Part 10 (1/2)
Yet either I did sit beside And do at length as you did, Or my delight is lightly by An idle lie deluded!
THE STATUES AND THE TEAR
All night a fountain pleads, Telling her beads, Her tinkling beads monotonous 'neath the moon; And where she springs atween, Two statues lean-- Two Kings, their marble beards with moonlight strewn.
Till hate had frozen speech, Each hated each, Hated and died, and went unto his place: And still inveterate They lean and hate With glare of stone implacable, face to face.
One, who bade set them here In stone austere, To both was dear, and did not guess at all: Yet with her new-wed lord Walking the sward Paused, and for two dead friends a tear let fall.
She turn'd and went her way.
Yet in the spray The s.h.i.+ning tear attempts, but cannot lie.
Night-long the fountain drips, But even slips Untold that one bead of her rosary: While they, who know it would Lie if it could, Lean on and hate, watching it, eye to eye.
NUPTIAL NIGHT
Hus.h.!.+ and again the chatter of the starling Athwart the lawn!
Lean your head close and closer. O my darling!-- It is the dawn.
Dawn in the dusk of her dream, Dream in the hush of her bosom, unclose!
Bathed in the eye-bright beam, Blush to her cheek, be a blossom, a rose!
Go, nuptial night! the floor of Ocean tressing With moon and star; With benediction go and breathe thy blessing On coasts afar.
Hark! the theorbos thrum O'er the arch'd wave that in white smother booms ”Mother of Mystery, come!
Fain for thee wait other brides, other grooms!”
Go, nuptial night, my breast of hers bereaving!
Yet, O, tread soft!
Grow day, blithe day, the mountain shoulder heaving More gold aloft!
Gold, rose, bird of the dawn, All to her balcony gather unseen-- Thrill through the curtain drawn, Bless her, bedeck her, and bathe her, my Queen!
HESPERUS
Down in the street the last late hansoms go Still westward, but with backward eyes of red The harlot shuffles to her lonely bed; The tall policeman pauses but to throw A flash into the empty portico; Then he too pa.s.ses, and his lonely tread Links all the long-drawn gas-lights on a thread And ties them to one planet swinging low.
O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west-- To watch the hours heave by upon her breast And at her parted lip for dreams attend: If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deem'd.
Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?
CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE
Who lives in suit of armour pent And hides himself behind a wall, For him is not the great event, The garland nor the Capitol.
And is G.o.d's guerdon less than they?