Classic Poem

That night out of his loneliness there grew
With slow deep strength a sense within his heart
That he must see her at whatever cost.
All other life seemed pale; at length he knew
Its tangled wastes unmeaning, here apart
From her he had so swiftly found and lost.

Restless, unhappy, daring, unconfined,
He felt her well to be.
An obscure warning flashed across his mind
That before,—yes, and after,—she
Had turned to other lovers. What were these
For him to hold as stain?
He loved her!—loved her subtle flashing brain
And her body's ecstasies.

Truly he judged her reckless, wild,
Unstable as a faery-child,—
Fatal and fickle and possessed
By demons that could never rest
In any love that he could give. . . .
And yet—how sweet it were to live
A while in her exotic spell
Of rapture!—while the miracle
Of love enthralled them,—while delight
Of her wild body lit the night
And her wild flashing spirit shone
Magical—till the hour was gone.
They with clear eyes and hearts awake
Might in their hour of April take
A day,—a month,—a year,—and bless
The gods for so much happiness.
For surely was that spirit wise
That hid behind her laughing eyes;—
Surely that spirit well did know
How the great miracles come and go,
And how the soul to death addressed
Must hail and speed the uncertain guest!
Perhaps she, too, was eager to cast
All shames away, and his at last
Become with him a soulless free
Mad nymph and faun in Arcady,—
Reckless, unmemoried, and gay
For this their pagan holiday.
Beautiful pagan that she was!
He saw her slender whiteness pass
Down valleys in wild laughing race
While he pursued, and the glad chase
Narrowed and closed, and panting fast
He clasped her in some dell at last.
Oh beauty, beauty called to him
Out of her maze, unsolved and dim
Of good and evil; and her name
Across his darkness shot its flame.

And then he grew to picture her
With him above the city's stir
In her high rooms, at twilight hour
Looking down as from a tower
On mortal life,—they two alone
Into one hour's completeness grown;
Touched with the sense of fleeting days,—
Life's sweetness, life's dear lingered ways,
Where for a moment, hand in hand,
Across the singing summer land
Of youth, two hearts may seek and hold
The rainbow's far incredible gold
And bid the daylight-world go by,
Content with their sole ecstasy.
He saw them wandering through the loud
Bright laughter of the midnight crowd
At other hours, delighting then
To feel the mysterious stream of men
Swirling around them, now a part
Of the great city's infinite heart.
And other days,—they drifting far
Down the small waterways of the Loire
Or Indre, where men are less than dreams
Upon the narrow willowed streams.
Perhaps they would grow simple there
Amid a world so mild and fair,—
Forget the intricate sodden maze
Of city nights and city days,
And blunder into peace, and be
Forgotten in felicity!

A dream! A dream! … Yet in a world
Whose verities in mists are furled,—
Where nothing is secure or plain
Save the realities of pain,
It seemed no madness. And the might
Of this gold vision came to smite
Its image on his brain; he felt
All fancied barriers break and melt.
And on a midnight when, alone,
His grey walls chilled him to the bone
With vague sepulchral prophecies,
And far away the wind-swept seas
Howled on their rocks, he suddenly stood
Transformed, and in adventurous mood
Knew her the meteor of his night,
Knew her his April of delight,
His flute of Spring, his golden west,
His sea-born and belovèd breast.

And in that night with terrible powers astir
He wrote to her.—

“I am coming now,
For I cannot be longer without you.
I am coming now,
And this is what my heart cries to you.—

“Sidonian lute!
Your breasts are lilies
Cooled by the dawn—
Your brain is lit
With summer lightnings—
Your thighs are sleeping music …
Sidonian lute!—
Pale lute awaiting
The musician's hand!—
Oh give me peace
From insupportable echoes. . . .

“Tonight—
This night before the summer—
Through which great winds
From remote storms
Rush secretly,—
On this night
I am drowned in your fragrance—
Devastated by you—
Mad with your memory. . . .

“Be merciful!
I kiss the ground before you,
I hold you in my arms
As a slave holds a pearl.
I am not I—
I am your shadow
That tracks you endlessly
Through star-swept spaces.
You—
Whose brain is lightning—
Whose breasts are lilies …
Sidonian lute!
Sidonian lute!
Whose breasts are lilies
Under the moon.”