New Collected Rhymes [8]
didst thou fulfil The task thy braggart tongue begot, We eat our leek with better will, We'd rather be alive than not.
ZIMBABWE
(The ruined Gold Cities of Rhodesia. The Ophir of Scripture.)
Into the darkness whence they came, They passed, their country knoweth none, They and their gods without a name Partake the same oblivion. Their work they did, their work is done, Whose gold, it may be, shone like fire About the brows of Solomon, And in the House of God's Desire.
Hence came the altar all of gold, The hinges of the Holy Place, The censer with the fragrance rolled Skyward to seek Jehovah's face; The golden Ark that did encase The Law within Jerusalem, The lilies and the rings to grace The High Priest's robe and diadem.
The pestilence, the desert spear, Smote them; they passed, with none to tell The names of them who laboured here: Stark walls and crumbling crucible, Strait gates, and graves, and ruined well, Abide, dumb monuments of old, We know but that men fought and fell, Like us, like us, for love of Gold.
LOVE'S CRYPTOGRAM
[The author (if he can be so styled) awoke from a restless sleep, with the first stanza of the following piece in his mind. He has no memory of composing it, either awake or asleep. He had long known the perhaps Pythagorean fable of the bean-juice, but certainly never thought of applying it to an amorous correspondence! The remaining verses are the contribution of his Conscious Self!]
ELLE.
I cannot write, I may not write, I dare not write to thee, But look on the face of the moon by night, And my letters shalt thou see. For every letter that lovers write, By their loves on the moon is seen, If they pen their thought on the paper white, With the magic juice of the bean!
LUI.
Oh, I had written this many a year, And my letters you had read. Had you only told me the spell, my dear, Ere ever we twain were wed! But I have a lady and you have a lord, And their eyes are of the green, And we dared not trust to the written word, Lest our long, long love be seen!
ELLE.
"Oh, every thought that your heart has thought, Since the world came us between, The birds of the air to my heart have brought, With no word heard or seen." 'Twas thus in a dream we spoke and said Myself and my love unseen, But I woke and sighed on my weary bed, For the spell of the juice of the bean!
TUSITALA
We spoke of a rest in a fairy knowe of the North, but he, Far from the firths of the East, and the racing tides of the West, Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite Southern Sea, Weary and well content in his grave on the Vaea crest.
Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales, Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight, Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hill; and the sails Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night.
Winds of the West and the East in the rainy season blow Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet, Winds of the East and West as they wander to and fro, Bear him the love of the land he loved, and the long regret.
Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea Flowed between us, but now that no wash of the wandering tides Sunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be, Whom only the unbridged stream of the river of Death divides.
DISDAINFUL DIAPHENIA
There is no venom in the Rose That any bee should shrink from it; No poison from the Lily flows, She hath not a disdainful wit; But thou, that Rose and Lily art, Thy tongue doth poison Cupid's dart!
Nature herself to deadly flowers Refuseth beauty lest the vain Insects that hum through August hours With beauty should suck in their bane; But thou, as Rose or Lily fair, Art circled with envenomed air!
Like Progne didst thou lose thy tongue, Thy lovers might adore and live; Like that witch Circe, oft besung, Thou hast dear gifts, if thou wouldst give; But since thou hast a wicked wit, Thy lovers fade, or flee from it.
TALL SALMACIS
Were an apple tree a pine,
ZIMBABWE
(The ruined Gold Cities of Rhodesia. The Ophir of Scripture.)
Into the darkness whence they came, They passed, their country knoweth none, They and their gods without a name Partake the same oblivion. Their work they did, their work is done, Whose gold, it may be, shone like fire About the brows of Solomon, And in the House of God's Desire.
Hence came the altar all of gold, The hinges of the Holy Place, The censer with the fragrance rolled Skyward to seek Jehovah's face; The golden Ark that did encase The Law within Jerusalem, The lilies and the rings to grace The High Priest's robe and diadem.
The pestilence, the desert spear, Smote them; they passed, with none to tell The names of them who laboured here: Stark walls and crumbling crucible, Strait gates, and graves, and ruined well, Abide, dumb monuments of old, We know but that men fought and fell, Like us, like us, for love of Gold.
LOVE'S CRYPTOGRAM
[The author (if he can be so styled) awoke from a restless sleep, with the first stanza of the following piece in his mind. He has no memory of composing it, either awake or asleep. He had long known the perhaps Pythagorean fable of the bean-juice, but certainly never thought of applying it to an amorous correspondence! The remaining verses are the contribution of his Conscious Self!]
ELLE.
I cannot write, I may not write, I dare not write to thee, But look on the face of the moon by night, And my letters shalt thou see. For every letter that lovers write, By their loves on the moon is seen, If they pen their thought on the paper white, With the magic juice of the bean!
LUI.
Oh, I had written this many a year, And my letters you had read. Had you only told me the spell, my dear, Ere ever we twain were wed! But I have a lady and you have a lord, And their eyes are of the green, And we dared not trust to the written word, Lest our long, long love be seen!
ELLE.
"Oh, every thought that your heart has thought, Since the world came us between, The birds of the air to my heart have brought, With no word heard or seen." 'Twas thus in a dream we spoke and said Myself and my love unseen, But I woke and sighed on my weary bed, For the spell of the juice of the bean!
TUSITALA
We spoke of a rest in a fairy knowe of the North, but he, Far from the firths of the East, and the racing tides of the West, Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite Southern Sea, Weary and well content in his grave on the Vaea crest.
Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales, Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight, Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hill; and the sails Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night.
Winds of the West and the East in the rainy season blow Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet, Winds of the East and West as they wander to and fro, Bear him the love of the land he loved, and the long regret.
Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea Flowed between us, but now that no wash of the wandering tides Sunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be, Whom only the unbridged stream of the river of Death divides.
DISDAINFUL DIAPHENIA
There is no venom in the Rose That any bee should shrink from it; No poison from the Lily flows, She hath not a disdainful wit; But thou, that Rose and Lily art, Thy tongue doth poison Cupid's dart!
Nature herself to deadly flowers Refuseth beauty lest the vain Insects that hum through August hours With beauty should suck in their bane; But thou, as Rose or Lily fair, Art circled with envenomed air!
Like Progne didst thou lose thy tongue, Thy lovers might adore and live; Like that witch Circe, oft besung, Thou hast dear gifts, if thou wouldst give; But since thou hast a wicked wit, Thy lovers fade, or flee from it.
TALL SALMACIS
Were an apple tree a pine,