Behind The Scenes: Empire

The little painted angels flit,
See, down the narrow staircase, where
The pink legs flicker over it!

Blonde, and bewigged, and winged with gold,
The shining creatures of the air
Troop sadly, shivering with cold.

The gusty gaslight shoots a thin
Sharp finger over cheeks and nose
Rouged to the colour of the rose.

All wigs and paint, they hurry in:
Then, bid their radiant moment be
The footlights' immortality!

poem by Arthur Symons
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Before the Squall

The wind is rising on the sea,
The windy white foam-dancers leap;
And the sea moans uneasily,
And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.

Ridge after rocky ridge uplifts,
Wild hands, and hammers at the land,
Scatters in liquid dust, and drifts
To death among the dusty sand.

On the horizon's nearing line,
Where the sky rests, a visible wall,
Grey in the offing, I divine,
The sails that fly before the squall.

poem by Arthur Symons
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The Price

Pity all faithless women who have loved. None knows
How much it hurts a woman to do wrong to love.
The mother who has felt the child within her move,
Shall she forget her child, and those ecstatic throes?

Then pity faithless women who have loved. These have
Murdered within them something born out of their pain.
These mothers of the child whom they have loved and slain
May not so much as lay the child within a grave.

poem by Arthur Symons
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To Muriel: at the Opera

Roses and rose-buds, red and white,
Nestled between your breasts to-night,
And, lying there with drowsy breath,
Sweetly resigned themselves to death.
Ah, cruel child! that would not so
Suffer the perfumed life to go,
But, hungering for the rose's heart
Of midmost sweetness, plucked apart
Petal from petal: 'Ah!' you said
(With lips that kissed white roses red)
'To live on love and roses!'

Well,
But if the rose were Muriel?

poem by Arthur Symons
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Hands

The little hands too soft and white
To have known more laborious hours
Than those which die upon a night
Of kindling wine and fading flowers;

The little hands that I have kissed,
Finger by finger, to the tips,
And delicately about each wrist
Have set a bracelet with my lips;

Dear soft white little morbid hands,
Mine all one night, with what delight
Shall I recall in other lands,
Dear hands, that you were mine one night!

poem by Arthur Symons
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Declaration

Child, I will give you rings to wear,
And, if you love them, dainty dresses,
Flowers for your bosom and your hair,
And, if you love them, fond caresses;

And I will give you of my days,
And I will leave, when you require it,
My dreams, my books, my wonted ways,
Content if only you desire it.

Love's captive, now his fugitive,
All this I give you, for my part.
I ask but what I cannot give,
I ask no more than this: your heart.

poem by Arthur Symons
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By Loe Pool

The pool glitters, the fishes leap in the sun
With joyous fins, and dive in the pool again;
I see the corn in sheaves, and the harvestmen,
And the cows coming down to the water one by one.
Dragon-flies mailed in lapis and malachite
Flash through the bending reeds and blaze on the pool;
Sea-ward, where trees cluster, the shadow is cool;
I hear a singing, where the sea is, out of sight;
It is noontide, and the fishes leap in the pool.

poem by Arthur Symons
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Flora of the Eden: Antwerp

Eyes that sought my eyes, an-hungered, as a fire;
Hands that sought and caught my hands in their desire;
Hands and eyes that clipt and lipt me as a hungering fire!

But I turned away from your ecstatic eyes,
But my heart was silent to your eager sighs,
But I turned to other eyes from your imploring eyes.

Hands that I rejected, you were fain to give;
Eyes that for their moment loved me, as I live;
Mouth that kissed me: Flora of the Eden, O forgive!

poem by Arthur Symons
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Bohemian Folk-Song

(From the French)
The moon was in the sky,
Pale, pale her light had grown
I went into the forest
All alone.

All alone,
My heart was well-nigh glad,
But when I thought of thee
Grief came and made me sad.

It came with the winds of autumn
When the dead leaves drop from the tree,
Because thy heart hath forgotten
Thy lover afar from thee.

It came with the rain fast falling
Through the dead leaves again,
Because that over a dead love
The heart must weep like rain.

poem by Arthur Symons
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Grey Hours: Naples

There are some hours when I seem so indifferent; all things fade
To an indifferent greyness, like that grey of the sky;
Always at evening-ends, on grey days; and I know not why,
But life, and art, and love, and death, are the shade of a shade.
Then, in those hours, I hear old voices murmur aloud,
And memory forgoes desire, too weary at heart for regret;
Dreams come with beckoning fingers, and I forget to forget;
The world as a cloud drifts by, or I drift by as a cloud.

poem by Arthur Symons
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