by George Moore
For wolves and ravens would I hail to me,
Sooner than man’s detested sympathy.
SERENADE.
THE infidel has no heaven.
The Christian has but one.
Whilst I, fairest Queen! have seven,
Each singly wooed and won.
Thy heart, O most soulful treasure!
Thine eyes, limpid hazes of light.
Thy mouth, O most tuneful measure!
Thy checks, roses red and white.
Sweet bosom, the sweetest and fairest,
All given, all yielded to me.
Sweet body, the sweetest and rarest
Surrendered, belonging to me. —
But as night would be lonesome and dreary
If star-eyes gazed never down,
So these would be loathsome and weary,
Uncrowned with womanhood’s crown.
SONNET. THE LOST PROFILE.
JUST like a pale white sea-shell misted rose ‘
Is her small ear, and o’er her shoulders fair,
Like trailing hyacinth, flows the clustering hair;
And column-wise straight from her bosom grows
The large full throat. Upon a gold ground glows
The half-lost face; the shadows deepening where
Lie unbeholden beauties, and her bare
Sweet arms an open vesture hiding shows.
Like this reverted head are memories:
For gazing on the past the dreamer sees
A vision of dead faces turned from sight,
Between the glooms of shadow-shapen night
Dimly pourtrayed; for blinding years reveal
Them unto us only in lost profile.
SONG.
LOVE gazed on sweet beauty, and said:
“Oh! there, I might pillow my head,
And dream o’er the love that is dead.”
Love laid on the virginal bed
And kissed the rose breast blossoms red
Till the beauty faded and fled.
Love rose with his pinions outspread,
Forgetting the weak heart that bled,
For Love is by loveliness led.
SONNET. UNATTAINED.
I SAT beside a wondrous apple tree,
Whose branches were on every side weighed down
By rich and luscious fruit, some red, some brown,
Some pink, some white, all colours one could see.
The ripening fruitage stirred a thirst in me,
So, pulling one, I ate, but with a frown
Threw it aside; taste, colour both had flown,
Like dreams when gazed at through reality.
I plucked and ate until my taste was gone,
Then, viewed them with contempt. At last, one day
I spied upon a topmost twig a fair
Fruit which hung out against the sky alone,
I climbed and climbed, but out of reach it lay,
Till it fell withered grey from sun and air.
THE BALCONY.
O MISTRESS sweet! O mine! mistress adorable!
Thy memory doth shine thro’ years unfathomable,
Paling all lesser loves, as Venus when she flies
Forth like a new-fledged dove athwart the starry skies.
I see thee in my dreams upon thy balcony,
Drinking the pale moonbeams, lost in a reverie;
As when I watched thine eyes and sang an under tune,
And all the southern skies seemed purple diamond strewn.
I see thee as thou wast upright majestical,
Thy full arms falling crost, and shadows mystical
Playing around thy face, that purely Greek profile
Of tender subtle grace as taken from a seal.
Art thou as fair as then, O thou! my mistress sweet!
Ah! I did know thee when kings knelt around thy feet,
When gold was spilt as water, when death was sought and found
For thee sin’s fairest daughter, for thee love’s empress crowned.
Is all now gone and passed? Is all now wrecked in dust?
Cannot a kingdom last ruled by the sceptre lust;
Have men set now above thee another, a younger queen?
Are there none now to love thee? Thy lovers who have been?
Is all thy beauty dead? Has ravening decay
Seized on thy peerless head and streaked its gold with grey?
May be! All things must pass, yet gazing in my dream
I see thee in its glass mirrored as in a stream,
Unchanged thou sleepest there tho’ time doth fly so fleet,
Untouched by grief or care, impassionate and sweet.
If I should meet thee now, could I love as before?
A something whispers “No,” within my ear, “No more.
For no man sinks to sleep and dreams his dream again,
A dream awakes to weep, and joy once past is pain.”
SONNET. LOVE’S GRAVE.
WHEN the day of thought has passed I stray around
A sweet, retired grove, bedecked with flowers
Of widowhood; there are the tranquil bowers
Whose calm is never broken by a sound
Or echo from the world; there all is crowned
With still sad peace. So in the secret hours
Thither I turn my thoughts and weep fresh showers
Of love upon that verdant spot of ground.
What men call pleasure I have known, yet here
When all the bitter feast is o’er, I come
To kneel and pray and live within the year
That long has passed. It is my stricken home,
And sitting by its fireless hearth, I hear
Sad memories wail like night-winds round a tomb.
SERENADE.
I HAVE wandered to my love
When the stars kiss in the sea,
When the breeze doth sigh above
In a love-taught melody;
I have wandered to my love
As the moth does to the light,
As the thrush does to the grove,
As the day does to the night.
Like the songs of hollow shells,
Or the music of a stream;
Like the murmur of sea swells,
Or the dreaming of a dream,
I do sing to her I love,
For the spirits guiding me
All my songs and dreamings move
By ineffable decree.
SONNET. SUMMER.
THE tedded grass breathed fragrance of crushed thyme,
The swan seemed slumbering on the silent wave,
And linnets from the flowerful closes gave
Forth sweetly songs in sad uncadenced rhyme,
The setting sun unspeakable, sublime,
Gazed like a god; and down the blue concave,
Like nun adoring in cathedral nave,
The wan moon lay, awaiting her full time.
Drinking the rich deep music nature sang
I sat in dream, lost in a reverie
Of sound; for in a sweet possessive pang
The clear tones of the wondrous melody
Throughout my spirit rapt in worship rang
Hushing the pain of every memory.
SONNET. LAUS VENERIS.
I AM most lovely, fair beyond desire:
My breasts are sweet, my hair is soft and bright,
And every movement flows by instinct right:
Full well I know my touch doth burn like fire,
That my voice stings the sense like smitten lyre;
I am the queen of sensuous delight;
Past years are sealed with the signet of my might;
And at my feet pale present kneels a buyer.
My beds are odorous with soft-shed scent,
And strange moon flowers a tremulous twilight air
Weave over all; and here, alone I sing
My siren songs, until all souls are bent
Within th
e subtle sweet melodious snare.
God, making Love, made me Love’s grievous sting.
RONDEL.
LADY! unwreath thy hair
That is so long and fair,
May’s rain is not so sweet
As the shower of loosened hair
That will fall around my feet.
Lady! unwreath thy hair
That is so long and fair.
The golden curls they paint
Round the forehead of a saint
Ne’er glittered half so bright
As thy electric hair: —
It pales the morning’s light.
Lady! unwreath thy hair
That is so long and fair.
Lady! unwreath thy hair
That is so long and fair,
And weave a web of gold
Of thy enchanted hair
Till all be in its hold.
Lady! unwreath thy hair
That is so long and fair.
SONNET. IN CHURCH.
FROM flowerful fields where a full summer glowed.
Calm with the passion of our love, we strayed
Into an antique chapel, where has prayed,
Since centuries, the peasant to his God:
Silence there reigned, in reverence we bowed
Before the altar. Thro’ stained windows played
The red sunset, until with light and shade,
Purple and gold, the whole was overflowed.
’Tis there in sorrow time the crowds toil-tired
Seek consolation in their misery;
The stricken heart whose way is difficult
There leaves the burden of the thing desired,
And goes forth calm, with those mild hopes that see
Beyond the bitterness of things occult.
SONNET. SUMMER ON THE COAST OF NORMANDY.
THE wind takes breath and softly sighs its sigh
Thro’ her fair fragrant hair. By sea-beach here
We listen to a music sad to hear,
That pours its soul from out the earth and sky
In one long lingering, loving melody.
The ocean waves are still, the sky is clear.
Buds blossom in the mild moist atmosphere
And Nature joys in her fecundity.
We see not Love; we only feel presence
Of something hovering yet invisible;
Not in the sight nor ear, but in the sense
Are his wings seen, and his voice audible,
A fragmentary music, whose intense
Tones find no words its secret soul to tell.
A NIGHT OF JUNE.
THE night was drowned
And crowned
With over-much delight;
A breathless heat
Too sweet
Made faint the sense and sight.
Hanging between
The green
Of vine inwoven bower,
A plenilune,
In swoon,
Glowed like a golden flower.
The shadows slept
And crept
Like fairies to and fro;
And roses hung
And swung
Their censers high and low.
Her gleaming breast
Was dressed
In clouds of amber hair;
And her breath came
Like flame
Thro’ the deep moon-lit air.
Her arms were wound
Around
My downward-gazing face;
And lips reposed,
And closed
Close kissing on the place.
Till passion’s ache
Could take
No new breath to respire;
But sank to sleep
In deep
Visions of blind desire,
Our souls were filled,
And stilled —
With weight of heavenly tears,
And sacred, glad,
And sad
Unreachable strange fears.
“Oh! misery I
Ah! me!”
She murmured o’er and o’er,
“This night will pass
Alas!
As other nights before.”
The moon doth bathe
Her path —
In liquid light and splendour;
As even so
Doth glow
My soul with love most tender.
Life gives us gleams
In dreams
Of something in swift flight,
An instant star
Afar
Lost in the deeps of night.
Joy and delight
Are bright
Only a short-lived hour;
And day’s too soon
In June,
And love’s too frail a flower.
SONNET. LA CHAKMBUSB.
COMB hither to my bosom, subtle snake,
‘ And lie within my breasts; I fear no harm,
For us in spell a weird magnetic charm
Twain turns to one. My shuddering senses ache
On passion’s bitter bound; strange dreams I slake
In kissing thee. Sleep on! what doth alarm
Thee, O my sweet? Is not my bosom warm?
Lie still, the hour is not yet come to wake.
Thy long lithe length entwines around my throat
In strong voluptuous coils; I watch thee float
Leaned out in air to strike the frightened dove,
Thy body oscillates, thy jet eyes glare
Lurid with fire. Oh! fly the circling snare
Bewitched bird, for here is death in love.
SONG. THE ASSIGNATION.
DRINKING the warm rich air
Laden with breath of roses,
I leaned and kissed her fair
Sweet bosom and her hair
Within the laurel closes.
The purple skies were strewn
With stars innumerable;
And in love-laden swoon
Upon Night’s breast the moon
Lay half invisible.
Till, lo! Astarte bright Rose o’er the shadowy vale,
And filled the whole deep night
With crystalline low light, White, tremulous, and pale.
Then on the star-lit bank,
Dreaming of what love’s bliss is,
We trembled and we sank;
And thro’ her lips I drank
Her soul in rapturous kisses.
SONNET. TO A LOST ART.
GONE from me, dead, O child of my weak heart!
Child, yet a mistress, wooed most lover-wise,
Wooed long, — but never won, — with weary sighs,
With toil and many tears; but tho’ we part
For e’er I love thee still; I now must start
Upon another path, with other eyes
And hands to beckon me. Will they despise
Me as thou didst? my sweet, my own lost Art.
Tho’ I have wed thy sister, thou, my sweet
Wilt keep thy place in my most hidden sense;
My dreams and secret thoughts will ever pour,
Not gifts of tribute shells around thy feet,
But love’s Sad offering of my impotence,
A fruitless wave that can but kiss thy shore.
HENDECASYLLABLES. ELIANE. —
HERE is absolute love-time, hear me, Carmen,
Carmen, fairest of women, we are lovers,
Lovers such as the dreaming senses vision
In those luminous moments of immortal
And full mystical blisses where the soul is
As a blossom in summer’s burning noontide.
Here we wandering through the gardens moon-lit
And faint bowers of odour laden roses,
Sing songs womanly speaking sweetest passion,
Such as Lesbians, over-smitten lyres
Kissing sister-ward leaning o’er the chosen,
Sung to feverish under-tunes in list’ning
To the fluctuant breathing of the ocean.
CARMEN.
Leaving suppliant lovers (who are falser?)
Beyond hearing of their bewailing. Within
Pale place, beautiful, full of fairest flowers,
In low glimmering of the fading twilight
Lying, hand upon hand we kissing softly,
Watching moon risen through the starless heaven,
Slowly burn to a fireless cinder pleasure.
SONG.
MY soul is like a house of doves,
Each day desires depart,
The doves return, but the desires
Return not to the heart.
The azure of the sky is paled
Beneath their flocks in flight,
That, passing, seek from star to star
A refuge for the night.
O haste! my dream, or thou wilt find
An empty nest in May,
Only the down and broken shells
Of the birds flown away.
LE SUCCUBE.
LIST well! I went towards a wood
By night when all was solitude.
There I surprised mine Enemy
In dark hair sleeping tranquilly.
She smiled amid the rippling deep
Of her dark hair, her eyes asleep.
“That smile by some cruel mystery
Thou hast despoiled from me,” said I,
“And thou dost sleep, assuaged fiend,
The sleep that thou from me did’st rend!”
And then I killed the Enemy
In dark hair sleeping tranquilly.
Her fatal blood flowed here and there
Over the barren briars bare.
Her fatal blood amid the closes
Dishonoured the white snow roses.
You have drunk up her life, O flowers!
Prom whom exude strange tears in showers.
The sombre purples of her wound
Shine in the clustering roses round.
Oh! could I fly your sight beyond,
Red flowerage of this rocky mound.
