It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.
The heart asks more than life can give,
When that is learned, then all is learned;
The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old.
I cannot die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die--but is there not
Some shining strange escape for me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
Of immortality?
Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,
From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,
Unto myself I came.
My spirit like my flesh
Sprang from a thousand sources,
From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,
From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;
The living thoughts in me
Spring from dead men and women,
Forgotten time out of mind
And many as bubbles of foam.
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you.
Your heart is bound tightly, let
Beauty beware,
It is not hers to set
Free from the snare.
Tell her a bleeding hand
Bound it and tied it,
Tell her the knot will stand
Though she deride it;
One who withheld so long
All that you yearned to take,
Has made a snare too strong
For Beauty’s self to break.
Love, you brought me everything;
I gave little —
But the beauty that I sing
May be brittle; —
May be brittle, and so might —
Now I've spoken! —
Have fallen on another's sight
And been broken!
Who is in love with loveliness,
Need not shake with cold;
For he may tear a star in two,
And frock himself in gold.
Who holds her first within his heart,
In certain favor goes;
If his roof tumbles, he may find
Harbor in a rose.
The maid is out in the clear April light
Our store of linen hanging up to dry;
On clump of box, on the small grass there lie
Bits of thin lace, and broidery blossom-white.
And something makes tall Ellen — gesture, look —
Or else but that most ancient, simple thing,
Hanging the clothes upon a day in spring,
A Greek girl cut out some old lovely book.
The wet white flaps ; a tune just come in mind,
The sound brims the still house. Our flags are out,
Blue by the box, blue by the kitchen stair;
Betwixt the two she trips across the wind,
Her warm hair blown all cloudy-wise about,
Slim as the flags, and every whit as fair.
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears,
Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years,
Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.
There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes,
Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries:
There were great silences under clear dark skies.
Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done.
The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun:
But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.
Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears,
And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears,
Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.
Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring.
Bind up, bind up your dark bright hair
And hide the smouldering sunken fire.
Let it be held no more than fair,
Nor yourself guess how rare, how rare
Its movement, colour and deep fire.
Your eyes they have their consciousness,
Your lips their grave reflective smile,
Your hands their cunning for distress:
Your hair has only beauteousness
And hid flame for its only guile.
That glowing hair on shoulders white
Is pride past sum: take care, take care!
Even to dream of wish'd delight
Too much perturbs the ebb of night--
Bind up, bind up your burning hair!
When I had dreamed and dreamed what woman's beauty was,
And how that beauty seen from unseen surely flowed,
I turned and dreamed again, but sleeping now no more:
My eyes shut and my mind with inward vision glowed.
"I did not think!" I cried, seeing that wavering shape
That steadied and then wavered, as a cherry bough in June
Lifts and falls in the wind--each fruit a fruit of light;
And then she stood as clear as an unclouded moon.
As clear and still she stood, moonlike remotely near;
I saw and heard her breathe, I years and years away.
Her light streamed through the years, I saw her clear and still,
Shape and spirit together mingling night with day.
Water falling, falling with the curve of time