Song

1

On a bank, beside a willow,
Heaven her cov'ring, earth her pillow,
Sad Amynta sighed alone;
From the cheerless dawn of morning,
Till the dews of night returning,
Singing thus she made her moan:
" Hope is banished,
Joys are vanished,
Damon my beloved is gone!

2

Time, I dare thee to discover
Such a youth, and such a lover;
O so true, so kind was he!

I

AN empty glove — long withering in the grasp
Of Time's cold palm. I lift it to my lips, —
And lo, once more I thrill beneath its clasp,
In fancy, as with odorous finger-tips
It reaches from the years that used to be
And proffers back love, life and all, to me.

II

Ah! beautiful she was beyond belief:
Her face was fair and lustrous as the moon's;

Autumn, dear to walkers with your streaks and carpets
Of bright colours, spread like a boy's gift for the true boy,
Sacred for the love flowing over and unuttered even in making —
Have you too left me?

Never was trust so equal between man and his dear mates
Of tree or watercourse flowing by Cranham or past Hartpury.
Eternity promised: what unfaith could cause any shaking
In that love, near bereft me?

Earth spaces breathing dark incense (as the kind shower wets)
And woodlands stirring to blood-light, the heart all ready —

Dawn brings lovely playthings to the mind,
But sunset fights and goes down in battle blind.
The banners of dawn spread over in mystery,
But nightfall ends a boast and a pageantry.

After the halt of dawn comes the slow moving of
Time, till the sun's hidden rush and the day is admitted.
Sunset dies out in a smother of something like love,
With dew and the elm-hung stars and owl outcries half-witted.

Loving the breeze on clifftops, I climb to a shelter of pines,
entranced by moonlight, beside the pond sit on a stone ledge,
and with these clouds and fountains I form bonds of karma —
in another life, certain to be a monk of this mountain!

In the ninth month when west winds blow,
when moonlight is cold and dew blossoms congeal,
I think of you all the long autumn night —
in one night my spirit leaps up nine times.
In the second month when the east wind comes,
when grasses sprout and the hearts of flowers unfold,
I think of you through the slow spring days —
one day and my heart takes nine turnings.
I live north of Lo River bridge,
you live south of Lo River bridge.
Since I was fifteen I've known you,
and this year I'll be twenty-three.
Like the dodder plant growing

Be grave, woman for love
Still hungering as gardens
For rain though flowerless
What perfume now to rise
From weary expectation.

Be not wild to love,
Poor witch of mysteries
Whose golden age thy body's
Alchemy aburn was
Unto haggard ember.

Beauty's flesh to phantom
Wears unprosperous
And come but devils of
Chill omen to adore
The perforce chaste idolon.

Be grave, woman, to greet
The kiss, the clasp, the shudder which
Rage of thee from crafty
Lust unrolls — and think
These are thy dead to grieve on

Bitterly have I been contested for,
Though never have I counted numbers —
They were too many, less than all.
And kindly have I warded off
Contest and bitterness,
Given each a replica of love,
Beguiled them with fine images.

To their hearts they held them.
Her dear face, its explicitness!
Clearly, of all women, the immediate one
To these immediate men.

But the original woman is mythical,
Lies lonely against no heart.
Her eyes are cold, see love far off,
Read no desertion when love removes,
The images out of fashion.

The heliotrope's fragrant breath —
The subtle sweet of jasmine on the evening air —
The flowery mead, all radiant
With sympathetic pleasure
From the glowing kiss with which
The God of Day salutes its lovely face —
The whispering, snowy surf, wherewith
Old Ocean in his kindliest mood
Murmurs soft secrets to the willing sands —
The mingled joy and anguish thrilling us
In the weird plaints of Schubert —
Great Rossini's heaven-born strains —
All graceful, lovely things,
Lifting my soul to beatific state, —

My words were delicately breathed
As Syren notes: the Cyprian's head
Never shone out more golden-wreathed
Than mine: but now I lie here dead.

A chattering swallow, bright and wild,
Whom one man loved for all her years —
Having loved her even as a child:
I leave him nothing but his tears.