Short Poems

Tripped the beautiful Princess down the stairs of stone,
Bearing a golden pitcher, blushing, dreaming, alone;
Softly she raised the cover: the water arose in its might,
And she fell in its cold embraces upon her bridal night.

There came a great betrothal: a Princess was to wed
A Prince of another nation: and lo the old king said . . .
" Rarer is magical water than wine of high account,
Fetch thou a stoup, my daughter, of the lymph of the Magic Fount."

So the magical Fountain struggled within its prison of stone,
Like the mighty heart of a Poet by scornful men unknown,
In the City the people murmured, ever below their breath —
For the frown of the King was a scourge, and the word of the King was death.

But the King said: " Far more precious than rarest draughts of wine
Is the stream that rises ever from this free fount of mine:
Yet the country lasses drink it, and churls of common clay.
Up with a gateway of granite, and drive the mob away!"

M IGHIT of old was the City: a great King ruled therein,
A monarch of wide wild conquest, a monarch of cruel sin:
Close by the gate of the Palace a magical Fountain rose,
And all who drank its waters forgot for a while their woes.

That wild free song which will not wear a fetter,
Such as was mastered well by loving Shelley
(Pure poet, down-ridden in the world's hot mêlee ),
Or such as Shakespeare uttered, careless setter
In Orient gold of perfect amethysts,
Whom men must marvel at, while the great world exists.

Strange; for it is not long since her white form
Lay in my arms, and all the lights burnt dim
In the old haunted chamber, weird and warm,
And no ghosts tortured the entwining limb,
Nor any ghouls of the charnel dared to swarm
Round that sweet Sister of the Seraphim.
Strange that the Authorities did not find in her face
And figure quicker passport to the surface.

Hoc discunt omnes, ante Alpha et Beta,
Puellae: so the cruel Roman satirist.
'Tis true enough, from countess to cosmeta .
Thou, moral poet, writing elsewise, flatterest.
But why in the world should anybody treat a
Topic so fair unfairly? Rain that patterest
In the sweet spring-tide with a slow soft cadence,
No lovelier art thou than moist mouths of maidens.

I hold my goblet up, and each scintilla
Scrutinize pleasantly . . . and as I view it,
My ancestral portraits, ille atque illa ,
Laughingly leave their framework and eschew it.
The Founder of the Race [not Squire Gorilla,
Darwin's progenitor] is first to do it.
In the great room they gather, strange to see.
Comes Helen from the throng, and kisses me.

But they depart, shy-blushing, backward-glancing,
And we are left in utter silence, save
That distant music on the air is dancing
As sunlight dances on the summer wave —
Music like wine our ecstasy enhancing . . .
But suddenly it sinks into its grave —
With one strange magical cadence leaves us lonely,
Whose meaning is, Love always and Love only .