Who have loved and ceased to love, forget That ever they loved in their lives, they say;Only remember the fever and fret, And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;All the delight of him passes away From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met -Too late did I love you, my love, and yet I shall never forget till my dying day.
Too late were we 'ware of the secret net That meshes the feet in the flowers that stray;There were we taken and snared, Lisette, In the dungeon of La Fausse Amistie;Help was there none in the wide world's fray, Joy was there none in the gift and the debt;Too late we knew it, too long regret -
I shall never forget till my dying day!
We must live our lives, though the sun be set, Must meet in the masque where parts we play, Must cross in the maze of Life's minuet;Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:
But while snows of winter or flowers of May Are the sad year's shroud or coronet, In the season of rose or of violet, I shall never forget till my dying day!
ENVOY.
Queen, when the clay is my coverlet, When I am dead, and when you are grey, Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet, "I shall never forget till my dying day!"BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE.
Here I'd come when weariest!
Here the breast Of the Windburg's tufted over Deep with bracken; here his crest Takes the west, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.
Silent here are lark and plover;
In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her O'er their nest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.
Bring me here, Life's tired-out guest, To the blest Bed that waits the weary rover, Here should failure be confessed;Ends my quest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!
ENVOY.
Friend, or stranger kind, or lover, Ah, fulfil a last behest, Let me rest Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!
DIZAIN.
As, to the pipe, with rhythmic feet In windings of some old-world dance, The smiling couples cross and meet, Join hands, and then in line advance, So, to these fair old tunes of France, Through all their maze of to-and-fro, The light-heeled numbers laughing go, Retreat, return, and ere they flee, One moment pause in panting row, And seem to say--Vos plaudite!
A.D.
ORONTE--Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux, Mais de petits vers!
"Le Misanthrope," Acte i., Sc. 2.
A PORTRAIT OF 1783.
Your hair and chin are like the hair And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear;You were unfashionably fair In '83;
And sad you were when girls are gay, You read a book about Le vrai Merite de l'homme, alone in May.
What CAN it be, Le vrai merite de l'homme? Not gold, Not titles that are bought and sold, Not wit that flashes and is cold, But Virtue merely!
Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know), You bade the crowd of foplings go, You glanced severely, Dreaming beneath the spreading shade Of 'that vast hat the Graces made;'
So Rouget sang--while yet he played With courtly rhyme, And hymned great Doisi's red perruque, And Nice's eyes, and Zulme's look, And dead canaries, ere he shook The sultry time With strains like thunder. Loud and low Methinks I hear the murmur grow, The tramp of men that come and go With fire and sword.
They war against the quick and dead, Their flying feet are dashed with red, As theirs the vintaging that tread Before the Lord.
O head unfashionably fair, What end was thine, for all thy care?
We only see thee dreaming there:
We cannot see The breaking of thy vision, when The Rights of Man were lords of men, When virtue won her own again In '93.
THE MOON'S MINION.
(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)
Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear, The wand'ring waters, green and grey;Thine eyes are wonderful and clear, And deep, and deadly, even as they;The spirit of the changeful sea Informs thine eyes at night and noon, She sways the tides, and the heart of thee, The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!
The Moon came down the shining stair Of clouds that fleck the summer sky, She kissed thee, saying, "Child, be fair, And madden men's hearts, even as I;Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet, That know me and are known of me;The lover thou shalt never meet, The land where thou shalt never be!"She held thee in her chill embrace, She kissed thee with cold lips divine, She left her pallor on thy face, That mystic ivory face of thine;And now I sit beside thy feet, And all my heart is far from thee, Dreaming of her I shall not meet, And of the land I shall not see!
IN ITHACA.
"And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me."--Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. Luciani Vera Historia.
'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er With all the waves and wars, a weary while, Grew restless in his disenchanted isle, And still would watch the sunset, from the shore, Go down the ways of gold, and evermore His sad heart followed after, mile on mile, Back to the Goddess of the magic wile, Calypso, and the love that was of yore.
Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet To look across the sad and stormy space, Years of a youth as bitter as the sea, Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet, Because, within a fair forsaken place The life that might have been is lost to thee.
HOMER.
Homer, thy song men liken to the sea With all the notes of music in its tone, With tides that wash the dim dominion Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.
No wiser we than men of heretofore To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore, As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.
THE BURIAL OF MOLIERE.
(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)
