Chapter X

We, flowers, have lived to our blossoming hour,
And not in vain did we rise from the root,
Whether we perish or ripen to power;
We know what sweetness it is to flower,
Let life or death be the fruit.

_The Springs of Fontana._

The springs of Fontana well high on the mountain,
Out of the rock of the granite they pour
Twenty or more;
Ripple and runnel and freshet and fountain
Well, happy tears, from the heart of the mountain
Up at Fontana.

See, not a step can we take but a spring
Breaks from the roots of the blond-flower’d chestnuts—
(Look, in the water their long golden breast-knots
Flung in caress!)—from a tuft of the ling,
From a stone, anything,
Up at Fontana.

Twenty or more, and no one of the twenty
Gushes the same; here the waters abundant
Babble redundant,
Filling the vale with the bruit of their plenty;
Here a mere ripple, a trickle, a scanty
Dew on Fontana.

Surely one noonday the Prophet in heaven
Slept, and the wand of the desert fell—
Fell to the rock, and the rock was riven.
Lo, all around it eternally well
(A miracle!)
The springs of Fontana.

Waters of boon!
Deluge or drought cannot alter your current,
Swift in December and icy in June,
Full when the icicle hangs on the torrent,
Full when the river is dry and the noon
Parches Fontana.

Over the rocks!
Over the tree-root that tangles and blocks—
Robbing from all that resists you a sunny
Scent of the cistus and rock-hidden honey,
Yarrow, campanula, thyme, agrimony—
Flow from Fontana!

Flow, happy waters, and gather and rally,
Rush to the plain.
Flow to the heavenly fields of Limain,
Blue as a dream in the folds of the valley;
Feed them and fatten with blossom and grain,
Springs of Fontana!

River of springs,
Born many times in renewal unending,
Bright, irresistible, purest of things,
Blessing the rocks that oppose you, befriending
Pastures and cattle and men in your wending
Forth from Fontana.

Born (who knows how?) a mysterious fountain
Out of the stone and the dust of the mountain,
Bound to a country we know little of,
How shall I bless ye and praise ye enough,
Image of Love,
Springs of Fontana!

_July, 1889._

“_Un cœur tendre qui hait le néant vaste et noir
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige._”
BAUDELAIRE

Rosa Rosarum.

_Rosa Rosarum._

Give me, O friend, the secret of thy heart
Safe in my breast to hide,
So that the leagues which keep our lives apart
May not our souls divide.

Give me the secret of thy life to lay
Asleep within my own,
Nor dream that it shall mock thee any day
By any sign or tone.

Nay, as in walking through some convent-close,
Passing beside a well,
Oft have we thrown a red and scented rose
To watch it as it fell;

Knowing that never more the rose shall rise
To shame us, being dead;
Watching it spin and dwindle till it lies
At rest, a speck of red—

Thus, I beseech thee, down the silent deep
And darkness of my heart,
Cast thou a rose; give me a rose to keep,
My friend, before we part.

For, as thou passest down thy garden-ways,
Many a blossom there
Groweth for thee: lilies and laden bays,
And rose and lavender.

But down the darkling well one only rose
In all the year is shed;
And o’er that chill and secret wave it throws
A sudden dawn of red.

_Florentine May._

Still, still is the Night; still as the pause after pain;
Still and as dear;
Deep, solemn, immense; veiling the stars in the clear
Thrilling and luminous blue of the moon-shot atmosphere;
Ah, could the Night remain!

Who, truly, shall say thou art sullen or dark or unseen,
Thou, O heavenly Night,
Clear o’er the valley of olives asleep in the quivering light,
Clear o’er the pale-red hedge of the rose, and the lilies all white
Down at my feet in the green?

Nay, not as the Day, thou art light, O Night, with a beam
Far more dear and divine;
Never the noon was blue as these tremulous heavens of thine,
Pulsing with stars half seen, and vague in a pallid shine,
Vague as a dream.

Night, clear with the moon, filled with the dreamy fire
Shining in thicket and close,
Fire from the lamp in his breast that the luminous fire-fly throws;
Night, full of wandering light and of song, and the blossoming rose,
Night, be thou my desire!

Night, Angel of Night, hold me and cover me so—
Open thy wings!
Ah, bend above and embrace!—till I hear in the one bird that sings
The throb of thy musical heart in the dusk, and the magical things
Only the Night can know.

_Serenade._

Moon of my soul, arise!
Ah me, the moon, the moon goes out in clouds;
Lo, a great darkness all the heaven shrouds
And night is in mine eyes.

Star of my life, appear!
Ah, not a star, not one is lit on high—
Only along the edges of the sky
There slants a falling sphere.

_Invocations._

O song in the nightingale’s throat, O music,
Dropt as it fell by a falling star,—
All of the silence is filled with thy pain,
Listening till it shall echo again.
O song in the nightingale’s throat, O music,
Thou art the soul of the silence afar!

O space of the moon in the starless heaven,
Raining a whiteness on moorland and sea,
Falling as lightly and purely as dew,
All of the shadow thou filterest through—
O space of the moon in the starless heaven,
Surely the night is the shadow of thee!

O silence of Death, O world of darkness,
When over me the last shadow shall fall,
Holdest thou safe in the night all around
Any moon to arise, any music to sound?
O silence of Death, O world of darkness,
Shall we perceive thee or know thee at all?

_Aubade Triste._

The last pale rank of poplar-trees
Begins to glimmer into light,
With stems and branches faintly white
Against a heaven one dimly sees
Beyond the failing night.

A point of grey that grows to green
Fleck’d o’er with rainy yellow bars,—
A sudden whitening of the stars,
A pallor where the moon has been,
A peace the morning mars;

When, lo! a shiver of the breeze
And all the ruffled birds awake,
The rustling aspens stir and shake;
For, pale, beyond the pallid trees,
The dawn begins to break.

And now the air turns cool and wan,
A drizzling rain begins to fall,
The sky clouds over with a pall—
The night, that was for me, is gone;
The day has come for all.

_A Jonquil._

IN THE PISAN CAMPO SANTO.

Out of the place of death,
Out of the cypress shadow,
Out of sepulchral earth,
Dust that Calvary gave;
Sprang, as fragrant of breath
As any flower of the meadow,
This, with death in its birth,
Sent like speech from the grave.

So, in a world of doubt,
Love—like a flower—
Blossoms suddenly white,
Suddenly sweet and pure;
Shedding a breath about
Of new mysterious power;
Lifting a hope in the night,
Not to be told, but sure.

_A Song._

Last night I met mine own true love
Walking in Paradise,
A halo shone above his hair,
A glory in his eyes.

We sat and sang in alleys green
And heard the angels play;
Believe me, this was true last night
Though it is false to-day.

_Stornelli and Strambotti._

I.

Flower of the vine!
I scarcely knew or saw how love began;
So mean a flower brings forth the sweetest wine!

* * * * *

O mandolines that thrill the moonlit street,
O lemon flowers so faint and freshly blown,
O seas that lap a solemn music sweet
Through all the pallid night against the stone,
O lovers tramping past with happy feet,
O heart that hast a memory of thine own—
For Mercy’s sake no more, no more repeat
The word it is so hard to hear alone!

* * * * *

Flowers in the hay!
My heart and all the fields are full of flowers;
So tall they grow before the mowing-day.

II.

Rose in the rain!
We part; I dare not look upon your tears:
So frail, so white, they shatter and they stain.

* * * * *

Love is a bird that breaks its voice with singing,
Love is a rose blown open till it fall,
Love is a bee that dies of its own stinging,
And Love the tinsel cross upon a pall.
Love is the Siren, towards a quicksand bringing
Enchanted fishermen that hear her call.
Love is a broken heart,—Farewell,—the wringing
Of dying hands. Ah, do not love at all!

* * * * *

_Tuscan Olives._

(SEVEN RISPETTI.)

I.

The colour of the olives who shall say?
In winter on the yellow earth they’re blue,
A wind can change the green to white or gray,
But they are olives still in every hue;

But they are olives always, green or white,
As love is love in torment or delight;
But they are olives, ruffled or at rest,
As love is always love in tears or jest.

II.

We walked along the terraced olive-yard,
And talked together till we lost the way;
We met a peasant, bent with age and hard,
Bruising the grape-skins in a vase of clay;

Bruising the grape-skins for the second wine.
We did not drink, and left him, Love of mine;
Bruising the grapes already bruised enough:
He had his meagre wine, and we our love.

III.

We climbed one morning to the sunny height
Where chestnuts grow no more and olives grow;
Far-off the circling mountains cinder-white,
The yellow river and the gorge below.

“Turn round,” you said, O flower of Paradise;
I did not turn, I looked upon your eyes.
“Turn round,” you said, “turn round, look at the view!”
I did not turn, my Love, I looked at you.

IV.

How hot it was! Across the white-hot wall
Pale olives stretch towards the blazing street;
You broke a branch, you never spoke at all,
But gave it me to fan with in the heat;

You gave it me without a sign or word,
And yet, my love, I think you knew I heard.
You gave it me without a word or sign:
Under the olives first I called you mine.

V.

At Lucca, for the autumn festival,
The streets are tulip-gay; but you and I
Forgot them, seeing over church and wall
Guinigi’s tower soar i’ the black-blue sky;

A stem of delicate rose against the blue;
And on the top two lonely olives grew,
Crowning the tower, far from the hills, alone;
As on our risen love our lives are grown.

VI.

Who would have thought we should stand again together,
Here, with the convent a frown of towers above us;
Here, mid the sere-wooded hills and wintry weather;
Here, where the olives bend down and seem to love us;

Here, where the fruit-laden olives half remember
All that began in their shadow last November;
Here, where we knew we must part, must part and sever;
Here, where we know we shall love for aye and ever.

VII.

Reach up and pluck a branch, and give it me,
That I may hang it in my Northern room,
That I may find it there, and wake and see
—Not you! not you!—dead leaves and wintry gloom.

O senseless olives, wherefore should I take
Your leaves to balm a heart that can but ache?
Why should I take you hence, that can but show
How much is left behind? I do not know.

_Apprehension._

I.

O foolish dream, to hope that such as I
Who answer only to thine easiest moods,
Should fill thy heart, as o’er my heart there broods
The perfect fulness of thy memory!
I flit across thy soul as white birds fly
Across the untrodden desert solitudes:
A moment’s flash of wings; fair interludes
That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky.

Even such to thee am I; but thou to me
As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea,
Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill.
But who, but who shall give such rest to thee?
The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually
Call to the land, and call unanswered still.