The garden of desire
Date: 2025-01-13T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Love poetry; American; Sonnets

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Title: The garden of desire

Love sonnets to a Spanish monk

Author: Edna Worthley Underwood

Release date: January 13, 2025 [eBook #75105]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARDEN OF DESIRE ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

THE GARDEN OF DESIRE
LOVE SONNETS TO A SPANISH MONK

By

Edna Worthley Underwood

NEW YORK & LONDON
Mitchell Kennerley
1913

Copyright, 1913, by
Mitchell Kennerley
Printed in America

I
THE GARDEN OF DESIRE

“O, holy God of Love, thou guidest there the heart where hindrances are.”

Kalidasa. (Malavika and Agnimitra)

I

I hastened homeward through the twilight lone

While on my lips your kisses stung like flame,

Burning to purest white the rose of shame

That leaped between us, scarlet lipped, full blown;

Within my ears your Spanish speech made moan;

I saw nor mud, mist, gray, wet streets; there came

As in a vision, Spain of splendid name.

Your castle in Love’s Land—there, we, alone!

Gone! Gone! Here by the window now I wait

For him to whom I owe yet give not love;

Watching the bird-winged night drop from above,

Grouped church spires, like frail hands up-flung to Fate,

On windows through which answering night lights chime,

I hear the passionless, cold rain of Winter time!

II

How well, how well you woo me with soft speech,

Fire swift my blood with wreathèd word divine!

“If power to choose Love’s own pure tongue were mine,”

You said, “I’d choose Italia’s to teach
You how I love; but If I must beseech
As penitent, mercy, pardon divine—

(As now in love’s proud passion I seek thine)—

O! let us, Sweet, speak Spanish, each to each!”

“But if in haughtiness I would command,
See armies, nations, bow beneath my word,
Then let the bitter English tongue be heard!”

“Love! Love!” I cried, “stretch out your sceptred hand,

Put from you the soft vowels that sing of Spain—

Look! Look! I kneel before you in love’s pain!”

III

No! No! I told you once, twice, thrice,—this wise,

And firmly I said it despite the hand

That clung about my breasts, the vice-like band

That passion set on me; despite your eyes
That eagerly sought mine, their wild surprise
That trembling with desire I could withstand
The majesty of Love’s greatest command
Laid on us with the weight of destinies.

I left, aye!—left you there and went my way.

Outside I met a woman bent and old,

A toothless, wrinkled hag, shrunk with Life’s cold.

That sight makes good all sin, I cried, Bright Day!

If age were not and death—O! then—Here! Here!

Outside your door keep me not waiting, Dear!

IV

Upon our first great love-night, Heart of Mine,

You whispered in that golden speech of Spain,

“My home was Malaga beside the Main.”

’Twas there, I asked, where black the bunched grapes shine?

O sweet, sweet South, I cried, sweet South of thine!

A silence fell. We spoke no more again.

Within your eyes I saw an olden pain;

O sad, sad South, I thought, sad South of thine!

Upon my breast bunched black your bright curls lay—

Bacchante then and Pan were we that night;

Grape-God, I call you witness to the sight;

That night, Grape-God, beneath your mighty sway

Lay not upon my breast in love’s sweet pain

Black grapes from Malaga beside the Main?

V

You said: “To make more sweet that which will be,

Let’s play a part together, you and I.

See!—I’m a monk, who, in his garden high,

Doth fast and pray to banish things worldly.

Down there you come, sad faced, dreaming of me.

I feel that you ’twixt flowering trees draw nigh;

I look not lest your lips let love flame high,

But, rising,—thus—I bless you prayerfully.”

Señor!—that tone!—Those gestures strange yet stern!

Tell me, where did you learn them? Tell me true!

Great God, Señor, an unfrocked priest are you!

No, no! No, no!—Enough, your kisses burn—
To-night—I swear it!—you shall be denied,
Grief-stricken glooms o’er us—The Crucified.

VI

Upon my eyes like rain your kisses fall,
Soft rain that maketh to be sweet the Spring,
The time of fairest love’s first flowering,
When mating birds so softly call and call.
Like rain upon my eyes your kisses fall,

Bright rain the royal Summer’s crown to bring,

Soft rain upon shy trees that croon and swing,

Sweet bridal veil of mist that hideth all.

Kiss me not thus! No, no, not thus kiss me.

The storm’s kiss first!—when black the day suns grow

And winds nor height, depth, hell nor heaven know—

Yes, yes, the storm’s kiss first! Thus—thus—kiss me!

Unchain the whirlwinds of your wild desire

And blind me, blind me, with the lightning’s fire!

VII

But when I’m worn and weary and would rest,

And in my ears the storm sounds vaguely far,

The lightnings fireless as that far night star,

Then fold me in your arms, upon your breast.
O! fold me in your arms! There let me rest,
To watch, idly, the fleeing Storm-God’s car,
Rain-mist so soft it may not mark nor mar

The lily’s leaf—when sleep and dreams are best.

Then on my eyes like rain let kisses fall,

Soft rain that maketh to be sweet the Spring,

And Winter fields like pink pearls shimmering.

The bridal veil of mist fall over all!

From under, as shy crocuses do peep,

New love shall bud and blossom while I sleep.

VIII

Within a gloomy land our love did grow,

Within a city gray with mist and smoke

Whose roofs lone prairie levels roughly choke,

Where no bright, seaward slipping rivers flow,

Around us rose the din of toil and woe—

Straight church towers whence stern warring bell tones broke

With words of warning when their iron tongues spoke,—

Such was the city that our love did know!

Think you we saw it? No, no! This saw we—

A waving field where flame-like flowers bloom,

(That fateful flower of old Sicilian doom—

Great Demeter, we thought not then of thee!)

We plucked. We ate. The fruit was strangely sweet,

And hell and heaven opened at our feet.

IX

“Be at the opera”—you write—to-night—
The crimson rose I send on your breast wear,
My lips had blessed it ere I sent it where

They, too, have lain and learned love’s speech aright.

“I cannot wait”—you say—“till comes our night;

Tu esposo—I know, yes, he’ll be there,

But that I’ll suffer if you’ll grant me, Fair,

One glimpse of you. O! let me know. Write! Write!”

Yes, Sweet! and when the trumpets leap and sing,

And fiddle-bows rise, fall, like trees swaying

Beneath an angry storm when winds are strong,

Ear-dulled, the present blotted with the past,

My love shall rise and reach you, hold you fast,

And vanish with you on the wings of song!

X

What pictures do we see when memories frown

Alone and here together, Dearest One!

I first saw light beneath a pallid sun,

The northern stars upon my youth looked down.

You, where the earth wears best its flowery crown,

Where fiercest, mightiest, doth blaze the sun,

Not star-like to it was my pallid one,

The Southern Cross upon your youth looked down.

O! shed upon me all your blaze of lights,

Fill well my soul for what it missed of yore,

Enrich me ever with your flowery lore!

I can recall no more the northern nights!

I know when on my mouth is set your mouth

The sensuous, sweet savors of the South.

XI

There was a little garden that I knew

Far, far to north—where still my childhood stays—

The garden of my girlhood, of its Mays,

Where frail and strange, unreal, dream-flowers grew.

Within that little garden that I knew,

O! prim the beds were, straight and white the ways,

All simply made and plain for childhood days,

There little Love, white-winged, unspotted, flew.

Think you aught great there is for you I’ve done?

My Dream-Tree I have plundered of its toys

That grew within the garden of my joys!

In little paths where once sweet Love did run,

Roam wildly now the gaunt Wolves of Desire—

And blurred the ways, with dead flowers flecked—and mire.

XII

Unto that little garden sometimes, Love,
I hasten yet to—to—yes, to forget—
Tell all its quaintnesses again and let
Myself learn peace of her who knew not love.
Yes, yes, unto that garden sometimes, Love,
I hasten yet to—to—yes, to forget—
To feel its dear, deep calm again and let

Hover above my heart Youth’s white, white dove.

No, no!—you need not worry lest I stay,
Forget the lore that I of grief have learned,
The lore sin red upon my soul has burned—
Tell me why should you worry lest I stay?

Surely you’ve heard when of blood tigers taste,

Not seas can keep them from it—mountain—waste!

XIII

They say that they who’ve sinned this sin of ours

May never after death know aught of light;

Naught can once cleanse their souls, nor make them white,

Nor Lydian scents make sweet the sin-stained hours.

A gate whose whirling swords have lightning’s powers

To blast and burn flash outward with such might

The black and barren road is bleached to bright

That leads down, downward, where the darkness cowers.

Come, Sweet, lift up your eyes! Be not afraid.

Behold!—within that pit a giant rose,
Its million, million petals, hearts of those
Who sinned this sin of ours all undismayed,
So rich, colossal, glorious and fair

It dims the white sword-whirl of judgment there!

XIV

“Quare, dum licet, internos laetemur amantes;
Non satis est ullo tempore longus amor.”
Propertius

Your love has clothed me with a garment fair
That covers up all soil and smirch and sin,
From folded feet folds whitely to the chin
And hallows me as those the saints do wear.
O, trust me—I will keep it spotless, fair,

For this, your gracious gift, my dreams shall win

A purity serene, no more therein

May creep a false thought ever anywhere.

Yet underneath this love-robe—gift of thine—
I know that you’d not sinned this sin of mine
Nor broken sacred vows as I have done;
Yet judge me not too harshly, Dear, Dear One,
Than mortal women I have been most lone,
The heart must have a home! Let that atone.

XV

Do you recall the day when first we met?

In The Cathedral ’twas. The service o’er

Friends introduced us, passed, and said no more,

And we were left alone, strangers as yet.

A sad monastic gloom on you was set.

I sensed your thirst for life, more life, yet more—

And I, too, was athirst because I wore

The slave’s badge that so sharply helps to whet.

I went not home. I loathed the narrow streets.

I longed for country lanes, deep peace of air.

I left the black-roofed city, hastened where

I saw the hills. Upon them—O! so sweet—

Thick-banked stood trees like pink mist in the sun,

Aloud I cried:—Thank God! The Winter’s done!

XVI

We must be kinder to each other, Dear,
Than others are whose love by law is blest,
Slower to wound, cavil, think ill—grieve—lest
We break the iris band that binds us near!
We must be crueller to each other, Dear,
Than others are whose love by law is blest,

Quicker to know Truth’s shining scalpel’s best

And use it bravely. No blot can be here!

Have you thought where ’tis set, this great love-dower?

There! pendulous ’twixt sacrilege and shame,
Uncertain, floating, impotent to bring
A permanence. O! would ours were the power
God-like to make, create a soul, a name,

And touch it whitely with Life’s deathless wing!

XVII

You’ve heard how after some great victory
The Cæsars triumphing came gayly home,
Red-robed, gold palm-embroiderèd—to Rome—
Gods like unto, with glory good to see,
On cars charioted of ivory,

Through gates triumphal, flower-up-built to dome,

While at their feet the masses moaning roam

And they, joy-drunk, cry:—“Io Triompe!”

Thus, Love, at life’s high noon enter my heart!

(Not like one monkish bred, cringing with fear,

Black clad, furtive of eye for dangers near,)
Come as the Cæsars came! Be that your part,
Bright robed, triumphant, bold for victory,
And o’er my conquered soul cry—“Triompe!”

XVIII

You praised my speech to-day. You said I’d caught,

Wandering in many lands ’mong many men,

Colorful vowel richnesses learned then

Of many tongues. When first we met you thought

This gave me added charm, that thus I ought
Be not one woman—O! proud praise again!—
But many since I had their tongues and then

Their charm. Thus, thus you praised me who should not.

But now what think you I have learned of you?

The Tongue of Love! which I knew not before,

Nor can they learn it who o’er books do pore.

That taught you me. It sounds most sweetly too.

I learned it easily as children play

When first you said: “Yo, yo amo à te!”

XIX

From Peking westward thirty li there stands,

To one forth faring through the Tschengi-Thor,

The Lo-ku Bridge, buttressed, barred both sides o’er

With lions cunningly so wrought by hands

Long dead, no one who counts them lives, it stands

Recorded. Whoso tries, counts o’er and o’er,

May not cease counting, of aught else think more,

But goes mad dreaming of a lion that stands

Upon the Lo-ku Bridge. You said ’twas true.
And added softer—should life call me where
You are not, and can never be, O! there
I’d go mad dreaming of the lips of you,
Counting the kisses that you gave to me
In midnights dark as old Teng’s dynasty!

XX

You said—O! how the words did surge my soul
And to far finger tips send blood to spin—
That always ere the bold day does begin

You think of me; your thoughts my thoughts control

Ere day does of its noisy strife unroll;
Far, far across the sweet, unreal, mist-thin
City that sleeps, you claim me yours and win
A space for us not time’s—unspotted, whole.

And always in the dawn I feel you near.

Then like souls in gray Hades we two go

Forth through the silvery silence, there to know

The things that they know not whose love’s less dear.

Be this our dwelling, this pale silent land

Where Life—a dream like day—waits our command.

XXI

Our love is like a Japan print, you think,

Rare mulberry-paper one, like gold that’s dead?

Foreground a garden, kiosk-canopièd

O’er moon-eyed, magic flowers of black and pink;

Curved, quaint-bridged river; temple on the brink

Where lidless eyed sits Buddah unwearièd,

Dreaming that time is naught, the now even sped.

To westward over all black bird-dots sink.

Background, a fairy sea of dreamland blue

Whence mountains rise that surely once we knew

In some dim other life too sweet for words.

Aye! Aye! our Love-Land! But those black, black birds—

Too like they are to monks who hovered where

That old Greek garden of the world was fair.

XXII

“Flutes and mandolins—a Spanish melody—nothing more. Yet it seemed as if the night were speaking, or out of the night some passional life long since melted into Nature’s mystery.”

Lafcadio Hearn

Last night—shall I forget it ere I die?

I lay within a chamber curtained in

With red rich hangings such as Arabs spin,

Sombre of depth, tragic, where shadows lie.

You reached your lute and played a song keyed high

Upon soft undercurrents, trilled and thin,

Weaving an old love-song of Spain’s therein,

Sprayed fine as waters are when winds are nigh.

And then you played no more again that night.

Nor of song’s silver stream did I care more.

I looked into your eyes. There black and bright

An ocean did unroll sans sound, depth, shore—
Across it sped as once of old the dove,
The golden, glittering, galleons of love!

XXIII

“Quanto e bello giovinezza!
Ma sen fugge tuttavia,
Chi vuol esser lieto sia—
Di doman non v’e certezza.”
Lorenzo de Medici

No, no, why talk of this, your faith, to me!

In life are nobler things than fast and prayer

Or silent meditation cloistered where
The real things cannot touch us vividly.
Give me the storm, the struggle! Aye! give me
A taste of all that is or here or there,
For I would touch life richly everywhere—
An earth-lyre for emotion’s mastery.

Dear One, Dear One, I firmly do believe—

(O! look not at me thus with eyes that grieve!)

That if there is the Heaven to which you pray
Unto the cloistered will its keeper say:
“A garden rich I gave you. Now speak truth—

What did you with my greatest gift—your youth?”

XXIV

You spoke upon a sudden words like these

Towering above me in the crimson room

To anger stung by some word said too soon:

“Aman terriblemente en mi país!”

Terriblemente aman en mi país!

Cold sensuality’s not there the boon

We crave; instead, the force, fury of noon

Which like flame purifies impurities.

The whirlwinds gulfed me from your passion’s height

And swept me outward, ’cross a sea of night,
Night amethystine, purple, rich, and deep
Where multi-colored stars their watches keep

And sing in whirling splendor words like these—

“Aman terriblemente en mi país!”

XXV

Mazeltov

O! sweet is your forgiveness, Dear, to me,

How sweet I think and think and cannot tell;

If Love’s a great, great thirst it is the well

Where I, a desert wanderer, drink gladly;

But if it’s health and life lived brave and free,

It is as pure white lilies that for a spell
Cool fever’s brow and of green meadows tell—
Such, Dear, has your forgiveness been to me.

And then the little word with which it came,
The Hebrew “mazeltov”—To you joy’s flame!
I hug it to my heart as they of yore
Who heard it, perchance, by the palace door
Of one who gloried in proud Babylon
And learned of love beneath a younger sun.

XXVI

Mazeltov

To-day is still the day that sweet word came
Yet must I watch it ebb to Time’s great sea
And there to mingle with eternity,
Lose sense and form and be no more a name.

And yet ’tis still the day. The words I frame,

While ocean-like night’s mists rise stealthily;

Beneath my window here there spreads a sea

From which twin church spires spin like fireless flame.

Behold! the west has opened. Bless you, Day!

You would be gracious to me? You would stay?

And all the sky is flecked with tumbled light,

Wave beating upon wave, outbreasting night,
Up-wrapped as in a glory I do feel
Seeing outflung the roses of Castile!

XXVII

’Tis only these our bodies that are near!

Our souls are sphered in two far heavens of space

Where naught each of the other may we trace
Nor feel the freshness of a love-wrung tear.
All kindliness does your heaven ensphere,
Mercy—and the tender, piteous grace
Of Judah’s chosen, the divine, sad face
That smiled its blessing down the ages drear.

Within my heaven ideal Beauty stands,

The chaste white goddess of the cruel hands

And smileless lips who gives naught and asks all,

From whom our praises slip as scorned gems fall.

Yet would I have her other if I could?

Her slaves have said—Beauty’s as great as Good!

XXVIII

You asked me why I love you. This is why,
Told in the Hebrew lore: The Mischna tells
How Abraham, a boy, his idols sells,

Then, tiring, searched for God both far and nigh.

Night came. He saw the stars strew thick the sky,

“Surely that’s God!” The moon rose with her spells.

“No, no, that’s God!” Awe from his spirit wells:

But moon and stars fade fast and night passed by.

Rich with the fervor of its sun rose day.

“I know now none has found God and none may!

The force is He behind the day and night!”

Cried Abraham in rapture at the light.

Thus I love not for outward shows nor gold,

But for the silent love your heart does hold.

XXIX

I, too, have touched Life’s idols, found them clay,

Then, broken-hearted, sought some better thing,

The while unfolded o’er me like a wing
The panorama of the night and day.
A petty part I played within a play
While Spring and Summer scenery did fling
Round me fit for the great gods glorying,
And set suns, gem-like, on the breast of day.

At last the power behind it I did learn.

I met you and the meaning was made clear;

Then I built worthy of the garden here.

My heart’s a dwelling now gods may not spurn,

So high it towers it tops the clouds above

To house you fittingly, my Love, my Love!

XXX

Gale’d

Jacob and Laban for their love’s great need
A stone tower built—as Hebrew scholars know—
To mark the ending of a grievous woe,
Upon stone then set stone, crying—“Godspeed!”

Finished, they prayed: “Be this now called Gale’d!

Past it let each to other never go
With thought of anger, grief, suspicion, woe,
For peace must rest upon the tower Gale’d.”

Thus to us be, O Love! this crimson room
So rich with curtains of an orient bloom
Which sun-pale women wrought, dreaming of men
Who’d rush to meet them with the dusk again;
Whene’er we enter here let sad thoughts be
Deep buried in our love’s immensity.

XXXI

Faith is the soul’s pure garment, is it not,

That covers well from cold within a world

Divine things had not been in, had not whirled

From battlemented light the Demon, Thought;
Whose soul-garment is richest he cannot
See grief nor sorrow plainly, though unfurled

The black, tear-dyed pinions of Death’s own world

A-flutter o’er his head, of horror wrought.

Outside your sheltered warmth, a pilgrim, I
Do come and lowly kneel where you sit high—
Soul-naked do I come as humble ones

Who in some fair, far south seek meed of suns—

O! crueller than to them rude Winter’s wing,

Life’s storms to her who seeks such sheltering!

XXXII

That little song you sang to me, Dear One,
Has blotted out the present, brought to view
This painted vision that a pagan knew:
Quai of Alexandria, low, fading sun,

Frail, floating, purple night-shadows that run

Across sands deeply bronze, dulled by no dew;

A maid, nude, save for gauze crocus in hue

Through which shines polished flesh like to a sun.

Two flute players stroll past unto the feasts,

Flower-ankleted and girdled—Joy’s young Priests;

Beside the crocus maid they pause and sing

In shrill tones colored like the bronze evening.

She hears and trembles her gold gauzes through:

“O le désir est douloureux et doux!”

XXXIII

We met last night beside a northern lake

Whirled there ’cross prairie levels bleached with heat,

For rain athirst, as we athirst to meet

And in the northern night our longing slake.

Beneath our window spread, far, pale, the lake

Crooning a song of sleep, belated, sweet,
Away, away, the veilèd moon did fleet,
Dream shadow for the rhythmic night to wake.

Clear came the dawn, and chill and coldly blue,

Black, stern, upon the shore pines rose to view.

Beneath our window floated in from far,

Dead fish, silver, shining, as young moons are;

Out o’er that azure distance pure as prayer

I looked and knew that that night storms dwelled there.

XXXIV

Just as we left the lake I saw near by

A night-bird sheltered in a black pine’s shade,

By bold bright thunder of the light dismayed,

There fled to shelter till dusk touched the sky.

Within his mimic night he nestled nigh

Unto the great tree’s trunk, blinking, afraid;

Grief clutched my heart. Like him you are not made

For noisy daylight, I think quick, and sigh.

You are my black, black night-bird! Well I know

You’ll leave me for the dusk again and go
Through twilights on and on, forgetful, free,
Pale silences down-floating, far from me,
And I shall be as in daylight a star

That fades and falters where the lightnings are.

XXXV

O! Love’s a crystal cup filled rim to rim
And set for us by gods at Life’s banquet,
Where we may drink and drink as Titans yet
Find always there is sweetness at the brim:

When laughter’s ringing loud, who sits there grim

And scorns the gift, the best the gods have set,

Will find it empty if he try to wet

Late at Life’s banquet board dead lips and dim.

Come, Love, I pledge you in this goodly gift!

High! high! above our heads the cup now lift!

Let’s drain it here together, you and I,

For ages that come after we’ll not sigh,

For we have bought the best with this our breath—

Alone remembered joy is safe from death.

XXXVI

“O! palagio d’Ilio, in alta stanza—”

Gabriele d’Annunzio

I’m grateful for that sonnet that you read
With such a thrill of voice I seemed to see
The laughing Cyclades again, gayly

Ships slipping down the shining wind’s roadstead

That sweeps to Troy. ’Twas like a frame you said,

That sonnet in the tongue of Italy,

To frame one fine last line, clean-chiselled, free—

The love-night of two lovers long since dead.

Helen, the white loved one, it said, grieved not

Nor evermore of Greece, home, kindred, thought,

The while the ship sped on. There rose to mind,

Like visions of the day unto the blind,
A room wherein rich gems Love’s luster shed
Upon a cedar-wrought, gold, gleaming bed.

XXXVII

“Mujer mas pura que la luz serena,

Mas negra que la sombra del pecado.”

How I do love your voice when thus you read

The poets of your soft and southern tongue

Whose vowels are like silver prayer-bells rung

Within the oratory of Love’s creed,
Where longing is the incense to up-speed,
And consonants are hushed like prayer among

Gray, gliding nuns, when vesper songs are sung

And they ask pardon for sins sweet indeed.

The last line! How your voice did tremble there,

Caressing lovingly each cadenced sound,
Tonal sonorousness, new, rich, soon found
To weave a magic on the waiting air!
I love you for that subtle sense of art
Where one with me forever is your heart.

XXXVIII

My heart is filled with joy like spring-fed streams

Which bubbling overflow a barren land,
To leave with lavishness on either hand
Green ripple of leaf-dance, and petal gleams.

My heart is filled with joy like spring-fed streams

By floating, fragile, white mist-billows fanned,

Prismatic curtains by the sun’s light planned,

The substance iridescent of our dreams.

My heart is filled with joy, for Love dwells there,

New Heaven for me making and new Earth—

Love! Love!—the God-dream, that to joy gives birth.

’Tis this I know well makes the world so fair,

’Tis this which is the music all things sing—

The crocus dawn—the sunset crimsoning.

XXXIX

Late met we last night by the lake again
When faint for dawn I felt the dark to be;
Mist-veiled, the water lay all silently,
An opal, mystic, dim, Hungarian.
Beneath its milky whiteness I knew when
The call of day came crisping clear and free,
Troubling within the trees birds dream-drowsy
A maze of misty flame would leap again.

So from my heart as night mists dropped adown
And earth became an opal for Love’s crown,
No real world anywhere, nothing but this,
I knew that with sun-splendor of your kiss
There’d come a wonder as with dawn there came

And from Love’s opal heart would leap a flame.

XL

We waked not till again the cruel day came.

The level lake with fire was burnished white.

It bit into the eyes, wounded the sight,

And all the barren land was like a flame.

We lay beside a window wherein came

The scent and sight of cedars, their slim height,

Above them, higher towering, black as night,

One sad and sombre pine—the badge of shame.

Within its glooming shadows I saw glare

The night-bird of the wild and awful stare,

My black, black Bird of Night, to you I cried,

In peace let me a little, pray, abide,

Then to your twilights take me, Bird of Night,

Since now I’m one with you: I fear the light.

XLI

Again, again you ask how you can know
How much I really love you? This to me!
All women I do envy that I see
If they have aught of youth or charm to show,
And wonder, would you like me better so,
If better thus, if thus changed I might be,

Count o’er the years of youth still left to me

Praying: “Dear God, make time go very slow!”

For you I’ve plunged me from calm’s peerless height,

And dwarfed my soul for Envy’s shabby door;

Yet know that I would cry: “Dear God, give more!”

If for the asking I could have to-night
Gold Helens and all dear dead ones’ beauty
Since for your love so little it would be.

XLII

He said when ready for the ball I stood—
Mi esposo—“These gems will you not wear?”
Down bending then to fasten pearl tears where
You’ve set the rubies of Love’s solitude.
And I said, laughing strangely, wild of mood—
“I’d like a corsage gem of grapes to wear
Upon my breast, my arms, my throat, my hair—

Black, bursting grapes, the fiercest suns have wooed!”

And all night while the music rose and fell

I felt your black curls touch me, loved them well,

Felt float across my face spice scents from south,

Felt on my lips the hot breath of your mouth,

Vineyards I saw, gold-dusted grapes in stack—

Your black, black curls flung passionately back.

XLIII

How ebon rich, how wondrous, is your hair!
When here it floats beside me darkly free,
This is the vision that I seem to see:
A roof in Nineveh the Ancient where
Night long there pulses upward on the air

The breath of the great earth-breast’s heat fiercely,

A Titan’s passion like to, first set free

With blackness of the night, exhaustless, there.

A woman, passion-pale, with gems like rain,
Leans listless by stone parapets, again
Lifts arms voluptuous toward where afar
A rider’s armor shines beneath a star,
Her jewels all a-shiver as a pearl
When into ocean depths the sun-rays whirl.

XLIV

To-night a magic sail, Love, is your hair

That wafts o’er waters that know not the sun,

Where stars come not, nor bright the dawn lights run,

And black a basalt palace towers there.
There mingle all night long upon the air
The murmurings of Love’s oblivion,
With songs of many waters, one by one

Flung o’er stone dream of arches black and bare.

Voluptuously listening here I lie

Learning the languors of that unseen sea,

Its rich accords, its magic, mystery.

The night grows deep within your eyes—my sky.

There wild stars rise. Soon, soon our love will be

Swelling the black night palace harmony.

XLV

Your hair I love despite its selfish hue
Made up of treasured sun-gold held in fee,
Not one reflected ray has been set free,
Therefore it is so brightly black to view.
Ages of eastern passion made this hue
Dark as its deepest midnights ere can be,

Splendid as noons the skies strike blanchingly,

So fiercely black, so cruelly bright it grew.

Gold hair gives back again whatever it takes,
Much shine and shimmer in the sunlight makes;
Your hair for æons has drunk deep the sun;
Slow ages swirl beneath me, one by one;

Unto my heart come thoughts that I fear there,

At sight of the black passion of your hair!

XLVI

When in your hair like this I hide my face
I sense sharp savors of Autumn divine,
See tree-boles black against the dusky shine

Of early night; frost-blooms like flaunted lace

Upon the hills; flocked birds sweeping through space;

Sombre the forest aisles, all powdered fine
With twilight dust—sepia crystalline—
And to my heart, too, twilight comes apace.

What is that numbing fragrance in your hair!

Down those dim forest aisles,—lo! dancing there,

One scarlet clad! Slow notes shiver the night.

They tremble down her head disks like sunlight;

By subtle Moorish scents my face is fanned—

O! dance for me again the Saraband!

XLVII

Couleur tabac d’Espagne—your eyes are, Love,

Clearly and sweetly brown, with sun shone through

At mid-day when of merry mood are you—

Mirth’s mirrors, such as brooklets to the dove.

Couleur topaz d’Espagne—my tawny Love—
Topazes filled with diamond’s eyes of you
When shadows lengthen and soft falls the dew—
Dusk’s jewelled passion—Oh! my tawny Love!

But when midnight her magic does distil,

Then fathomless, a black abyss, your eyes

Where death, destruction lurk, and whence arise

Sweet danger calls that swift my pulses thrill.

Yes, yes, ’tis Fate that’s king and ruleth all;

Lo! I am one to whom the deeps do call.

XLVIII

Our arms together twined twin marbles are:

Yours, brown, Numidian, warm, turquoise-veined,

Mine, pale Pentelican, rose, faintly stained—
Two tinted figurines of Tanagra.
In mine I see the north which snowfields mar,
In yours I see the languors unrestrained
Of Asiatic noons—Afric regained—
Life lived beneath a sun oracular.

Be to me, Sweet, a city of the south,
The garden of its richness be your mouth;
In kisses pour Egyptian lavender,
The strange, sleep-swaying scents of Lydia,
Pour on my arms to dull their sharp whiteness
Rose-liquor from the mountains of Cyprus!

XLIX

“Chiunque venne qui, portò con sè il suo mistero amoroso.”

Matilde Serao

This vision of my childhood comes to me:
A little river by my northern home,
A mountain river, noisy, white with foam,

Brave-hearted, full of laughter, song and glee,

Myself like to in those old days care-free,
It longed for other scenes and left the home;
I met it far away, now silent grown
Mid meadows; sad, with nearness of the sea.

O little mountain river! I’m like you,
Hushed, silenced, by the wonder of life, too,
Struck fear-dumb by the nearness of a sea
Which, as for you the ocean, waits for me;
Were it not there with cruel, baleful glow
I’d not have lived life thus—O no, no, no!

L

O let me be a child to you to-night!

Take from me lore of love and all its pain,

Then tell some fabled tale of olden Spain

And let me listen with a child’s delight!

O let me be a child to you to-night!

So tired am I of stress and strife and strain—

Of life—the puzzle naught can now make plain,

Of balance keeping between wrong and right!

You’ve asked me often if I ever pray.

Can any to that question answer—nay?

What are ambition, effort,—life—but prayer,

What are all great desires everywhere?

I’m praying now beneath your eyes’ love-light—

O let me be a child again to-night!

LI

Upon this point of time flung island-wise

Between two boundless oceans deep as thought,

With up-surge of the world-tides we are caught

And for a moment held in poised surprise.

The beacon of desire flames in our eyes,

We stretch out tremblingly hands love-distraught

And clasp each other close, caring for naught,

High on the pinnacle of destinies.

And you are happy, Love! You think we go
On, on, hand clasped in hand, forever so,
And carelessly kiss me with soft caress;
I kiss back with a passion measureless
Because I know that even to hope is vain—
The deeps will never let us meet again!

LII

I look out toward the gray Missouri Hills.

Behold!—there Spring comes back to us again,

Upon my window beats its first wild rain

And scents of Summer now the dawn distils.

Trees, prayerful, armed, ascetic, some joy thrills.

Shining gun-metal gray the long streets stain

Where pales the passion of the first Spring rain,

Sweeping from off the gray Missouri Hills.

Adown their shimmering length looking I see
The colors as of rainbows steal softly;
Unseen hands crocuses and jonquils fling,
I see the splendors of immortal Spring
And know ’tis but reflection of my heart—

Eternal Spring dwells where enthroned thou art.

LIII

You took my fingers—thus—and bent them back,

Slowly, then one by one, giving to each

Some special love-name from your Spanish speech—

“Muy cariñoso,”—sadly said—Alack!

Plucked them as petals from your passion’s track,

Stripped bare the trembling flower-heart to beseech

The red, red rose your lips leaned low to reach

Unto my palm—the fingers thus bent back.

You said: “Now close your hand, quick! quick, Dear One!

I’ve sealed upon it there in Moorish guise
The rose-tree seal of Allah’s Paradise;
Should I be ever where you’re not, Dear One,
Like Life’s tree which by sacred Tesnim grew,
This rose shall bud and blossom—shelter you!”

LIV

How can it matter what they were to me,
The old, old lovers of the days long dead,
Nor what they whispered fondly, what I said,
Since it is all so far away from me!
O! blot not thus hours bought so bitterly

By useless brooding o’er things vanished,—dead;

The past, Dear, is a tide that’s hastenèd

Back, back again unto the shoreless sea.

O foolish, foolish fond one that you are!
How much you owe them of the long ago
Who taught me lore of love, its restless woe—
Love! Love! the bitter art whose masters are
Than Spartan mothers crueller since they say—

The arms that bring you joy likewise must slay!

LV

Sadly I watched the dancers gayly dressed—

A silken river of frail iris sheen

O’er-fluttered by winged fans; watched heads down lean

In languor to be sweetly word caressed;

O! weary was the heart within my breast

Though ribboned light on mirrored walls such sheen

Of bright foam flung, as when flowers overlean

A river’s marge and dance at wind’s behest.

Outside within the night your lute-string trilled.

The yellow whirling ball-room floated far,

We stood together ’neath the morning star;

You reached a lilac branch with blossoms filled,

O’er me was flung its jewelled, fragrant rain—

“Love! clasp me close,” I cried,—“the dawn again!”

LVI

I dreamed a dream of fields vivid with Spring,

Strown o’er with scentless flowers of fleckless white

Which said: “We are thy youth’s first loves!” Aright

They seemed to me as snow upon the Spring.

This dream passed. Next into Doom’s Land I swing,

Before from the abyss there rose to sight
One giant amorous lily, black as night—
A flame of ebony the days there bring.

The Doom-Pit and the lily were as one.

I dropped down their entangling, dim twilight,

In sable petals folded deep as night,
Dreaming how once you said to me, Dear One,
When eagerly you leaned my hair to kiss—
“Your eyes are a black dangerous abyss!”

LVII

“Espejo encantado?... Espejo encantado
gomo en el que Fausto mirò à Margarita,
donde se proyecta, donde resuscita
visiones efimeras—todo lo pasado.”
Francisco Villaespesa

At night, twin urns, your eyes are filled with sleep

From some far, silent sea I do not know,
Some far, far sea whither I may not go,
Where you do leave me for the tideless deep.
At dawn when you come back again you keep
Your soul so recessed, hidden from me so,
Our old love seems as steps in melting snow
Hastening unto the twin, dim urns of sleep.

As one within a twilight lone I feel

While gorgeous-winged some great strange bird sweeps past

And brushes me with wings—ah! brightly vast.

The promise that Life longs for most I feel

Has flashed its gold upon me. I can keep

Only the shadow in the urns of sleep.

LVIII

The Spring sun has swathed us in its toga’d light.

O! why were we not born in Sybaris!
I smell Damascus roses, sharp iris,
See streets Lucanian, gay, thus by night:
Rich balconies of marble hid from sight
By tapestries and silks of Sybaris;
The peplus purpling, the bold chlamys;

Greeks ankleted in gems; while buskined bright

Soft-footed Asiatics come and go;
Women with pale eyelids powdered blue,
Upon their lips that smile the sphinxes knew;
Men calm of face as chiselled cameo,
All sauntering unto some love-bought bliss.
O! why were we not born in Sybaris!

LIX

With a Gift of Eastern Perfume

Egyptian baccharis! This gift I prize.

Of old your slave as now I watched you go

With one crowned with the pheasant’s topaz glow.

“Who’s that,” she cried, “whose heart shakes in her eyes?”

To me pointing. I dared not run nor rise,

But, crouching, o’er your baccar buds bent low.

A slave with flowers only a queen may know?

Some royal lover, hath she, I surmise!

Straightway within her eyes my doom I read.

Like lightning blue the lances shook o’er me.

I was not worth your crown! How could I be!

But when within your eyes the look I read,

I thought: “For this death’s cheap—aye! cheap the price—

For one such other I would meet it twice!”

LX

“Che fai tu, luna, in ciel? dimmi, che fai, Silenzïo sa luna?”

Leopardi

How sad, how sad the moon is, Dear, to-night,

And strangely chill the wind, as if it came

From barren space beyond the bright sun’s flame;

To-night there dwells a horror in the night.
How sad, how sad the wind is, Dear, to-night,
And O! so full of grief, regret, and shame

And fear of thousand things that have no name!

The stars even wink back their tears, to-night.

O! break upon me, storm of grief—break! break!

Hiding black hearts behind that pallid moon,

The sooner will come calmness, sun, and noon.

Take me within your arms, Dear, quickly take!

I’m so afraid of life, aye!—love—I seem

To want to die awhile—then wake—to dream.

LXI

How sad, how sad the moon is, Dear, to-night—
Pale woman in her grave-clothes seeking there
Along the azure meadows of the air,
The way that leadeth back to life and light.
She trembles and her face with fear is white
Astray amid that cold strange splendor there;

Gold star-flowers stare with eyes that do not care

While she gropes broken-hearted down the night.

Pull low that purple lilac! Yes!—this way.
When—list!—you kiss me thus, let her not see,
She’s so athirst for love she’d envy me,

Poor, poor lost lonely one, wound her not, pray!

Why, Dear, the glad great gods themselves I think

For kisses such as these would cross death’s brink!

LXII

“Venisti. O nuntii beati.”

Catullus

The stars are trembling wind-blown lamps to-night

By nymphs upheld whose bare, white feet now flee

Adown the winding stairs of ivory

That cross the terraced Garden of the Night.

Sly Nymphs! How they spin on in fluttered flight

Their misty, gossamer gowns out-floating free,

Dot-like, red, little mouths; eyes wide to see;

Hair like sun-flushed tree-tops at sweet twilight.

Unto the Opal Chambers of the Moon,
The irised chambers of old revelry
They hasten down Night’s stairs of ivory.

Faint grow the little star-lamps. They fade soon.

But through frost ferns faint, pallid lustres creep

Where white-armed little Nymphs sleep love’s deep sleep.

LXIII

“Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia”

Vittoria Colonna

My heart’s a wound of piteousness to-day
Because our crimson room last night was seen
The shadow of all sin since time has been—
That color that Macbeth washed not away.

Fear came between our kisses then. “Nay! nay!—

The world, how can it know our love has been?”

The moon—look!—tells it now to stars that lean

In eagerness; and they to winds that sway

The talking trees. Ah! when I leave you, Dear,

What horrors in the dawn upon me’ll seize
At many fingered mockery of leaves
A-point at me! The world will see—will hear—
The merciless white Day no one deceives,

And O! all those black-fingered, scornful trees!

II
THE PASSING OF LOVE

“Now, thou Hyacinth, whisper the letters on thee graven and add a deeper ai, ai to thy petals.”

—Moschus

I

“Partir—c’est mourir un peu!”

Francesco Paolo Tosti

Day! and its light falls on a thousand hills!

Day! and its strength flows in upon the heart!

High up in air fine fleece-white clouds do part,

And countless little valleys now light fills.
Midsummer’s ecstasy the whole world thrills;
Drowsing the ox pulls slow the creaking cart
Nor pauses at bird-trill to look, or start,
Nepenthes with the Summer day distils.

O Summer, red-lipped Summer, on my soul

Pour all your sleep-sweet balms! There stop the roll

Of longing, futile thought, repining—pain—
That like thy hills I, too, may know again—
Though he be gone—the mid-day’s drowsy deep;
Summer, for me dreamless nepenthes steep!

II

The Dream of Spain

Tad’ma’s Italian Spring!—the languor, light,

That bathes in lucent waves that marbled sweep

Veined rich as are those women there who keep,

Idling by day, flower-crowned, a dream of night!

Frail, blossom-hung, a pink Spring tree to right,

Where silent, saffron-robed, one watch does keep

O’er waters deep as are his own thoughts deep,

Scorning near joys for fancy’s fond delight.

O! never yet saw sun a sea so blue,
So Tyrian-toned, so violet-rich in hue!
There he who watches sees—(or is’t a dream,

Or where sunbeams, glancing, on billows gleam?)

Haze-crested hills, a gold and magic main,

And whispers softly as now I: “Spain! Spain!”

III

Let there be dance and laughter, sound of song,

Soft glances interchange and merriment,
That from Joy’s too full cup to others sent
Drops overflowing to me may belong.
Let me be ’mid the laughter-loving throng,
To my dead heart their life-passion be lent,
Who now am but a beggar worn and bent,

Crouched down by others’ fires when winds are strong.

That it could not have lasted, well I know—
Too few—alas!—youth’s years now left to me;
Love’s spared itself a hideous tragedy,
Than which none bitterer life has to show—
The tragedy of them that Time has sold,
The vision of a woman growing old!

IV

Within the Summer dawn I dreamed a dream

Of sand wastes where a strange procession came:

Men patriarchal, stern, robed in white flame,

Who knelt and lifted empty hands that seem

To plead for something, while with scorn supreme:

“Thy future years are we! Ask not our name!

We empty-handed come. Each one the same.”

I knew they reached the gray horizon’s gleam.

“Look! Look behind!”—I cried—“the cherubs there

Upholding each a wine glass, rich, flower-crowned,

Mirrored within whose radiant deeps is found

My love and I—immortal—earth-gods fair.

The future, stern, stern keepers, take! ’tis thine.

I care not, for that red rose past is mine!”

V

If life and love are garments that grow old

And frayed and soiled as those that beggars wear,

I’ll put them from me while they still are fair.

And purply splendid, still undimmed their gold.

I will not suffer word of them be told
That’s pitiful or hath a grievous air,
Joy shall be on them blazoned everywhere
As on twin standards of the warrior soul.

I will not wait till Hope—that coward bird—
Does backward fly becoming Memory,
Untruths to prattle to me foolishly.

The day that first my heart shall bring me word

I’ll leave forever these twin robes of state

And laugh to know Grief could not make me wait.

VI

For days I sit and think and cannot speak.
Forgotten have I how to live, it seems,
Without you—altar-place of all my dreams—
The heart it is so pitiful and weak.
For days I sit and think and cannot speak
While round me living murmurs till it seems

The rushing water round some wrecked ship’s beams,

Nor know day’s joined with day, nor week with week.

And then some word you said to me comes back,
Some little word you whispered long ago,
And I forget my grief and wake to know
The miracle the rolling year brings back,
The miracle of joy one word can bring—
That one small violet can make a Spring.

VII

To Spain, Good Stranger? There it is you go!
I pray you then seek out one that I knew
And for me tell him—O! I pray you to!—
Look not for him where piled up gold’s aglow,
Nor where the servile courtier bendeth low,

Nor yet indeed where banked spears filtering through

Sharp steel light falls pallid and cold as dew,

Where’er the humble kneel in prayer, there, go.

’Tis there you’ll find him where the tapers show

His hands in blessing lifted. Then, O then,

For me say this—say it again! again!

(I crave your pardon, Stranger. Say not so.)

But is he happy? That I have not heard—

Look in his eyes and then—then—send me word!

VIII

Theocritus who sang in Sicily,

By Ætna where are shepherds’ pipes a-ring,

Made thus unto the night a maiden sing:

“Moon-Wheel, the one I love draw unto me.”

O! would that I could pray thus, Moon, to thee,

And be as sure as she some peace to bring,
Simætha, ’neath the laurels silvering,
In old Sicilian gardens by the sea.

I pray to thee, Great Moon, make me forget!

O! gracious Lady Moon, let me forget

And love but beauty only as of yore!

Soon now upon the grass beside my door

The Fall will fling the poplars’ pallid gold—

Let me forget and love it as of old!

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

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Table of Contents

- THE GARDEN OF DESIRE LOVE SONNETS TO A SPANISH MONK

- I THE GARDEN OF DESIRE

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- II THE PASSING OF LOVE

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- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE