| Of that long cloud-bar in the West, Whose nether edge, erelong, you see The silvery chrism in turn anoint, And then the tiniest rosy point Touched doubtfully and timidly Into the dark blue's chilly strip, As some mute, wondering thing below, Awakened by the thrilling glow, Might, looking up, see Dian dip One lucent foot's delaying tip In Latmian fountains long ago.
Knew you what silence was before? Here is no startle of dreaming bird That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing;
Nor noise of any living thing, Here is no sough of branches stirred, Only, now and then, a sigh, Such as one hears by night on shore; With fickle intervals between, Such as Andromeda might have heard, Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh, And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen Turning in sleep; it is the sea That welters and wavers uneasily Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.
Soft as the dews that fell that night, She said, "Auf wiedersehen!" The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair; I linger in delicious pain; Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, Thinks she, "Auf wiedersehen!" ?
'T is thirteen years; once more I press The turf that silences the lane; I hear the rustle of her dress, I smell the lilacs, and -ah, yes, I hear "Auf wiedersehen!"
Sweet piece of bashful maiden art!
The English words had seemed too fain,
But these they drew us heart to heart, Yet held us tenderly apart;
She said, "Auf wiedersehen!"
AFTER THE BURIAL.
YES, faith is a goodly anchor; When skies are sweet as a psalm, At the bows it lolls so stalwart, In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm. And when over breakers to leeward The tattered surges are hurled, It may keep our head to the tempest, With its grip on the base of the world.
But, after the shipwreck, tell me What help in its iron thews, Still true to the broken hawser, Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?
In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt,
Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless of shore at last!
To the spirit its splendid conjectures, To the flesh its sweet despair, Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket With its anguish of deathless hair!
Immortal? I feel it and know it, Who doubts it of such as she? But that is the pang's very secret, Immortal away from me.
There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard
Would scarce stay a child in his race, But to me and my thought it is wider Than the star-sown vague of Space.
Your logic, my friend, is perfect, Your moral most drearily true; But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.
Console if you will, I can bear it ; "T is a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death.
Communion in spirit! Forgive me, But I, who am earthy and weak, Would give all my incomes from dream- land
For a touch of her hand on my cheek.
That little shoe in the corner, So worn and wrinkled and brown, With its emptiness confutes you, And argues your wisdom down.
HERE once my step was quickened, Here beckoned the opening door, And welcome thrilled from the thresh- old
To the foot it had known before.
A glow came forth to meet me From the flame that laughed in the grate,
And shadows adance on the ceiling,
Danced blither with mine for a mate.
"I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair,
"This corner, you know, is your seat ";
"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender,
"I brighten at touch of your feet."
"We know the practised finger,"
Said the books, "that seems like brain";
And the shy page rustled the secret It had kept till I came again.
Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered
On nightingales' throats that flew Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz
To gather quaint dreams for you."
Ah me, where the Past sowed heart'sease,
The Present plucks rue for us men! I come back that scar unhealing Was not in the churchyard then.
But, I think, the house is unaltered, I will go and beg to look At the rooms that were once familiar To my life as its bed to a brook.
Unaltered! Alas for the sameness That makes the change but more! 'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 'Tis his tread that chills the floor!
To learn such a simple lesson,
Need I go to Paris and Rome, That the many make the household, But only one the home?
'T was just a womanly presence, An influence unexprest,
But a rose she had worn, on my gravesod
Were more than long life with the rest!
"T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, "T was nothing that I can phrase, But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,
And put on her looks and ways. Were it mine I would close the shutters, Like lids when the life is fled, And the funeral fire should wind it, This corpse of a home that is dead.
For it died that autumn morning When she, its soul, was borne To lie all dark on the hillside That looks over woodland and corn.
Thou only aspirest the more, Unregretful the old leaves shedding That fringed thee with music before, And deeper thy roots embedding In the grace and the beauty of yore; Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older, The green of last summer is sear!" But loftier, hopefuller, bolder, Winnest broader horizons each year.
To me 't is not cheer thou art singing: There's a sound of the sea, O mournful tree,
In thy boughs forever clinging, And the far-off roar
Of waves on the shore
A shattered vessel flinging.
As thou musest still of the ocean On which thou must float at last, And seem'st to foreknow The shipwreck's woe
And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,
Do I, in this vague emotion, This sadness that will not pass, Though the air throb with wings, And the field laughs and sings,
Do I forebode, alas!
The ship-building longer and wearier, The voyage's struggle and strife, And then the darker and drearier Wreck of a broken life?
I Go to the ridge in the forest I haunted in days gone by, But thou, O Memory, pourest No magical drop in mine eye, Nor the gleam of the secret restorest That hath faded from earth and sky: A Presence autumnal and sober Invests every rock and tree, And the aureole of October Lights the maples, but darkens me.
Pine in the distance, Patient through sun or rain, Meeting with graceful persistence, With yielding but rooted resistance, The northwind's wrench and strain, No memory of past existence Brings thee pain;
Right for the zenith heading, Friendly with heat or cold,
Thine arms to the influence spreading Of the heavens, just from of old,
« ZurückWeiter » |