of the Maidens\n\n     (To the maiden with the hidden face in Abbey's painting)\n\n\nThe other maidens raised their eyes to him\nWho stumbled in before them when the fight\nHad left him victor, with a victor's right.\nI think his eyes with quick hot tears grew dim;\nHe scarcely saw her swaying white and slim,\nAnd trembling slightly, dreaming of his might,\nNor knew he touched her hand, as strangely light\nAs a wan wraith's beside a river's rim.\nThe other maidens raised their eyes to see\nAnd only she has hid her face away,\nAnd yet I ween she loved him more than they,\nAnd very fairly fashioned was her face.\nYet for Love's shame and sweet humility,\nShe dared not meet him with their queenlike grace.\n\n\n\n\n   To an Aeolian Harp\n\n\nThe winds have grown articulate in thee,\nAnd voiced again the wail of ancient woe\nThat smote upon the winds of long ago:\nThe cries of Trojan women as they flee,\nThe quivering moan of pale Andromache,\nNow lifted loud with pain and now brought low.\nIt is the soul of sorrow that we know,\nAs in a shell the soul of all the sea.\nSo sometimes in the compass of a song,\nUnknown to him who sings, thro' lips that live,\nThe voiceless dead of long-forgotten lands\nProclaim to us their heaviness and wrong\nIn sweeping sadness of the winds that give\nThy strings no rest from weariless wild hands.\n\n\n\n\n   To Erinna\n\n\nWas Time not harsh to you, or was he kind,\nO pale Erinna of the perfect lyre,\nThat he has left no word of singing fire\nWhereby you waked the dreaming Lesbian wind,\nAnd kindled night along the lyric shore?\nO girl whose lips Erato stooped to kiss,\nDo you go sorrowing because of this\nIn fields where poets sing forevermore?\nOr are you glad and is it best to be\nA silent music men have never heard,\nA dream in all our souls that we may say:\n\"Her voice had all the rapture of the sea,\nAnd all the clear cool quiver of a bird\nDeep in a forest at the break of day\"?\n\n\n\n\n   To Cleis\n\n     \"I have a fair daughter with a form like a golden flower,\n   Cleis, the beloved.\"\n                                        Sapphic fragment.\n\n\nWhen the dusk was wet with dew,\n Cleis, did the muses nine\n Listen in a silent line\nWhile your mother sang to you?\n\nDid they weep or did they smile\n When she crooned to still your cries,\n She, a muse in human guise,\nWho forsook her lyre awhile?\n\nDid you feel her wild heart beat?\n Did the warmth of all the sun\n Thro' your little body run\nWhen she kissed your hands and feet?\n\nDid your fingers, babywise,\n Touch her face and touch her hair,\n Did you think your mother fair,\nCould you bear her burning eyes?\n\nAre the songs that soothed your fears\n Vanished like a vanished flame,\n Save the line where shines your name\nStarlike down the graying years?\n\nCleis speaks no word to me,\n For the land where she has gone\n Lieth mute at dusk and dawn\nLike a windless tideless sea.\n\n\n\n\n   Paris in Spring\n\n\nThe city's all a-shining\n Beneath a fickle sun,\nA gay young wind's a-blowing,\n The little shower is done.\nBut the rain-drops still are clinging\n And falling one by one--\nOh it's Paris, it's Paris,\n And spring-time has begun.\n\nI know the Bois is twinkling\n In a sort of hazy sheen,\nAnd down the Champs the gray old arch\n Stands cold and still between.\nBut the walk is flecked with sunlight\n Where the great acacias lean,\nOh it's Paris, it's Paris,\n And the leaves are growing green.\n\nThe sun's gone in, the sparkle's dead,\n There falls a dash of rain,\nBut who would care when such an air\n Comes blowing up the Seine?\nAnd still Ninette sits sewing\n Beside her window-pane,\nWhen it's Paris, it's Paris,\n And spring-time's come again.\n\n\n\n\n   Madeira from the Sea\n\n\nOut of the delicate dream of the distance an emerald emerges\nVeiled in the violet folds of the air of the sea;\nSoftly the dream grows awakening--shimmering white of a city,\nSplashes of crimson, the gay bougainvillea, the palms.\nHigh in the infinite blue of its heaven a quiet cloud lingers,\nLost and forgotten of winds that have fallen asleep,\nFallen asleep to the tune of a Portuguese song in a garden.\n\n\n\n\n   City Vignettes\n\n\n  I\n        Dawn\n\nThe greenish sky glows up in misty reds,\n The purple shadows turn to brick and stone,\nThe dreams wear thin, men turn upon their beds,\n And hear the milk-cart jangle by alone.\n\n\n  II\n        Dusk\n\nThe city's street, a roaring blackened stream\n Walled in by granite, thro' whose thousand eyes\nA thousand yellow lights begin to gleam,\n And over all the pale untroubled skies.\n\n\n  III\n        Rain at Night\n\nThe street-lamps shine in a yellow line\n Down the splashy, gleaming street,\nAnd the rain is heard now loud now blurred\n By the tread of homing feet.\n\n\n\n\n   By the Sea\n\n\nBeside an ebbing northern sea\nWhile stars awaken one by one,\nWe walk together, I and he.\n\nHe woos me with an easy grace\nThat proves him only half sincere;\nA light smile flickers on his face.\n\nTo him love-making is an art,\nAnd as a flutist plays a flute,\nSo does he play upon his heart\n\nA music varied to his whim.\nHe has no use for love of mine,\nHe would not have me answer him.\n\nTo hide my eyes within the night\nI watch the changeful lighthouse gleam\nAlternately with red and white.\n\nMy laughter smites upon my ears,\nSo one who cries and wakes from sleep\nKnows not it is himself he hears.\n\nWhat if my voice should let him know\nThe mocking words were all a sham,\nAnd lips that laugh could tremble so?\n\nWhat if I lost the power to lie,\nAnd he should only hear his name\nIn one low, broken cry?\n\n\n\n\n   On the Death of Swinburne\n\n\nHe trod the earth but yesterday,\nAnd now he treads the stars.\n He left us in the April time\n He praised so often in his rhyme,\nHe left the singing and the lyre and went his way.\n\nHe drew new music from our tongue,\nA music subtly wrought,\n And moulded words to his desire,\n As wind doth mould a wave of fire;\nFrom strangely fashioned harps slow golden tones he wrung.\n\nI think the singing understands\nThat he who sang is still,\n And Iseult cries that he is dead,--\n Does not Dolores bow her head\nAnd Fragoletta weep and wring her little hands?\n\nNew singing now the singer hears\nTo lyre and lute and harp;\n Catullus waits to welcome him,\n And thro' the twilight sweet and dim,\nSappho's forgotten songs are falling on his ears.\n\n\n\n\n   Triolets\n\n\n  I\n\nLove looked back as he took his flight,\n And lo, his eyes were filled with tears.\nWas it for love of lost delight\nLove looked back as he took his flight?\nOnly I know while day grew night,\n Turning still to the vanished years,\nLove looked back as he took his flight,\n And lo, his eyes were filled with tears.\n\n\n  II\n        (Written in a copy of \"La Vita Nuova\".  For M. C. S.)\n\nIf you were Lady Beatrice\n And I the Florentine,\nI'd never waste my time like this--\nIf you were Lady Beatrice\nI'd woo and then demand a kiss,\n Nor weep like Dante here, I ween,\nIf you were Lady Beatrice\n And I the Florentine.\n\n\n  III\n        (Written in a copy of \"The Poems of Sappho\".)\n\nBeyond the dim Hesperides,\n The girl who sang them long ago\nCould never dream that over seas,\nBeyond the dim Hesperides,\nThe wind would blow such songs as these--\n I wonder now if she can know,\nBeyond the dim Hesperides,\n The girl who sang them long ago?\n\n\n  IV\n\nDead leaves upon the stream\n And dead leaves on the air--\nAll of my lost hopes seem\nDead leaves upon the stream;\nI watch them in a dream,\n Going I know not where,\nDead leaves upon the stream\n And dead leaves on the air.\n\n\n\n\n   Vox Corporis\n\n\nThe beast to the beast is calling,\n And the soul bends down to wait;\nLike the stealthy lord of the jungle,\n The white man calls his mate.\n\nThe beast to the beast is calling,\n They rush through the twilight sweet,\nBut the soul is a wary hunter,\n He will not let them meet.\n\n\n\n\n   A Ballad of Two Knights\n\n\nTwo knights rode forth at early dawn\n A-seeking maids to wed,\nSaid one, \"My lady must be fair,\n With gold hair on her head.\"\n\nThen spake the other knight-at-arms:\n \"I care not for her face,\nBut she I love must be a dove\n For purity and grace.\"\n\nAnd each knight blew upon his horn\n And went his separate way,\nAnd each knight found a lady-love\n Before the fall of day.\n\nBut she was brown who should have had\n The shining yellow hair--\nI ween the knights forgot their words\n Or else they ceased to care.\n\nFor he who wanted purity\n Brought home a wanton wild,\nAnd when each saw the other knight\n I ween that each knight smiled.\n\n\n\n\n   Christmas Carol\n\n\nThe kings they came from out the south,\n All dressed in ermine fine,\nThey bore Him gold and chrysoprase,\n And gifts of precious wine.\n\nThe shepherds came from out the north,\n Their coats were brown and old,\nThey brought Him little new-born lambs--\n They had not any gold.\n\nThe wise-men came from out the east,\n And they were wrapped in white;\nThe star that led them all the way\n Did glorify the night.\n\nThe angels came from heaven high,\n And they were clad with wings;\nAnd lo, they brought a joyful song\n The host of heaven sings.\n\nThe kings they knocked upon the door,\n The wise-men entered in,\nThe shepherds followed after them\n To hear the song begin.\n\nAnd Mary held the little child\n And sat upon the ground;\nShe looked up, she looked down,\n She looked all around.\n\nThe angels sang thro' all the night\n Until the rising sun,\nBut little Jesus fell asleep\n Before the song was done.\n\n\n\n\n   The Faery Forest\n\n\nThe faery forest glimmered\n Beneath an ivory moon,\nThe silver grasses shimmered\n Against a faery tune.\n\nBeneath the silken silence\n The crystal branches slept,\nAnd dreaming thro' the dew-fall\n The cold white blossoms wept.\n\n\n\n\n   A Fantasy\n\n\nHer voice is like clear water\n That drips upon a stone\nIn forests far and silent\n Where Quiet plays alone.\n\nHer thoughts are like the lotus\n Abloom by sacred streams\nBeneath the temple arches\n Where Quiet sits and dreams.\n\nHer kisses are the roses\n That glow while dusk is deep\nIn Persian garden closes\n Where Quiet falls asleep.\n\n\n\n\n   A Minuet of Mozart's\n\n\nAcross the dimly lighted room\n The violin drew wefts of sound,\n Airily they wove and wound\nAnd glimmered gold against the gloom.\n\nI watched the music turn to light,\n But at the pausing of the bow,\n The web was broken and the glow\nWas drowned within the wave of night.\n\n\n\n\n   Twilight\n\n\nDreamily over the roofs\n The cold spring rain is falling,\nOut in the lonely tree\n A bird is calling, calling.\n\nSlowly over the earth\n The wings of night are falling;\nMy heart like the bird in the tree\n Is calling, calling, calling.\n\n\n\n\n   The Prayer\n\n\nMy answered prayer came up to me,\n And in the silence thus spake he:\n\"O you who prayed for me to come,\n Your greeting is but cold and dumb.\"\n\nMy heart made answer:  \"You are fair,\n But I have prayed too long to care.\nWhy came you not when all was new,\n And I had died for joy of you.\"\n\n\n\n\n   Two Songs for a Child\n\n\n  I\n        Grandfather's Love\n\nThey said he sent his love to me,\n They wouldn't put it in my hand,\nAnd when I asked them where it was\n They said I couldn't understand.\n\nI thought they must have hidden it,\n I hunted for it all the day,\nAnd when I told them so at night\n They smiled and turned their heads away.\n\nThey say that love is something kind,\n That I can never see or touch.\nI wish he'd sent me something else,\n I like his cough-drops twice as much.\n\n\n  II\n        The Kind Moon\n\nI think the moon is very kind\n To take such trouble just for me.\nHe came along with me from home\n To keep me company.\n\nHe went as fast as I could run;\n I wonder how he crossed the sky?\nI'm sure he hasn't legs and feet\n Or any wings to fly.\n\nYet here he is above their roof;\n Perhaps he thinks it isn't right\nFor me to go so far alone,\n Tho' mother said I might.\n\n\n\n\nOn the Tower\n\n\n\nUnder the leaf of many a Fable lies the Truth for those who look for it.\n                                                            Jami.\n\n\n\nOn the Tower\n\n(A play in one act.)\n\n\nThe Knight.\nThe Lady.\n\nVoices of men and women on the ground at the foot of the tower.\nThe voice of the Knight's Page.\n\n\n\n     The top of a high battlemented tower of a castle.  A stone ledge,\n     which serves as a seat, extends part way around the parapet.\n     Small clouds float by in the blue sky, and occasionally a swallow\n     passes.\n     Entrance R. from an unseen stairway which is supposed to extend\n     around the outside of the tower.\n\n\nThe Lady (unseen).\n Oh do not climb so fast, for I am faint\n With looking down the tower to where the earth\n Lies dreaming in the sun.  I fear to fall.\n\nThe Knight (unseen).\n Lean on me, love, my love, and look not down.\n\nL.\n Call me not \"love\", call me your conquered foe,\n That now, since you have battered down her gates,\n Gives you the keys that lock the highest tower\n And mounts with you to prove her homage true;\n Oh bid me go no farther lest I fall,\n My foot has slipped upon the rain-worn stones,\n Why are the stairs so narrow and so steep?\n Let us go back, my lord.\n\nK.\n                           Are you afraid,\n Who were so dauntless till the walls gave way?\n Courage, my sweet.  I would that I could climb\n A thousand times by wind-swept stairs like these,\n That lead so near to heaven.\n\nL.\n                              Sir, you may,\n You are a knight and very valorous;\n I am a woman.  I shall never come\n This way but once.\n (The Knight and the Lady appear on the top of the tower.)\n\nK.\n                     Kiss me at last, my love.\n\nL.\n Oh, my sweet lord, I am too tired to kiss.\n Look how the earth is like an emerald,\n With rivers veined and flawed with fallow fields.\n\nK.  (Lifting her veil)\n Then I kiss you, a thousand thousand kisses\n For all the days ere I had won to you\n Beyond the walls and gates you barred so close.\n Call me at last your love, your castle's lord.\n\nL.  (After a pause)\n I love you.\n\n (She kisses him.  Her veil blows away like a white butterfly\n over the parapet.  Faint cries and laughter from men and women\n under the tower.)\n\nMen and Women.\n The veil, the lady's veil!\n\n (The knight takes the lady in his arms.)\n\nL.\n My lord, I pray you loose me from your arms\n Lest that my people see how much we love.\n\nK.\n May they not see us?  All of them have loved.\n\nL.\n But you have been an enemy, my lord,\n With walls between us and with moss-grown moats,\n Now on a sudden must I kiss your mouth?\n I who was taught before I learned to speak\n That all my house was hostile unto yours,\n Now can I put my head against your breast\n Here in the sight of all who choose to come?\n\nK.\n Are we not past the caring for their eyes\n And nearer to the heaven than to earth?\n Look up and see.\n\nL.\n                   I only see your face.\n\n (She touches his hair with her hands.  Murmuring under the tower.)\n\nK.\n Why came we here in all the noon-day light\n With only darting swallows over us\n To make a speck of darkness on the sun?\n Let us go down where walls will shut us round.\n Your castle has a hundred quiet halls,\n A hundred chambers, where the shadows lie\n On things put by, forgotten long ago.\n Forgotten lutes with strings that Time has slackened,\n We two shall draw them close and bid them sing--\n Forgotten games, forgotten books still open\n Where you had laid them by at vesper-time,\n And your embroidery, whereon half-worked\n Weeps Amor wounded by a rose's thorn.\n Shall I not see the room in which you slept,\n Palpitant still and breathing of your thoughts,\n Where maiden dreams adown the ways of sleep\n Swept noiselessly with damosels and knights\n To tourneys where the trumpet made no sound,\n Blow as he might, the scarlet trumpeter,\n And were the dreams not sometimes brimmed with tears\n That waked you when the night was loneliest?\n Will you not bring me to your oratory\n Where prayers arose like little birds set free\n Still upward, upward without sound of flight?\n Shall I not find your turrets toward the north,\n Where you defied white winter armed for war;\n Your southern casements where the sun blows in\n Between the leaf-bent boughs the wind has lifted?\n Shall we not see the sunrise toward the east,\n Watch dawn by dawn the rose of day unfolding\n Its golden-hearted beauty sovereignly;\n And toward the west look quietly at evening?\n Shall I not see all these and all your treasures?\n In carven coffers hidden in the dark\n Have you not laid a sapphire lit with flame\n And amethysts set round with deep-wrought gold,\n Perhaps a ruby?\n\nL.\n                  All my gems are yours\n And all my chambers curtained from the sun.\n My lord shall see them all, in time, in time.\n\n\n (The sun begins to sink.)\n\nK.\n Shall I not see them now?  To-day, to-night?\n\nL.\n How could I show you in one day, my lord,\n My castle and my treasures and my tower?\n Let all the days to come suffice for this\n Since all the past days made them what they are.\n You will not be impatient, my sweet lord.\n Some of the halls have long been locked and barred,\n And some have secret doors and hard to find\n Till suddenly you touch them unawares,\n And down a sable way runs silver light.\n We two will search together for the keys,\n But not to-day.  Let us sit here to-day,\n Since all is yours and always will be yours.\n\n (The stars appear faintly one by one.)\n\nK.  (After a pause.)\n I grow a little drowsy with the dusk.\n\nL.  (Singing.)\n    There was a man that loved a maid,\n    (Sleep and take your rest)\n    Over her lips his kiss was laid,\n    Over her heart, his breast.\n\n (The knight sleeps.)\n\n    All of his vows were sweet to hear,\n    Sweet was his kiss to take;\n    Why was her breast so quick to fear,\n    Why was her heart, to break?\n\n    Why was the man so glad to woo?\n    (Sleep and take your rest)\n    Why were the maiden's words so few----\n\n (She sees that he is asleep, and slipping off her long cloak-like\n outer garment, she pillows his head upon it against the parapet,\n and half kneeling at his feet she sings very softly:)\n\n    I love you, I love you, I love you,\n    I am the flower at your feet,\n    The birds and the stars are above you,\n    My place is more sweet.\n\n    The birds and the stars are above you,\n    They envy the flower in the grass,\n    For I, only I, while I love you\n    Can die as you pass.\n\n (Light clouds veil the stars, growing denser constantly.\n The castle bell rings for vespers, and rising, the lady moves\n to a corner of the parapet and kneels there.)\n\nL.\n Ave Maria! gratia plena, Dominus----\n\nVoice of the Page (from the foot of the tower.)\n My lord, my lord, they call for you at court!\n\n (The knight wakes.  It is now quite dark.)\n\n There is a tourney toward; your enemy\n Has challenged you.  My lord, make haste to come!\n\n (The knight rises and gropes his way toward the stairs.)\n\nK.\n I will make haste.  Await me where you are.\n\n (To himself.)\n There was a lady on this tower with me----\n\n (He glances around hurriedly but does not see her in the darkness.)\n\nPage.\n My lord has far to ride before the dawn!\n\nK.  (To himself.)\n Why should I tarry?\n\n (To the page.)\n Bring my horse and shield!\n\n (He descends.  As the noise of his footfall on the stairs dies away,\n the lady gropes toward the stairway, then turns suddenly, and going to\n the ledge where they have sat, she throws herself over the parapet.)\n\n\nCURTAIN.\n\n\n\n\n[End of Helen of Troy And Other Poems.]\n\n\n\n\nSara Teasdale\n\nSara Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where she attended a\nschool that was founded by the grandfather of another great poet from\nSt. Louis--T. S. Eliot.  She later associated herself more with New\nYork City.  Her first book of poems was \"Sonnets to Duse\" (1907), but\n\"Helen of Troy\" (1911) was the true launch of her career, followed by\n\"Rivers to the Sea\" (1915), \"Love Songs\" (1917), \"Flame and Shadow\"\n(1920) and more.  Her final volume, \"Strange Victory\", is considered\nby many to be predictive of her suicide.\n\nIt is interesting to note that in Teasdale's Collected Works, about\nhalf of the poems in this volume--some more justly than others--have\nbeen excluded, and most of the rest have been slightly changed.  Most\nof the poems from this volume which were selected to be included in\n\"Love Songs\" also had some minor changes.  This edition preserves the\noriginal readings, but they are not to be considered authoritative.","title":"Helen of Troy, and Other Poems","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":12252}