Honey from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?
The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.
Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
And men who rail like thee;
An equal passion to repay
They are not coy like me.
Or seek some slave of power and gold
To be thy dear heart's mate;
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me, thy hate.
A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;
I hate thy want of truth and love--
How should I then hate thee?
As restored by Mr. C.D. Locock.
Cease, cease--for such wild lessons madmen learn
Thus to be lost, and thus to sink and die
Perchance were death indeed!--Constantia turn
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie
Even though the sounds its voice that were
Between lips are laid to sleep:
Within thy breath, and on thy hair
Like odour, it is yet
And from thy touch like fire doth leap--
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet--
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.
breathless awe like the swift change
Of dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers
Wild sweet yet incommunicably strange
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers...
Shall we roam, my love,
To the twilight grove,
When the moon is rising bright;
Oh, I'll whisper there,
In the cool night-air,
What I dare not in broad daylight!
I'll tell thee a part
Of the thoughts that start
To being when thou art nigh;
And thy beauty, more bright
Than the stars' soft light,
Shall seem as a weft from the sky.
When the pale moonbeam
On tower and stream
Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
How I love to gaze
Thou leaden brain, which censur'st what I write,
And say'st my lines be dull and do not move,
I marvel not thou feel'st not my delight,
Which never felt'st my fiery touch of love.
But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv'd,
Whose stomach unto gall hath turn'd thy food,
Whose senses, like poor prisoners, hunger-starv'd,
Whose grief hath parch'd thy body, dried thy blood,
Thou which hast scorned life and hated death,
And in a moment mad, sober, glad, and sorry,
Thou which hast bann'd thy thoughts and curs'd thy breath
With thousand plagues, more than in Purgatory,
Thou thus whose spirit Love in his fire refines,
Come thou, and read, admire, applaud my lines.
Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.
Kissing Helena, together
With my kiss, my soul beside it
Came to my lips, and there I kept it,--
For the poor thing had wandered thither,
To follow where the kiss should guide it,
Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
Love, though it is not chill and cold,
But burning like eternal fire,
Is yet not of approaches bold,
Which gay dramatic tastes admire.
Oh timid love, more fond than free,
In daring song is ill pourtrayed,
Where, as in war, the devotee
By valour wins each captive maid;--
Where hearts are prest to hearts in glee,
As they could tell each other's mind;
Where ruby lips are kissed as free,
As flowers are by the summer wind.
No! gentle love, that timid dream,
With hopes and fears at foil and play,
Works like a skiff against the stream,
And thinking most finds least to say.
Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now,
When passion is decayed?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
Till our love was loved out in us both;
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled:
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.
If I have pleasures for a friend,
And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
Or that I should bar him of another;
For all we can gain is to give ourselves pain,
When neither can hinder the other.
Said Death to Passion
"Give of thine an Acre unto me."
Said Passion, through contracting Breaths
"A Thousand Times Thee Nay."
Bore Death from Passion
All His East
He -- sovereign as the Sun
Resituated in the West
And the Debate was done.