The faun, and other poems online

And pressed the rose-leaf to my throbbing
heart !

We seemed to float afar in misty space
I saw beneath my own your paling face;
Your eyes were fixed in limpid light a-swoon,
All sorrowing as the white impassioned moon;
I knew our lips had mingled, but no more,
For with a mighty wakening, I tore
The precious peril from my breast apart
Oh, take this rose-leaf from my burning heart

Go from me go! I would not have you be
Less than the idol you have been to me;
To warm, white womanhood you must be true
No less is worthy, peerless one, of you.
One wild sweet thrill of rapture I have known,
And I will bear my burden hence alone
A fragrant burden to the world's sad mart,
A rose-leaf from the ashes of my heart.



[68]



PARIS, GOOD-BYE

THE waves have hurled our lost good-byes

Afar upon the baffling deeps ;

Amidst their solemn echoing sweeps
A stillness softening the eyes,

With calmer musings of regret.
And yet

A lurch, a quickening flight,

A fitful looming in the night
Has rent apart one only tie
That bound your heart to mine good-bye

The gulf between is deep as death,
A soul asleep ! If yours could flee
Through conquered space, and come to me,

And touch my heart's web with the breath
That 'neath your radiant breast should lie,
'Twould verberate with song good-bye!

I wish the night were not so blue;
If there could come the wild alarm
Of thunder, and the forked storm

Should crash its justice over you
If only you might feel again
The self-stained soul's awakening pain,

I'd clasp and cling to your first sigh,

For I might love you then good-bye!



[69]



AFTER THE STORM

THE day was dawning, and the sea was calm
Still as a baby cuddled in its sleep ;
Tender and pale, but oh, so deep so deep !

Singing the sky a low and sorrowing psalm.
I cannot help but know and love you best
When the glad Gale descends to your heaving

breast,
Lashing your seething spirit to unrest.

Receive your stormy lover, mighty Sea ;

Nor strive against him and his princely love.
He comes not to you with a slavish plea,

But bears you in his arms, below, above,
Laughing to see your grand soul struggle so,
Shouting, "She'll yield to me my bride, I
know !"

And yet you sent him from your longing breast,
And lie in pure white light, so still and calm,

A wealth of pain and passion unconfessed,
Singing the sky a low-voiced, sorrowing
psalm.



[70]



THE SOUL OF THE SNOW

I COME with a rush and whirl,
With flutter and flurry;

All silent and soft I swirl
In my breathless hurry.

I bury the barren blight

Of the Earth's cold anguish
I rest in my frenzied flight

Where the bare boughs languish.

When withering whirlwinds shriek

In their wrathful revel,
Over perilous mountain peak,

And the stubbled level

I ride in their spirals curled,

To their own undoing !
I comfort the mourning world

With my wild, warm wooing.

I wrap it in dreams away

Till it stirs in sleeping,
The thrill of the dawning day

Through its pulses leaping!



[71]



Then, lo ! from a silent place
A gurgle and gushing!

The fire of my keen embrace
With a vernal rushing

Up-flames into brown little buds,
As with laughter I flee

Away on the riotous floods
To my lover, the Sea!



[72]



SONG (

SEEST thou not how the twilight is fading
Far, into amber and amorous seas?

Hearest thou evening's breezes persuading
Kisses from sorrowing, whispering trees?

Seest thou not that the shadows are stealing
Slowly o'er mountain and meadow and sea?

Hearest thou not silver vespers are pealing,
Floating afar into faint meloily?

Let us forget all the cares that have bound us
Fast to the furrowing sorrows of day,

Yield to the breeze's caressing around us,
Yield to the spirit's empassioning play.

Let us float down the soft stream of thy sing-
ing,

Minstrel of melody, singer divine,
Into the region of ecstasy flinging

Silvery flights of the dreaming of thine.

Why should we linger o'er doubt or delaying
When the deep strain of your rapturous song

Over our quickening pulses is playing,

Thrilling and luring, and lingering long?



[73]



Let us float down the soft stream of thy sing-
ing,

Minstrel of melody, singer divine,
Till the caress of my soul's silent clinging

Maketh the throb of thine ecstasy mine.



[74]



SONNET TO A ROSE

SWEET rose, the fairest of all flowers, seeming

In luxury of beauty to combine

The greatest virtues of all flowers divine,

As thou'rt among thy fair companions beaming,

My heart with rapturous throbs of love is

teeming !

Mysterious rose, when first I held thee mine
Thou wouldst the donor's feelings deep de-
fine,

And silence both our hearts into a dreaming ;
Then through that fleeting hour of bliss I

wore thee,
And reveling in thy perfume found delight.

No flower I'll care for, rose, as I adore thee,

Though thou wilt fade ere yet I see thee right;

And I must live, dear rose, and e'er deplore

thee;
How brief thy bloom and then eternal blight.



[75]



MOONLIGHT VILLANELLE

SILVER CYNTHIA breaks the gloom!

Bathing in her mystic light,
Fragrant showers of roses bloom.

Come, our wanderings we'll resume,

For, upon this silent night,
Silver Cynthia breaks the gloom!

All the earth she doth illume,

E'en those nooks, where, in delight,
Fragrant showers of roses bloom.

Shadows lurk like things of doom,
But in streams of dazzling white
Silver Cynthia breaks the gloom !

Come with me, where weirdly loom

Trembling, shadowy forms of might!
Silver Cynthia breaks the gloom
Scented showers of roses bloom.



[76]



SONG AT NIGHT

I WONDER what your dream may be,
Dear Heart, to-night of me?

I wonder if you feel my touch,
And if you miss me much?

I stare up at the naked stars

It seems their silver bars
Withhold the vision of your face,

And you from my embrace.

Perhaps the starlight filters now

On your uplifted brow ;
Oh, tear the dazzling veil apart,

And rush upon my heart !



[77]



IF I SHOULD COME

IF I should come and kiss you in the night,

When all the world in slumbering silence lies,
O Dearest, would it wake you with delight
If I should come and kiss you in the night?
And would you start, and tremble in surprise,
Uplifting through the dusk your wondering

eyes ?
And would you smile, and clasp me to your

breast
Until my cheek upon your own should

rest?

O Dearest, would it wake you with delight,
If I should come and kiss you in the night?



[78]



SPIRIT OF FIRE

SPIRIT of Fire,

Why did you fan the flame of my fleet desire,

Quick'ning my burning blood in its ebb and

flow,
Billowing chaste unrest on your breasts of

snow ?
Spirit of Fire.

Dew of the dawn in your eyes' dark dreaming

sleeps,

Cleft when the wakening dart of passion leaps
Forth in the pleading pulse of your lips, so

near

Ecstasy strikes to my soul in nameless fear,
Lest I should clasp and crush you in mad

caress,

Losing your soul in Love's warm wilderness
Spirit of Fire.



[79]



KISS ME YOU!

BETWEEN my palms I clasp your hand
To try to make you understand ;
I look and look into your eyes
To clear them of their soft surprise.
O, trust me, girl of dawn and dew
Kiss me you!

I am so strong that in my arms
I hold you, 'spite of your alarms !
I feel the flutter of your heart
As of my own it were a part!
And I am shaken through and through
Kiss me you !

Your head held on my shoulder so,
The wild warm roses come and go !
Your scarlet lips are very near
And, oh, you are so dear so dear!
Why should I kneel, and humbly sue ?
Kiss me YOU!



[80]



LOVE ME WHILE YOU MAY

THEY tell me hearts should ever guarded be,

In Spring soft Spring,
When little buds are greening hedge and tree,

And wild incenses fling;
That Youth's unfettered fancies will betray

Some sweet enraptured day !
But dear, I feel the Heart's one treason
To turn from Love, and follow reason,
In springtime's joyous, throbbing season;

So love me love me while you may !

When scented petals scatter in the wind,

So cold so cold!

When autumn's gold and crimsoned woods are
thinned,

And all the world grows old,
Then chilling Age, all pallid, bent and gray,

Will come sweet Love to slay!
Ah, Heart of mine, the world's one treason
Is to turn from Love, and follow Reason,
In springtime's joyous, throbbing season;

So love me love me while you may !



[81]



THE PASSIONATE SONG

SHALL, I He asleep through the coming years,
Or my heart burst forth into passionate song
That has tortured and torn my soul so long?

Let us bury the cowardly train of fears,
Let us banish the burning fangs of wrong,
And, my heart, burst forth into passionate
song!

Let us fling the fetters of Fortune's pawn
Let us say, "O Heart that has starved so

long,
Lo, Love shall waken your passionate song !"

And you, Lover, far out in the dawn,

As you break the clods on the hard, cold way,
Arise from your labors, and hear my lay,
And follow its winding out of the mist
To the peak of Joy, by the sun's rays kissed.
We have built the way full brave and alone
That day was Duty's, but this is our own ;
And the night shall follow, how sweet and

long!
And our hearts burst forth into passionate

song.



[82]



SHALL WE DISCOVER?

WHEN I was a child, as I leaned to the water,
That danced as a nymph through the heart

of the wood,
I wondered what magic the forest had taught

her,

And sometimes believed that my heart un-
derstood.

The words that I caught, as she whispered and

bubbled

With sun-dimpled merriment over the rocks,
Were full of wild joy! but a tone low and

troubled
At times broke the flow in a series of shocks.

When music awakened me, sweeping and sur-
ging

Up over my heart in a wonderful thrill,
I felt, with the fine throb of ecstasy merging,
That low, troubled tone, and its ominous
ohill.

Dear Love, when I look in your eyes, with their

splendor

Of promise, a glory brims over my life;
Then something strikes into the harmonies

tender

A pang with Love's delicate languor at
strife.

[83]



Dear Heart, when our love shall have reached

its full measure
And all lesser things shall have paled in the

past,

Say, shall we discover the infinite treasure
The wild song of absolute rapture, at last?



[84]



A MAIDEN'S HEART

A MAIDEN'S heart is rapt in wild, sweet

wonder

The birds and bees and blossoming,
The blue above, and billows booming under
Strange whispers to her untaught bosom

bring ;
But when the twilight hour begins to darken,

And crickets 'neath the rose-tree sing,
Such yearnings in her young eyes lean and

hearken,

That tears unbidden from their fountains
spring.

"Oh tell me, bird, swift winging to your little

mate.

What is it stirs my breast
With such a wild unrest?
O Moon, up-soaring white from heaven's east-
ern gate,

How soft your tender light
Enfolds the dreaming night !
O evening Breeze, that whispers through the

wav'ring trees,
What secret do you know
To make them tremble so?
O Shore, upon whose bosom break the seething

seas,

Unseal to me ah, yield to me
That mystic word of ecstasy !"
[85]



SONG OF THE COQUETTE

TO-DAY I am so happy, the world is all a-glee,
A song of joy is bursting from every greening

tree;
My raptured heart goes dreaming a-down

youth's summer sea,
Because my own true loved one has plighted

faith to me!

But should the tempest gather to blacken

heaven's blue,
And if my own dear lover prove false instead

of true

Do you think for the untrue one I should sigh?
No! I'd laugh, and get another that would

I!

He clasped my trembling fingers, he drew me

to his breast,
He whispered words the sweetest that ever lips

confessed !
Though years should ravage roses on cheeks

now fair to see,
He swore that he forever would keep his faith

with me !



[86]



But should he break this moment of maiden

ecstasy,
And plight unto another the love he pledged

to me

Do you think for the untrue one I should sigh?
No I'd laugh and get a new one that would

I!



[87]



A CLIMBING ROSE

IF I were but a climbing rose

What would I do then? Goodness knows,

I'd climb up to your window, dear

I'd climb and nod, and peep and peer !

I'd learn the secret of that art

By which you capture every heart!

I'd boldly swing into your room,

And fill it with a sweet perfume;

And if you dared to venture near,

I'd reach right out and kiss you, dear!



[88]



TO A SHY SWAIN

WHY, look you, Sweetheart, how you limp and

halt!

Your speeches fall and flounder, shy and vault !
Is Love's dear tongue so hard, in sooth, to

learn ?

His tender graces, then, so hard to earn?
Is this the best that you can do ask whether
I really think we'll have a change of weather?
Then sit in silence twirling at your thumbs,
Or crush your cigarette up into crumbs?
And all the little precious moments flying
And Love, disgruntled, in the corner crying!



[89]



INVOCATION TO LOVE

COME to me softly as a summer shower,
Veiling the ardor of the midday sun;

Come as the cooling breeze on budding bower,
When day is done.

Steal on my senses with the kiss of sleep,
Gently enfold me as the summer night,

Clothing my dreams, through which your heart-
beats creep
With visions bright.

Touch of the hand, and virgin touch of lips
Oh, hold them purer than young April days !

Fresh as her flowers with faintly flushing tips,
In wooded ways.



[90]



THE HOLY GRAIL

DEAR Heart, we may not know the reason why
The cup of life is brimming bitter-sweet

What mysteries within the goblet lie
To make the cycle of a soul complete.

We shall remember when the days have run
We shall recall it where the shadows fail;

And when we lift the goblet to the sun
Behold the vision of the Holy Grail.



[91]



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