Classic Poem

PART IV

There is many a love in the land, my love,
But never a love like this is;
Then kill me dead with your love, my love,
And cover me up with kisses.

Yea, kill me dead and cover me deep
Where never a soul discovers;
Deep in your heart to sleep, to sleep,
In the darlingest tomb of lovers.

The wanderer took him apart from the place;
Look'd up in the boughs at the gold birds there,
He envied the humming-birds fretting the air,
And frowned at the butterflies fanning his face.

He sat him down in a crook of the wave
And away from the Amazons, under the skies
Where great trees curved to a leaflined cave,
And he lifted his hands and he shaded his eyes:

And he held his head to the north when they came
To run on the reaches of sand from the south,
And he pull'd at his chin, and he pursed his mouth,
And he shut his eyes, with a sense of shame.

He reach'd and he shaped a bamboo reed
From the brink below, and began to blow
As if to himself; as the sea sometimes
Does soothe and soothe in a low, sweet song,
When his rage is spent, and the beach swells strong
With sweet repetitions of alliterate rhymes.

The echoes blew back from the indolent land;
Silent and still sat the tropical bird,
And only the sound of the reed was heard,
As the Amazons ceased from their sports on the sand.

They rose from the wave, and inclining the head,
They listened intent, with the delicate tip
Of the finger touch'd to the pouting lip,
Till the brown Queen turn'd in the tide, and led
Through the opaline lake, and under the shade,
To the shore where the chivalrous singer played.

He bended his head and he shaded his eyes
As well as he might with his lifted fingers,
And ceased to sing. But in mute surprise
He saw them linger as a child that lingers.
Allured by a song that has ceased in the street,
And looks bewilder'd about from its play,
For the last loved notes that fell at its feet.

How the singer was vexed; he averted his head;
He lifted his eyes, looked far and wide
For a brief, little time; but they bathed at his side
In spite of his will, or of prayers well said.

He press'd four fingers against each lid,
Till the light was gone; yet for all that he did
It seem'd that the lithe forms lay and beat
Afloat in his face and full under his feet.

He seem'd to behold the billowy breasts,
And the rounded limbs in the rest or unrests —
To see them swim as the mermaid swims,
With the drifting, dimpled delicate limbs,
Folded or hidden or reach'd or caress'd.

It seems to me there is more that sees
Than the eyes in man; you may close your eyes,
You may turn your back, and may still be wise
In sacred and marvelous mysteries.
He saw as one sees the sun of a noon
In the sun-kiss'd south, when the eyes are closed —
He saw as one sees the bars of a moon
That fall through the boughs of the tropical trees,
When he lies at length, and is all composed,
And asleep in his hammock by the sundown seas.
He heard the waters beat, bubble and fret;
He lifted his eyes, yet forever they lay
Afloat in the tide; and he turn'd him away
And resolved to fly and for aye to forget.

He rose up strong, and he cross'd him twice,
He nerved his heart and he lifted his head,
He crush'd the treacherous reed in a trice,
With an angry foot, and he turn'd and fled.
Yet flying, he hurriedly turn'd his head
With an eager glance, with meddle-some eyes,
As a woman will turn; and he saw arise

The beautiful Queen from the silvery bed.
She toss'd back her hair, and she turned her eyes
With all of their splendor to his as he fled;
Ay, all their glory, and a strange surprise,
And a sad reproach, and a world unsaid.

Then she struck their shields, they rose in array,
As roused from a trance, and hurriedly came
From out of the wave. He wander'd away,
Still fretting his sensitive soul with blame.

Alone he sat in the shadows at noon,
Alone he sat by the waters at night;
Alone he sang, as a woman might,
With pale, kind face to the pale, cold moon.

He would here advance, and would there retreat,
As a petulant child that has lost its way
In the redolent walks of a sultry day,
And wanders around with irresolute feet.

He made him a harp of mahogany wood,
He strung it well with the sounding strings
Of a strong bird's thews, and from ostrich wings,
And play'd and sang in a sad, sweet rune.
He hang'd his harp in the vines, and stood
By the tide at night, in the palms at noon,
And lone as a ghost in the shadowy wood.

Then two grew sad, and alone sat she
By the great, strong stream, and she bow'd her head,
Then lifted her face to the tide, and said:

" O pure as a tear and as strong as a sea,
Yet tender to me as the touch of a dove,
I had rather sit sad and alone by thee,
Than to go and be glad, with a legion in love. "

She sat one time at the wanderer's side
As the kingly water went wandering by;
And the two once look'd, and they knew not why,
Full sad in each other's eyes, and they sigh'd.

She courted the solitude under the rim
Of the trees that reach'd to the resolute stream,
And gazed in the waters as one in a dream,
Till her soul grew heavy and her eyes grew dim.

She bow'd her head with a beautiful grief
That grew from her pity; she forgot her arms,
And she made neglect of the battle alarms
That threaten'd the land; the banana's leaf
Made shelter; he lifted his harp again,
She sat, she listen'd intent and long,
Forgetting her care and forgetting her pain —
Made sad for the singer, made glad for his song.

And the women waxed cold; the white moons waned,
And the brown Queen marshall'd them never once more,
With sword and with shield, in the palms by the shore;
But they sat them down to repose, or remain'd
Apart and scatter'd in the tropic-leaf'd trees,
As sadden'd by song, or for loves delay'd;
Or away in the Isle in couples they stray'd,
Not at all content in their Isles of peace.

They wander'd away to the lakes once more,
Or walk'd in the moon, or they sigh'd or slept,
Or they sat in pairs by the shadowy shore,
And silent song with the waters kept.

There was one who stood by the waters one eve,
With the stars on her hair, and the bars of the moon
Broken up at her feet by the bountiful boon
Of extending old trees, who did questioning grieve;

" The birds they go over us two and by two;
The mono is mated; his bride in the boughs
Sits nursing his babe, and his passionate vows
Of love, you may hear them the whole day through.

" The lizard, the cayman, the white-tooth'd boar,
The serpents that glide in the sword-leaf'd grass,
The beasts that abide or the birds that pass,
They are glad in their loves as the green-leaf'd shore.

" There is nothing that is that can yield one bliss
Like an innocent love; the leaves have tongue
And the tides talk low in the reeds, and the young
And the quick buds open their lips but for this.

" In the steep and the starry silences,
On the stormy levels of the limitless seas,
Or here in the deeps of the darkbrow'd trees,
There is nothing so much as a brave man's kiss.

" There is nothing so strong, in the stream, on the land,
In the valley of palms, on the pinnacled snow,
In the clouds of the gods, on the grasses below
As the silk-soft touch of a baby's brown hand.

" It were better to sit and to spin on a stone
The whole year through with a babe at the knee,
With its brown hands reaching caressingly,
Than to sit in a girdle of gold and alone.

" It were better indeed to be mothers of men,
And to murmur not much; there are clouds in the sun.
Can a woman undo what the gods have done?
Nay, the things must be as the things have been. "

They wander'd well forth, some here and some there,
Unsatisfied some and irresolute all.
The sun was the same, the moonlight did fall
Rich-barr'd and refulgent; the stars were as fair
As ever were stars; the fruitful clouds cross'd
And the harvest fail'd not; yet the fair Isles grew
As a prison to all, and they search'd on through
The magnificent shades as for things that were lost.

The minstrel, more pensive, went deep in the wood,
And oft-time delay'd him the whole day through,
As charm'd by the deeps, or the sad heart drew
Some solaces sweet from the solitude.

The singer forsook them at last, and the Queen
Came seldom then forth from the fierce deep wood,
And her warriors, dark-brow'd and bewildering stood
In bands by the wave in the complicate screen
Of overbent boughs. They would lean on their spears
And would sometimes talk, low-voiced and by twos,
As allured by longings they could not refuse,
And would sidewise look, as beset by their fears.

Once, wearied and sad, by the shadowy trees
In the flush of the sun they sank to their rests,
The dark hair veiling the beautiful breasts
That rose in billows, as mists veil seas.

Then away to the dream-world one by one;
The great red sun in his purple was roll'd,
And red-wing'd birds and the birds of gold
Were above in the trees like the beams of the sun.

Then the sun came down, on his ladders of gold
Built up of his beams, and the souls arose
And ascended on these, and the fair repose
Of the negligent forms was a feast to behold.

The round brown limbs they were reach'd or drawn,
The grass made dark with the fervour of hair;
And here were the rose-red lips and there
A flush'd breast rose like a sun at a dawn.

Then black-wing'd birds flew over in pair,
Listless and slow, as they call'd of the seas
And sounds came down through the tangle of trees
As lost, and nestled, and hid in their hair.

They started disturb'd, they sprang as at war
To lance and to shield; but the dolorous sound
Was gone from the wood; they gazed around
And saw but the birds, black-wing'd and afar.

They gazed at each other, then turn'd them unheard,
Slow trailing their lances, in long single line;
They moved through the forest, all dark as the sign
Of death that fell down from the ominous bird.

Then the great sun died, and a rose-red bloom
Grew over his grave in a border of gold,
And a cloud with a silver-white rim was roll'd
Like a cold gray stone at the door of his tomb.

Strange voices were heard, sad visions were seen
By sentries, betimes, on the opposite shore,
Where broad boughs bended their curtains of green
Far over the wave with their tropical store.

A sentry bent low on her palms and she peer'd
Suspiciously through; and, heavens! a man,
Low-brow'd and wicked, looked backward, and jeer'd
And taunted right full in her face as he ran:

A low crooked man, with eyes like a bird, —
As round and as cunning, — who came from the land
Of lakes, where the clouds lie low and at hand,
And the songs of the bent black swans are heard;

Where men are most cunning and cruel withal,
And are famous as spies, and are supple and fleet,
And are webb'd like the waterfowl under the feet,
And they swim like the swans, and like pelicans call.

And again, on a night when the moon she was not,
A sentry saw stealing, as still as a dream,
A sudden canoe down the mid of the stream,
Like the dark boat of death, and as still as a thought.

And lo! as it pass'd, from the prow there arose
A dreadful and gibbering, hairy old man,
Loud laughing as only a maniac can,
And shaking a lance at the land of his foes;
Then sudden it vanish'd, as still as it came,
Far down through the walls of the shadowy wood,
And the great moon rose like a forest aflame,
All threat'ning, sullen, and red like blood.