Drunk

Too far away, oh love, I know,To save me from this haunted road,Whose lofty roses break and blowOn a night-sky bent with a load

Of lights: each solitary rose,Each arc-lamp golden does exposeGhost beyond ghost of a blossom, showsNight blenched with a thousand snows.

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,White lilac; shows discoloured nightDripping with all the golden leesLaburnum gives back to light

And shows the red of hawthorn setOn high to the purple heaven of night,Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,Blood shed in the noiseless fight.

Of life for love and love for life,Of hunger for a little food,Of kissing, lost for want of a wifeLong ago, long ago wooed.Too far away you are, my love,To steady my brain in this phantom showThat passes the nightly road aboveAnd returns again below.

The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut treesHas poised on each of its ledgesAn erect small girl looking down at me;White-night-gowned little chits I see,And they peep at me over the edgesOf the leaves as though they would leap, shouldI callThem down to my arms;"But, child, you're too small for me, too smallYour little charms."

White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,Some other will thresh you out!And I see leaning from the shadesA lilac like a lady there, who braidsHer white mantilla aboutHer face, and forward leans to catch the sightOf a man's face,Gracefully sighing through the whiteFlowery mantilla of lace.

And another lilac in purple veiledDiscreetly, all recklessly callsIn a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailedHer forth from the night: my strength has failedIn her voice, my weak heart falls:Oh, and see the laburnum shimmeringHer draperies down,As if she would slip the gold, and glimmeringWhite, stand naked of gown.

The pageant of flowery trees aboveThe street pale-passionate goes,And back again down the pavement, LoveIn a lesser pageant flows.

Two and two are the folk that walk,They pass in a half embraceOf linked bodies, and they talkWith dark face leaning to face.

Come then, my love, come as you willAlong this haunted road,Be whom you will, my darling, I shallKeep with you the troth I trowed.