Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Dolce far Niente

I

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Far to the East lay the ocean paling
Under the skies of Augustine.—
There, in the boat as we sat together,
Soft in the glow of the turquoise weather,
Light as the foam or a seagull's feather,
Fair of form and of face serene,
Sweet at my side I felt you lean,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

II

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Pine and palm, to the West, hung, trailing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Was it the wind that sighed above you?
Was it the wave that whispered of you?
Was it my soul that said "I love you"?
Was it your heart that murmured between,
Answering, shy as a bird unseen?
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

III

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Gray and low flew the heron wailing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Naught was spoken. We watched the simple
Gulls wing past. Your hat's white wimple
Shadowed your eyes. And your lips, a-dimple,
Smiled and seemed from your soul to wean
An inner beauty, an added sheen,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

IV

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Red on the marshes the day flared, failing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Was it your thought, or the transitory
Gold of the West, like a dreamy story,
Bright on your brow, that I read? the glory
And grace of love, like a rose-crowned queen
Pictured pensive in mind and mien?
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

V

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Wan on the waters the mist lay veiling
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Was it the joy that begot the sorrow?—
Joy that was filled with the dreams that borrow
Prescience sad of a far To-morrow,—
There in the Now that was all too keen,
That shadowed the fate that might intervene?
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

VI

 
Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
The marsh-hen cried and the tide was ailing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
And so we parted. No vows were spoken.
No faith was plighted that might be broken.
But deep in our hearts each bore a token
Of life and of love and of all they mean,
Beautiful, thornless and ever green,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.
 

St. Augustine, Fla.

Words

 
I cannot tell what I would tell thee,
What I would say, what thou shouldst hear:
Words of the soul that should compell thee,
Words of the heart to draw thee near.
 
 
For when thou smilest, thou, who fillest
My life with joy, and I would speak,
'T is then my lips and tongue are stillest,
Knowing all language is too weak.
 
 
Look in my eyes: read there confession:
The truest love has least of art:
Nor needs it words for its expression
When soul speaks soul and heart speaks heart.
 

Reasons

I

 
Yea, why I love thee let my heart repeat:
I look upon thy face and then divine
How men could die for beauty, such as thine,—
Deeming it sweet
To lay my life and manhood at thy feet,
And for a word, a glance,
Do deeds of old romance.
 

II

 
Yea, why I love thee let my heart unfold:
I look into thy heart and then I know
The wondrous poetry of the long-ago,
The Age of Gold,
That speaks strange music, that is old, so old,
Yet young, as when 't was born,
With all the youth of morn.
 

III

 
Yea, why I love thee let my heart conclude:
I look into thy soul and realize
The undiscovered meaning of the skies,—
That long have wooed
The world with far ideals that elude,—
Out of whose dreams, maybe,
God shapes reality.
 

Evasion

 
Why do I love you, who have never given
My heart encouragement or any cause?
Is it because, as earth is held of heaven,
Your soul holds mine by some mysterious laws?
Perhaps, unseen of me, within your eyes
The answer lies, the answer lies.
 

II

 
From your sweet lips no word hath ever fallen
To tell my heart its love is not in vain—
The bee that wooes the flow'r hath honey and pollen
To cheer him on and bring him back again:
But what have I, your other friends above,
To feed my love, to feed my love?
 

III

 
Still, still you are my dream and my desire;
Your love is an allurement and a dare
Set for attainment, like a shining spire,
Far, far above me in the starry air:
And gazing upward, 'gainst the hope of hope,
I breast the slope, I breast the slope.
 

In May

I

 
When you and I in the hills went Maying,
You and I in the sweet May weather,
The birds, that sang on the boughs together,
There in the green of the woods, kept saying
All that my heart was saying low,
Love, as glad as the May's glad glow,—
And did you know?
When you and I in the hills went Maying.
 

II

 
There where the brook on its rocks went winking,
There by its banks where the May had led us,
Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,
Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking
All that my soul was thinking there,
Love, as pure as the May's pure air,—
And did you care?
There where the brook on its rocks went winking.
 

III

 
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling,
Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,
In the Mays to come I shall feel forever
The wildflowers thinking, the wildbirds telling
The same fond love that my heart then knew,
Love unspeakable, deep and true,—
But what of you?
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.
 

Will You Forget?

 
In years to come, will you forget,
Dear girl, how often we have met?
And I have gazed into your eyes
And there beheld no sad regret
To cloud the gladness of their skies,
While in your heart—unheard as yet—
Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?—
In years to come, will you forget?
 
 
Ah, me! I only pray that when,
In other days, some man of men
Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep
With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken
When love awakens in their deep,—
I only pray some memory then,
Or sad or sweet, you still will keep
Of me and love that might have been.
 

Clouds of the Autumn Night

 
Clouds of the autumn night,
Under the hunter's moon,—
Ghostly and windy white,—
Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?
 
 
Out of the west, where dusk,
From her rich windowsill,
Leaned with a wand of tusk,
Witch-like, and wood and hill
Phantomed with mist and musk.
 
 
Into the east, where morn
Sleeps in a shadowy close,
Shut with a gate of horn,
'Round which the dreams she knows
Flutter with rose and thorn.
 
 
Blow from the west, oh, blow,
Clouds that the tempest steers!
And with your rain and snow
Bear of my heart the tears,
And of my soul the woe.
 
 
Into the east then pass,
Clouds that the night winds sweep!
And on her grave's sear grass,
There where she lies asleep.
There let them fall, alas!
 

The Glory and the Dream

 
There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.
 
 
Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;—
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream;—
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion—dead this many a year.
 

Snow and Fire

 
Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk
And lilies of the morn;
And cactus, holding up a slender tusk
Of fragrance on a thorn;
All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,
Her presence puts to scorn.
 
 
For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,
Scentless and chaste of heart;
The moonflower, making spiritual the air,
Like some pure work of art;
Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,
And virtue's counterpart.
 
 
Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when
Her lips to mine are pressed,—
Why are my veins all fire then? and then
Why should her soul suggest
Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men,
And prurient with unrest?
 

Restraint

 
Dear heart and love! what happiness to sit
And watch the firelight's varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine—
As through glad windows—mark fair fancies flit
In sumptuous chambers of thy soul's chaste wit
Like graceful women: then to take in mine
Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart's divine
Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!
When I remember how thy look and touch
Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,
I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead
Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much
Sweet hell,—beyond all help of me,—might be,
Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!
 

Why Should I Pine?

 
Why should I pine? when there in Spain
Are eyes to woo, and not in vain;
Dark eyes, and dreamily divine:
And lips, as red as sunlit wine;
 
 
Sweet lips, that never know disdain:
And hearts, for passion over fain;
Fond, trusting hearts that know no stain
Of scorn for hearts that love like mine.—
Why should I pine?
 
 
Because all dreams I entertain
Of beauty wear thy form, Elain;
And e'en their lips and eyes are thine:
So though I gladly would resign
All love, I love, and still complain,
"Why should I pine?"
 

When Lydia Smiles

 
When Lydia smiles, I seem to see
The walls around me fade and flee;
And, lo, in haunts of hart and hind
I seem with lovely Rosalind,
In Arden 'neath the greenwood tree:
The day is drowsy with the bee,
And one wild bird flutes dreamily,
And all the mellow air is kind,
When Lydia smiles.
 
 
Ah, me! what were this world to me
Without her smile!—What poetry,
What glad hesperian paths I find
Of love, that lead my soul and mind
To happy hills of Arcady,
When Lydia smiles!
 

The Rose

 
You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,—
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,—
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed
Is thine!—And, heart, be comforted;
For, though we part and roses shed
Their leaves and fade, love cannot die.—"
You have forgot.
 
 
So by those words of yours I'm led
To send it you this day you wed.
Look well upon it. You, as I,
Should ask it now, without a sigh,
If love can lie as it lies dead.—
You have forgot.
 

A Ballad of Sweethearts

 
Summer may come, in sun-blonde splendor,
To reap the harvest that Springtime sows;
And Fall lead in her old defender,
Winter, all huddled up in snows:
Ever a-south the love-wind blows
Into my heart, like a vane asway
From face to face of the girls it knows—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
 
 
If Carrie smile or Maud look tender,
Straight in my bosom the gladness glows;
But scarce at their side am I all surrender
When Gertrude sings where the garden grows:
And my heart is a bloom, like the red rose shows
For her hand to gather and toss away,
Or wear on her breast, as her fancy goes—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
 
 
Let Laura pass, as a sapling slender,
Her cheek a berry, her mouth a rose,—
Or Blanche or Helen,—to each I render
The worship due to the charms she shows:
But Mary's a poem when these are prose;
Here at her feet my life I lay;
All of devotion to her it owes—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
 
 
How can my heart of my hand dispose?
When Ruth and Clara, and Kate and May,
In form and feature no flaw disclose—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.