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Ebook has 185 lines and 13853 words, and 4 pages

SONNETS AND SONGS

BY HELEN HAY WHITNEY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

MCMV

TO P. W.

SONNETS

PAGE

Ave atque Vale 3 "Chaque baiser vaut un roman" 4 As a Pale Child 5 Flower of the Clove 6 Too Late 7 The Supreme Sacrifice 8 Malua 9 Love's Legacy 10 How we would Live! 11 In Extremis 12 The Forgiveness 13 With Music 14 Alpha and Omega 15 Flowers of Ice 16 Love and Death 17 The Message 18 Tempest and Calm 19 After Rain 20 Not through this Door 21 Pot-Pourri 22 Eadem Semper 23 To a Woman 24 Aspiration--I 25 Aspiration--II 26 The Gypsy Blood 27 Not Dead but Sleeping 28 The Last Gift 29 Amor Mysticus 30 The Pattern of the Earth 31 Disguised 32

SONGS

On the White Road 35 The Wanderer 36 False 37 A Song of the Oregon Trail 38 The Apple-Tree 39 Silver and Rose 40 To-Morrow 41 The Greater Joy 42 The Rose-Colored Camelia-Tree 43 Good-Bye Sorrow 44 In Harbor 45 Rosa Mundi 46 The Ribbon 47 The Aster 48 Heart and Hand 49 The Golden Fruit 50 To a Moth 52 Winter Song 53 Youth 54 Persephone 55 ?toiles d'Enfer 57 Enough of Singing 58 Truth 59 The Philosopher 60 Prayers 61 A South-Sea Lover Scorned 62 In May 64 For Your Sake 65 Lyric Love 67 Be Still 68 Butterfly Words 69 Music 70 The Ghost 72 Fight! 74 In Tonga 75 This was the Song 76 To E. D. 78 The Dance 79 Vanquished 80 Tranquillity 81

SONNETS

As a blown leaf across the face of Time Your name falls emptily upon my heart. In this new symmetry you have no part, No lot in my fair life. The stars still chime Autumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime. I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art, Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses start To hear your soul remembered in a rhyme.

You may not vex me any more. The stark Terror of life has passed, and all the stress. Winds had their will of me, and now caress, Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I, As on a mirror, see the days go by In nonchalant procession to the dark.

I, living love and laughter, have forgot The way the heart has uttered melody. As sobbing, plaintive cadence of the sea A poet's soul should rest, remembering not The inland paths of green, the flowers, the spot Where fairies ring. In hermit ecstasy Music is born, and gay or wofully Lovers of Poesy share her lonely lot.

For you and me, Beloved, crowned with Spring, Catching Love's flowers from off the lap of Time, What are the songs my voice has scorned to sing? Ghostly they hover round my heart-wise lips; Into a kiss I fold my rose of Rhyme, Laid like a martyr on your finger-tips.

As a pale child, hemmed in by windy rain, Patiently turns to touch his well-known toys, Playing as children play who make no noise, Yet happy in a way; then sighs again, To watch the world across the storm-dim pane, And sees with wistful eyes glad girls and boys Who romp beneath the rain's unlicensed joys, And feels wild longings sweep his gentle brain.

So I, contented with my flowers for stars, Stroll in my fair, walled garden happily, Knowing no gladder game till, shrill and sweet, I hear life's cry ring down the silent street, And press my face against the sunlit bars To watch the joyous spirits who are free.

But mine! Ah, mine is like a tattered leaf Upon a turbid stream. I have no pride, No life, but love, which is a bitter grief. As a lost star I wander down your sky. Give me your heart. Open it wide--so wide! I must have love and laughter, or I die.

Upon your stone the wine of my desire Is spilled. Your poppy lips have grown too pale From fasting. Your white hands will not avail The cold eyes of your heart to light the fire. I did not think my prayers could ever tire. Now, like doomed ships, they flutter without sail. Lost in a calm which held no rock, no gale-- Now, when your chilly smile bids me aspire!

So, without history, my soul is slain-- Woman of barren love; the wine was red-- Beautiful for your spending. Not again Will the bud blossom where the frost has sped. Timid, you dared not hark when angels sang. All, all is lost, without one saving pang.

Better than life, better than sea and morn, And all the sun-stained fragments of the day-- Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that stray Across dim twilights--I, the tempest-torn, Fighting the stars for glory, who must scorn Heart-drops bespread along love's cruel way Like scattered petals on the breast of May-- Better than life I love you, I forlorn.

Better than death--the sleeping and the peace When warm within the breast of brooding Earth My weary heart should give its woes release, The pitiful dark remembering not my loss, The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth-- Better than death, my love, my burning cross.

Out of the purple treasuries of night Came the dark wind of evening silver-starred-- Stirred on his cheek. The forest keeping ward Breathed with a tremulous silence, and the bright, Bare moon crowned his adoring brow with light. The exquisite dream of beauty held him hard In a great love, a forest love, unmarred-- Still unprofaned--by human nature's sight.

Guarding the temple gates of peace he stood, Statue of bronze with pagan heart of stone. Sudden, a dazzling glory lit the wood-- Moon in his soul that dimmed the moon above. Life was revealed, a Spring-sweet maid, alone-- Beauty was woman, and the woman--Love.

As one who looks too long upon the sun When he must turn to earth from flame-shot skies Sees all else dark through his bereaved eyes, And yet may watch the rainbow ribbons run Athwart the gravity of gray and dun, He holds the darkness dearer for the prize Wherein his only pledge of radiance lies When he the vast magnificence must shun.

So we who play with rainbows, having seen The sun's own face. We may not hold the west, Which burns against the bosom of the night, But in the after-glow, with eyes serene, We still may find, dear heart, the sun's bequest, An echoed glory of our passionate light.

How we would live! We'd drink the years like wine, With all to-morrows hid behind the veil, Which is your hair; between two lilies pale-- Your slender hands--my heart should lie and shine, A crimson rose. We'd catch the wind and twine The evening stars--a chaplet musical-- To crown our folly, lure the nightingale To sing the bliss your lips should teach to mine.

And if the sage, declaring life is vain, Should frown upon the flower of all our days And chide the sun that knows no tears of rain, He should not tease our heart with cynic eye-- The soul's vast altar stands beyond his gaze When two have lived--then shall they fear to die?

Nay, touch me not, nor even with your eyes Hold mine, for I would speak you, thus afar, Aloof and chill and lonely as a star. The hands that urge, the hungry heart that cries, Have wrapped my love with love's elusive lies; The lips that burn have laid a ruddy scar Against the truth that stands without the bar, And blinded faith with passion's mysteries.

Night holds a single moon, day one desire-- Her golden sun; and life a love supreme, Wherein one moment poises, crowned with fire, White with the naked truth. Beyond control, 'Tis here, my Sun, in love's last hour extreme, I hold aloft my bare, adoring soul.

If I might see you dead, Beloved--dead-- Your false eyes closed forever to the light, Your false smile stilled upon my aching sight; If I might know that nevermore your head, Cruelly fair, could lie upon the bed Of my torn heart; if I beheld the night Free from your living thought--ah! if I might, Then could my desolate soul be comforted.

For this is worst of all the woes you gave-- My heart may not forgive. The tired years go And leave the great love weeping for a grave, Scorned and unburied, 'neath the open sky. I could not love you less, to see you so. Loving you more, I might forgive--and die.

Dear, did we meet in some dim yesterday? I half remember how the birds were mute Among green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit, And on the grass, beside a stream, we lay In early twilight; faintly, far away, Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute, With answered echoes of an airy flute, While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.

Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery. You looked in mine, the music rose and fell Like little, lisping laughter of the sea; Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore-- Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell? Soft--music ceases--I recall no more.

I died to-day, and yet upon my eyes A glamour of the gorgeous summer green Still wavers, and my brain has kept a keen, Sweet bird-song. Glad with light, the summer skies Are sapphire, and a purple shadow lies Across the hills--no change is on the scene Since happy yesterday. Ah! can it mean The body lives when stricken spirit dies?

The blow has fallen, yet I can recall The first of days when this dead heart drew breath-- A wondrous moon-flower waking of a heart. Strange--then as now the moment seemed to part Body from soul, so like are birth and death; So did I gain, and so I lost my all.

The lights within the ice-floes are our flowers, Lily and daffodil and violet. Beneath these monstrous suns that never set Tremble soft rainbows, young as Earth's first hours, Ancient as Time. No balm of gentle showers Make for their growth; for them, gigantic, met The immemorial ice and sun, to get Such blossoms--pledge of Beauty's bravest powers.

Violet and pale grass-green, the Spring-time dies In the soft South. To us, in this grim world, Daring with frozen heart and tearless eyes The North's white sanctity, Fate idly throws These alms--a deathless Spring of ice enfurled, And over all, far flung, the sunset rose.

I can believe that my Beloved dies, That all her virtue, all her youth shall fail, And life, her rosy life, grow cold and pale, To bloom again in braver Paradise. I must believe that death shall close her eyes, And hold her heart beyond a heavy veil, Where silences surround her spirit frail And waste the form where all my loving lies.

When one has heard the message of the Rose, For what faint other calling shall he care? Dark broodings turn to find their lonely lair; The vain world keeps her posturing and pose. He, with his crimson secret, which bestows Heaven on his heart, to Heaven lifts his prayer, And knows all glory trembling through the air As on triumphal journeying he goes.

So through green woodlands in the twilight dim, Led by the faint, pale argent of a star, What though to others it is weary night, Nature holds out her wide, sweet heart to him; And, leaning o'er the world's mysterious bar, His soul is great with everlasting light.

First came the tempest, and the world was torn Upon its mighty passion--all the deep Trembled before it. From the haggard steep To the sweet valley with its brooding corn, Its foaming lips in expletives of scorn Lashed into life the world's eternal sleep; Then, caught with madness, in gigantic leap Expired upon the heights where it was born.

And then a hush--the dripping, tender rain Falls in warm tears. The thunder could not wake The grief that silence in her soul has furled. Soft sighs the wind, the sea is gray with pain-- The fulness of a heart too tense to break-- And deep, unuttered sadness in the world.

The country road at lonely close of day Rests for a while from the long stress of rain; Dripping and bowed, the green walls of the lane Reflect no glistening light, no colors gay Has dying Summer left. The sky is gray, As though the weeping had not eased the pain. The Autumn is not yet, and all in vain Seems Summer's life--a blossom cast away.

The air is hushed, save in the emerald shade The rain still drips and stirs each fretting leaf To soft insistence of its little grief. The hopeless calm all thought of life denies-- But hark! out through the silence, unafraid, A robin ripples to the chilly skies.

Not through this door of elemental calm, Patient, wet woodland, resting after rain, Brooding brown fields that wait the sleeping grain-- Not through this door may the wrecked spirit's balm-- Come in and take possession. There's a psalm Nature has crooned to weariness and pain, Easing the tumult of the world-worn brain, Sweet, wholesome mother of the open palm.

But the disastrous heart cries out for men, Strife where the fight is reddest. Verily Peace comes with fighting with the strength of ten, Here where the world is young, with naught to see. But day blow out across the long, low sky-- Peace means an emptiness, which rests to die.

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