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Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me

High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?

Love is a flame; -- we have beaconed the world's night.
A city: -- and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor: -- we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,

And the high cause of Love's magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names

Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,

To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming. . . .

These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,

Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust

Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;

And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon

Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;

The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such --

The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers

About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .
Dear names,

And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;

Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,

Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam

That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold

Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;

And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; --

All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,

Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.

They'll play deserter, turn with the traitorbreath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust

And sacramented covenant to the dust.
---- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,

And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers. . . .

But the best I've known,
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown

About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.

Nothing remains.
O dear my loves, O faithless, once again

This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,

Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."
Mataiea, 1914

Heaven
Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,

Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,

Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;

But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,

For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good

Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see

A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,

The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! -- Death eddies near --

Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time.

Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One

Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,

Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,

The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,

Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,

And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,

And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,

And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,

There shall be no more land, say fish.
Doubts

When she sleeps, her soul, I know,
Goes a wanderer on the air,

Wings where I may never go,
Leaves her lying, still and fair,

Waiting, empty, laid aside,
Like a dress upon a chair. . . .

This I know, and yet I know
Doubts that will not be denied.

For if the soul be not in place,
What has laid trouble in her face?

And, sits there nothing ware and wise
Behind the curtains of her eyes,

What is it, in the self's eclipse,
Shadows, soft and passingly,

About the corners of her lips,
The smile that is essential she?

And if the spirit be not there,
Why is fragrance in the hair?

There's Wisdom in Women
"Oh love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said,

"But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head,
And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;

So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.
But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,

And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own,
Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young,

Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?
He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her

I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,
But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.

For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;
Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?

Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,
The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;

But if you're that high goddess once I thought,
The more your godhead is, I lose the more.

Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!
Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!

Most fair, -- the blind has lost your face for ever!
Most foul, -- how could I see you while I kissed you?

So . . . the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you,
For, foul or lovely, 'twas a fool that loved you.

A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence)
Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept

Softly along the dim way to your room,
And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,

And holiness about you as you slept.
I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept

About my head, and held it. I had rest
Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast.

I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.
It was great wrong you did me; and for gain

Of that poor moment's kindliness, and ease,
And sleepy mother-comfort!

Child, you know
How easily love leaps out to dreams like these,

Who has seen them true. And love that's wakened so
Takes all too long to lay asleep again.

Waikiki, October 1913
One Day

Today I have been happy. All the day
I held the memory of you, and wove

Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,
And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,

And sent you following the white waves of sea,
And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,

Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.

So lightly I played with those dark memories,
Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,

Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,
For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,

And love has been betrayed, and murder done,
And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

The Pacific, October 1913
Waikiki

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree
Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes

Somewhere an `eukaleli' thrills and cries
And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.

And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;

And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,

An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
Of two that loved -- or did not love -- and one

Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
A long while since, and by some other sea.

Waikiki, 1913
Hauntings

In the grey tumult of these after years
Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;

And less-than-echoes of remembered tears
Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;

And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying
Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, --

Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,
Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.



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