English

A HUNDRED years ago they quarried for the stone here;
The carts came through the wood by the track still plain;
The drills show in the rock where the blasts were blown here,
They show up dark after rain.

Then the last cart of stone went away through the wood,
To build the great house for some April of a woman,
Till her beauty stood in stone, as her man's thought made it good,
And the dumb rock was made human.

The house still stands, but the April of its glory
Is gone, long since, with the beauty that has gone;

The broad earth smiles in open benison,
An emerald sea, whose waves of leaf and shade
On far-off shores of misty turquoise fade;
And all the host of life steers blithely on,
With joy for captain, fancy at the helm:
The woodpecker taps roundly at his tree,
The vaulting high-ho flings abroad his glee
In fluty laughter from the towering elm.
Here at my feet are violets, and below—
A gracile spirit tremulously alive—
Spring water fills a little greenish pool,
Paved all with mottled leaves and crystal cool.

Once , and in the daytime too, I made myself afraid,
Playing Eyelids-Up-and-Down, with the window-shade;
Till the Houses seemed to watch People going by;
And they kept me looking, too,—wondering where and why.

If I were that Other Boy,—if I were those Men,
Going by with things to sell,—who would I be, then?

Windows with their eyebrows high; windows like a frown,
Thinking it all over, so, with the curtains down;
Tall ones that are somehow sad, narrow ones that blink,—
All the Windows you can see make you think, and think.

Patting goodbye, his father said, “My lad,
You'll always show the Hun a brave man's face.
I'd rather you were dead than in disgrace.
We're proud to see you going, Jim, we're glad.”

His mother whimpered, “Jim, my boy, I frets
Until ye git a nice safe wound, I do.”
His sisters said: why couldn't they go too.
His brothers said they'd send him cigarettes.

For three years, once a week, they wrote the same,
Adding, “We hope you use the Y.M. Hut.”
And once a day came twenty Navy Cut.

Where the pheasant roosts at night,
Lonely, drowsy, out of sight,
Where the evening breezes sigh
Solitary, there stray I.

Close along the shaded stream,
Source of many a youthful dream,
Where branchy cedars dim the day
There I muse, and there I stray.

Yet, what can please amid this bower,
That charmed the eye for many an hour!
The budding leaf is lost to me,
And dead the bloom on every tree.

The winding stream, that glides along,
The lark, that tunes her early song,

These jewel-coloured walls, gemmed Salomè.
This Queen uneasy by her cankered lord,
This muffled headsman rigid as his sword
(Like a basalt Death hewn for idolatry,
Or Death itself in passive cruelty
Waiting to be recognized and adored)
Through incensed thunder-darkness long have pored
Upon thy steps, seeming to say to thee
‘Dance while thou canst, hot Salomè; life lies,
Thy slim throne-shaking feet to snakes are bare.’
Will the repellent King not cry at last
‘Involuntary stricken duliast,

And this, then, is love's ending. It is like
The history of some fair southern clime:
Hot fires are in the bosom of the earth,
And the warmed soil puts forth its thousand flowers,
Its fruits of gold—summer's regality;
And sleep and odours float upon the air,
Making it heavy with its own delight.
At length the subterranean element
Bursts from its secret solitude, and lays
All waste before it. The red lava stream
Sweeps like a pestilence; and that which was
A garden for some fairy tale's young queen

If he be a nobler lover, take him!
You in you I seek, and not myself;
Love with men 's what women choose to make him,
Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf:
All I am or can, your beauty gave it,
Lifting me a moment nigh to you,
And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it—
Mine I thought it was, I never knew.

What you take of me is yours to serve you,
All I give, you gave to me before;
Let him win you! If I but deserve you,
I keep all you grant to him and more:
You shall make me dare what others dare not,

What hath Love with Thought to do?
Still at variance are the two.
Love is sudden, Love is rash,
Love is like the levin flash,
Comes as swift, as swiftly goes,
And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow,
Weighing long 'tween yes and no;
When dear Love is dead and gone,
Thought comes creeping in anon,
And, in his deserted nest,
Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think?
Happiness stands on a brink
Whence too easy 't is to fall
Whither 's no return at all;

Deep sighed the wind, slow struck the hour,
When from his Couch Alphonso rose;
Soft Down invoked Sleep's soothing power,
No pillow there could give repose!

The night still brooded on the hill,
Beneath, the sable river rolled,
Not glittering now the tinkling rill,
Its stream was dark, its spirit cold.

His chamber long, with restless feet,
The Lord Alphonso traversed o'er;
There once refreshed by slumbers sweet,
But slumbers sweet he knows no more!

His roused Domestics strait obey