"Dead Love"

Pray a little for dead love!
      Put your hands up in a prayer,
Kiss the lips that will not move,
      Smooth the ruffled plaits of hair,
Then go forth, and bid me know
That an old love ended so.

Weep a little for poor love!
      Ere they bury him away,
Stoop your face his face above,
      Let no other hear you pray.
Then go forth and never know
That your love was buried so.

Is there any help for love?
      He is stricken to the heart,
And his white face does not move
      And the lips are drawn apart.
Nay, go forth that all may know
This was love that ended so.

Weep not any more for love
      That is dead and laid away.
All the spring is green above,
      Men would laugh to hear you pray.
It was in the time of snow
That your love was buried so.

Pray not any prayer for love,
      Plant no flowers about his bed,
For the cold heart will not move
      Though you weep that love is dead.
Sing new songs and bid me know
That love's pain is ended so.

"A Forsaken Garden"

IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
     At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
     The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
     The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
          Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
     To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
     Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
     Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
          Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
     That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
     Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
     The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
          These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
     As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
     Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
     Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
          All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
     One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
     In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
     Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
          Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"
     Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
     And men that love lightly may die---but we?"
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
     And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
          Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
     And were one to the endÑbut what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
     As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them ?
     What love was ever as deep as a grave ?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
          Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
     Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
     In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
     Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
          We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever;
     Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
     Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
     While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
          Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
     Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
     The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
     Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
          Death lies dead.

"Love and Sleep"

Lying asleep between the strokes of night
      I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
      Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
      But perfect-colored without white or red.
      And her lips opened amorously, and said---
I wist not what, saving one word---Delight,
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
      And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
            The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
      The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
            And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.

"Sorrow"

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever,
Here and there for awhile would borrow
Rest, if rest might haply deliver
            Sorrow.

One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.

Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
            Sorrow.

"The Dreamer"

Glad, but not flushed with gladness,---
      Since joys go by;
Sad, but not bent with sadness,---
      Since sorrows die;
Faint in the gleaming glass
She sees all past things pass,
And all sweet life that was,
      Lie down and die.

And glowing ghosts of flowers
      Draw down, draw nigh,
And wings of swift dead hours
      Take flight and fly;
And seeing she hears what seems
Lulled sounds of straying streams,
Dead mouths of many dreams
      That sing and sigh.

A painted dream, beholden
      Of no man's eye,
Framed in far memories, golden
      As hope when nigh
Holds fast her soul that hears
Faint waters flow like tears
By shores no sunbeam cheers
      From all the sky.

Face fallen and white throat lifted
      With sleepless eye,
She sees old loves that drifted
      Sink low, soar high.
Old loves and faded fears
Float down a shore that hears
The flowing of all men's tears
      Beneath the sky.

"The Year of the Rose"

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
     Till autumn pluck from his hand
     An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses
     To the stones and sea-grass on the strand
How red was the reign of the roses
     Over the rose-crowned land!

The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
     From the thin green leaf to the gold,
     It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf
     For witness in winter's sight
     How lovers once in the light
Would mix their breath with its breath,
     And its spirit was quenched not of night,
As love is subdued not of death.

In the red-rose land not a mile
Of the meadows from stile to stile,
     Of the valleys from stream to stream,
     But the air was a long sweet dream
And the earth was a sweet wide smile
     Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned
     From the sea which had borne her and burned,
That with one swift smile of her mouth
     Looked full on the north as it yearned,
And the north was more than the south.

For the north, when winter was long,
In his heart had made him a song,
     And clothed it with wings of desire,
     And shod it with shoon as of fire,
To carry the tale of his wrong
     To the south-west wind by the sea,
     That none might bear it but he
To the ear of the goddess unknown
     Who waits till her time shall be
To take the world for a throne.

In the earth beneath, and above
In the heaven where her name is love,
     She warms with light from her eyes
     The seasons of life as they rise,
And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,
     But the wings that lift her and bear
     As an eagle's, and all her hair
As fire by the wind's breath curled,
     And her passage is song through the air,
And her presence is spring through the world.

So turned she northward and came,
And the white-thorn land was aflame
     With the fires that were shed from her feet,
     That the north, by her love made sweet,
Should be called by a rose-red name;
     And a murmur was heard as of doves,
     And a music beginning of loves
In the light that the roses made,
     Such light as the music loves,
The music of man with maid.

But the days drop one upon one,
And a chill soft wind is begun
     In the heart of the rose-red maze
     That weeps for the roseleaf days
And the reign of the rose undone
     That ruled so long in the light,
     And by spirit, and not by sight,
Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,
     Still ruled in the viewless night,
As love might rule over death.

The time of lovers is brief;
From the fair first joy to the grief
     That tells when love is grown old,
     From the warm wild kiss to the cold,
From the red to the white-rose leaf,
     They have but a season to seem
     As rose-leaves lost on a stream
That part not and pass not apart
     As a spirit from dream to dream,
As a sorrow from heart to heart.

From the bloom and the gloom that encloses
The death-bed of Love where he dozes
     Till a relic be left not of sand
     To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;
From the change in the grey garden-closes
     To the last stray grass of the strand,
A rain and ruin of roses
     Over the red-rose land.

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