Poems & Ballads Volume I Part 22

O my lord, O Love, I have laid my life at thy feet; Have thy will thereof, Do as it please thee with it, For what shall please thee is sweet.

I am come unto thee To do thee service, O Love; Yet cannot I see Thou wilt take any pity thereof, Any mercy on me.

But the grace I have long time sought Comes never in sight, If in her it abideth not, Through thy mercy and might, Whose heart is the world's delight.

Thou hast sworn without fail I shall die, For my heart is set On what hurts me, I wot not why, But cannot forget What I love, what I sing for and sigh.

She is worthy of praise, For this grief of her giving is worth All the joy of my days That lie between death's day and birth, All the lords.h.i.+p of things upon earth.

Nay, what have I said?

I would not be glad if I could; My dream and my dread Are of her, and for her sake I would That my life were fled.

Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you, Then were I dead; If I sang not a little to say to you, (Could it be said) O my love, how my heart would be fed; Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart, For thy love's sake I live, Do but tell me, ere either depart, What a lover may give For a woman so fair as thou art.

The lovers that disbelieve, False rumours shall grieve And evil-speaking shall part.

BEFORE PARTING

A month or twain to live on honeycomb Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme, And that strong purple under juice and foam Where the wine's heart has burst; Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray Even to change the bitterness of it, The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet, To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise Over my face and eyes.

And yet who knows what end the scythd wheat Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?

These were not sown, these are not harvested, They grow a month and are cast under feet And none has care thereof, As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow of your lips by rote, Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows; The fas.h.i.+on of fair temples tremulous With tender blood, and colour of your throat; I know not how love is gone out of this, Seeing that all was his.

Love's likeness there endures upon all these: But out of these one shall not gather love.

Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough To make love whole and fill his lips with ease, As some bee-builded cell Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.

I know not how this last month leaves your hair Less full of purple colour and hid spice, And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care; And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet Worth patience to regret.

THE SUNDEW

A little marsh-plant, yellow green, And p.r.i.c.ked at lip with tender red.

Tread close, and either way you tread Some faint black water jets between Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing maybe; who shall know?

The summer knows and suffers it; For the cool moss is thick and sweet Each side, and saves the blossom so That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns About it; breathless though it be, Bow down and wors.h.i.+p; more than we Is the least flower whose life returns, Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and c.u.mbered in earth's sight With wants, with many memories; These see their mother what she is, Glad-growing, till August leave more bright The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong gra.s.s, Blown all one way to shelter it From trample of strayed kine, with feet Felt heavier than the moorhen was, Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

You call it sundew: how it grows, If with its colour it have breath, If life taste sweet to it, if death Pain its soft petal, no man knows: Man has no sight or sense that saith.

My sundew, grown of gentle days, In these green miles the spring begun Thy growth ere April had half done With the soft secret of her ways Or June made ready for the sun.

O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower, I have a secret halved with thee.

The name that is love's name to me Thou knowest, and the face of her Who is my festival to see.

The hard sun, as thy petals knew, Coloured the heavy moss-water: Thou wert not worth green midsummer Nor fit to live to August blue, O sundew, not remembering her.

FLISE

_Mais o sont les neiges d'antan?_

What shall be said between us here Among the downs, between the trees, In fields that knew our feet last year, In sight of quiet sands and seas, This year, Flise?

Who knows what word were best to say?

For last year's leaves lie dead and red On this sweet day, in this green May, And barren corn makes bitter bread.

What shall be said?

Here as last year the fields begin, A fire of flowers and glowing gra.s.s; The old fields we laughed and lingered in, Seeing each our souls in last year's gla.s.s, Flise, alas!

Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep, Not we, though this be as it is?

For love awake or love asleep Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss, A song like this.

I that have slept awake, and you Sleep, who last year were well awake, Though love do all that love can do, My heart will never ache or break For your heart's sake.

The great sea, faultless as a flower, Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze, And laughs with love of the amorous hour.

I found you fairer once, Flise, Than flowers or seas.

We played at bondsman and at queen; But as the days change men change too; I find the grey sea's notes of green, The green sea's fervent flakes of blue, More fair than you.

Your beauty is not over fair Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.

The smell of flowers in all your hair Allures not now; no sigh replies If your heart sighs.

But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound, You find love's new name good enough.

Less sweet I find it than I found The sweetest name that ever love Grew weary of.

My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake Grown tame and glad to be caressed, With lips athirst for mine to slake Their tender fever! who had guessed You loved me best?

I had died for this last year, to know You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?

I care not if love come or go Now, though your love seek mine for mate.

It is too late.