The river else doesn’t wholly reign,
But pale-blue ice is drowned now;
And clouds are not blue again,
But sun had drunk the snow out.
Through a half-opened door,
You fret a heart with rustle; though…
You are not else in love; but lor!
You can’t not fall in love tomorrow.
for R.M.
I love shaking the bones in your arm
the humerus, radius and ulna.
Some people have such bones –
men, like you, across the top of the back!
I love you at the train station
so young . . .
The song of that bird
executed only in the morning and evening.
I love the way
you just do it!
Perfect commas, two profiles, eyelashes
moles and turtles in your smile.
I love the movement between our reality
and imagination – that gold step
[HERNANI, ACT I.]
To mount the hills or scaffold, we go to-morrow:
Hernani, blame me not for this my boldness.
Art thou mine evil genius or mine angel?
I know not, but I am thy slave. Now hear me:
Go where thou wilt, I follow thee. Remain,
And I remain. Why do I thus? I know not.
I feel that I must see thee--see thee still--
See thee for ever. When thy footstep dies,
It is as if my heart no more would beat;
When thou art gone, I am absent from myself;
But when the footstep which I love and long for
Where are the bay-leaves, Thestylis, and the charms?
Fetch all; with fiery wool the caldron crown;
Let glamour win me back my false lord's heart!
Twelve days the wretch hath not come nigh to me,
Nor made enquiry if I die or live,
Nor clamoured (oh unkindness!) at my door.
Sure his swift fancy wanders otherwhere,
The slave of Aphrodite and of Love.
I'll off to Timagetus' wrestling-school
At dawn, that I may see him and denounce
His doings; but I'll charm him now with charms.
So shine out fair, O moon! To thee I sing
I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho' I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang -- ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Sun! stay thy course, this moment stay--
Suspend the o'er flowing tide of day,
Divulge not such a love as mine,
Ah! hide the mystery divine;
Lest man, who deems my glory shame,
Should learn the secret of my flame.
O night! propitious to my views,
Thy sable awning wide diffuse;
Conceal alike my joy and pain,
Nor draw thy curtain back again,
Though morning, by the tears she shows,
Seems to participate my woes.
Ye stars! whose faint and feeble fires
Express my languishing desires,
When I would sing of crooked streams and fields,
On, on from me they stretch too far and wide,
And at their look my song all powerless yields,
And down the river bears me with its tide;
Amid the fields I am a child again,
The spots that then I loved I love the more,
My fingers drop the strangely scrawling pen,
And I remember nought but nature's lore,
I plunge me in the river's cooling wave,
Or on the embroidered bank admiring lean,
Now some endangered insect life to save,
O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?
When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?
The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
The brand is on thy brow,
A dark and guilty spot;
'Tis ne'er to be erased!
'Tis ne'er to be forgot!
The brand is on thy brow!
Yet I must shade the spot:
For who will love thee now,
If I love thee not?
Thy soul is dark, — is stained; —
From out the bright world thrown;
By God and man disdained,
But not by me, — thy own!
Oh! even the tiger slain
Hath one who ne'er doth flee,
Who soothes his dying pain!
— That one am I to thee!
