Poems

WHEN the boat touches on the other side
And I step out in those fair meads and wide,
I think I shall not care
To stoop and smell
One hyacinth, nor pluck one immortelle
Till I have found three ladies there
Who died —
Oh, long ago, but whom I know quite well
Because of what their lovers had to tell.

And one will be by spirits bright attended,
And I shall know her by her robe of green
And by the scarlet vest that shows between
Its parted folds; and were those colors blended
From clinging memories of the gown she wore,
Walking that day
Along the Arno’s shore,
When all his ardent soul was caught away
By the Antico Amor?

And one I’ll find by ‘waters clear and fresh
And sweet,’ and still the mesh
Of her blonde hair
Will snare
The pearly bloom that falls upon its gold.
‘Humbly she used to sit amid such glory’;
Ah, dopo i perduti giorni, where
Is he who told
Her beauty’s story?
Finding the rest he prayed for at her feet,
By waters clear and fresh and sweet?

And then the last one — shall I know her, too,
The ‘wayward girl’ who used to pass
Outside the prison of that window-glass
And wave her kisses through?
‘Graceful and silly, beautiful and strange’ —
Alas, she could not change!
Always we see her as she went and came
By Hampstead Heath, and wore her ‘duffel gray,’
While the wild singing flame
That burned in that young heart across the way,
Burned out at last and left her girlish name
With his to face the years,
Writ in the water of our many tears!

IIóτνια, πóτνια úΠνoδóτϵιρα τῶν ΠoλυΠóνων βρoτῶν!.

I DID not hear the footstep stealing softly through the door,
I did not see the shadow falling darkly on the floor,
I did not heed his coming nor know when he had passed,
Nor dream that he could take you when I held your hand so fast.

Are you happy in the meadows where his tall, pale flowers grow?
Do you never miss the roses that you loved here long ago?
How they bloom and how they wither while you never come again,
In the garden where the morning still must look for you in vain!

But the night knows how to find you; in her mansions cool and deep
She has spells that lure and bind you, she has dreams that clasp and keep;
And I kneel before the portal where her marble moons are hung,
And I snatch the gift immortal to my mortal yearning flung.