Chapter IV: Part FOUR: Sonnets

IV-I WHEN YOU, THAT AT THIS MOMENT

When you, that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more--what now you seem to be-- The sun, from which all excellences start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea; I shall remember only of this hour-- And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep-- The pathos of your love, that, like a flower, Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep, Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed, The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

IV-II THAT LOVE AT LENGTH SHOULD FIND

That Love at length should find me out and bring This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust, Is, after all, I must confess, but just; There is a subtle beauty in this thing, A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing All voices how into my throat is thrust, Unwelcome as Death’s own, Love’s bitter crust, All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring. This being done, there let the matter rest. What more remains is neither here nor there. That you requite me not is plain to see; Myself your slave herein have I confessed: Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me; But if I suffer, it is my own affair.

IV-III LOVE IS NOT BLIND

Love is not blind. I see with single eye Your ugliness and other women’s grace. I know the imperfection of your face,-- The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I In loveliness, and cannot so erase Its letters from my mind, that I may trace You faultless, I must love until I die. More subtle is the sovereignty of love: So am I caught that when I say, “Not fair,” ’Tis but as if I said, “Not here--not there-- Not risen--not writing letters.” Well I know What is this beauty men are babbling of; I wonder only why they prize it so.

IV-IV I KNOW I AM BUT SUMMER

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.

IV-V I PRAY YOU IF YOU LOVE ME

I pray you if you love me, bear my joy A little while, or let me weep your tears; I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy Your destiny’s bright spinning--the dull shears Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,-- Nor can you well be less aware how fine, How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted Endures the golden fortune that is mine. I pray you for this day at least, my dear, Fare by my side, that journey in the sun; Else must I turn me from the blossoming year And walk in grief the way that you have gone. Let us go forth together to the spring: Love must be this, if it be anything.

IV-VI PITY ME NOT

Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me. This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore. Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

IV-VII SOMETIMES WHEN I AM WEARIED

Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly Of all the things that are the outward you, And my gaze wanders ere your tale is through To webs of my own weaving, or I see Abstractedly your hands about your knee And wonder why I love you as I do, Then I recall, “Yet _Sorrow_ thus he drew”; Then I consider, “_Pride_ thus painted he.” Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note In me a beauty that was never mine, How first you knew me in a book I wrote, How first you loved me for a written line: So are we bound till broken is the throat Of Song, and Art no more leads out the Nine.

IV-VIII OH, OH, YOU WILL BE SORRY

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, “What a big book for such a little head!” Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink! Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that. I never again shall tell you what I think. I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more: I shall be called a wife to pattern by; And some day when you knock and push the door, Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy, I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

IV-IX HERE IS A WOUND

Here is a wound that never will heal, I know, Being wrought not of a dearness and a death, But of a love turned ashes and the breath Gone out of beauty; never again will grow The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath Its friendly weathers down, far underneath Shall be such bitterness of an old woe. That April should be shattered by a gust, That August should be levelled by a rain, I can endure, and that the lifted dust Of man should settle to the earth again; But that a dream can die, will be a thrust Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

IV-X I SHALL GO BACK AGAIN

I shall go back again to the bleak shore And build a little shanty on the sand, In such a way that the extremest band Of brittle seaweed will escape my door But by a yard or two; and nevermore Shall I return to take you by the hand; I shall be gone to what I understand, And happier than I ever was before. The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung. But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

IV-XI SAY WHAT YOU WILL

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find The roots of last year’s roses in my breast; I am as surely riper in my mind As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed. Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will, Call me in all things what I was before, A flutterer in the wind, a woman still; I tell you I am what I was and more. My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth-- Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

IV-XII WHAT’S THIS OF DEATH

What’s this of death, from you who never will die? Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay, The thumb that set the hollow just that way In your full throat and lidded the long eye So roundly from the forehead, will let lie Broken, forgotten, under foot some day Your unimpeachable body, and so slay The work he most had been remembered by? I tell you this: whatever of dust to dust Goes down, whatever of ashes may return To its essential self in its own season, Loveliness such as yours will not be lost, But, cast in bronze upon his very urn, Make known him Master, and for what good reason.

IV-XIII I SEE SO CLEARLY

I see so clearly now my similar years Repeat each other, shod in rusty black, Like one hack following another hack In meaningless procession, dry of tears, Driven empty, lest the noses sharp as shears Of gutter-urchins at a hearse’s back Should sniff a man died friendless, and attack With silly scorn his deaf triumphant ears; I see so clearly how my life must run One year behind another year until At length these bones that leap into the sun Are lowered into the gravel, and lie still, I would at times the funeral were done And I abandoned on the ultimate hill.

IV-XIV YOUR FACE IS LIKE A CHAMBER

Your face is like a chamber where a king Dies of his wounds, untended and alone, Stifling with courteous gesture the crude moan That speaks too loud of mortal perishing, Rising on elbow in the dark to sing Some rhyme now out of season but well known In days when banners in his face were blown And every woman had a rose to fling. I know that through your eyes which look on me Who stand regarding you with pitiful breath, You see beyond the moment’s pause, you see The sunny sky, the skimming bird beneath, And, fronting on your windows hopelessly, Black in the noon, the broad estates of Death.

IV-XV THE LIGHT COMES BACK

The light comes back with Columbine; she brings A touch of this, a little touch of that, Coloured confetti, and a favour hat, Patches, and powder, dolls that work by strings And moons that work by switches, all the things That please a sick man’s fancy, and a flat Spry convalescent kiss, and a small pat Upon the pillow,--paper offerings. The light goes out with her; the shadows sprawl. Where she has left her fragrance like a shawl I lie alone and pluck the counterpane, Or on a dizzy elbow rise and hark-- And down like dominoes along the dark Her little silly laughter spills again!

IV-XVI LORD ARCHER, DEATH

Lord Archer, Death, whom sent you in your stead? What faltering prentice fumbled at your bow, That now should wander with the insanguine dead In whom forever the bright blood must flow? Or is it rather that impairing Time Renders yourself so random, or so dim? Or are you sick of shadows and would climb A while to light, a while detaining him? For know, this was no mortal youth, to be Of you confounded, but a heavenly guest, Assuming earthly garb for love of me, And hell’s demure attire for love of jest: Bringing me asphodel and a dark feather, He will return, and we shall laugh together!

IV-XVII LOVING YOU LESS THAN LIFE

Loving you less than life, a little less Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess I cannot swear I love you not at all. For there is that about you in this light-- A yellow darkness, sinister of rain-- Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight To dwell on you, and dwell on you again. And I am made aware of many a week I shall consume, remembering in what way Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek, And what divine absurdities you say: Till all the world, and I, and surely you, Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

IV-XVIII I, BEING BORN A WOMAN

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.

IV-XIX WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

IV-XX STILL WILL I HARVEST BEAUTY

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: In coloured fungus and the spotted fog Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows Of rust and oil, where half a city throws Its empty tins; and in some spongy log Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog. . . . And a black pupil in the green scum shows. Her the inhabiter of divers places Surmising at all doors, I push them all. Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge Turn back forevermore with craven faces, I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!

IV-XXI HOW HEALTHILY THEIR FEET

How healthily their feet upon the floor Strike down! These are no spirits, but a band Of children, surely, leaping hand in hand, Into the air in groups of three and four, Wearing their silken rags as if they wore Leaves only and light grasses, or a strand Of black elusive seaweed oozing sand, And running hard as if along a shore. I know how lost forever, and at length How still these lovely tossing limbs shall lie, And the bright laughter and the panting breath; And yet, before such beauty and such strength, Once more, as always when the dance is high, I am rebuked that I believe in death.

IV-XXII EUCLID ALONE HAS LOOKED

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.