SPRING IN WAR TIME

  I FEEL the Spring far off, far off,
     The faint far scent of bud and leaf—
  Oh how can Spring take heart to come
     To a world in grief,
        Deep grief?

  The sun turns north, the days grow long,
     Later the evening star grows bright—
  How can the daylight linger on
     For men to fight,
        Still fight?

  The grass is waking in the ground,
     Soon it will rise and blow in waves—
  How can it have the heart to sway
     Over the graves,
        New graves?

  Under the boughs where lovers walked
     The apple-blooms will shed their breath—
  But what of all the lovers now
     Parted by death,
        Gray Death?

WHILE I MAY

  WIND and hail and veering rain,
     Driven mist that veils the day,
  Soul's distress and body's pain,
     I would bear you while I may.

  I would love you if I might,
     For so soon my life will be
  Buried in a lasting night,
     Even pain denied to me.

DEBT

  WHAT do I owe to you
     Who loved me deep and long?
  You never gave my spirit wings
     Or gave my heart a song.

  But oh, to him I loved
     Who loved me not at all,
  I owe the little open gate

That led thru heaven's wall.

FROM THE NORTH

  THE northern woods are delicately sweet,
     The lake is folded softly by the shore,
     But I am restless for the subway's roar,
  The thunder and the hurrying of feet.
  I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat
     Against the image of the tower that bore
     Me high aloft, as if thru heaven's door
  I watched the world from God's unshaken seat.
  I would go back and breathe with quickened sense
     The tunnel's strong hot breath of powdered steel;
  But at the ferries I should leave the tense
        Dark air behind, and I should mount and be
     One among many who are thrilled to feel
        The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.

THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK

  THE lightning spun your garment for the night
     Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,
     A broidery of lamps that lit for you
  The steadfast splendor of enduring light.
  The moon drifts dimly in the heaven's height,
     Watching with wonder how the earth she knew
     That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,
  Should wear upon her breast a star so white.
  The festivals of Babylon were dark
     With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down;
  The Saturnalia were a wild boy's lark
     With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town—
  But you have found a god and filched from him
  A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.

SEA LONGING

  A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
     Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
     The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
  With the old murmur, long and musical;
  The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
     And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,—
     Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
  For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
  I would that I were there and over me
     The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
     Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,—
  Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
     Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
  Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.

THE RIVER

  I CAME from the sunny valleys
     And sought for the open sea,
  For I thought in its gray expanses
     My peace would come to me.

  I came at last to the ocean
     And found it wild and black,
  And I cried to the windless valleys,
     "Be kind and take me back!"

  But the thirsty tide ran inland,
     And the salt waves drank of me,
  And I who was fresh as the rainfall
     Am bitter as the sea.

LEAVES

  ONE by one, like leaves from a tree,
  All my faiths have forsaken me;
  But the stars above my head
  Burn in white and delicate red,
  And beneath my feet the earth
  Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
  I who was content to be
  But a silken-singing tree,
  But a rustle of delight
  In the wistful heart of night—
  I have lost the leaves that knew
  Touch of rain and weight of dew.
  Blinded by a leafy crown
  I looked neither up nor down—
  But the little leaves that die
  Have left me room to see the sky;
  Now for the first time I know
  Stars above and earth below.

THE ANSWER

  WHEN I go back to earth
  And all my joyous body
  Puts off the red and white
  That once had been so proud,
  If men should pass above
  With false and feeble pity,
  My dust will find a voice
  To answer them aloud:

  "Be still, I am content,
  Take back your poor compassion,
  Joy was a flame in me
  Too steady to destroy;
  Lithe as a bending reed
  Loving the storm that sways her—
  I found more joy in sorrow
  Than you could find in joy."

III

OVER THE ROOFS

I

  OH chimes set high on the sunny tower
     Ring on, ring on unendingly,
  Make all the hours a single hour,
  For when the dusk begins to flower,
     The man I love will come to me! . . .

  But no, go slowly as you will,
     I should not bid you hasten so,
  For while I wait for love to come,
  Some other girl is standing dumb,
     Fearing her love will go.

II

  Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high!
     Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free !
  Oh sun awake in the covered sky,
     For the man I love, loves me I . . .

  Oh drifting steam disperse and die,
     Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,—
  Fate heard afar my happy cry,
     And laid her finger on my mouth.

III

  The dusk was blue with blowing mist,
     The lights were spangles in a veil,
  And from the clamor far below
     Floated faint music like a wail.

  It voiced what I shall never speak,
     My heart was breaking all night long,
  But when the dawn was hard and gray,
     My tears distilled into a song.

IV

  I said, "I have shut my heart
     As one shuts an open door,
  That Love may starve therein
     And trouble me no more."

  But over the roofs there came
     The wet new wind of May,
  And a tune blew up from the curb
     Where the street-pianos play.

  My room was white with the sun
     And Love cried out in me,
  "I am strong, I will break your heart
     Unless you set me free."

A CRY

  OH, there are eyes that he can see,
     And hands to make his hands rejoice,
  But to my lover I must be
           Only a voice.

  Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,
     And lips whereon his lips can lie,
  But I must be till I am dead
           Only a cry.

CHANCE

  How many times we must have met
     Here on the street as strangers do,
  Children of chance we were, who passed

The door of heaven and never knew.

IMMORTAL

  So soon my body will have gone
     Beyond the sound and sight of men,
  And tho' it wakes and suffers now,
     Its sleep will be unbroken then;
  But oh, my frail immortal soul
     That will not sleep forevermore,
  A leaf borne onward by the blast,
     A wave that never finds the shore.

AFTER DEATH

  Now while my lips are living
     Their words must stay unsaid,
  And will my soul remember
     To speak when I am dead?

  Yet if my soul remembered
     You would not heed it, dear,
  For now you must not listen,
     And then you could not hear.

TESTAMENT

  I SAID, "I will take my life
     And throw it away;
  I who was fire and song
     Will turn to clay."

  "I will lie no more in the night
     With shaken breath,
  I will toss my heart in the air
     To be caught by Death."

  But out of the night I heard,
     Like the inland sound of the sea,
  The hushed and terrible sob
     Of all humanity.

  Then I said, "Oh who am I
     To scorn God to his face?
  I will bow my head and stay
     And suffer with my race."

GIFTS

  I GAVE my first love laughter,
     I gave my second tears,
  I gave my third love silence
     Thru all the years.

  My first love gave me singing,
     My second eyes to see,
  But oh, it was my third love
     Who gave my soul to me.

IV

FROM THE SEA

  ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
  Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
  To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
  Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,
  With only light between the heavens and me.
  I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
  Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
  The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

  Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
  Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
  The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
  Look far away and let me ease my heart
  Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
  Look far away, and if I say too much,
  Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
  How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
  The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
  Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

  I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,
  That in some strange way I was strong enough
  To keep my love unuttered and to stand
  Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night
  You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.
  Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love
  You thought it something delicate and free,
  Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,
  Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.
  Yet in my heart there was a beating storm
  Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove
  To say too little lest I say too much,
  And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame.
  Yet when I heard your name the first far time
  It seemed like other names to me, and I
  Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river
  That nears at last its long predestined sea;
  And when you spoke to me, I did not know
  That to my life's high altar came its priest.
  But now I know between my God and me
  You stand forever, nearer God than I,
  And in your hands with faith and utter joy
  I would that I could lay my woman's soul.

  Oh, my love
  To whom I cannot come with any gift
  Of body or of soul, I pass and go.
  But sometimes when you hear blown back to you
  My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,
  Know that I sang for you alone to hear,
  And that I wondered if the wind would bring
  To him who tuned my heart its distant song.
  So might a woman who in loneliness
  Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,
  Wonder if it would please its father's eyes.
  But long before I ever heard your name,
  Always the undertone's unchanging note
  In all my singing had prefigured you,
  Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.
  Yet I was free as an untethered cloud
  In the great space between the sky and sea,
  And might have blown before the wind of joy
  Like a bright banner woven by the sun.
  I did not know the longing in the night—
  You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.
  All things in all the world can rest, but I,
  Even the smooth brief respite of a wave
  When it gives up its broken crown of foam,
  Even that little rest I may not have.
  And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy
  In all the piercing beauty of the world
  I would give up—go blind forevermore,
  Rather than have God blot from out my soul
  Remembrance of your voice that said my name.

  For us no starlight stilled the April fields,
  No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,
  Yet where we walked the city's street that night
  Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,
  And in our path we left a trail of light
  Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea
  When night submerges in the vessel's wake
  A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

VIGNETTES OVERSEAS

I

Off Gibraltar

  BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,
     The sun goes down in yellow mist,
  The sky is fresh with dewy stars
     Above a sea of amethyst.

  Yet in the city of my love
     High noon burns all the heavens bare—
  For him the happiness of light,
     For me a delicate despair.

II

Off Algiers

  Oh give me neither love nor tears,
     Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,
  Go lightly on your pilgrimage
     Unburdened by desire.

  Forget me for a month, a year,
     But, oh, beloved, think of me
  When unexpected beauty burns
     Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

III

Naples

  Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,
  Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,
  Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,
  Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;
  Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung—
  Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!

IV

Capri

  When beauty grows too great to bear
     How shall I ease me of its ache,
  For beauty more than bitterness
     Makes the heart break.

  Now while I watch the dreaming sea
     With isles like flowers against her breast,
  Only one voice in all the world
     Could give me rest.

V

Night Song at Amalfi

  I asked the heaven of stars
     What I should give my love—
  It answered me with silence,
     Silence above.

  I asked the darkened sea
     Down where the fishers go—
  It answered me with silence,
     Silence below.

  Oh, I could give him weeping,
     Or I could give him song—
  But how can I give silence
  My whole life long?

VI

Ruins of Paestum

  On lowlands where the temples lie
     The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,
  Only the little songs of birds
     Link the unbroken hours.

  So in the end, above my heart
     Once like the city wild and gay,
  The slow white stars will pass by night,
     The swift brown birds by day.

VII

Rome

  Oh for the rising moon
     Over the roofs of Rome,
  And swallows in the dusk
     Circling a darkened dome!

  Oh for the measured dawns
     That pass with folded wings—
  How can I let them go
     With unremembered things?

VIII

Florence

  The bells ring over the Anno,
     Midnight, the long, long chime;
  Here in the quivering darkness
     I am afraid of time.

  Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,
     Time takes too much from me,
  And yet to rock and river
     He gives eternity.

IX

Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio

  The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,
     The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,
  The marble satyr plays a mournful strain
     That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.

  Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,
     Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me,
  Then would I still my soul and for an hour
     Change to a laurel in the glancing shower.

X

Stresa

  The moon grows out of the hills
     A yellow flower,
  The lake is a dreamy bride
     Who waits her hour.

  Beauty has filled my heart,
     It can hold no more,
  It is full, as the lake is full,
     From shore to shore.

XI

Hamburg

  The day that I come home,
     What will you find to say,—
  Words as light as foam
     With laughter light as spray?

  Yet say what words you will
     The day that I come home;
  I shall hear the whole deep ocean
     Beating under the foam.

V

SAPPHO

SAPPHO

I

  MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,
  So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;
  Only the white immortal stars shall know,
  Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,
  How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp.
  I think you are not wholly careless now,
  Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour,
  Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep,
  Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy
  Lifted my soul and made me half a god.
  Farewell! Across the threshold many feet
  Shall pass, but never Sappho's feet again.
  Girls shall come in whom love has made aware
  Of all their swaying beauty—they shall sing,
  But never Sappho's voice, like golden fire,
  Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters.
  There shall be swallows bringing back the spring
  Over the long blue meadows of the sea,
  And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain,
  But never Sappho's whisper in the night,
  Never her love-cry when the lover comes.
  Farewell! I close the door and make it fast.

  The little street lies meek beneath the moon,
  Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea.
  I too go seaward and shall not return.
  Oh garlands on the doorposts that I pass,
  Woven of asters and of autumn leaves,
  I make a prayer for you: Cypris be kind,
  That every lover may be given love.
  I shall not hasten lest the paving stones
  Should echo with my sandals and awake
  Those who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep,
  Lest they should rise and see me and should say,
  "Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?"
  Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,
  But they go driven, straining back with fear,
  And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf
  Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea.

  Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves,
  I shall await the waking of the dawn,
  Lying beneath the weight of dark as one
  Lies breathless, till the lover shall awake.
  And with the sun the sea shall cover me—
  I shall be less than the dissolving foam
  Murmuring and melting on the ebbing tide;
  I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells;
  And yet I shall be greater than the gods,
  For destiny no more can bow my soul
  As rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills.
  Yes, if my soul escape it shall aspire
  To the white heaven as flame that has its will.
  I go not bitterly, not dumb with pain,
  Not broken by the ache of love—I go
  As one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep.
  Yet they shall say: "It was for Cercolas;
  She died because she could not bear her love."
  They shall remember how we used to walk
  Here on the cliff beneath the oleanders
  In the long limpid twilight of the spring,
  Looking toward Lemnos, where the amber sky
  Was pierced with the faint arrow of a star.
  How should they know the wind of a new beauty
  Sweeping my soul had winnowed it with song?
  I have been glad tho' love should come or go,
  Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them,
  Happy again when it has left them rest.
  Others shall say, "Grave Dica wrought her death.
  She would not lift her lips to take a kiss,
  Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile.
  She was a pool the winter paves with ice
  That the wild hunter in the hills must leave
  With thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun."
  Ah Dica, it is not for thee I go;
  And not for Phaon, tho' his ship lifts sail
  Here in the windless harbor for the south.
  Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile,
  Watch over one whose gods are far away.
  Egypt, be kind to him, his eyes are deep—
  Yet they are wrong who say it was for him.
  How should they know that Sappho lived and died
  Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover,
  Never transfused and lost in what she loved,
  Never so wholly loving nor at peace.
  I asked for something greater than I found,
  And every time that love has made me weep,
  I have rejoiced that love could be so strong;
  For I have stood apart and watched my soul
  Caught in the gust of passion, as a bird
  With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind
  Struggles and frees itself to find the sky.
  It is not for a single god I go;
  I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
  I will not be a reed to hold the sound
  Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
  Turning my torment into music for them.
  They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
  I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
  Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel—
  Beauty in all things and in every hour.
  The gods have given life—I gave them song;
  The debt is paid and now I turn to go.

  The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps,
  There is a rim of silver on the sea,
  As one grown tired who hopes to sleep, I go.

II

  Oh Litis, little slave, why will you sleep?
  These long Egyptian noons bend down your head
  Bowed like the yarrow with a yellow bee.
  There, lift your eyes no man has ever kindled,
  Dark eyes that wait like faggots for the fire.
  See how the temple's solid square of shade
  Points north to Lesbos, and the splendid sea
  That you have never seen, oh evening-eyed.
  Yet have you never wondered what the Nile
  Is seeking always, restless and wild with spring
  And no less in the winter, seeking still?
  How shall I tell you? Can you think of fields
  Greater than Gods could till, more blue than night
  Sown over with the stars; and delicate
  With filmy nets of foam that come and go?
  It is more cruel and more compassionate
  Than harried earth. It takes with unconcern
  And quick forgetting, rapture of the rain
  And agony of thunder, the moon's white
  Soft-garmented virginity, and then
  The insatiable ardor of the sun.
  And me it took. But there is one more strong,
  Love, that came laughing from the elder seas,
  The Cyprian, the mother of the world;
  She gave me love who only asked for death—
  I who had seen much sorrow in men's eyes
  And in my own too sorrowful a fire.
  I was a sister of the stars, and yet
  Shaken with pain; sister of birds and yet
  The wings that bore my soul were very tired.
  I watched the careless spring too many times
  Light her green torches in a hungry wind;
  Too many times I watched them flare, and then
  Fall to forsaken embers in the autumn.
  And I was sick of all things—even song.
  In the dull autumn dawn I turned to death,
  Buried my living body in the sea,
  The strong cold sea that takes and does not give—
  But there is one more strong, the Cyprian.
  Litis, to wake from sleep and find your eyes
  Met in their first fresh upward gaze by love,
  Filled with love's happy shame from other eyes,
  Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in light
  As tho' you looked unthinking at the sun,
  Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you came
  Not from the sunny shallow pool of sleep,
  But from the sea of death, the strangling sea
  Of night and nothingness, and waked to find
  Love looking down upon you, glad and still,
  Strange and yet known forever, that is peace.
  So did he lean above me. Not a word
  He spoke; I only heard the morning sea
  Singing against his happy ship, the keen
  And straining joy of wind-awakened sails
  And songs of mariners, and in myself
  The precious pain of arms that held me fast.
  They warmed the cold sea out of all my blood;
  I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep.
  There on the ship with wines and olives laden,
  Led by the stars to far invisible ports,
  Egypt and islands of the inner seas,
  Love came to me, and Cercolas was love.

III ¹ ¹ From " Helen of Troy and Other Poems."

  The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
  And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
  The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.
  Twilight has veiled the little flower-face
  Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
  And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
  Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
  Along the surges creeping up the shore
  When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
  And running, running till the night was black,
  Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
  And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
  Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides
  Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
  Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
  I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
  And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
  From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
  Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
  To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,
  It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
  To hold the added sweetness of a song.
  There is a quiet at the heart of love,
  And I have pierced the pain and come to peace
  I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;
  And softer than a little wild bird's wing
  Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
  Ah never any more when spring like fire
  Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
  Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
  Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre,
  Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice.
  Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,
  Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,
  Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
  The quiver and the crying of my heart.
  Still I remember how I strove to flee
  The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head
  To hurry faster, but upon the ground
  I saw two wingèd shadows side by side,
  And all the world's spring passion stifled me.
  Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might,
  No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
  No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
  With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
  In many guises didst thou come to me;
  I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,
  Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
  In Anactoria I knew thy grace,
  I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
  But never wholly, soul and body mine,
  Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.
  Now have I found the peace that fled from me;
  Close, close against my heart I hold my world.
  Ah, Love that made my life a Iyric cry,
  Ah, Love that tuned my lips to Iyres of thine,
  I taught the world thy music, now alone
  I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.