The Magic House and Other Poems 9

The Magic House and Other Poems 9

A NIGHT IN JUNE

 

 

The world is heated seven times,

The sky is close above the lawn,

An oven when the coals are drawn.

 

There is no stir of air at all,

Only at times an inward breeze

Turns back a pale leaf in the trees.

 

Here the syringa’s rich perfume

Covers the tulip’s red retreat,

A burning pool of scent and heat.

 

The pallid lightning wavers dim

Between the trees, then deep and dense

The darkness settles more intense.

 

A hawk lies panting in the grass,

Or plunges upward through the air,

The lightning shows him whirling there.

 

A bird calls madly from the eaves.

Then stops, the silence all at once

Disturbed, falls dead again and stuns.

 

A redder lightning flits about,

But in the north a storm is rolled

That splits the gloom with vivid gold;

 

Dead silence, then a little sound,

The distance chokes the thunder down,

It shudders faintly in the town.

 

A fountain plashing in the dark

Keeps up a mimic dropping strain;

Ah! God, if it were really rain!

 

 

 

 

MEMORY

 

 

I see a schooner in the bay

Cutting the current into foam;

One day she flies and then one day

Comes like a swallow veering home.

 

I hear a water miles away

Go sobbing down the wooded glen;

One day it lulls and then one day

Comes sobbing on the wind again.

 

Remembrance goes but will not stay;

That cry of unpermitted pain

One day departs and then one day

Comes sobbing to my heart again.

 

 

 

 

YOUTH AND TIME

 

 

Move not so lightly, Time, away,

Grant us a breathing-space of tender ruth;

Deal not so harshly with the flying day,

Leave us the charm of spring, the touch of youth.

 

Leave us the lilacs wet with dew,

Leave us the balsams odorous with rain,

Leave us of frail hepaticas a few,

Let the red osier sprout for us again.

 

Leave us the hazel thickets set

Along the hills, leave us a month that yields

The fragile bloodroot and the violet,

Leave us the sorrage shimmering on the fields.

 

You offer us largess of power,

You offer fame, we ask not these in sooth,

These comfort age upon his failing hour,

But oh, the charm of spring, the touch of youth!

 

 

 

 

A MEMORY OF THE ‘INFERNO’

 

 

An hour before the dawn I dreamed of you;

Your spirit made a smile upon your face,

As fleeting as the visionary grace

That music lends to words; and when it flew,

I thought of how the maid Francesca grew,

So lovely at Ravenna, until Time

Ripened the fruit of her immortal crime.

As pure as light my vision took this hue

To paint our sorrow: so your lips made moan;

‘Upon that day we read no more therein’:

I wept, such tears Paolo might have known;

And all the love, the immemorial pain,

Swept down upon me as I felt begin,

That furious circle rage and reel again.

 

 

 

 

LA BELLE FERONIÈRE

 

 

I never trod where Leonardo was,

Then why art thou within this house of dreams,

Strange Lady? From thy face a memory streams,

Of things, forgotten now, that came to pass;

The flower of Milan floated in thy glass:

Thy dreaming smile; thy subtle loveliness!

Ah! laughter airier far than ours, I guess,

Lighted thy brow, fleeter than fire in grass.

 

Yet, there is something fateful in thy face:

Say, when the master caught it, didst thou know,

Almost thy name would perish with thy grace,

Thine artifices melt away like snow,

And all the power within this painted space,

Be his alone to hold and haunt us so?

 

 

 

 

A NOVEMBER DAY

 

 

There are no clouds above the world,

But just a round of limpid grey,

Barred here with nacreous lines unfurled,

That seem to crown the autumnal day,

With rings of silver chased and pearled.

 

The moistened leaves along the ground,

Lie heavy in an aureate floor;

The air is lingering in a swound;

Afar from some enchanted shore,

Silence has blown instead of sound.

 

The trees all flushed with tender pink

Are floating in the liquid air,

Each twig appears a shadowy link,

To keep the branches mooréd there,

Lest all might drift or sway and sink.

 

This world might be a valley low,

In some lost ocean grey and old,

Where sea-plants film the silver flow,

Where waters swing above the gold

Of galleons sunken long ago.

 

 

 

 

OTTAWA

 

 

City about whose brow the north winds blow,

Girdled with woods and shod with river foam,

Called by a name as old as Troy or Rome,

Be great as they, but pure as thine own snow;

Rather flash up amid the auroral glow,

The Lamia city of the northern star,

Than be so hard with craft or wild with war,

Peopled with deeds remembered for their woe.

 

Thou art too bright for guile, too young for tears,

And thou wilt live to be too strong for Time;

For he may mock thee with his furrowed frowns,

But thou wilt grow in calm throughout the years,

Cinctured with peace and crowned with power sublime,

The maiden queen of all the towered towns.

 

 

 

 

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