Poems

CAPRICE

I

 
She hung the cage at the window:
“If he goes by,” she said,
“He will hear my robin singing,
And when he lifts his head,
I shall be sitting here to sew,
And he will bow to me, I know.”
 
 
The robin sang a love-sweet song,
The young man raised his head;
The maiden turned away and blushed:
“I am a fool!” she said,
And went on broidering in silk
A pink-eyed rabbit, white as milk.
 

II

 
The young man loitered slowly
By the house three times that day;
She took her bird from the window:
“He need not look this way.”
She sat at her piano long,
And sighed, and played a death-sad song.
 
 
But when the day was done, she said,
“I wish that he would come!
Remember, Mary, if he calls
To-night–I’m not at home.”
So when he rang, she went–the elf!–
She went and let him in herself.
 

III

 
They sang full long together
Their songs love-sweet, death-sad;
The robin woke from his slumber,
And rang out, clear and glad.
“Now go!” she coldly said; “’tis late;”
And followed him–to latch the gate.
 
 
He took the rosebud from her hair,
While, “You shall not!” she said;
He closed her hand within his own,
And, while her tongue forbade,
Her will was darkened in the eclipse
Of blinding love upon his lips.
 

SWEET CLOVER

“… My letters back to me.”

I

 
I know they won the faint perfume,
That to their faded pages clings,
From gloves, and handkerchiefs, and things
Kept in the soft and scented gloom
 
 
Of some mysterious box–poor leaves
Of summer, now as sere and dead
As any leaves of summer shed
From crimson boughs when autumn grieves!
 
 
The ghost of fragrance! Yet I thrill
All through with such delicious pain
Of soul and sense, to breathe again
The sweet that haunted memory still.
 
 
And under these December skies,
As bland as May’s in other climes,
I move, and muse my idle rhymes
And subtly sentimentalize.
 
 
I hear the music that was played,–
The songs that silence knows by heart!–
I see sweet burlesque feigning art,
The careless grace that curved and swayed
 
 
Through dances and through breezy walks;
I feel once more the eyes that smiled,
And that dear presence that beguiled
The pauses of the foolish talks,
 
 
When this poor phantom of perfume
Was the Sweet Clover’s living soul,
And breathed from her as if it stole,
Ah, heaven! from her heart in bloom!
 

II

 
We have not many ways with pain:
We weep weak tears, or else we laugh;
I doubt, not less the cup we quaff,
And tears and scorn alike are vain.
 
 
But let me live my quiet life;
I will not vex my calm with grief,
I only know the pang was brief,
And there an end of hope and strife.
 
 
And thou? I put the letters by:
In years the sweetness shall not pass;
More than the perfect blossom was
I count its lingering memory.
 
 
Alas! with Time dear Love is dead,
And not with Fate. And who can guess
How weary of our happiness
We might have been if we were wed?
 

Venice.

THE ROYAL PORTRAITS.
(AT LUDWIGSHOF.)

I

 
Confronting each other the pictures stare
Into each other’s sleepless eyes;
And the daylight into the darkness dies,
From year to year in the palace there:
But they watch and guard that no device
Take either one of them unaware.
 
 
Their majesties the king and the queen,
The parents of the reigning prince:
Both put off royalty many years since,
With life and the gifts that have always been
Given to kings from God, to evince
His sense of the mighty over the mean.
 
 
I cannot say that I like the face
Of the king; it is something fat and red;
And the neck that lifts the royal head
Is thick and coarse; and a scanty grace
Dwells in the dull blue eyes that are laid
Sullenly on the queen in her place.
 
 
He must have been a king in his day
’Twere well to pleasure in work and sport:
One of the heaven-anointed sort
Who ruled his people with iron sway,
And knew that, through good and evil report,
God meant him to rule and them to obey.
 
 
There are many other likenesses
Of the king in his royal palace there;
You find him depicted everywhere,–
In his robes of state, in his hunting-dress,
In his flowing wig, in his powdered hair,–
A king in all of them, none the less;
 
 
But most himself in this on the wall
Over against his consort, whose
Laces, and hoops, and high-heeled shoes
Make her the finest lady of all
The queens or courtly dames you choose,
In the ancestral portrait hall.
 
 
A glorious blonde: a luxury
Of luring blue and wanton gold,
Of blanchéd rose and crimson bold,
Of lines that flow voluptuously
In tender, languorous curves to fold
Her form in perfect symmetry.
 
 
She might have been false. Of her withered dust
There scarcely would be enough to write
Her guilt in now; and the dead have a right
To our lenient doubt if not to our trust:
So if the truth cannot make her white,
Let us be as merciful as we–must.
 

II

 
The queen died first, the queen died young,
But the king was very old when he died,
Rotten with license, and lust, and pride;
And the usual Virtues came and hung
Their cypress wreaths on his tomb, and wide
Throughout his kingdom his praise was sung.
 
 
How the queen died is not certainly known,
And faithful subjects are all forbid
To speak of the murder which some one did
One night while she slept in the dark alone:
History keeps the story hid,
And Fear only tells it in undertone.
 
 
Up from your startled feet aloof,
In the famous Echo-Room, with a bound
Leaps the echo, and round and round
Beating itself against the roof,–
A horrible, gasping, shuddering sound,–
Dies ere its terror can utter proof
 
 
Of that it knows. A door is fast,
And none is suffered to enter there.
His sacred majesty could not bear
To look at it toward the last,
As he grew very old. It opened where
The queen died young so many years past.
 

III

 
How the queen died is not certainly known;
But in the palace’s solitude
A harking dread and horror brood,
And a silence, as if a mortal groan
Had been hushed the moment before, and would
Break forth again when you were gone.
 
 
The present king has never dwelt
In the desolate palace. From year to year
In the wide and stately garden drear
The snows and the snowy blossoms melt
Unheeded, and a ghastly fear
Through all the shivering leaves is felt.
 
 
By night the gathering shadows creep
Along the dusk and hollow halls,
And the slumber-broken palace calls
With stifled moans from its nightmare sleep;
And then the ghostly moonlight falls
Athwart the darkness brown and deep.
 
 
At early dawn the light wind sighs,
And through the desert garden blows
The wasted sweetness of the rose;
At noon the feverish sunshine lies
Sick in the walks. But at evening’s close,
When the last, long rays to the windows rise,
 
 
And with many a blood-red, wrathful streak
Pierce through the twilight glooms that blur
His cruel vigilance and her
Regard, they light fierce looks that wreak
A hopeless hate that cannot stir,
A voiceless hate that cannot speak
 
 
In the awful calm of the sleepless eyes;
And as if she saw her murderer glare
On her face, and he the white despair
Of his victim kindle in wild surmise,
Confronted the conscious pictures stare,–
And their secret back into darkness dies.
 

THE FAITHFUL OF THE GONZAGA.²

I

 
Federigo, the son of the Marquis,
Downcast, through the garden goes:
He is hurt with the grace of the lily,
And the beauty of the rose.
 
 
For what is the grace of the lily
But her own slender grace?
And what is the rose’s beauty
But the beauty of her face?–
 
 
Who sits beside her window
Waiting to welcome him,
That comes so lothly toward her
With his visage sick and dim.
 
 
“Ah! lily, I come to break thee!
Ah! rose, a bitter rain
Of tears shall beat thy light out
That thou never burn again!”
 

II

 
Federigo, the son of the Marquis,
Takes the lady by the hand:
“Thou must bid me God-speed on a journey,
For I leave my native land.
 
 
“From Mantua to-morrow
I go, a banished man;
Make me glad for truth and love’s sake
Of my father’s curse and ban.
 
 
“Our quarrel has left my mother
Like death upon the floor;
And I come from a furious presence
I never shall enter more.
 
 
“I would not wed the woman
He had chosen for my bride,
For my heart had been before him,
With his statecraft and his pride.
 
 
“I swore to him by my princehood
In my love I would be free;
And I swear to thee by my manhood,
I love no one but thee.
 
 
“Let the Duke of Bavaria marry
His daughter to whom he will:
There where my love was given
My word shall be faithful still.
 
 
“There are six true hearts will follow
My truth wherever I go,
And thou equal truth wilt keep me
In welfare and in woe.”
 
 
The maiden answered him nothing
Of herself, but his words again
Came back through her lips like an echo
From an abyss of pain;
 
 
And vacantly repeating
“In welfare and in woe,”
Like a dream from the heart of fever
From her arms she felt him go.
 

III

 
Out of Mantua’s gate at daybreak
Seven comrades wander forth
On a path that leads at their humor,
East, west, or south, or north.
 
 
The prince’s laugh rings lightly,
“What road shall we take from home?”
And they answer, “We never shall lose it
If we take the road to Rome.”
 
 
And with many a jest and banter
The comrades keep their way,
Journeying out of the twilight
Forward into the day,
 
 
When they are aware beside them
Goes a pretty minstrel lad,
With a shy and downward aspect,
That is neither sad nor glad.
 
 
Over his slender shoulder,
His mandolin was slung,
And around its chords the treasure
Of his golden tresses hung.
 
 
Spoke one of the seven companions,
“Little minstrel, whither away?”–
“With seven true-hearted comrades
On their journey, if I may.”
 
 
Spoke one of the seven companions,
“If our way be hard and long?”–
“I will lighten it with my music
And shorten it with my song.”
 
 
Spoke one of the seven companions,
“But what are the songs thou know’st?”–
“O, I know many a ditty,
But this I sing the most:
 
 
“How once was an humble maiden
Beloved of a great lord’s son,
That for her sake and his troth’s sake
Was banished and undone.
 
 
“And forth of his father’s city
He went at break of day,
And the maiden softly followed
Behind him on the way
 
 
“In the figure of a minstrel,
And prayed him of his love,
‘Let me go with thee and serve thee
Wherever thou may’st rove.
 
 
“‘For if thou goest in exile
I rest banished at home,
And where thou wanderest with thee
My fears in anguish roam,
 
 
“‘Besetting thy path with perils,
Making thee hungry and cold,
Filling thy heart with trouble
And heaviness untold.
 
 
“‘But let me go beside thee,
And banishment shall be
Honor, and riches, and country,
And home to thee and me!’”
 
 
Down falls the minstrel-maiden
Before the Marquis’ son,
And the six true-hearted comrades
Bow round them every one.
 
 
Federigo, the son of the Marquis,
From its scabbard draws his sword:
“Now swear by the honor and fealty
Ye bear your friend and lord,
 
 
“That whenever, and wherever,
As long as ye have life,
Ye will honor and serve this lady
As ye would your prince’s wife!”
 

IV

 
Over the broad expanses
Of garlanded Lombardy,
Where the gentle vines are swinging
In the orchards from tree to tree;
 
 
Through Padua from Verona,
From the sculptured gothic town,
Carved from ruin upon ruin,
And ancienter than renown;
 
 
Through Padua from Verona
To fair Venice, where she stands
With her feet on subject waters,
Lady of many lands;
 
 
From Venice by sea to Ancona;
From Ancona to the west;
Climbing many a gardened hillside
And many a castled crest;
 
 
Through valleys dim with the twilight
Of their gray olive trees;
Over plains that swim with harvests
Like golden noonday seas;
 
 
Whence the lofty campanili
Like the masts of ships arise,
And like a fleet at anchor
Under them, the village lies;
 
 
To Florence beside her Arno,
In her many-marbled pride,
Crowned with infamy and glory
By the sons she has denied;
 
 
To pitiless Pisa, where never
Since the anguish of Ugolin
The moon in the Tower of Famine³
Fate so dread as his hath seen;
 
 
Out through the gates of Pisa
To Livorno on her bay,
To Genoa and to Naples
The comrades hold their way,
 
 
Past the Guelph in his town beleaguered,
Past the fortressed Ghibelline,
Through lands that reek with slaughter,
Treason, and shame, and sin;
 
 
By desert, by sea, by city,
High hill-cope and temple-dome,
Through pestilence, hunger, and horror,
Upon the road to Rome;
 
 
While every land behind them
Forgets them as they go,
And in Mantua they are remembered
As is the last year’s snow;
 
 
But the Marchioness goes to her chamber
Day after day to weep,–
For the changeless heart of a mother
The love of a son must keep.
 
 
The Marchioness weeps in her chamber
Over tidings that come to her
Of the exiles she seeks, by letter
And by lips of messenger,
 
 
Broken hints of their sojourn and absence,
Comfortless, vague, and slight,–
Like feathers wafted backwards
From passage birds in flight.⁴
 
 
The tale of a drunken sailor,
In whose ship they went to sea;
A traveller’s evening story
At a village hostelry,
 
 
Of certain comrades sent him
By our Lady, of her grace,
To save his life from robbers
In a lonely desert place;
 
 
Word from the monks of a convent
Of gentle comrades that lay
One stormy night at their convent,
And passed with the storm at day;
 
 
The long parley of a peasant
That sold them wine and food,
The gossip of a shepherd
That guided them through a wood;
 
 
A boatman’s talk at the ferry
Of a river where they crossed,
And as if they had sunk in the current
All trace of them was lost;
 
 
And so is an end of tidings
But never an end of tears,
Of secret and friendless sorrow
Through blank and silent years.
 

V

 
To the Marchioness in her chamber
Sends word a messenger,
Newly come from the land of Naples,
Praying for speech with her.
 
 
The messenger stands before her,
A minstrel slender and wan:
“In a village of my country
Lies a Mantuan gentleman,
 
 
“Sick of a smouldering fever,
Of sorrow and poverty;
And no one in all that country
Knows his title or degree.
 
 
“But six true Mantuan peasants,
Or nobles, as some men say,
Watch by the sick man’s bedside,
And toil for him, night and day,
 
 
“Hewing, digging, reaping, sowing,
Bearing burdens, and far and nigh
Begging for him on the highway
Of the strangers that pass by;
 
 
“And they look whenever you meet them
Like broken-hearted men,
And I heard that the sick man would not
If he could, be well again;
 
 
“For they say that he for love’s sake
Was gladly banishèd,
But she for whom he was banished
Is worse to him, now, than dead,–
 
 
“A recreant to his sorrow,
A traitress to his woe.”
From her place the Marchioness rises,
The minstrel turns to go.
 
 
But fast by the hand she takes him,–
His hand in her clasp is cold,–
“If gold may be thy guerdon
Thou shalt not lack for gold;
 
 
“And if the love of a mother
Can bless thee for that thou hast done,
Thou shalt stay and be his brother,
Thou shalt stay and be my son.”
 
 
“Nay, my lady,” answered the minstrel,
And his face is deadly pale,
“Nay, this must not be, sweet lady,
But let my words prevail.
 
 
“Let me go now from your presence,
And I will come again,
When you stand with your son beside you,
And be your servant then.”
 

VI

 
At the feet of the Marquis Gonzaga
Kneels his lady on the floor;
“Lord, grant me before I ask it
The thing that I implore.”
 
 
“So it be not of that ingrate.”–
“Nay, lord, it is of him.”
’Neath the stormy brows of the Marquis
His eyes are tender and dim.
 
 
“He lies sick of a fever in Naples,
Near unto death, as they tell,
In his need and pain forsaken
By the wanton he loved so well.
 
 
“Now send for him and forgive him,
If ever thou loved’st me,
Now send for him and forgive him
As God shall be good to thee.”
 
 
“Well so,–if he turn in repentance
And bow himself to my will;
That the high-born lady I chose him
May be my daughter still.”
 

VII

 
In Mantua there is feasting
For the Marquis’ grace to his son;
In Mantua there is rejoicing
For the prince come back to his own.
 
 
The pomp of a wedding procession
Pauses under the pillared porch,
With silken rustle and whisper,
Before the door of the church.
 
 
In the midst, Federigo the bridegroom
Stands with his high-born bride;
The six true-hearted comrades
Are three on either side.
 
 
The bridegroom is gray as his father,
Where they stand face to face,
And the six true-hearted comrades
Are like old men in their place.
 
 
The Marquis takes the comrades
And kisses them one by one:
“That ye were fast and faithful
And better than I to my son,
 
 
“Ye shall be called forever,
In the sign that ye were so true,
The Faithful of the Gonzaga,
And your sons after you.”
 

VIII

 
To the Marchioness comes a courtier:
“I am prayed to bring you word
That the minstrel keeps his promise
Who brought you news of my lord;
 
 
“And he waits without the circle
To kiss your highness’ hand;
And he asks no gold for guerdon,
But before he leaves the land
 
 
“He craves of your love once proffered
That you suffer him for reward,
In this crowning hour of his glory,
To look on your son, my lord.”
 
 
Through the silken press of the courtiers
The minstrel faltered in.
His claspèd hands were bloodless,
His face was white and thin;
 
 
And he bent his knee to the lady,
But of her love and grace
To her heart she raised him and kissed him
Upon his gentle face.
 
 
Turned to her son the bridegroom,
Turned to his high-born wife,
“I give you here for your brother
Who gave back my son to life.
 
 
“For this youth brought me news from Naples
How thou layest sick and poor,
By true comrades kept, and forsaken
By a false paramour.
 
 
“Wherefore I charge you love him
For a brother that is my son.”
The comrades turned to the bridegroom
In silence every one.
 
 
But the bridegroom looked on the minstrel
With a visage blank and changed,
As his whom the sight of a spectre
From his reason hath estranged;
 
 
And the smiling courtiers near them
On a sudden were still as death;
And, subtly-stricken, the people
Hearkened and held their breath
 
 
With an awe uncomprehended
For an unseen agony:–
Who is this that lies a-dying,
With her head on the prince’s knee?
 
 
A light of anguish and wonder
Is in the prince’s eye,
“O, speak, sweet saint, and forgive me,
Or I cannot let thee die!
 
 
“For now I see thy hardness
Was softer than mortal ruth,
And thy heavenly guile was whiter,
My saint, than martyr’s truth.”
 
 
She speaks not and she moves not,
But a blessed brightness lies
On her lips in their silent rapture
And her tender closèd eyes.
 
 
Federigo, the son of the Marquis,
He rises from his knee:
“Aye, you have been good, my father,
To them that were good to me.
 
 
“You have given them honors and titles,
But here lies one unknown–
Ah, God reward her in heaven
With the peace he gives his own!”
 

THE FIRST CRICKET

 
Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning,
And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay,–
Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining,
All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay?
 
 
Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber,
Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan,
Yet with th’ unconscious earth’s boded evil my soul thou dost cumber,
And in the year’s lost youth makest me still lose my own.
 
 
Answerest thou, that when nights of December are blackest and bleakest,
And when the fervid grate feigns me a May in my room,
And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest,–
Thou wilt again give me all,–dew and fragrance and bloom?
 
 
Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing,
If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf,
Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling,
Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and–himself:
 
 
Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers
Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree.
Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers,
Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be?
 

THE MULBERRIES

I

 
On the Rialto Bridge we stand;
The street ebbs under and makes no sound;
But, with bargains shrieked on every hand,
The noisy market rings around.
 
 
“Mulberries, fine mulberries, here!”
A tuneful voice,–and light, light measure;
Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear,
If I paid three times the price for my pleasure.
 
 
Brown hands splashed with mulberry blood,
The basket wreathed with mulberry leaves
Hiding the berries beneath them;–good!
Let us take whatever the young rogue gives.
 
 
For you know, old friend, I haven’t eaten
A mulberry since the ignorant joy
Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten
All this bitter world for a boy.
 

II

 
O, I mind the tree in the meadow stood
By the road near the hill: when I clomb aloof
On its branches, this side of the girdled wood,
I could see the top of our cabin roof.
 
 
And, looking westward, could sweep the shores
Of the river where we used to swim
Under the ghostly sycamores,
Haunting the waters smooth and dim;
 
 
And eastward athwart the pasture-lot
And over the milk-white buckwheat field
I could see the stately elm, where I shot
The first black squirrel I ever killed.
 
 
And southward over the bottom-land
I could see the mellow breadths of farm
From the river-shores to the hills expand,
Clasped in the curving river’s arm.
 
 
In the fields we set our guileless snares
For rabbits and pigeons and wary quails,
Content with the vaguest feathers and hairs
From doubtful wings and vanished tails.
 
 
And in the blue summer afternoon
We used to sit in the mulberry-tree:
The breaths of wind that remembered June
Shook the leaves and glittering berries free;
 
 
And while we watched the wagons go
Across the river, along the road,
To the mill above, or the mill below,
With horses that stooped to the heavy load,
 
 
We told old stories and made new plans,
And felt our hearts gladden within us again,
For we did not dream that this life of a man’s
Could ever be what we know as men.
 
 
We sat so still that the woodpeckers came
And pillaged the berries overhead;
From his log the chipmonk, waxen tame,
Peered, and listened to what we said.
 

III

 
One of us long ago was carried
To his grave on the hill above the tree;
One is a farmer there, and married;
One has wandered over the sea.
 
 
And, if you ask me, I hardly know
Whether I’d be the dead or the clown,–
The clod above or the clay below,–
Or this listless dust by fortune blown
 
 
To alien lands. For, however it is,
So little we keep with us in life:
At best we win only victories,
Not peace, not peace, O friend, in this strife.
 
 
But if I could turn from the long defeat
Of the little successes once more, and be
A boy, with the whole wide world at my feet,
Under the shade of the mulberry-tree,–
 
 
From the shame of the squandered chances, the sleep
Of the will that cannot itself awaken,
From the promise the future can never keep,
From the fitful purposes vague and shaken,–
 
 
Then, while the grasshopper sang out shrill
In the grass beneath the blanching thistle,
And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill,
Harked to the quail’s complaining whistle,–
 
 
Ah me! should I paint the morrows again
In quite the colors so faint to-day,
And with the imperial mulberry’s stain
Re-purple life’s doublet of hodden-gray?
 
 
Know again the losses of disillusion?
For the sake of the hope, have the old deceit?–
In spite of the question’s bitter infusion,
Don’t you find these mulberries over-sweet?
 
 
All our atoms are changed, they say;
And the taste is so different since then;
We live, but a world has passed away
With the years that perished to make us men.