Classic Poem

(From the French of Alfred de Musset)

The Muse

Come, take thy lute and kiss me, poet mine.
Green are the bursting buds of eglantine,
Spring blooms tonight, and conscious of the Spring
And the warm promise that the breezes bring
The birds perch silent, till the morning shine.
Come, take thy lute and kiss me, poet mine.

The Poet

How dark it is in wood and dale!
Methought to see, with windy veil,
A phantom cross the forest weird.
Athwart the fields it seemed to pass,
Its foot scarce touched the daisied grass.
A luckless fantasy it was
That faded fast and disappeared.

The Muse

Come, take thy lute. Night in her fragrant veil
Is by the dreamful zephyr rocked to rest.
The virgin rose, within her chalice pale
Prisons the bee, with too much sweet oppressed.
List, all is mute. What night for love is this!
Beyond the lindens dark, day's parting kiss
A deeper blush on heaven's cheek hath thrown.
All Nature blooms tonight, and field and grove
Murmur like happy novices of love
Their fragrant vows in sweet prophetic moan.

The Poet

Why this quick beating of the heart?
What inward promptings flare and start
And fill me with this strange affright?
Was that a knocking at my door?
My fitful lamp scarce flickers more.
Why am I dazzled by its light?
My limbs all tremble. Woe is me!
Who comes? who calls? — No, all is well.
'Twas but the tolling midnight bell.
O solitude! O poverty!

The Muse

Come, take thy lute. The wine of young desire
Makes riot in immortal veins tonight.
The feverous winds have set my lips on fire
I sink in languor, panting for delight.
Ah, thriftless boy, behold me, I am fair.
It cannot be thou hast forgot the day
I took thee to my breast in thy despair
And spread my wing and kissed thy tears away.
Dying of love at dawn of love wast thou;
I was thy solace in that bitter sorrow;
So be thou mine. I die of longing now.
And needs must pray, or never see the morrow.

The Poet

Is the voice that calls me thine?
Hapless spirit, is it thou?
Only one true heart divine
Unpolluted loves me now.
Ay, 't is thou, for ever fair,
Tender sister, heavenly queen.
For I feel, through night's still air
Golden garments thou dost wear
Flood my bosom with their sheen.

The Muse

Come, take thy lute. In sad and songless mood
The balmy vigil did I see thee keeping,
And like a sparrow to her brood
From heaven's height I hasten to thy weeping.
Ah, something ails thee, love; some stifled pang
Lies restless in thy heart with grief unspent,
Since love, like mortal love, within it sprang,
A counterfeit of joy, a shadow of content.
Sing as to God, sing thine unuttered groan
Thy pleasure past, thy winged sorrow flown.
Follow thy love to some untrodden shore,
While the chance echoes of thy life we waken,
And tell thy glory, bliss, and madness o'er
Dreaming the winged dream first overtaken.
Feign me some spot cut off from memory;
We are alone, the world is at our feet; —
Green Caledon and sunburnt Italy;
My mother Greece, where honey first was sweet;
Argos and Pteleon's smoking hecatomb,
And hallowed Messa, doves' delicious home;
The shaggy front of changeful Pelion,
And that calm bay, the mirror of the swan,
'Twixt templed hills, whose silver shadows creep
O'er the bright water betwixt steep and steep.
So may our singing lull a golden dream;
But what enchanted pain shall be that singing's theme?
Some pensive seraph at the break of dawn
Did haply bending over thee appear,
And shaking lilacs in his robe of lawn,
Whispered the loves he dreamt of in thine ear.
Come, shall we sing of hope, or joy, or woe?
The mailed legions shall we bathe in gore?
Or to the winds the foam of coursers throw?
Or tell how silken ladders lovers bore?
Or shall we sing what hand doth night and day
Feed the unnumbered lamps that burn above
With holy oil of life and of eternal love?
Or cry to Tarquin: " It is time, away!"
Or drive the goats to nip the bitter tree,
Or dive for pearls beneath the bitter sea,
Or unto melancholy show the sky?
Or up the mountain chase the hunter's pack
And see the doe that pleads with piteous cry;
Her new-born young, her heather call her back;
But as she falls the hunter in his rage
Casts her poor heart still panting to his hound.
Or shall we paint a red-cheeked maiden bound
To mass, and followed by a tripping page?
She, by her mother's side, with absent air
Upon her parted lips forgets her prayer,
For in the pillar's echo she can hear
The tinkling spur of some bold cavalier.
Or shall we bid the chivalry of France
With buckled armour mount embattled walls,
Reveal their prowess in a quaint romance
And summon back the minstrels to their halls?
Shall he of Waterloo rehearse his life
And count the victims slaughtered by his knife,
Till, on his hillock by the wing oppressed
Of the swift angel of eternal night,
He crossed his hands upon his iron breast?
Or shall we dress soft elegies in white?
Or shall the scathing rhyme the shame relate
Of some pale wretch's merchantable name,
Who, stung by envy, from his lurkings came,
And, shivering with impotence and hate,
The hopes of genius on its brow profaned,
And bit the laurels that his breath had stained?
Take thy lute, take thy lute! I cannot wait.
The laden breezes from the earth will tear me,
My wing will on the breath of Spring upbear me:
A tear from thee; God hearkens; it is late.

The Poet

If thou wishest, sister dear,
From my friendly eye a tear,
From my loving lip a kiss,
Gladly, love, they will be given
To remind thee of our bliss
When again thou art in heaven.
But of hope I cannot sing,
Nor of happiness nor glory,
Nor, alas! of suffering:
Dumb the lips are, listening
To the heart's unuttered story.

The Muse

Dost thou, then, liken me to autumn's blast
That dries on graves the tears that sorrow drew,
Since grief to him is but a drop of dew?
Poet, that kiss, I give it thee at last.
Thy leisure is the blossom I would fain
Have gathered here, to God belongs thy pain.
Whatever burden lies upon thy heart,
Suffer the seraph's soul-searching dart
To probe it through, with wound as deep as fate:
Nought like great sorrow makes a mortal great.
Deem not the ravage of that heavenly fire
Should hush thy singing or benumb thy lyre.
The sweetest song with wildest sorrow throbs
And human music is but woven sobs.
When late the pelican, his voyage o'er,
Flies to his rushes with the flight of day,
His famished brood run eager to the shore,
Thinking already to divide the prey,
And openmouthed around their father flock,
Shaking their shapeless necks with joyous cries.
He, gaining with slow steps a lofty rock,
With drooping wing makes shelter for his brood
And, melancholy fisher, scans the skies.
Nought but his heart he bringeth them for food;
The blood drips slowly from his open side.
In vain he probed the depths of ocean wide,
Ocean was waste and earth a solitude.
Sombre and silent, stretched upon the stone,
He bares a father's bosom to his own,
And feels his anguish silenced with their plaints.
He totters in his feast of death and faints,
As from his breast the bloody milk they draw,
Drunken with anguish, tenderness, and awe:
But sometimes, mid that blessed agony,
When, waiting long for death long lingering,
He dreads his young may leave him ere he die,
He starts, and spreading to the night his wing,
Strikes his bare bosom. Then a savage cry
Rends with so woeful an adieu the air,
The sea birds from the haunted beaches fly,
And the lone traveller belated there
Feels death pass by, and says a hurried prayer.
Thus, poet, poets do. They bid man
Who lives but for a time make merry then,
But in their feasts they, like the pelican,
On their rich heart's blood feed their fellow men.
When thus they speak of broken hopes deplored,
Of sadness and oblivion, love and pain,
The baffled heart grows heavy at the strain.
Their wordy passion is a flashing sword
That traces dazzling circles in the air,
And yet some drop of blood is ever clinging there.

The Poet

Muse, enough! Too grievous grows
Thine insatiable demand.
Men write nothing on the sand
When the cruel north wind blows.
I have known another spring
When my youth was like a bird
Ready ceaselessly to sing.
But if now mine anguish spake, —
If these throbbing strings were stirred
To my sorrow's gentlest word, —
Like a reed the lyre would break.