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Title: Some Verses
Author: Helen Hay Whitney
Release date: March 14, 2013 [eBook #42330]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Nicole Henn-Kneif, Greg Bergquist and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME VERSES ***
Transcriber's Notes:
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error:
"Ehere is not one..." has been changed to "There is not one..."
SOME VERSES
BY
HELEN HAY
DUCKWORTH AND CO.
3 HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN
1898
To my Father
CONTENTS
| SONNETS | |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| THE DAYS | 3 |
| THE EVERLASTING SNOWS | 4 |
| THRONE AND ALTAR | 5 |
| EAST AND WEST | 6 |
| THE BATTLE | 7 |
| WATER AND WINE | 8 |
| PITY ME NOT! | 9 |
| A DREAM IN FEVER | 10 |
| A WOMAN'S PRIDE | 11 |
| AGE | 12 |
| IN THE MIST | 13 |
| ON THE MOUNTAIN'S SLOPE | 14 |
| TO THE BELOVED | 15 |
| MY BROOK | 16 |
| BENEATH THE MOON | 17 |
| THE RUBY | 18 |
| SPRING AND AUTUMN | 19 |
| THE LOST MOMENT | 20 |
| THE COMING OF LOVE | 21 |
| EVENING AT WASHINGTON | 22 |
| LOVE'S KISS | 23 |
| THE SCARLETT THREAD | 24 |
| AUTUMN | 25 |
| THE TIDE OF THE HEART | 26 |
| POEMS | |
| DOES THE PEARL KNOW? | 29 |
| IN AUTUMN | 31 |
| WAITING FOR DAY | 33 |
| THE ANGEL OF INDIFFERENCE | 34 |
| DEAR DEAD WOMEN | 37 |
| THE GRAVE OF HOPE | 39 |
| TREES OF THE WILDERNESS | 40 |
| THE LOVE OF THE ROSE | 42 |
| IN THE GREEN YEW | 43 |
| THE DEAD NIGHT | 45 |
| SONG | 47 |
| SIGH NOT FOR LOVE | 48 |
| AMBITION AND LOVE | 49 |
| TO B. D. | 51 |
| LITTLE SAD FACE | 52 |
| EARTH'S TEARS—AND MAN'S | 54 |
| I HAVE SEEN WHAT THE SERAPHS HAVE SEEN | 55 |
| A LASS FROM THE WOODS | 57 |
| WAS THERE ANOTHER SPRING | 59 |
| TO DIANE | 60 |
| BIRD LOVE—ROSE LOVE | 62 |
| THE JOY OF LIFE | 64 |
| MIST | 66 |
| THE LAST CLOUD | 67 |
| SONG | 68 |
| IN THE GRAVE | 69 |
| THE FLOWERS OF PROSERPINE | 71 |
SONNETS
THE DAYS
A long grim corridor—a sullen bar
Of light athwart the darkness—where no fleet
Pale sunshine spreads for dark his winding sheet
A light, not born of noon nor placid star
Glows lurid thro' the gloom—while from afar,
Beats marching of innumerable feet.
Is this the place where tragic armies meet?
The throb of terror that presages war?—
I strain to see, then softly on my sight
There falls the vision, manifold they come—
White listless Day chained to her brother Night—
Their hands are shackled and their lips are dumb,
And as they meet the air where each one dies,
They turn and smile at me—with weary eyes.
THE EVERLASTING SNOWS
And shall it be that these undaunted snows
That poise so lightly on the mountains' crest—
A lily laid to cheer its lonely breast—
Shall their chill smile still face the wind, that blows
Across the field whereon no blossom grows,
And light the land where no gay life may rest
Save glowing hasty fingers of the West,
When our two hearts lie cold beneath the rose?
These silver flakes of ancient hoary frost,
Surviving all our joys' supremest powers,
And though the petals of your lips be lost
And gone the summer of your golden head,
This pale eternal growth of winter's flowers
Shall still live on—though our sweet love be dead.
THRONE AND ALTAR
He had a vision of a golden throne
Fronting an altar; both alike were bare,
But o'er the purple of the regal chair
Blazed the device, "I wait for him alone
Who with the world has held his soul his own."
He sadly turned, this height he could not dare.
But—Stay—the text upon the altar there—
"I wait for him who has not made a moan
Howe'er his kind have used his heaven-sent dower.
Fear not, and burn thine incense, lowly heart."
And sudden brightness turns the averted face,
To holy sense of majesty and power—
And a voice:—"Master—this indeed thou art."
Wondrous music trembles thro' the space.
EAST AND WEST
You have not ceased for me. Though stern-browed Fate
Laid our two paths apart; when in the West
She gave you over to the seas, and great
Wide winds of enterprise, and set your breast
Against the suns and shadows of the earth;
Then with a gilded largess, led my ways
Toward the time-worn East, who paints her dearth
With purple vain imaginings; the praise
Of all her languid incense and the pride
Of ancient mysteries and hopeless creeds
Hold for my heart no spell when warm and wide
I see across the blue of Isis' veil
The thunderous breakers of your ocean pale
And glints of prairie sun through river reeds.
THE BATTLE
The pallid waves caress the paler sand,
Falter and tremble, then reluctant wane,
Fearing advance, yet venturing again.
Grey deep sea waves that never knew the land,
Tired with the tumult, stretch a crooked hand
To win a precious sweet surcease from pain,
But, glancing back upon the mighty main,
Perforce return to swell the strong command.
So fretful Life sees Death's cold sands and faints
To fling thereon the wearing of her wave,
Yet, turning ere she finds the gloomy shore,
Seeing ahead the idle senseless grave,
Behind—the Kings, the Patriots and the Saints,
She sighing turns to face the fight once more.
WATER AND WINE
I asked for water and they brought me wine;
Wine in a jewelled chalice, where the gold
Gleamed thro' the purple beads, as if unrolled—
One saw the sun-rays of a life-time shine.
So drinking, I forgot my dream divine
Of crystal purity, for in my hold
Were wealth and Fame and Passions manifold
Which with the draught I fancied might be mine.
"Ah, Youth," I said, "Ah, Faith and Love!" I said;
"These are but broken lances in the strife!
What shall remain when all these things are sped?"
Then crashed the dream. I clutched the hand of Fate
Amid the ruins of my shattered life,
And found the Gods had cheated, all too late.
PITY ME NOT!
Cruel and fair! within thy hollowed hand
My heart is lying as a little rose,
So faint and faded, scarce could one suppose
It might look in thine eyes and understand
The song they sing unto a weary land,
Making it radiant, yet because I dare,
To love thee, being weak, lose not thine air
Of passive distance, fateful and most grand.
Pity me not, nor turn away awhile
Till absence's cloud has caught my passion up.
Ah, be not kind! for love's sake, be not kind!
Grant me the tragic deepness of the cup,
And when thine eyes have flashed and made me blind,
Kill me beneath the shadow of thy smile.
A DREAM IN FEVER
A vast screen of unequal downward lines,
An orange purple halo 'round the rain,
Twists from a space whose very size is pain.
Here in this vortex day with night combines
Ruby and Emerald glint their blazing spines;
Closing and smothering, wheels a brazen main,
A shuddering sea of silence; in its train
A Thought—a cry, whose snake—fear trembling twines
Around—above—alive yet uttered not;
But my heart hears—and shrieking dies of dread,
Then soaring breaks its bands and o'er the rim
White winged it rends the dark with jagged blot,
Glimpsing the iris gateway barred ahead,
And, gazing thro', the eyes of cherubim.
A WOMAN'S PRIDE
I will not look for him—I will not hear
My heart's loud beating, as I strain to see
Across the rain forlorn and hopelessly,
Nor starting, think 'tis he that draws so near.
I will forget how tenderly and dear
He might in coming hold his arms to me,
For I will prove what woman's pride can be
When faint love lingers in the darkness drear.
I will not—Ah, but should he come to-night
I think my life might break thro' very bliss,
This little will should so be torn apart
That all my soul might fail in golden light
And let me die—So do I long for this.
Ah, love, thine eyes!—Nay, love—Thy heart, thy heart!
AGE
I have a dream, that somewhere in the days,
Since when a myriad suns have burned and died,
There was a time my soul was not for pride
Of spendthrift youth, the pensioner who pays
Dole for the pain of searching thro' the haze
Where joy lies hidden. As the puff balls ride,
The wandering wind across the Summer's side
So winged my spirit in a golden blaze
Of pure and careless Present—Future naught
But a sad dotard's wail—and I was young,
Who now am old. Now years like flashes seem,
Lambent or grey on the great wall of Thought—
This is a song a poet may have sung—
No proof remains, I have but dreamed a dream.
IN THE MIST
Ah love, my love, upon this alien shore
I lean and watch the pale uneasy ships
Slip thro' the waving mist in strange eclipse,
Like spirits of some time and land of yore.
I did not think my heart could love thee more,
And yet, when lightlier than a swallow dips,
The wind lays ghostly kisses on my lips
I seem to know of love the eternal core.
Here is no throbbing of impassioned breath
To beat upon my cheek, no pulsing heart
Which might be silenced by the touch of Death,
No smile which other smile has softly kissed
Or doting gaze which Time must draw apart,
But spirit's spirit in the trailing mist.
ON THE MOUNTAIN'S SLOPE
High on the mountain's slope I pause and turn—
Over my head, by the rough crag-points high,
Seems rent and torn the tender hovering sky,
Till almost—thro'—I see a Heaven-spark burn;
Then downward to the sleeping world I yearn
Whose eyes so heavy droop they may not try
To catch the higher gleam—and live thereby—
Youth passes graveward—and they never learn.
Then faint with brooding o'er a careless earth
I turn to Nature and her broad warm breast,
Strive for a friendship with her sun-burnt mirth,
Teach my sad soul to catch her cadence deep,
Dream that in her absorbed my heart must rest;
But Nature smiles, and turns once more in sleep.
TO THE BELOVED
Beloved, when the tides of life run low
As sobbing echoes of a dead refrain,
And I may sit and watch the silent rain
And muse upon the fulness of my woe,
Then is my burden lighter, for I know
The roses of my heart shall bloom again
The fairer for this plenitude of pain,
And Summer shall forget the chilly snow.
But when life calls me to its revels gay
And I must face the world's wide-gazing eyes
Nor find sweet rest by night or peace by day,
E'en seems your love, where I would turn for aid,
As distant as the blue in sunny skies;
Then am I very lonely and afraid.
MY BROOK
Earth holds no sweeter secret anywhere
Than this my brook, that lisps along the green
Of mossy channels, where slim birch trees lean
Like tall pale ladies whose delicious hair
Lures and invites the kiss of wanton air.
The smooth soft grasses, delicate between
The rougher stalks, by waifs alone are seen,
Shy things that live in sweet seclusion there.
And is it still the same, and do these eyes
Of every silver ripple meet the trees
That bend above like guarding emerald skies?
I turn—who read the city's beggared book
And hear across the moan of many seas
The whisper and the laughter of my brook.
BENEATH THE MOON
Give me thy hand, Beloved! Here where still
The night wind hovers 'neath the pallid moon
Give me this fleeting moment; all too soon
The listless day will break upon the hill;
This last sweet night is mine. The tremulous thrill
Upon thy lips is all the precious boon
I begged of Heaven, the garish sun of noon
Is theirs—the rest—mine is this moment's will.
Our love could never be the love of day.
I have not claimed the welcome of thy lips;
No touch save fluttering hand, and for the pay
I gave my minstrelsy of sea and sky.
Once more thine eyes! Now sun-stained finger tips,
Send through the hush of dawn a glad good-bye.
THE RUBY
Ah—she was fair, this daughter of a queen!
Jewels upon her breast's soft fall of snow,
Jewels—in golden hair—and fierce aglow,
The gem of pride upon her brow serene!
Sleeping soft moonstone, emerald's baleful green,
A single sapphire, singing soft and low
Of wars for beauty's sake in years ago,
And flaming opal—wed with tourmaline.
Yet was there one great stone she might not wear,
And so her eyes were weary, and her mouth
Curved in the listless line of vain desire.
No diamond pure was hers the right to bear,
But—crimson poison petal of the South—
The ruby shone in deep unholy fire.
SPRING AND AUTUMN
The painted World has laid her jewels down,
Let fall the pinchbeck hair about her face
And croons a love song. In a far-off place
Where she was strutting in her silken gown
She met the Youth. His face was young and brown.
"Good day to you," she cried, the frosty lace
About her shoulders trembled. Ah—disgrace!
He turned, and left her weeping in the town.
She smiles not any more, her heart disdains
The wind's rough courting, loud and indiscreet.
Her tears dissolve the earth in ceaseless rains
And though her searching steps be light and fleet
Through frowning city or soft country lanes,
Now never more may Spring and Autumn meet.
THE LOST MOMENT
This moment I so careless threw away,
Tossed to the ages, with a spendthrift hand,
Little I recked the labour that had planned
This flash eternal of a Summer day;
Æons of sequent toil had passed to pay
Wealth to the freighted instant. Slow and grand
Wavers a solemn dirge across the land,
One soul, in my lost moment, found a way
To throw the mock to Time, and call him slave.
And I—a pauper still—gaze wise at last
To all the grey horizon line of nought.
But from the heart I deemed an empty grave
Gleams forth like spark my precious gem of past
Shrined in the setting of a deathless thought.
THE COMING OF LOVE
I dreamed that love came, as the oak trees grow,
By the chance dropping of a tiny seed;
And then from moon to moon with steady speed,
Tho' torn by winds and chilled with heedless snow,
The sap of pulsing life would upward flow,
'Till in its might the heavens themselves could read
Portents of power that they must learn to heed.
This was my dream—the waking proved not so—
For love came like a flower, and grew apace;
I saw it blossom tenderly and frail
Till the dear Spring had run its eager race,
Then the rough wind tossed wide the petals red;
The seeds fell far in soil beyond my pale.
I know not, now, if love be lost, or dead.
EVENING AT WASHINGTON
The purple stretches of the evening sky
Lean to the fair white city waiting here,
Flecking with gold the marble's lifted tier,
Down the blue marsh where crows to Southward fly.
Flanked by dim ramparts, where the tide dreams by,
High from the city's heart, a lifted spear,
In its straight splendour makes the heavens seem near,
Symbol of man-made force that shall not die.
To the tall crest we gaze in self-command,
Assured the world's our own and we may dare
To raise our Babel thro' forbidden aisles
And hold the skirt of knowledge in our hand,
Great in our moment, spurn the world's despair;
While Heaven looks down through calm unmeasured miles.
LOVE'S KISS
Kiss me but once—and in that space supreme
My whole dark life shall quiver to an end,
Sweet Death shall see my heart and comprehend
That life is crowned—and in an endless gleam
Will fix the colour of the dying stream
That Life and Death may meet as friend with friend
An endless immortality to blend;
Kiss me but once, and so shall end my dream.
And then Love heard me and bestowed his kiss,
And straight I cried to Death: I will not die!
Earth is so fair when one remembers this;
Life is but just begun! Ah, come not yet!
The very world smiles up to kiss the sky
And in the grave one may forget—forget.
THE SCARLET THREAD
The sun rose dimly thro' the pallid rain,
Dear Heart—and have we strength to face the day?
The times and life alike are old and grey,
All worn with long monotonies of pain.
Lo—we are working out the curse of Cain,
Who never felt the fire of passion's sway.
Ah—show us crimson in some tragic way
That we may live!—Fate laughed in her disdain.
A thread of scarlet clashed upon mine eyes
Hung for a moment and was swept behind,
And blankly I beheld the hopeless skies
For day by contrast now is grimmest night—
Remembering light as do the newly blind
I pray for death to hide the bitter sight.
AUTUMN
The ruddy banners of the Autumn leaves
Toss out a challenge to the waiting snows,
Where Winter stalks from o'er the mountain rows;
This fiery blaze his onward march receives,
A mock defence his coward heart believes,
And turns him sulking to his moated close.
Now Man the confidence of Nature knows,
And feels the mighty heart that loves and grieves.
Not as in rude young March or hoyden June,
Hard in their beauty, laughing thro' their days;
Their fine indifference is out of tune.
In the dark paths we tread in hope and fear
Look we to Autumn and her gracious ways,
The great last swan-song of the dying year.
THE TIDE OF THE HEART
Love, when you leave me, as with moon-bent tide
The glad waves leave the beaches of my heart;
Slowly and indolently they depart
Ripple by ripple, till the light has died
And left the naked sands forlorn to bide
The sea's return. No might of human power
Can fill the empty waste, nor take one hour
From that long durance in Earth's prison wide.
But when you come again, and hold your hands
Dear hands, outstretched to take me, then, the waves,
They turn, full flooded on the fainting sands,
And all the dimpled hollows smile again,
And brimmed with life, the deep mysterious caves
Forget the distant night of lonely pain.
POEMS
DOES THE PEARL KNOW?
Does the pearl know, that in its shade and sheen
The dreamy rose, and tender wavering green,
Are hid the hearts of all the ranging seas—
That Beauty weeps for gifts as fair as these?
Does it desire aught else when its rare blush
Reflects Aurora in the morning's hush,
Encircling all perfection can bestow—
Does the pearl know?
Does the bird know, when thro' the waking dawn
He soaring sees below the silvered lawn,
And weary men who wait to watch the day
Steal o'er the heights where he may wheel and stray?
Can he conceive his fee divine to share,
As a free joyous peer with sun and air,
And pity the sad things that creep below—
Does the bird know?
Does the heart know, when filled to utter brim,
The least quick throb, a sacrificial hymn
To a great god who scorns the frown of Jove
That here it finds the awful power of love?
Think you the new-born babe in first wise sleep
Fathoms the gift the heavens have bade him keep
Yet if this be—if all these things are so—
Does the heart know?
IN AUTUMN
The gold-red leaves have burned
To their last great glow, and died
And underfoot
By the strong oak's root
They are seized by the angry wind and spurned
And into a common grave have turned
For Summer—warm and wide.
A year must a sapling wage
Its life with the sun and rain,
Then its tender youth
Without reck or ruth
Is frozen and beaten to harsh old age
By a stroke of Nature mother's rage
And the sturdy fight seems vain.
It wails to the oak o'erhead
As the coffin-cold wraps round
"The end of life
Is toil and strife
And the secret of being, I have found
Is a seed in the wind and a log on the ground.
I hope I will soon be dead."
"Peace little struggler—sleep"—
And the great oak croons a song,
"Death is but night
And a cradle white
For one dark space may the shadows creep,
Then Spring will rise from her dungeon keep
And life wake, wise and strong.
WAITING FOR DAY
Sweet Lady Night is paling white.
Why lags her Lord and Master?
She weeping, lays her jewels off—
Ah—may he not come faster.
But hush—the tender rosy blush
Her beauty fair adorning
Her love steps o'er the mountain's rim,
They kiss—and here's the morning.
THE ANGEL OF INDIFFERENCE
A Man once loved a Woman, in the days of old,
Our bond is the strongest in the world, they said—
The Angels up above
Are jealous of our love,
Perhaps they are wishing we were dead, overhead.
So they loved for a Time and the passing of a Time,
And the Angel of Indifference, smiling down, saw their fire,
And he covered for a space
With his sombre wings his face,
That they twain might have of love all desire, without tire.
But love's perfect joy within them burned at last to a flame
Till they longed for a breeze that would gently cool the heart.
For absence! cooling snow
They sighed apart and low,
Tho' they murmured still their love, hand and heart loth to part.
But at length they prayed together to the calm Angel—pale,
Ah—we yearn, scorched and weary, for the peace of thy breast.
For that land where love seems
But the shadow of dreams,
Where all sleep in the silver of the West, give us rest.
And he heard, and he bore them to the cool grey heights,
Where all men may drift and himself alone stands fast,
And gave them for their token
The peace of dreams unbroken
Where their souls, his faithful vassals, rest at last, from the past.
DEAR DEAD WOMEN
The winds have chilled the loving odorous South,
All wan and grey she seeks a place to die,
Her tossing hair, her pleading passionate mouth,
Pity that things so fair in death must lie;
But Winter holds and kills her with a sigh.
One kiss he lays upon her lips so proud,
Shuts the blue eyes and winds her sombre shroud.
I walk between the narrow way of yew.
The glowing amaranth droops upon its stalk,
The shivering birds are timorous and few,
And waifs of Summer strew th' untended walk;
With vague sweet forms I seem to pass and talk.
The ladies of those days in Summer's prime
Whose smiles prevailed not for the frown of Time.
Their little tripping feet reluctant turned
Down the dark paths they had not known before;
Behind them all the glow of living burned,
But they must enter thro' the gloomy door,
And leave behind the loves that plead no more,
The dear frivolity of wiles and ways
They neither need nor know in these grim days.
Here in their garden's close I spend no tear,
No smile—too rare the heights for such display.
But on the frosted hedges' lifted spear
And with my head a little bowed, I lay
A pale camelia, proud and cold as they
Who wait beneath their ashen pall of snow—
Perhaps the fair dead dames will see and know.