I
THE GARDEN OF DESIRE
“O, holy God of Love, thou guidest there the heart where hindrances are.”
Kalidasa. (Malavika and Agnimitra)
I
I hastened homeward through the twilight lone
While on my lips your kisses stung like flame,
Burning to purest white the rose of shame
That leaped between us, scarlet lipped, full blown;
Within my ears your Spanish speech made moan;
I saw nor mud, mist, gray, wet streets; there came
As in a vision, Spain of splendid name.
Your castle in Love’s Land—there, we, alone!
Gone! Gone! Here by the window now I wait
For him to whom I owe yet give not love;
Watching the bird-winged night drop from above,
Grouped church spires, like frail hands up-flung to Fate,
On windows through which answering night lights chime,
I hear the passionless, cold rain of Winter time!
II
How well, how well you woo me with soft speech,
Fire swift my blood with wreathèd word divine!
“If power to choose Love’s own pure tongue were mine,”
You said, “I’d choose Italia’s to teach
You how I love; but If I must beseech
As penitent, mercy, pardon divine—
(As now in love’s proud passion I seek thine)—
O! let us, Sweet, speak Spanish, each to each!”
“But if in haughtiness I would command,
See armies, nations, bow beneath my word,
Then let the bitter English tongue be heard!”
“Love! Love!” I cried, “stretch out your sceptred hand,
Put from you the soft vowels that sing of Spain—
Look! Look! I kneel before you in love’s pain!”
III
No! No! I told you once, twice, thrice,—this wise,
And firmly I said it despite the hand
That clung about my breasts, the vice-like band
That passion set on me; despite your eyes
That eagerly sought mine, their wild surprise
That trembling with desire I could withstand
The majesty of Love’s greatest command
Laid on us with the weight of destinies.
I left, aye!—left you there and went my way.
Outside I met a woman bent and old,
A toothless, wrinkled hag, shrunk with Life’s cold.
That sight makes good all sin, I cried, Bright Day!
If age were not and death—O! then—Here! Here!
Outside your door keep me not waiting, Dear!
IV
Upon our first great love-night, Heart of Mine,
You whispered in that golden speech of Spain,
“My home was Malaga beside the Main.”
’Twas there, I asked, where black the bunched grapes shine?
O sweet, sweet South, I cried, sweet South of thine!
A silence fell. We spoke no more again.
Within your eyes I saw an olden pain;
O sad, sad South, I thought, sad South of thine!
Upon my breast bunched black your bright curls lay—
Bacchante then and Pan were we that night;
Grape-God, I call you witness to the sight;
That night, Grape-God, beneath your mighty sway
Lay not upon my breast in love’s sweet pain
Black grapes from Malaga beside the Main?
V
You said: “To make more sweet that which will be,
Let’s play a part together, you and I.
See!—I’m a monk, who, in his garden high,
Doth fast and pray to banish things worldly.
Down there you come, sad faced, dreaming of me.
I feel that you ’twixt flowering trees draw nigh;
I look not lest your lips let love flame high,
But, rising,—thus—I bless you prayerfully.”
Señor!—that tone!—Those gestures strange yet stern!
Tell me, where did you learn them? Tell me true!
Great God, Señor, an unfrocked priest are you!
No, no! No, no!—Enough, your kisses burn—
To-night—I swear it!—you shall be denied,
Grief-stricken glooms o’er us—The Crucified.
VI
Upon my eyes like rain your kisses fall,
Soft rain that maketh to be sweet the Spring,
The time of fairest love’s first flowering,
When mating birds so softly call and call.
Like rain upon my eyes your kisses fall,
Bright rain the royal Summer’s crown to bring,
Soft rain upon shy trees that croon and swing,
Sweet bridal veil of mist that hideth all.
Kiss me not thus! No, no, not thus kiss me.
The storm’s kiss first!—when black the day suns grow
And winds nor height, depth, hell nor heaven know—
Yes, yes, the storm’s kiss first! Thus—thus—kiss me!
Unchain the whirlwinds of your wild desire
And blind me, blind me, with the lightning’s fire!
VII
But when I’m worn and weary and would rest,
And in my ears the storm sounds vaguely far,
The lightnings fireless as that far night star,
Then fold me in your arms, upon your breast.
O! fold me in your arms! There let me rest,
To watch, idly, the fleeing Storm-God’s car,
Rain-mist so soft it may not mark nor mar
The lily’s leaf—when sleep and dreams are best.
Then on my eyes like rain let kisses fall,
Soft rain that maketh to be sweet the Spring,
And Winter fields like pink pearls shimmering.
The bridal veil of mist fall over all!
From under, as shy crocuses do peep,
New love shall bud and blossom while I sleep.
VIII
Within a gloomy land our love did grow,
Within a city gray with mist and smoke
Whose roofs lone prairie levels roughly choke,
Where no bright, seaward slipping rivers flow,
Around us rose the din of toil and woe—
Straight church towers whence stern warring bell tones broke
With words of warning when their iron tongues spoke,—
Such was the city that our love did know!
Think you we saw it? No, no! This saw we—
A waving field where flame-like flowers bloom,
(That fateful flower of old Sicilian doom—
Great Demeter, we thought not then of thee!)
We plucked. We ate. The fruit was strangely sweet,
And hell and heaven opened at our feet.
IX
“Be at the opera”—you write—to-night—
The crimson rose I send on your breast wear,
My lips had blessed it ere I sent it where
They, too, have lain and learned love’s speech aright.
“I cannot wait”—you say—“till comes our night;
Tu esposo—I know, yes, he’ll be there,
But that I’ll suffer if you’ll grant me, Fair,
One glimpse of you. O! let me know. Write! Write!”
Yes, Sweet! and when the trumpets leap and sing,
And fiddle-bows rise, fall, like trees swaying
Beneath an angry storm when winds are strong,
Ear-dulled, the present blotted with the past,
My love shall rise and reach you, hold you fast,
And vanish with you on the wings of song!
X
What pictures do we see when memories frown
Alone and here together, Dearest One!
I first saw light beneath a pallid sun,
The northern stars upon my youth looked down.
You, where the earth wears best its flowery crown,
Where fiercest, mightiest, doth blaze the sun,
Not star-like to it was my pallid one,
The Southern Cross upon your youth looked down.
O! shed upon me all your blaze of lights,
Fill well my soul for what it missed of yore,
Enrich me ever with your flowery lore!
I can recall no more the northern nights!
I know when on my mouth is set your mouth
The sensuous, sweet savors of the South.
XI
There was a little garden that I knew
Far, far to north—where still my childhood stays—
The garden of my girlhood, of its Mays,
Where frail and strange, unreal, dream-flowers grew.
Within that little garden that I knew,
O! prim the beds were, straight and white the ways,
All simply made and plain for childhood days,
There little Love, white-winged, unspotted, flew.
Think you aught great there is for you I’ve done?
My Dream-Tree I have plundered of its toys
That grew within the garden of my joys!
In little paths where once sweet Love did run,
Roam wildly now the gaunt Wolves of Desire—
And blurred the ways, with dead flowers flecked—and mire.
XII
Unto that little garden sometimes, Love,
I hasten yet to—to—yes, to forget—
Tell all its quaintnesses again and let
Myself learn peace of her who knew not love.
Yes, yes, unto that garden sometimes, Love,
I hasten yet to—to—yes, to forget—
To feel its dear, deep calm again and let
Hover above my heart Youth’s white, white dove.
No, no!—you need not worry lest I stay,
Forget the lore that I of grief have learned,
The lore sin red upon my soul has burned—
Tell me why should you worry lest I stay?
Surely you’ve heard when of blood tigers taste,
Not seas can keep them from it—mountain—waste!
XIII
They say that they who’ve sinned this sin of ours
May never after death know aught of light;
Naught can once cleanse their souls, nor make them white,
Nor Lydian scents make sweet the sin-stained hours.
A gate whose whirling swords have lightning’s powers
To blast and burn flash outward with such might
The black and barren road is bleached to bright
That leads down, downward, where the darkness cowers.
Come, Sweet, lift up your eyes! Be not afraid.
Behold!—within that pit a giant rose,
Its million, million petals, hearts of those
Who sinned this sin of ours all undismayed,
So rich, colossal, glorious and fair
It dims the white sword-whirl of judgment there!
XIV
“Quare, dum licet, internos laetemur amantes;
Non satis est ullo tempore longus amor.”
Propertius
Your love has clothed me with a garment fair
That covers up all soil and smirch and sin,
From folded feet folds whitely to the chin
And hallows me as those the saints do wear.
O, trust me—I will keep it spotless, fair,
For this, your gracious gift, my dreams shall win
A purity serene, no more therein
May creep a false thought ever anywhere.
Yet underneath this love-robe—gift of thine—
I know that you’d not sinned this sin of mine
Nor broken sacred vows as I have done;
Yet judge me not too harshly, Dear, Dear One,
Than mortal women I have been most lone,
The heart must have a home! Let that atone.
XV
Do you recall the day when first we met?
In The Cathedral ’twas. The service o’er
Friends introduced us, passed, and said no more,
And we were left alone, strangers as yet.
A sad monastic gloom on you was set.
I sensed your thirst for life, more life, yet more—
And I, too, was athirst because I wore
The slave’s badge that so sharply helps to whet.
I went not home. I loathed the narrow streets.
I longed for country lanes, deep peace of air.
I left the black-roofed city, hastened where
I saw the hills. Upon them—O! so sweet—
Thick-banked stood trees like pink mist in the sun,
Aloud I cried:—Thank God! The Winter’s done!
XVI
We must be kinder to each other, Dear,
Than others are whose love by law is blest,
Slower to wound, cavil, think ill—grieve—lest
We break the iris band that binds us near!
We must be crueller to each other, Dear,
Than others are whose love by law is blest,
Quicker to know Truth’s shining scalpel’s best
And use it bravely. No blot can be here!
Have you thought where ’tis set, this great love-dower?
There! pendulous ’twixt sacrilege and shame,
Uncertain, floating, impotent to bring
A permanence. O! would ours were the power
God-like to make, create a soul, a name,
And touch it whitely with Life’s deathless wing!
XVII
You’ve heard how after some great victory
The Cæsars triumphing came gayly home,
Red-robed, gold palm-embroiderèd—to Rome—
Gods like unto, with glory good to see,
On cars charioted of ivory,
Through gates triumphal, flower-up-built to dome,
While at their feet the masses moaning roam
And they, joy-drunk, cry:—“Io Triompe!”
Thus, Love, at life’s high noon enter my heart!
(Not like one monkish bred, cringing with fear,
Black clad, furtive of eye for dangers near,)
Come as the Cæsars came! Be that your part,
Bright robed, triumphant, bold for victory,
And o’er my conquered soul cry—“Triompe!”
XVIII
You praised my speech to-day. You said I’d caught,
Wandering in many lands ’mong many men,
Colorful vowel richnesses learned then
Of many tongues. When first we met you thought
This gave me added charm, that thus I ought
Be not one woman—O! proud praise again!—
But many since I had their tongues and then
Their charm. Thus, thus you praised me who should not.
But now what think you I have learned of you?
The Tongue of Love! which I knew not before,
Nor can they learn it who o’er books do pore.
That taught you me. It sounds most sweetly too.
I learned it easily as children play
When first you said: “Yo, yo amo à te!”
XIX
From Peking westward thirty li there stands,
To one forth faring through the Tschengi-Thor,
The Lo-ku Bridge, buttressed, barred both sides o’er
With lions cunningly so wrought by hands
Long dead, no one who counts them lives, it stands
Recorded. Whoso tries, counts o’er and o’er,
May not cease counting, of aught else think more,
But goes mad dreaming of a lion that stands
Upon the Lo-ku Bridge. You said ’twas true.
And added softer—should life call me where
You are not, and can never be, O! there
I’d go mad dreaming of the lips of you,
Counting the kisses that you gave to me
In midnights dark as old Teng’s dynasty!
XX
You said—O! how the words did surge my soul
And to far finger tips send blood to spin—
That always ere the bold day does begin
You think of me; your thoughts my thoughts control
Ere day does of its noisy strife unroll;
Far, far across the sweet, unreal, mist-thin
City that sleeps, you claim me yours and win
A space for us not time’s—unspotted, whole.
And always in the dawn I feel you near.
Then like souls in gray Hades we two go
Forth through the silvery silence, there to know
The things that they know not whose love’s less dear.
Be this our dwelling, this pale silent land
Where Life—a dream like day—waits our command.
XXI
Our love is like a Japan print, you think,
Rare mulberry-paper one, like gold that’s dead?
Foreground a garden, kiosk-canopièd
O’er moon-eyed, magic flowers of black and pink;
Curved, quaint-bridged river; temple on the brink
Where lidless eyed sits Buddah unwearièd,
Dreaming that time is naught, the now even sped.
To westward over all black bird-dots sink.
Background, a fairy sea of dreamland blue
Whence mountains rise that surely once we knew
In some dim other life too sweet for words.
Aye! Aye! our Love-Land! But those black, black birds—
Too like they are to monks who hovered where
That old Greek garden of the world was fair.
XXII
“Flutes and mandolins—a Spanish melody—nothing more. Yet it seemed as if the night were speaking, or out of the night some passional life long since melted into Nature’s mystery.”
Lafcadio Hearn
Last night—shall I forget it ere I die?
I lay within a chamber curtained in
With red rich hangings such as Arabs spin,
Sombre of depth, tragic, where shadows lie.
You reached your lute and played a song keyed high
Upon soft undercurrents, trilled and thin,
Weaving an old love-song of Spain’s therein,
Sprayed fine as waters are when winds are nigh.
And then you played no more again that night.
Nor of song’s silver stream did I care more.
I looked into your eyes. There black and bright
An ocean did unroll sans sound, depth, shore—
Across it sped as once of old the dove,
The golden, glittering, galleons of love!
XXIII
“Quanto e bello giovinezza!
Ma sen fugge tuttavia,
Chi vuol esser lieto sia—
Di doman non v’e certezza.”
Lorenzo de Medici
No, no, why talk of this, your faith, to me!
In life are nobler things than fast and prayer
Or silent meditation cloistered where
The real things cannot touch us vividly.
Give me the storm, the struggle! Aye! give me
A taste of all that is or here or there,
For I would touch life richly everywhere—
An earth-lyre for emotion’s mastery.
Dear One, Dear One, I firmly do believe—
(O! look not at me thus with eyes that grieve!)
That if there is the Heaven to which you pray
Unto the cloistered will its keeper say:
“A garden rich I gave you. Now speak truth—
What did you with my greatest gift—your youth?”
XXIV
You spoke upon a sudden words like these
Towering above me in the crimson room
To anger stung by some word said too soon:
“Aman terriblemente en mi país!”
Terriblemente aman en mi país!
Cold sensuality’s not there the boon
We crave; instead, the force, fury of noon
Which like flame purifies impurities.
The whirlwinds gulfed me from your passion’s height
And swept me outward, ’cross a sea of night,
Night amethystine, purple, rich, and deep
Where multi-colored stars their watches keep
And sing in whirling splendor words like these—
“Aman terriblemente en mi país!”
XXV
Mazeltov
O! sweet is your forgiveness, Dear, to me,
How sweet I think and think and cannot tell;
If Love’s a great, great thirst it is the well
Where I, a desert wanderer, drink gladly;
But if it’s health and life lived brave and free,
It is as pure white lilies that for a spell
Cool fever’s brow and of green meadows tell—
Such, Dear, has your forgiveness been to me.
And then the little word with which it came,
The Hebrew “mazeltov”—To you joy’s flame!
I hug it to my heart as they of yore
Who heard it, perchance, by the palace door
Of one who gloried in proud Babylon
And learned of love beneath a younger sun.
XXVI
Mazeltov
To-day is still the day that sweet word came
Yet must I watch it ebb to Time’s great sea
And there to mingle with eternity,
Lose sense and form and be no more a name.
And yet ’tis still the day. The words I frame,
While ocean-like night’s mists rise stealthily;
Beneath my window here there spreads a sea
From which twin church spires spin like fireless flame.
Behold! the west has opened. Bless you, Day!
You would be gracious to me? You would stay?
And all the sky is flecked with tumbled light,
Wave beating upon wave, outbreasting night,
Up-wrapped as in a glory I do feel
Seeing outflung the roses of Castile!
XXVII
’Tis only these our bodies that are near!
Our souls are sphered in two far heavens of space
Where naught each of the other may we trace
Nor feel the freshness of a love-wrung tear.
All kindliness does your heaven ensphere,
Mercy—and the tender, piteous grace
Of Judah’s chosen, the divine, sad face
That smiled its blessing down the ages drear.
Within my heaven ideal Beauty stands,
The chaste white goddess of the cruel hands
And smileless lips who gives naught and asks all,
From whom our praises slip as scorned gems fall.
Yet would I have her other if I could?
Her slaves have said—Beauty’s as great as Good!
XXVIII
You asked me why I love you. This is why,
Told in the Hebrew lore: The Mischna tells
How Abraham, a boy, his idols sells,
Then, tiring, searched for God both far and nigh.
Night came. He saw the stars strew thick the sky,
“Surely that’s God!” The moon rose with her spells.
“No, no, that’s God!” Awe from his spirit wells:
But moon and stars fade fast and night passed by.
Rich with the fervor of its sun rose day.
“I know now none has found God and none may!
The force is He behind the day and night!”
Cried Abraham in rapture at the light.
Thus I love not for outward shows nor gold,
But for the silent love your heart does hold.
XXIX
I, too, have touched Life’s idols, found them clay,
Then, broken-hearted, sought some better thing,
The while unfolded o’er me like a wing
The panorama of the night and day.
A petty part I played within a play
While Spring and Summer scenery did fling
Round me fit for the great gods glorying,
And set suns, gem-like, on the breast of day.
At last the power behind it I did learn.
I met you and the meaning was made clear;
Then I built worthy of the garden here.
My heart’s a dwelling now gods may not spurn,
So high it towers it tops the clouds above
To house you fittingly, my Love, my Love!
XXX
Gale’d
Jacob and Laban for their love’s great need
A stone tower built—as Hebrew scholars know—
To mark the ending of a grievous woe,
Upon stone then set stone, crying—“Godspeed!”
Finished, they prayed: “Be this now called Gale’d!
Past it let each to other never go
With thought of anger, grief, suspicion, woe,
For peace must rest upon the tower Gale’d.”
Thus to us be, O Love! this crimson room
So rich with curtains of an orient bloom
Which sun-pale women wrought, dreaming of men
Who’d rush to meet them with the dusk again;
Whene’er we enter here let sad thoughts be
Deep buried in our love’s immensity.
XXXI
Faith is the soul’s pure garment, is it not,
That covers well from cold within a world
Divine things had not been in, had not whirled
From battlemented light the Demon, Thought;
Whose soul-garment is richest he cannot
See grief nor sorrow plainly, though unfurled
The black, tear-dyed pinions of Death’s own world
A-flutter o’er his head, of horror wrought.
Outside your sheltered warmth, a pilgrim, I
Do come and lowly kneel where you sit high—
Soul-naked do I come as humble ones
Who in some fair, far south seek meed of suns—
O! crueller than to them rude Winter’s wing,
Life’s storms to her who seeks such sheltering!
XXXII
That little song you sang to me, Dear One,
Has blotted out the present, brought to view
This painted vision that a pagan knew:
Quai of Alexandria, low, fading sun,
Frail, floating, purple night-shadows that run
Across sands deeply bronze, dulled by no dew;
A maid, nude, save for gauze crocus in hue
Through which shines polished flesh like to a sun.
Two flute players stroll past unto the feasts,
Flower-ankleted and girdled—Joy’s young Priests;
Beside the crocus maid they pause and sing
In shrill tones colored like the bronze evening.
She hears and trembles her gold gauzes through:
“O le désir est douloureux et doux!”
XXXIII
We met last night beside a northern lake
Whirled there ’cross prairie levels bleached with heat,
For rain athirst, as we athirst to meet
And in the northern night our longing slake.
Beneath our window spread, far, pale, the lake
Crooning a song of sleep, belated, sweet,
Away, away, the veilèd moon did fleet,
Dream shadow for the rhythmic night to wake.
Clear came the dawn, and chill and coldly blue,
Black, stern, upon the shore pines rose to view.
Beneath our window floated in from far,
Dead fish, silver, shining, as young moons are;
Out o’er that azure distance pure as prayer
I looked and knew that that night storms dwelled there.
XXXIV
Just as we left the lake I saw near by
A night-bird sheltered in a black pine’s shade,
By bold bright thunder of the light dismayed,
There fled to shelter till dusk touched the sky.
Within his mimic night he nestled nigh
Unto the great tree’s trunk, blinking, afraid;
Grief clutched my heart. Like him you are not made
For noisy daylight, I think quick, and sigh.
You are my black, black night-bird! Well I know
You’ll leave me for the dusk again and go
Through twilights on and on, forgetful, free,
Pale silences down-floating, far from me,
And I shall be as in daylight a star
That fades and falters where the lightnings are.