X.

Not love of you is most that I can bring, Since what I am to love you is the test, And should I love you more than any thing You would but be of idle love possessed, A mere love wandering in appet.i.te, Counting your glories and yet bringing none, Finding in you occasions of delight, A thief of payment for no service done.

But when of labouring life I make a song And bring it you, as that were my reward, To let what most is me to you belong, Then do I come of high possessions lord, And loving life more than my love of you I give you love more excellently true.

XI.

What better tale could any lover tell When age or death his reckoning shall write Than thus, 'Love taught me only to rebel Against these things,--the thieving of delight Without return; the gospellers of fear Who, loving, yet deny the truth they bear, Sad-suited l.u.s.ts with lecherous hands to smear The cloth of gold they would but dare not wear.

And love gave me great knowledge of the trees, And singing birds, and earth with all her flowers; Wisdom I knew and righteousness in these, I lived in their atonement all my hours; Love taught me how to beauty's eye alone The secret of the lying heart is known.'

XII.

This then at last; we may be wiser far Than love, and put his folly to our measure, Yet shall we learn, poor wizards that we are, That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure.

We bid him come, and light an eager fire, And he goes down the road without debating; We cast him from the house of our desire, And when at last we leave he will be waiting.

And in the end there is no folly but this, To counsel love out of our little learning.

For still he knows where rotten timber is, And where the boughs for the long winter burning; And when life needs no more of us at all, Love's word will be the last that we recall.

JOHN FREEMAN

I WILL ASK

I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you Their smell and hue, And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare Her flowers starry fair; Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn Their sweetness to keep Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born Between midnight and midnight deep.

And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white In its own green light, Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadow-sweet Lifting at your feet, And ivy-blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take The loveliest-- The seeding gra.s.ses that bend with the winds, and shake Though the winds are at rest.

'For me?' you will ask. 'Yes! surely they wave for you Their smell and hue, And you away all that is rare were so much less By your missed happiness.'

Yet I know gra.s.s and weed, ivy and apple and thorn Their whole sweet would keep, Though in Eden no human spirit on a shining morn Had awaked from sleep.

THE EVENING SKY

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd With eyes of dazzling bright Shakes Venus mid the twined boughs of the night; Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping From low bough to bough, Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed Its bloom of snow By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer, Not thus idly dancing goes Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.

She through ether burns Outpacing planetary earth, And ere two years triumphantly returns, And again wave-like swelling flows, And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen, No heavenly courses set, No flight unpausing through a void serene: But when eve clears, Arises Venus as she first uprose Stepping the shaken boughs among, And in her bosom glows The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the cl.u.s.tered stars Lightly, as she goes Amid the unseen branches of the night, Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.

She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows-- And who but knows How the rejoiced heart aches When Venus all his starry vision shakes;

When through his mind Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind, Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd, The mistress of his starry vision arises, And the boughs glittering sway And the stars pale away, And the enlarging heaven glows As Venus light-foot mid the twined branches goes.

THE CAVES

Like the tide--knocking at the hollowed cliff And running into each green cave as if In the cave's night to keep Eternal motion grave and deep--

That, even while each broken wave repeats Its answered knocking and with bruised hand beats Again, again, again, Tossed between ecstasy and pain;

Still in the folded hollow darkness swells, Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills, Till there's no room for sound Save that old anger rolled around;

So into every hollow cliff of life, Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife, In tunnels I knew not, In lightless labyrinths of thought,

The unresting tide has run and the dark filled, Even the vibration of old strife is stilled; The wave returning bears Muted those time-breathing airs.

--How shall the million-footed tide still tread These hollows and in each cold void cave spread?

How shall Love here keep Eternal motion grave and deep?

MOON-BATHERS

Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning Into the sea where blackness rims the sea, Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold Is only light remaining; yet still gleam The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge Of quiet waves. They were all things of light Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon-- Her nuns, dancing within her dying round, Clear limbs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s silvered with Moon and waves And quick with windlike mood and body's joy, Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.

An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow, As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools-- So slowly, who shall say when light is gone?

IN THOSE OLD DAYS

In those old days you were called beautiful, But I have worn the beauty from your face; The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.

Even your voice is altered when you speak, Or is grown mute with old anxiety For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight, And then under the flame a glowing dome Deepens slowly into blood-like light:-- So did you flame and in flame take delight, So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.

But I still warm me and make there my home, Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull, My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks, Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught, Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours: Now love undying feeds on love beautiful, Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought ...

--And can it be in your heart's music speaks A deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it be Indeed for me?

CATERPILLARS