So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour
Feeling your fingers go
Like a rhythmic breeze
Over my hair, and tracing my brows,
Till I knew you not from a little wind:
—I wonder now if God allows
Us only one moment his keys.
If only then
You could have unlocked the moon on the night,
And I baptized myself in the light
Of your love; we both have entered then the white
Pure passion, and never again.
I wonder if only
You had taken me then, how different
Life would have been: should I have spent
Myself in waste, and you have bent
Your pride, through being lonely?
Bei Hennef
The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
This is almost bliss.
And everything shut up and gone to sleep,
All the troubles and anxieties and pain
Gone under the twilight.
Only the twilight now, and the soft “Sh!” of the river
That will last for ever.
And at last I know my love for you is here,
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,
It is large, so large, I could not see it before
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,
Troubles, anxieties and pains.
You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,
You are the night, and I the day.
What else—it is perfect enough,
It is perfectly complete,
You and I,
What more——?
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!
Lightning
I felt the lurch and halt of her heart
Next my breast, where my own heart was beating;
And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,
And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound
Of the words I kept repeating,
Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood’s blindfold art.
Her breath flew warm against my neck,
Warm as a flame in the close night air;
And the sense of her clinging flesh was sweet
Where her arms and my neck’s blood-surge could meet.
Holding her thus, did I care
That the black night hid her from me, blotted out every speck?
I leaned me forward to find her lips,
And claim her utterly in a kiss,
When the lightning flew across her face,
And I saw her for the flaring space
Of a second, afraid of the clips
Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.
A moment, like a wavering spark,
Her face lay there before my breast,
Pale love lost in a snow of fear,
And guarded by a glittering tear,
And lips apart with dumb cries;
A moment, and she was taken again in the merciful dark.
I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,
And my arms fell loose, and I was dumb.
Almost I hated her, she was so good,
Hated myself, and the place, and my blood,
Which burned with rage, as I bade her come
Home, away home, ere the lightning floated forth again.
Song-day in Autumn
When the autumn roses
Are heavy with dew,
Before the mist discloses
The leaf’s brown hue,
You would, among the laughing hills
Of yesterday
Walk innocent in the daffodils,
Coiffing up your auburn hair
In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare
To catch and keep me with you there
So far away.
When from the autumn roses
Trickles the dew,
When the blue mist uncloses
And the sun looks through,
You from those startled hills
Come away,
Out of the withering daffodils;
Thoughtful, and half afraid,
Plaiting a heavy, auburn braid
And coiling it round the wise brows of a maid
Who was scared in her play.
When in the autumn roses
Creeps a bee,
And a trembling flower encloses
His ecstasy,
You from your lonely walk
Turn away,
And leaning to me like a flower on its stalk,
Wait among the beeches
For your late bee who beseeches
To creep through your loosened hair till he reaches,
Your heart of dismay.
Aware
Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,
Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so
Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze
See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know
I loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;
I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.
A Pang of Reminiscence