Sonnet

Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fairThan small white single poppies,--I can bearThy beauty; though I bend before thee, thoughFrom left to right, not knowing where to go,I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor thereFind any refuge from thee, yet I swearSo has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.Like him who day by day unto his draughtOf delicate poison adds him one drop moreTill he may drink unharmed the death of ten,Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffedEach hour more deeply than the hour before,I drink--and live--what has destroyed some men.

Time does not bring relief; you all have liedWho told me time would ease me of my pain!I miss him in the weeping of the rain;I want him at the shrinking of the tide;The old snows melt from every mountain-side,And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;But last year’s bitter loving must remainHeaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!There are a hundred places where I fearTo go,--so with his memory they brim!And entering with relief some quiet placeWhere never fell his foot or shone his faceI say, “There is no memory of him here!”And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Mindful of you the sodden earth in springAnd all the flowers that in the springtime grow,And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slowRising of the round moon, all throats that singThe summer through, and each departing wing,And all the nests that the bared branches show,And all winds that in any weather blow,And all the storms that the four seasons bring.You go no more on your exultant feetUp paths that only mist and morning knew,Or watch the wind, or listen to the beatOf a bird’s wings too high in air to view,--But you were something more than young and sweetAnd fair,--and the long year remembers you.

Not in this chamber only at my birth--When the long hours of that mysterious nightWere over, and the morning was in sight--I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firthI have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;And never shall one room contain me quiteWho in so many rooms first saw the light,Child of all mothers, native of the earth.So is no warmth for me at any fireTo-day, when the world’s fire has burned so low;I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,And straighten back in weariness, and longTo gather up my little gods and go.

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,That you were gone, not to return again--Read from the back-page of a paper, say,Held by a neighbour in a subway train,How at the corner of this avenueAnd such a street (so are the papers filled)A hurrying man--who happened to be you--At noon to-day had happened to be killed,I should not cry aloud--I could not cryAloud, or wring my hands in such a place--I should but watch the station lights rush byWith a more careful interest on my face,Or raise my eyes and read with greater careWhere to store furs and how to treat the hair.

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,And drag me at your chariot till I die,--Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!--Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lieWho shout you mighty: thick about my hair,Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,Who still am free, unto no querulous careA fool, and in no temple worshipper!I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,Lifted my face into its puny rain,Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke DesireAs you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

I think I should have loved you presently,And given in earnest words I flung in jest;And lifted honest eyes for you to see,And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;And all my pretty follies flung asideThat won you to me, and beneath your gaze,Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.I, that had been to you, had you remained,But one more waking from a recurrent dream,Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,A ghost in marble of a girl you knewWho would have loved you in a day or two.

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.Were you not lovely I would leave you now:After the feet of beauty fly my own.Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,And water ever to my wildest thirst,I would desert you--think not but I would!--And seek another as I sought you first.But you are mobile as the veering air,And all your charms more changeful than the tide,Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:I have but to continue at your side.So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,I am most faithless when I most am true.

I shall forget you presently, my dear,So make the most of this, your little day,Your little month, your little half a year,Ere I forget, or die, or move away,And we are done forever; by and byI shall forget you, as I said, but now,If you entreat me with your loveliest lieI will protest you with my favourite vow.I would indeed that love were longer-lived,And oaths were not so brittle as they are,But so it is, and nature has contrivedTo struggle on without a break thus far,--Whether or not we find what we are seekingIs idle, biologically speaking.

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;Well, such you are,--but well enough we knowHow thick about us root, how rankly growThose subtle weeds no man has need to tend,That flourish through neglect, and soon must sendPerfume too sweet upon us and overthrowOur steady senses; how such matters goWe are aware, and how such matters end.Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;With lovers such as we for evermoreIsolde drinks the draught, and GuinevereReceives the Table’s ruin through her door,Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.

Into the golden vessel of great songLet us pour all our passion; breast to breastLet other lovers lie, in love and rest;Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongueOf all the world: the churning blood, the longShuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressedSharply together upon the escaping guest,The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.Longing alone is singer to the lute;Let still on nettles in the open sighThe minstrel, that in slumber is as muteAs any man, and love be far and high,That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruitFound on the ground by every passer-by.

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughterWe drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient afterThe launching of the coloured moths of Love.Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zoneWe bound about our irreligious brows,And fettered him with garlands of our own,And spread a banquet in his frugal house.Not yet the god has spoken; but I fearThough we should break our bodies in his flame,And pour our blood upon his altar, hereHenceforward is a grove without a name,A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

Only until this cigarette is ended,A little moment at the end of all,While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,And in the firelight to a lance extended,Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,The broken shadow dances on the wall,I will permit my memory to recallThe vision of you, by all my dreams attended.And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.Yours is a face of which I can forgetThe colour and the features, every one,The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;But in your day this moment is the sunUpon a hill, after the sun has set.

Once more into my arid days like dew,Like wind from an oasis, or the soundOf cold sweet water bubbling underground,A treacherous messenger, the thought of youComes to destroy me; once more I renewFirm faith in your abundance, whom I foundLong since to be but just one other moundOf sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.And once again, and wiser in no wise,I chase your coloured phantom on the air,And sob and curse and fall and weep and riseAnd stumble pitifully on to where,Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.

No rose that in a garden ever grew,In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine,Though buried under centuries of fineDead dust of roses, shut from sun and dewForever, and forever lost from view,But must again in fragrance rich as wineThe grey aisles of the air incarnadineWhen the old summers surge into a new.Thus when I swear, “I love with all my heart,”’Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,’Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;And thus as well my love must lose some partOf what it is, had Helen been less fair,Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.

When I too long have looked upon your face,Wherein for me a brightness unobscuredSave by the mists of brightness has its place,And terrible beauty not to be endured,I turn away reluctant from your light,And stand irresolute, a mind undone,A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sightFrom having looked too long upon the sun.Then is my daily life a narrow roomIn which a little while, uncertainly,Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,Among familiar things grown strange to meMaking my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,Till I become accustomed to the dark.

And you as well must die, beloved dust,And all your beauty stand you in no stead;This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,This body of flame and steel, before the gustOf Death, or under his autumnal frost,Shall be as any leaf, be no less deadThan the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled,Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.In spite of all my love, you will ariseUpon that day and wander down the airObscurely as the unattended flower,It mattering not how beautiful you were,Or how beloved above all else that dies.

Let you not say of me when I am old,In pretty worship of my withered handsForgetting who I am, and how the sandsOf such a life as mine run red and goldEven to the ultimate sifting dust, “Behold,Here walketh passionless age!”--for there expandsA curious superstition in these lands,And by its leave some weightless tales are told.In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;Impious no less in ruin than in strength,When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,Let you not say, “Upon this reverend siteThe righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer.”

Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,And make you old, and leave me in my prime?How you and I, who scale together yetA little while the sweet, immortal heightNo pilgrim may remember or forget,As sure as the world turns, some granite nightShall lie awake and know the gracious flameGone out forever on the mutual stone;And call to mind how on the day you cameI was a child, and you a hero grown?--And the night pass, and the strange morning breakUpon our anguish for each other’s sake!

As to some lovely temple, tenantlessLong since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,Knowing well its altars ruined and the grassGrown up between the stones, yet from excessOf grief hard driven, or great loneliness,The worshipper returns, and those who passMarvel him crying on a name that was,--So is it now with me in my distress.Your body was a temple to Delight;Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled,Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;Here might I hope to find you day or night,And here I come to look for you, my love,Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

Cherish you then the hope I shall forgetAt length, my lord, Pieria?--put awayFor your so passing sake, this mouth of clay,These mortal bones against my body set,For all the puny fever and frail sweatOf human love,--renounce for these, I say,The Singing Mountain’s memory, and betrayThe silent lyre that hangs upon me yet?Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,Rather, from dreams of me, that at your sideSo many nights, a lover and a bride,But stern in my soul’s chastity, have lain,To walk the world forever for my sake,And in each chamber find me gone again!