Poems

CAPRICE

IShe hung the cage at the window:“If he goes by,” she said,“He will hear my robin singing,And when he lifts his head,I shall be sitting here to sew,And he will bow to me, I know.”The robin sang a love-sweet song,The young man raised his head;The maiden turned away and blushed:“I am a fool!” she said,And went on broidering in silkA pink-eyed rabbit, white as milk.IIThe young man loitered slowlyBy the house three times that day;She took her bird from the window:“He need not look this way.”She sat at her piano long,And sighed, and played a death-sad song.But when the day was done, she said,“I wish that he would come!Remember, Mary, if he callsTo-night–I’m not at home.”So when he rang, she went–the elf!–She went and let him in herself.IIIThey sang full long togetherTheir songs love-sweet, death-sad;The robin woke from his slumber,And rang out, clear and glad.“Now go!” she coldly said; “’tis late;”And followed him–to latch the gate.He took the rosebud from her hair,While, “You shall not!” she said;He closed her hand within his own,And, while her tongue forbade,Her will was darkened in the eclipseOf blinding love upon his lips.

SWEET CLOVER

“… My letters back to me.”

II know they won the faint perfume,That to their faded pages clings,From gloves, and handkerchiefs, and thingsKept in the soft and scented gloomOf some mysterious box–poor leavesOf summer, now as sere and deadAs any leaves of summer shedFrom crimson boughs when autumn grieves!The ghost of fragrance! Yet I thrillAll through with such delicious painOf soul and sense, to breathe againThe sweet that haunted memory still.And under these December skies,As bland as May’s in other climes,I move, and muse my idle rhymesAnd subtly sentimentalize.I hear the music that was played,–The songs that silence knows by heart!–I see sweet burlesque feigning art,The careless grace that curved and swayedThrough dances and through breezy walks;I feel once more the eyes that smiled,And that dear presence that beguiledThe pauses of the foolish talks,When this poor phantom of perfumeWas the Sweet Clover’s living soul,And breathed from her as if it stole,Ah, heaven! from her heart in bloom!IIWe have not many ways with pain:We weep weak tears, or else we laugh;I doubt, not less the cup we quaff,And tears and scorn alike are vain.But let me live my quiet life;I will not vex my calm with grief,I only know the pang was brief,And there an end of hope and strife.And thou? I put the letters by:In years the sweetness shall not pass;More than the perfect blossom wasI count its lingering memory.Alas! with Time dear Love is dead,And not with Fate. And who can guessHow weary of our happinessWe might have been if we were wed?Venice.

THE ROYAL PORTRAITS.

(AT LUDWIGSHOF.)

IConfronting each other the pictures stareInto each other’s sleepless eyes;And the daylight into the darkness dies,From year to year in the palace there:But they watch and guard that no deviceTake either one of them unaware.Their majesties the king and the queen,The parents of the reigning prince:Both put off royalty many years since,With life and the gifts that have always beenGiven to kings from God, to evinceHis sense of the mighty over the mean.I cannot say that I like the faceOf the king; it is something fat and red;And the neck that lifts the royal headIs thick and coarse; and a scanty graceDwells in the dull blue eyes that are laidSullenly on the queen in her place.He must have been a king in his day’Twere well to pleasure in work and sport:One of the heaven-anointed sortWho ruled his people with iron sway,And knew that, through good and evil report,God meant him to rule and them to obey.There are many other likenessesOf the king in his royal palace there;You find him depicted everywhere,–In his robes of state, in his hunting-dress,In his flowing wig, in his powdered hair,–A king in all of them, none the less;But most himself in this on the wallOver against his consort, whoseLaces, and hoops, and high-heeled shoesMake her the finest lady of allThe queens or courtly dames you choose,In the ancestral portrait hall.A glorious blonde: a luxuryOf luring blue and wanton gold,Of blanchéd rose and crimson bold,Of lines that flow voluptuouslyIn tender, languorous curves to foldHer form in perfect symmetry.She might have been false. Of her withered dustThere scarcely would be enough to writeHer guilt in now; and the dead have a rightTo our lenient doubt if not to our trust:So if the truth cannot make her white,Let us be as merciful as we–must.IIThe queen died first, the queen died young,But the king was very old when he died,Rotten with license, and lust, and pride;And the usual Virtues came and hungTheir cypress wreaths on his tomb, and wideThroughout his kingdom his praise was sung.How the queen died is not certainly known,And faithful subjects are all forbidTo speak of the murder which some one didOne night while she slept in the dark alone:History keeps the story hid,And Fear only tells it in undertone.Up from your startled feet aloof,In the famous Echo-Room, with a boundLeaps the echo, and round and roundBeating itself against the roof,–A horrible, gasping, shuddering sound,–Dies ere its terror can utter proofOf that it knows. A door is fast,And none is suffered to enter there.His sacred majesty could not bearTo look at it toward the last,As he grew very old. It opened whereThe queen died young so many years past.IIIHow the queen died is not certainly known;But in the palace’s solitudeA harking dread and horror brood,And a silence, as if a mortal groanHad been hushed the moment before, and wouldBreak forth again when you were gone.The present king has never dweltIn the desolate palace. From year to yearIn the wide and stately garden drearThe snows and the snowy blossoms meltUnheeded, and a ghastly fearThrough all the shivering leaves is felt.By night the gathering shadows creepAlong the dusk and hollow halls,And the slumber-broken palace callsWith stifled moans from its nightmare sleep;And then the ghostly moonlight fallsAthwart the darkness brown and deep.At early dawn the light wind sighs,And through the desert garden blowsThe wasted sweetness of the rose;

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The old-fashioned flatboats were so called.