The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics

WITH THE SEASONS

I

 
You will not love me, sweet.
When this fair year is past;
Or love now at my feet
At others' feet be cast.
You will not love me, sweet,
When this fair year is past.
 

II

 
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame
Brimmed to the pregnant year.
Who crimsons as with shame.
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame.
 

III

 
Ah, heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose;
The poppies now are seen
With seed-pods thrust in rows.
Dear heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose.
 

IV

 
Now Autumn reigns, a prince
Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold
Weighs down the fruited quince,
The last chilled violet's told.
The Autumn reigns, a prince,
A despot crowned with gold.
 

V

 
Alas! rude Winter's king,
Snow-driven from chin to head;
No wild birds pipe and sing,
The wild winds sing instead.
Ah me! rude Winter's king,
Snow-driven from chin to head.
 

VI

 
Weep now, you once who smiled,
Sweet hope that had few fears!
And this the end, my child! —
Thyself, my shame and tears!
Weep now, you once who smiled,
Sweet hope, that had few fears!
 

UNATTAINABLE

I

 
What though the soul be tired
For that to which 'twas fired,
The far, dear, still desired,
Beyond the heaven's scope;
Beyond us and above us,
The thing we would have love us,
That will know nothing of us,
But only bids us hope.
 

II

 
It still behooves us ever
From loving ne'er to sever,
To love it though it never
Reciprocate our care;
For love, when freely given,
Lets in soft hints of heaven
In memories that leaven
Black humors of despair.
 

III

 
For in this life diurnal
All earthly, gross, infernal,
Conflicts with that eternal
To make its love as lust;
To rot the fairest flower
Of thought which is a power,
All happiness to sour,
And burn our eyes with dust.
 

IV

 
Believe, some power higher
Breathes in us this desire
With purpose strange as fire,
And soft though seeming hard;
Who to such starved endeavor
And wasted love, that never
Seems recompensed, forever
Gives in His way reward.
 

BEYOND

 
Hangs stormed with stars the night,
Deep over deep,
A majesty, a might,
To feel and keep.
 

2

 
Ah! what is such and such,
Love, canst thou tell?
That shrinks – though 'tis not much —
To weep farewell.
 

3

 
That hates the dawn and lark;
Would have the wail, —
Sobbed through the ceaseless dark, —
O' the nightingale.
 

4

 
Yes, earth, thy life were worth
Not much to me,
Were there not after earth
Eternity.
 

5>

 
God gave thee life to keep —
And what hath life? —
Love, faith, and care, and sleep
Where dreams are rife.
 

6

 
Death's sleep, whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of love, that fill the heart
That breaks and dies.
 

7

 
And faith is never given
Without some care,
That leadeth us to heaven
By ways of prayer.
 

8

 
The nightingale and dark
Are thine then here;
Beyond, the light and lark
Eternal there.
 

SHADOWS

1

 
Ha! help! – 'twas palpable!
A ghost that thronged
Up from the mind or hell
Of one I wronged!
 

2

 
'Tis past and – silence! – naught! —
A vision born
Of the scared mind o'erwrought
With dreams forlorn:
 

3

 
The bastard brood of Death
And Sleep that wakes
Grim fancies with its breath,
And reason shakes.
 

4

 
Would that the grave could rot
Like flesh the soul,
Gnaw through with worms and not
Leave it thus whole,
 

5

 
More than it was in earth
Beyond the grave,
Much more in death than birth
To conscience slave!
 

CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK

1

 
Vent all your coward's wrath
Upon me so! —
Yes, I have crossed your path
And will not go!
 

2

 
Storm at me hate, and name
Me all that's vile,
"Lust," "filth," "disease," and "shame,"
I only smile.
 

3

 
Me brute rage can not hurt,
It only flings
In your own eyes blind dirt
That bites and stings.
 

4

 
Rave at your like such whine,
Your fellow-men,
This wrath! – great God! and mine! —
What is it then?
 

5

 
No words! no oaths! such hate
As devils smile
When raw success cries "wait!"
And "afterwhile!"
 

6

 
A woman I and ill,
A courtesan
You wearied of, would kill,
And you – a man!
 

7

 
You, you – unnamable!
A thing there's not,
Too base to burn in Hell,
Too vile to rot.
 

SEMPER IDEM

1

 
Hold up thy head and crush
Thy heart's despair;
From thy wan temples brush
The tear-wet hair.
 

2

 
Look on me thus as I
Gaze upon thee;
Nor question how nor why
Such things can be.
 

3

 
Thou thought'st it love! – poor fool!
That which was lust!
Which made thee, beautiful,
Vile as the dust!
 

4

 
Thy flesh I craved, thy face! —
Love shrinks at this —
Now on thy lips to place
One farewell kiss! —
 

5

 
Weep not, but die! – 'tis given —
And so – farewell! —
Die! – that which makes death heaven,
Makes life a hell.
 

TWO LIVES

1

 
"There is no God," one said,
And love is lust;
When I am dead I'm dead,
And all is dust.
"Be merry while you can
Before you're gray;
With some wild courtesan
Drink care away."
 

2

 
One said, "A God there is,
And God is love;
Death is not death, but bliss,
And life above.
"Above all flesh is mind;
And faith and truth
God's gifts to poor mankind
That make life youth."
 

3

 
One from a harlot's side
Arose at morn;
One cursing God had died
That night forlorn.
 

FOREVERMORE

I

 
O heart that vainly follows
The flight of summer swallows,
Far over holts and hollows,
O'er frozen buds and flowers;
To violet seas and levels,
Where Love Time's locks dishevels
With merry mimes and revels
Of aphrodisiac Hours.
 

II

 
O Love who, dreaming, borrows
Dead love from sad to-morrows,
The broken heart that sorrows,
The blighted hopes that weep;
Pale faces pale with sleeping;
Red eyelids red with weeping;
Dead lips dead secrets keeping,
That shake the deeps of sleep!
 

III

 
O Memory that showers
About the withered hours
White, ruined, sodden flowers,
Dead dust and bitter rain;
Dead loves with faces teary;
Dead passions wan and dreary;
The weary, weary, weary,
Dead heart-ache and the pain!
 

IV

 
O give us back the blisses,
Lost madness of moist kisses,
The youth, the joy, the tresses,
The fragrant limbs of white;
The high heart like a jewel
Alive with subtle fuel,
Lips beautiful and cruel,
Eyes' incarnated light!
 

V

 
Instead of tears, wild laughter
The old hot passions after,
The houri sweets that dafter
Made flesh and soul a slave!
Enough of tearful sorrows;
Enough of rank to-morrows;
The life that whines and borrows
But memories of the grave!
 

VI

 
The grave that breaks no netting
Of care or spint's fretting,
No long, long sweet forgetting
For those who would forget;
And those who stammer by it
Hope of an endless quiet,
Within them voiceless riot
When they and it have met.
 

VII

 
And God we pray beseeching, —
But Life with finger reaching,
Stone-stern, remaineth teaching
Our hearts to turn to stone;
Then fain are we to follow
The last, lorn, soaring swallow
Past bourns of holt and hollow
Forevermore alone.
 

A BLOWN ROSE

 
Lay but a finger on
That pallid petal sweet,
It trembles gray and wan
Beneath the passing feet.
 
 
But soft! blown rose, we know
A merriment of bloom,
A life of sturdy glow, —
But no such dear perfume.
 
 
As some good bard, whose page
Of life with beauty's fraught,
Grays on to ripe old age
Sweet-mellowed through with thought.
 
 
So when his hoary head
Is wept into the tomb,
The mind, which is not dead,
Sheds round it rare perfume.
 

TO-MORROW

 
A Lorelei full fair she sits
Throned on the stream that dimly rolls;
Still, hope-thrilled, with her wild harp knits
To her from year to year men's souls.
 
 
They hear her harp, they hear her song,
Led by the wizard beauty high,
Like blind brutes maddened rush along,
Sink at her cold feet, gasp and die.
 

MNEMOSYNE

 
In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,
A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,
Upon her brow deep chiseled love and hate,
That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.
 

THE SIRENS

 
Wail! wail! and smite your lyres' sonorous gold,
And beckon naked beauty from the sea
In arms and breasts and hips of godly mold,
Dark, strangling hair carousing to the knee.
 
 
In vain! in vain! and dull in unclosed ears
To one loved voice sweet calling o'er the foam,
Which in my heart like some strong hand appears
To gently, firmly draw my vessel home.
 

THE VINTAGER

 
Among the fragrant grapes she bows;
Long, violet clusters heap her hands;
About her satyr throats and brows
Flush at her smiled commands.
 
 
And from her sun-burnt throat at times,
As bubbles burst on new-made wine,
A happy fit of merry rhymes
Rings down the hills of vine.
 
 
From out one heart, remorseless sweet,
She plucked the big-grape passion there;
Trod in the wine-press of her feet,
It grew into despair:
 
 
Until she drained its honeyed must,
Which, tingling inward part by part,
Fierce mounted thro' her glowing bust
And centered in her heart.
 

A STORMY SUNSET

1

 
Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of envious gloom,
Unbroken passion of the sky!
As if the pure, kind-hearted breath
Of some soft power, ever nigh,
Had, cleaving in the bitter sheath,
Burst from its grave a gorgeous bloom.
 

2

 
The majesty of clouds that swarm.
Expanding in a furious length
Of molten-metal petals, flows
Unutterable, and where the warm,
Full fire is centered, swims and glows
The evening star fresh-faced with strength,
A shimmering rain-drop of the storm.
 

ON A DIAL

1

 
To-morrow and to-morrow
Is but to-day:
The world wags but to borrow
Time that grows gray: —
Grammercy! time's but sorrow
And – well away!
 

2

 
Since time hales but to sadness
And to decay,
Men needs wax fools for madness,
Laugh, curse, and pray;
Death grapples with their badness —
The Devil's to pay.
 

UNUTTERABLE

 
There is a sorrow in the wind to-night
That haunteth me; she, like a penitent,
Heaps on rent hairs the snow's thin ashes white
And moans and moans, her swaying body bent.
 
 
And Superstition gliding softly shakes
With wasted hands, that vainly grope and seek,
The rustling curtains; of each cranny makes
Cold, ghostly lips that wailing fain would speak.
 

MIDSUMMER

 
The red blood clings in her cheeks and stings
Through their tan with a fever that lightens,
And the clearness of heaven-born mountain springs
In her dark eyes dusks and brightens.
And her limbs are the limbs of an Atalanta who swings
With the youths in the sinewy games,
When the hot air sings thro' the hair it flings,
And the circus roars hoarse with their names,
As they fly to the goal that flames.
 
 
A voice as deep as wan waters that sweep
Thro' the musical reeds of a river;
A song of red reapers that bind and reap,
With the ring of curved scythes that quiver.
The note-like lisp of the pippins that leap,
Ripe-mellowed to gold, to the ground;
The murmurous sleep that the cool leaves keep
On close lips that trickle with sound.
 
 
And sweet is the beat of her glowing feet,
And her smiles as wide heavens are gracious;
And the creating might of her hands of heat
As a god's or a goddess's spacious.
The elastic veins thro' her heart that beat
Are rich with a perishless fire,
And her bosoms most sweet are the ardent seat
Of a mother that never will tire.
 
 
Wherever she fares her soft voice bears
High powers of being that thicken
In fruits, as the winds made Thessalian mares
Of old mysteriously quicken;
The apricots' juice and the juice of the pears,
The wine great grape-clusters hold,
These, these are her cares, and her wealth she declares
In her corn's vast billows of gold.
 
 
All hail to her lips, and her fruitful hips,
And her motherly thickness of tresses;
All hail to the sweetness that slips and drips
From her breasts which the light caresses.
A toiler, whose fair arm heaps and whips
Great chariots that heavily creak;
A worker, who sweats on the groaning ships.
And never grows weary or weak.