Is it not well to have more of the spirit,
Living high futures this earthly must miss?
Less of the flesh with the past pining near it? —
Such is the joy of this.
We will leave reason,
Dear, for a season;
Reason were treason
Since yonder nether
Foot-hills are clad now
In nothing sad now;
We will be glad now,
Glad as this weather.
Heart and heart! in the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
I in the dairy; you are the airy
Majesty passing; Love is the fairy
Bringing us two together.
Starlight in masses
Of mist that passes,
Stars in the grasses;
Star-bud and flower
Laughingly know us;
Secretly show us
Earth is below us
And for the hour
Soul has soul. In the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
You are a song; a singer I hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; the spirit,
Love, is the power.
And say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here,
Meseems, beneath the beechen bough
'T is just as sweet, my doubly dear,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.
When breathe green woodlands through and through
Wild scents of heliotrope and rain,
Where deep the moss mounds cool with dew,
Beyond the barley-blowing lane,
More wise than wedding, is to woo —
So we will woo again.
All night I lie awake and mark
The hours by no clanging clock,
But in the dim and dewy dark
Far crowing of some punctual cock;
Until the lyric of the lark
Mounts and Morn's gates unlock.
And would you be a nun and miss
All this delightful ache of love?
Not have the moon for what she is?
Love's honey-horn God holds above —
No world, for worlds are in a kiss
If worlds are good enough.
So say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here
We 'll stroll beneath the doddered bough,
Heaven's mated songsters singing near,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.
And had we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid,
We had loved, as the story says,
Did the Sultan's favorite one
And the Persian Emperor's son
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.
Do you know the story well
Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana? —
When night on the palace fell,
A slave through a secret door,
Low-arched on the Tigris' shore,
By a hidden winding stair
Ben Bekkar brought to his fair?
Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of marvellous worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
And the curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.
Ten slave-girls – so many blooms —
Stand sconcing tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each like to a star in the East;
Ten singers, their lutes a-tune,
Each like to a bosomed moon.
For her in the stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled,
No metaphor made may serve;
Scarved deep with her own dark hair,
The jewels like fire-flies there —
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.
The zone embracing her waist, —
The ransom of forty princes, —
But her form more priceless is placed;
Carbuncles of Istakhar
In her coronet burning are —
Though gems of the Jamshid race,
Far rarer the gem of her face.
Tall-shaped like the letter I,
With a face like an Orient morning;
Eyes of the bronze-black sky;
Lips, of the pomegranate split,
With the light of her language lit;
Cheeks, which the young blood dares
Make blood-red anemone lairs.
Kohled with voluptuous look,
From opaline casting-bottles,
Handmaidens over them shook
Rose-water, and strewed with bloom
Mosaics old of the room;
Torch-rays on the walls made bars,
Or minted down golden dinars.
Roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara; —
Not a spray of cypress sad; —
Narcissus and jessamine o'er
Carved pillar and cedarn door;
Pomegranates and bells of clear
Tulips of far Kashmeer.
And the chamber glows like a flower
Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa;
And the bronzen censers glower;
And scents of ambergris pour
With