And apple flowers unfold,
Find not of that dear need that all things tell
The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled.
O Love,
whereof my
boyhood was the dream,
My youth the beautiful novitiate,
Life was so slight a thing and thou so great,
How could I make thee less than all-supreme!
In thy sweet transports not alone I thought
Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast.
The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caught
Into the pulse of Nature and possessed
By the same light that consecrates it so.
Love! -- 'tis the
payment of the debt we owe
The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er
In silks and
perfume and unloosened hair
The
loveliness of lovers, face to face,
Lies folded in the adorable
embrace,
Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice
That soul partakes whose
inspiration fills
The
springtime and the depth of summer skies,
The
rainbow and the clouds behind the hills,
That
excellence in earth and air and sea
That makes things as they are the real divinity.
Thirty Sonnets:
Sonnet I
Down the
strait vistas where a city street
Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances,
Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less
And the sky reddens round the day's retreat.
Now out of
orient chambers, cool and sweet,
Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down.
Now the lamps
brighten and the quickening town
Rings with the
trample of returning feet.
And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mould
Sunk all the
drowsy and unloved daylight
In layers of odorous
softness, Paphian girls
Cover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls,
Crown, and about her spangly vestments fold
The ermine of the empire of the Night.
Sonnet II
Her courts are by the flux of
flaming ways,
Between the rivers and the illumined sky
Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high
Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.
They mark it
inland;
blithe and fair of face
Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare
Beyond the hilltops in the evening air
How bright the cressets at her portals blaze.
On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day
Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow;
There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams.
Her paths are
disillusion and decay,
With ruins piled and unapparent woe,
The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.
Sonnet III
There was a youth around whose early way
White angels hung in
converse and sweet choir,
Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, --
In cloud and far
horizon to desire.
His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream
Born of clear showers and the mountain dew,
Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam
Forever pure against heaven's
orient blue.
Within the city's shades he walked at last.
Faint and more faint in sad recessional
Down the dim corridors of Time outworn,
A
chorus ebbed from that
forsaken past,
A hymn of glories fled beyond recall
With the lost heights and
splendor of life's morn.
Sonnet IV
Up at his attic sill the South wind came
And days of sun and storm but never peace.
Along the town's tumultuous arteries
He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:
Each night the whistles in the bay, the same
Whirl of
incessant wheels and clanging cars:
For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars
Burnt like his youth with but a
sickly flame.
Up to his attic came the city cries --
The throes with which her iron sinews heave --
And yet forever behind prison doors
Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes
The light that hangs on desert hills at eve
And tints the sea on
solitary shores. . . .
Sonnet V
A tide of beauty with returning May
Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume
Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom
The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.
Over the
terrace flows the thronged cafe;
The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;
And through the streets, like veins when they abound,
The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.
Here let me live, here let me still pursue
Phantoms of bliss that
beckon and
recede, --
Thy strange allurements, City that I love,
Maze of
romance, where I have followed too
The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need
And stars beyond thy towers bring
tidings of.
Sonnet VI
Give me the
treble of thy horns and hoofs,
The
ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram,
A
garret and a
glimpse across the roofs
Of clouds blown
eastward over Notre Dame,
The glad-eyed streets and
radiant gatherings
Where I drank deep the bliss of being young,
The
strife and sweet
potential flux of things
I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!
It walks here aureoled with the city-light,
Forever through the myriad-featured mass
Flaunting not far its
fugitiveembrace, --
Heard sometimes in a song across the night,
Caught in a
perfume from the crowds that pass,
And when love yields to love seen face to face.
Sonnet VII
To me, a
pilgrim on that journey bound
Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are,
As of a
silken city famed afar
Over the sands for
wealth and holy ground,
Came the report of one -- a woman crowned
With all
perfection, blemishless and high,
As the full moon amid the
moonlit sky,
With the world's praise and wonder clad around.
And I who held this notion of success:
To leave no form of Nature's
lovelinessUnworshipped, if glad eyes have
access there, --
Beyond all
earthly bounds have made my goal
To find where that sweet
shrine is and extol
The hand that triumphed in a work so fair.
Sonnet VIII
Oft as by chance, a little while apart
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
Sweet Beauty,
opening on the impoverished heart,
Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:
Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe
Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus,
Nor all those signs the Patmian
prophet saw
Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;
But, clad thenceforth in
iridescent dyes,
The fair world glistens, and in after days
The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes
Lives in my step and lightens all my face, --
So they who found the Earthly Paradise
Still breathed, returned, of that sweet,
joyful place.
Sonnet IX
Amid the florid
multitude her face
Was like the full moon seen behind the lace
Of
orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part
When Spring shines in the world and in the heart.
As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor
Of summer woods through flower and
foliage pour,
So to my being's innermost recess
Flooded the light of so much
loveliness;
She held as in a vase of
priceless ware
The wine that over arid ways and bare
My youth was the
pathetic thirsting for,
And where she moved the veil of Nature grew
Diaphanous and that
radiance mantled through
Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.
Sonnet X
A
splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued,
With palms
extent for amorous charity
And eyes incensed with love for all they see,
A wonder more to be adored than wooed,
On whom the grace of
conscious womanhood
Adorning every little thing she does
Sits like
enchantment, making glorious
A
careless pose, a
casual attitude;
Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise
Hath come the realm of those old
fabulous queens
Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage,
To keep alive in this our latter age
That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means
Lifts up Man's soul to
towering enterprise.
Sonnet XI
* A paraphrase of Petrarca, `Quando fra l'altre donne . . .'
When among creatures fair of countenance
Love comes enformed in such proud character,
So far as other beauty yields to her,
So far the breast with fiercer
longing pants;
I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance,
That wed desire to a thing so high,
And say, Glad soul,
rejoice, for thou and I
Of bliss unpaired are made participants;
Hence have come
ardent thoughts and waking dreams
That, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup,
Leave it no lust for gross imaginings.
Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleams
That while it gazes lifts the spirit up
To that high source from which all beauty springs.
Sonnet XII
Like as a dryad, from her native bole
Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge,
To a slow river at whose silent verge
Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll,
Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal
Of the freaked flag and
meadow buttercup,
Bend till thine image from the pool beam up
Arched with blue heaven like an aureole.
See how adorable in fancy then
Lives the fair face it mirrors even so,