O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
The song I sought for you
Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find,
Lost in the dædal mind,
The living utterance with lovely tongue!
To say, as erst was sung
By Ariosto of Knight-errantry, —
Through lands of Poesy,
Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day,
The wizard shield you sway
Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse,
The skyey-builded verse:
The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
Our unanointed eyes. —
Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you,
Each line, a spark of dew, —
As once Ferdusi shone in Persia, —
Had strung each rosy spray
Of the unfolding flower of each song;
And Iran's bulbul tongue
Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab
In gardens of Afrasiab.
 

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

PART I

1

He waits musing

 
Herein the dearness of her is:
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in beauty and in bliss
Were not more white to have to kiss,
To love not more in tune.
 
 
And oft I think she is too true,
Too innocent for our day;
For in her eyes her soul looks new —
Two crowfoot-blossoms watchet-blue
Are not more soft than they.
 
 
So good, so kind is she to me,
In darling ways and happy words,
Sometimes my heart fears she may be
Too much with God and secretly
Sweet sister to the birds.
 

2

Becoming impatient

 
The owls are quavering, two, now three,
And all the green is graying;
The owls our trysting dials be —
There is no time for staying.
 
 
I wait you where this buckeye throws
Its tumbled shadow over
Wood-violet and the bramble-rose,
Long lady-fern and clover.
 
 
Spice-seeded sassafras weighs deep
Rough rail and broken paling,
Where all day long the lizards sleep
Like lichen on the railing.
 
 
Behind you you will feel the moon's
Gold stealing like young laughter;
And mists – gray ghosts of picaroons —
Its phantom treasure after.
 
 
And here together, youth and youth,
Love will be doubly able;
Each be to each as true as truth,
And dear as fairy fable.
 
 
The owls are calling and the maize
With fallen dew is dripping —
Ah, girlhood, through the dewy haze
Come like a moonbeam slipping.
 

3

He hums

 
There is a fading inward of the day,
And all the pansy sunset hugs one star;
To eastward dwindling all the land is gray,
While barley meadows westward smoulder far.
 
 
Now to your glass will you pass
For the last time?
Pass,
Humming that ballad we know? —
Here while I wait it is late
And is past time —
Late,
And love's hours they go, they go.
 
 
There is a drawing downward of the night;
The wedded Heaven wends married to the Moon;
Above, the heights hang golden in her light,
Below, the woods bathe dewy in the June.
 
 
There through the dew is it you
Coming lawny?
You,
Or a moth in the vines?
You! – at your throat I may note
Twinkling tawny,
Note,
A glow-worm, your brooch that shines.
 

4

She speaks

 
How many smiles in the asking? —
Herein I can not deceive you;
My "yes" in a "no" was a-masking,
Nor thought, dear, once to grieve you.
I hid. The humming-bird happiness here
Danced up i' the blood … but what are words
When the speech of two souls all truth affords?
Affirmative, negative what in love's ear? —
I wished to say "yes" and somehow said "no";
The woman within me knew you would know,
For it held you six times dear.
 

He speaks

 
So many hopes in a wooing! —
Therein you could not deceive me;
The heart was here and the hope pursuing,
Knew that you loved, believe me. —
Bunched bells o' the blush pomegranate – to fix
At your throat; three drops of fire they are;
And the maiden moon and the maiden star
Sink silvery over yon meadow ricks.
Will you look? – till I hug your head back, so —
For I know it is "yes" though you whisper "no," —
And my kisses, sweet, are six.
 

5

She speaks

 
Could I recall every joy that befell me
There in the past with its anguish and bliss,
Here in my heart it has whispered to tell me,
These were no joys to this.
 
 
Were it not well if our love could forget them,
Veiling the was with the dawn of the is?
Dead with the past we should never regret them,
These were no joys to this.
 
 
When they were gone and the present stood speechful,
Ardent with word and with look and with kiss,
What though we know that their eyes are beseechful,
These were no joys to this.
 
 
Is it not well to have more of the spirit,
Living high futures this earthly must miss?
Less of the flesh with the past pining near it? —
Such is the joy of this.
 

6

She sings

 
We will leave reason,
Dear, for a season;
Reason were treason
Since yonder nether
Foot-hills are clad now
In nothing sad now;
We will be glad now,
Glad as this weather.
Heart and heart! in the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
I in the dairy; you are the airy
Majesty passing; Love is the fairy
Bringing us two together.
 

He sings

 
Starlight in masses
Of mist that passes,
Stars in the grasses;
Star-bud and flower
Laughingly know us;
Secretly show us
Earth is below us
And for the hour
Soul has soul. In the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
You are a song; a singer I hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; the spirit,
Love, is the power.
 

7

He speaks

 
And say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here,
Meseems, beneath the beechen bough
'T is just as sweet, my doubly dear,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.
 
 
When breathe green woodlands through and through
Wild scents of heliotrope and rain,
Where deep the moss mounds cool with dew,
Beyond the barley-blowing lane,
More wise than wedding, is to woo —
So we will woo again.
 
 
All night I lie awake and mark
The hours by no clanging clock,
But in the dim and dewy dark
Far crowing of some punctual cock;
Until the lyric of the lark
Mounts and Morn's gates unlock.
 
 
And would you be a nun and miss
All this delightful ache of love?
Not have the moon for what she is?
Love's honey-horn God holds above —
No world, for worlds are in a kiss
If worlds are good enough.
 
 
So say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here
We 'll stroll beneath the doddered bough,
Heaven's mated songsters singing near,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.
 

8

He opens his heart

 
And had we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid,
We had loved, as the story says,
Did the Sultan's favorite one
And the Persian Emperor's son
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.
 
 
Do you know the story well
Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana? —
When night on the palace fell,
A slave through a secret door,
Low-arched on the Tigris' shore,
By a hidden winding stair
Ben Bekkar brought to his fair?
 
 
Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of marvellous worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
And the curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.
 
 
Ten slave-girls – so many blooms —
Stand sconcing tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each like to a star in the East;
Ten singers, their lutes a-tune,
Each like to a bosomed moon.
 
 
For her in the stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled,
No metaphor made may serve;
Scarved deep with her own dark hair,
The jewels like fire-flies there —
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.
 
 
The zone embracing her waist, —
The ransom of forty princes, —
But her form more priceless is placed;
Carbuncles of Istakhar
In her coronet burning are —
Though gems of the Jamshid race,
Far rarer the gem of her face.
 
 
Tall-shaped like the letter I,
With a face like an Orient morning;
Eyes of the bronze-black sky;
Lips, of the pomegranate split,
With the light of her language lit;
Cheeks, which the young blood dares
Make blood-red anemone lairs.
 
 
Kohled with voluptuous look,
From opaline casting-bottles,
Handmaidens over them shook
Rose-water, and strewed with bloom
Mosaics old of the room;
Torch-rays on the walls made bars,
Or minted down golden dinars.
 
 
Roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara; —
Not a spray of cypress sad; —
Narcissus and jessamine o'er
Carved pillar and cedarn door;
Pomegranates and bells of clear
Tulips of far Kashmeer.
 
 
And the chamber glows like a flower
Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa;
And the bronzen censers glower;
And scents of ambergris pour
With myrrh brought out of Lahore,
And musk of Khoten, and good
Aloes and sandal-wood.
 
 
Rubies, a tragacanth-red,
Angered in armlet and anklet
Dragon-like eyes that bled:
Bangles and necklaces dangled
Diamonds, whose prisms were angled,
Over veil and from coiffure, each
Or apricot-colored or peach.
 
 
And Ghoram now smites her lute,
Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila,
Or amorous ghazals may suit: —
And the flambeaux snap and wave
Barbaric on free and slave,
Rich fabrics and bezels of gems,
And roses in anadems.
 
 
Sherbets in ewers of gold,
Fruits in salvers carnelian;
Flagons of grotesque mold,
Made of a sapphire glass,
Stained with wine of Shirâz;
Shaddock and melon and grape
On plate of an antique shape:
 
 
Vases of frost and of rose,
An alabaster graven,
Filled with the mountain snows;
Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
One filigree silver-swirl;
Vessels of gold foamed up
With spray of spar on the cup. —
 
 
When a slave bursts in with the cry:
"The eunuchs! the Khalif's eunuchs!
With scimitars bared draw nigh!
Wesif and Afif and he,
Chief of the hideous three,
Mesrour! the Sultan 's seen
'Mid a hundred weapons' sheen!"…
 
 
We, never had parted, no!
As parted those lovers fearful;
But kissing you so and so,
When they came they had found us dead
On the flowers our blood dyed red;
Our lips together and
The dagger in my hand.
 

9

She speaks, musing

 
O cities built by music! lyres of love
Strung to a songful sea! did I but own
One harp chord of one broken barbiton
What had I budded for our life thereof?
 
 
In docile shadows under bluebell skies
A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
Beneath lone peaks the splendors never leave,
In lemon orchards whence the egret flies.
 
 
Where pitying gray the pitiless eyes of Death
Blight no slight bud unfostered, I have thought;
Deep, lily-deep, pearl-pale daturas, fraught
With dewy fragrance like an angel's breath.
 
 
Sleep in the days; the twilights tuned and tame
Through mockbirds throating to attentive stars;
Each morn outrivalling each in opal bars;
Eves preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.
 
 
O country by the undiscovered sea!
The dream infolds thee and the way is dim —
With head not high, what if I follow him,
Love – with the madness and the melody?
 

10

He, after a pause, lightly

 
An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
 
 
An elf there is where the clover tips
A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
To the bandit elf of the Fairy way, —
O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.
 
 
Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing —
The evening moth is another thing:
The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
 
 
But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
Hides unhidden, where none may know,
In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow —
O ho, O ho! – a friend or foe?
 

11

She, seriously

 
Who the loser, who the winner,
If the Fancy fail as preacher? —
None who loved was yet beginner
Though another's love-beseecher;
Love's revealment 's of the inner
Life and deity, the teacher.
 
 
Who may falsify the feeling
To the lover who is loser?
Has she felt: – the mere revealing
Of the passion 's his accuser;
She conceals it; the concealing
Is her own love's self-abuser.
 
 
One hath said, no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth —
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.
 

12

He

 
Handsels of anemones
The surrendered hours
Pour about the sweet Spring's knees —
Crowding babies of the breeze,
Her unstudied flowers.
 
 
When 't is dawn, bestowing Day
Strews with coins of golden
Every furlong of his way —
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.
 
 
Warlock Night, when dips the dark,
Opens, tire on tire,
Windows of an heavenly ark,
Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark,
Butterflies of fire.
 
 
With the night, the day, the spring, —
Godly chords of beauty, —
We the instrument will string
Of our lives and love shall sing
Songs of truth and duty.
 

13

She

 
How it was I can not tell,
For I know not where nor why,
And the beautiful befell
In a land that does not lie
East or West where mortals dwell —
But beneath a vaguer sky.
 
 
Was it in the golden ages,
Or the iron, that I heard,
In prophetic speech of sages,
How had come a snowy bird
'Neath whose wing lay written pages
Of an unknown lover's word?
 
 
I forget; you may remember
How the earthquake shook our ships;
How our city, one huge ember,
Blazed within the thick eclipse;
When you found me – deep December
Sealed on icy eyes and lips.
 
 
I forget. No one may say
Pre-existences are true:
Here 's a flower dies to-day,
Resurrected blooms anew:
Death is dumb and Life is gray —
Who shall doubt what God can do!
 

14

He

 
As to this, nothing to tell,
You being all my belief;
Doubt may not enter or dwell
Here where your image is chief,
Royal, to quicken or quell,
Swaying no sceptre of grief.
 
 
Wise with the wisdom of Spring —
Dew-drops, a world in each prism,
Gems from the universe ring: —
Free of all creed and all schism,
Buds that are speechless but bring
God-uttered God aphorism.
 
 
See how the synod is met
There of the planets to preach us —
Freed from the frost's oubliette,
Here how the flowers beseech us —
Were it not well to forget
Winter and night as they teach us?
 
 
Dew-drop, a bud, and a star,
These – each a separate thought
Over man's logic how far! —
God to a unit hath wrought —
Love, making these what they are,
For without love they were naught.
 
 
Millions of stars; and they roll
Over your path that is white,
Here where we end the long stroll. —
Seen of the innermost sight,
All of the love of my soul
Kisses your spirit. Good-night.