Part 16 (1/2)

IV

If I had been a boy, I would have wors.h.i.+ped your grace, I would have flung my wors.h.i.+p before your feet, I would have followed apart, glad, rent with an ecstasy to watch you turn your great head, set on the throat, thick, dark with its sinews, burned and wrought like the olive stalk, and the n.o.ble chin and the throat.

I would have stood, and watched and watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a desert plain.

So, when you had risen from all the lethargy of love and its heat, you would have summoned me, me alone, and found my hands, beyond all the hands in the world, cold, cold, cold, intolerably cold and sweet.

V

It was not chast.i.ty that made me cold nor fear, only I knew that you, like myself, were sick of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps of love and love and lovers and love's deceit.

It was not chast.i.ty that made me wild but fear that my weapon, tempered in different heat, was over-matched by yours, and your hand skilled to yield death-blows, might break.

With the slightest turn--no ill-will meant-- my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought fiery-tempered, delicate, over-pa.s.sionate steel.

CONRAD AIKEN

SEVEN TWILIGHTS

I

The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere, Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.

Willows lean by the water. Pleas of water Cry through the trees. And on the boles and boughs Green water-lights make rings, already paling.

Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves Silverly stir on the breath of moving water, Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill, And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill, Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.

By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall, Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been Last year, and the year before, and many years: Ever the same. ”Thus turns the human track Backward upon itself, I stand once more By this small stream...” Now the rich sound of leaves, Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs, Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace As comes to seamen when they dream of seas.

”O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight!

Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail, Above that mountain--arch your green benediction Once more over my heart. m.u.f.fle the sound of bells, Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley; Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water: Take me among your hearts as you take the mist Among your boughs!” ... Now by the granite milestone, On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere, The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge Of barren rock far down the valley. Now, Though twilight here, it may be starlight there; Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields; The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island With one red star above it.... ”This I should see, Should I go on, follow the falling road,-- This I have often seen.... But I shall stay Here, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman, Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge, Into the twilight; as a watchman lifts A lantern, which he does not know is out.”

II

Now by the wall of the ancient town I lean Myself, like ancient wall and dust and sky, And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.

Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.

The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower, No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.

Old is the world, old as the world am I; The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields, Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo In fields my heart has known, but has not seen.

”These fields”--an unknown voice beyond the wall Murmurs--”were once the province of the sea.

Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play, Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoise Walked slowly, looking upward at the waves, Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles, A white acropolis ...” The ancient tower Sends out, above the houses and the trees, And the wide fields below the ancient walls, A measured phrase of bells. And in the silence I hear a woman's voice make answer then: ”Well, they are green, although no s.h.i.+p can sail them....

Sky-larks rest in the gra.s.s, and start up singing Before the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.

Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!

And the brown clay is runneled by the rain....”

A moment since, the sheep that crop the gra.s.s Had long blue shadows, and the gra.s.s-tips sparkled: Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking, Voices of man and woman, voices of bells, Diversely making comment on our time Which flows and bears us with it into dusk, Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly Upon this air, make them an incantation For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight, This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence, And something that may be leaves or may be sea.

III

When the tree bares, the music of it changes: Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful; Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud.

When the house ages and the tenants leave it, Cricket sings in the tall gra.s.s by the threshold; Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web.