My dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.
Stars reflected in the water
Are jewels enough for Pharaoh's daughter;
But Pharaoh's daughter's dead and gone
While living girls are getting on.
On city pavements
Two muffled, sombre nuns pace,
Behind laughing girls.
Too strange, too far a thing to hold,
Our fingers slip, and let you go; —
A white, long flower high on a cliff,
With peril of the sea below.
We cannot match you as you are.
With aught or all within our reach;
Match shadows on an April pool?
Or moonlight rendered into speech?
You herd the stars up in the sky.
In silver smock, with a tall rod,
And to your arms, as shepherds do,
Gather the little lambs of God.
Oh, I would sing! Oh, I would cry!
Oh, I would lay me down and die !
There is no lovely or strange thing
I would not do this day in spring.
Why go the sighing winds unfurled?
To blow me to the end of world.
Why bud the flowers, except that I
May pelt the stars out of the sky?
Why drips the rain its ancient way ?
To blot out every yesterday,
And gather time to this one hour,
My golden thoughts its only dower.
Why curves the pool out in the grass?
To make for me a looking-glass,
Where I may see how glad a thing
A girl in love this day in spring!
Little ships of whitest pearl
With sailors who were ancient kings,
Come over the sea when my little girl
Sings.
And if my little girl should weep,
Little ships with torn sails
Go headlong down among the deep
Whales.
I saw the little quiet town,
And the whitewashed gables on the hill,
And laughing children coming down
The laneway to the mill.
Wind-blushes up their faces glowed,
And they were happy as could be,
The wobbling water never flowed
So merry and so free.
One little maid withdrew aside
To pick a pebble from the sands.
Her golden hair was long and wide,
And there were dimples on her hands.
And when I saw her large blue eyes,
What was the pain that went thro' me?
Why did I think on Southern skies
And ships upon the sea?
Who knows how beauty springs
Out of the world of things,
To take the eyes with sudden flame
And vanish whence it came,
High above things that vex,
Fear, covetousness, spite and sex ?
Lost in the busy day,
In thoughts that harry and press,
I knew a young girl passed
And heard her swinging dress ;
And when I turned I saw,
Raised on a stair,
Only her ankle, finely poised
Against the coloured air.
Who that has known can tell
How in this world of things,
At Pompeii I heard a woman laugh,
And turned to find the reason of her mirth ;
Saw but the silent figure of a girl
That centuries had mummied into earth :
The running figure of a little maid
With face half-hidden in her shielding arm,
Silent, yet screaming, yea, in ev'ry limb
The cruel torture of her dread alarm.
At Pompeii I heard a maiden shriek
All down the years from out the distant past ;
Blind in the awful darkness still she runs ;
Death in the mould of fear her form has cast.
A little maid once soft and sweet and white,
Full of the morning's hope, and love and joy,
That Nature, moving to the voice of Time,
Shook her dark wings to wither and destroy.
You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain.
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.
You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.
Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream.
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.