At a Life's End
COME here, rekindle the old fire,
This last night leave no lamp unlit!
In later days we twain shall sit,
Remembering the joys of it,--
The warmth and sweetness of desire.
Here, ere we part, again live o'er
The way we went,--the hour,--the kiss;
Let Love with magic hand of his
Rebuild the mirage of our bliss
In desert days that wend before.
Swart night of August! when we stood
Heart-locked beside the window-pane!
The thunder quickening again
The laggard pulses of the rain,
Wrung a few drops as hot as blood.
Outside we heard the passionate tune
That wooing wind and water keep;
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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The Father
The evening found us whom the day had fled,
Once more in bitter anger, you and I,
Over some small, some foolish, trivial thing
Our anger would not decently let die,
But dragged between us, shamed and shivering
Until each other's taunts we scarcely heard,
Until we lost the sense of all we said,
And knew not who first spoke the fatal word.
It seemed that even every kiss we wrung
We killed at birth with shuddering and hate,
As if we feared a thing too passionate.
However close we clung
One hour the next hour found us separate,
Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.
To-night we quarrelled over one small head,
Our fruit of last year's maying, the white bud
Blown from our stormy kisses and the dead
First rapture of our wild, estranging blood.
You clutched him: there was panther in your eyes,
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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White Magic
Is it not a wonderful thing to be able to force an astonished plant to bear rare flowers which are foreign to it. . . and to obtain a marvelous result from sap which, left to itself, would have produced corollas without beauty? -VIRGIL.
I stood forlorn and pale,
Pressed by the cold sand, pinched by the thin grass,
Last of my race and frail
Who reigned in beauty once, when beauty was,
Before the rich earth beckoned to the sea,
Took his salt lips to taste,
And spread this gradual waste-
This ruin of lower, this doom of grass and tree.
Each Spring could scarcely lift
My brows from the sand drift
To fill my lips with April as she went,
Or force my weariness
To its sad, summer dress:
On the harsh beach, I heard the grey sea rise,
The ragged grass made ceaseless, dim lament,
And day and night scarce changed the mournful skies.
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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In the Orchard
'I thought you loved me.' 'No, it was only fun.'
'When we stood there, closer than all?' 'Well, the harvest moon
Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head.'
'That made you?' 'Yes.' 'Just the moon and the light it made
Under the tree?' 'Well, your mouth, too.' 'Yes, my mouth?'
'And the quiet there that sang like the drum in the booth.
You shouldn't have danced like that.' 'Like what?' 'So close,
Whith your head turned up, and the flower in your hair, a rose
That smelt all warm.' 'I loved you. I thought you knew
I wouldn't have danced like that with any but you.'
'I didn't know, I thought you knew it was fun.'
'I thought it was love you meant.' 'Well, it's done.' 'Yes, it's done.
I've seen boys stone a blackbird, and watched them drown
A kitten... it clawed at the reeds, and they pushed it down
Into the pool while it screamed. Is that fun, too?'
'Well, boys are like that... Your brothers...' 'Yes, I know.
But you, so lovely and strong! Not you! Not you!'
'They don't understand it's cruel. It's only a game.'
'And are girls fun, too?' 'No, still in a way it's the same.
It's queer and lovely to have a girl...' 'Go on.'
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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To the Old Gods
O YE, who rode the gales of Sicily,
Sandalled with flame,
Spread on the pirate winds; o ye who broke
No wind-flower as ye came--
Though Pelion shivered when the thunder spoke
The gods' decree!--
Into the twilight of the ancient days
Have not ye flown!--
Ye, whom the happy Greeks inspired hand
Struck from the frenzied stone:
That, ye withdrawn, your images should stand
To take their praise.
Smeared into clay, and frozen into stone!
Ye, that do now
Face eyes unworshipful in plunder's halls,
Mutilate, with marred brow:
Broken and maimed: couched along alien walls
In lands unknown.
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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Words
Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles,--
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis? --MARLOWE
Bring the great words that scourge the thundering line
With lust and slaughter-words that reek of doom
And the lost battle and the ruined shrine;--
Words dire and black as midnight on a tomb;
Hushed speech of waters on the lip of gloom;
Huge sounds of death and plunder in the night;--
Words whose vast plumes above the ages meet,
Girdling the lost, dark centuries in their flight,
The slave of their unfetterable feet.
Bring words as pure as rills of earliest Spring
In some far cranny of the hillside born
To stitch against the earth's green habiting;--
Words lonely as the long, blue fields of morn;--
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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The End of Love
WHO shall forget till his last hour be come,--
Until the useful service of the dust
Hath drawn the emptying cerements in and in;--
Until the Earth hath eaten love and lust,
Mirth, Beauty, and their kin . . .
Who shall forget that hour
That night unstarred, that day ungarlanded;
Where fell the petals of that fadeless flower?
When every word was said
That long had bared frustrate and savage teeth,
Leashed in the perishable thong of days,
And whipped to words of praise!
When every ill, and each ingratitude,
Each joy misnamed,
Each deed misunderstood,
Was flogged into the daylight, halt, and maimed,
Out of its bier, to bear the day's disgust--
Out of its decent bed
To beat Love's tortured head
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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Leda
Do you remember, Leda?
There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such things have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of these flowers?
I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss
My withered hands are curled on pain
That were so wide once, after bliss.
And gold is springing in my hair
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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The Chalice of Circe
DRINK of our Cup--of the red wine that burns in it,
All the wild shames that have crusted its mouth,
Passion that twists in it, Madness that churns in it,
Fever that yearns in it, Folly that turns in it,
Drink of our Cup! It is Love, it is Youth!
"Amorous valleys have travailed to breed in it,
Eden hath shaken one tree at its brim,
Syria scattered an infamous seed in it,
Paphos hath freed in it lovers, to bleed in it,
Foam from Armida hath rusted its rim!
Chalice of gold with the bruised roses dying there,
How the mad kisses have clustered and clung!
All the sweet loves of the world, softly crying there,
Longing and lying there, swooning and sighing there,
Call to me: "Scatter our wine on thy tongue!"
Rim of it: poisoned with carrion kisses,
Taints the fresh flower, and forbiddeth the sun:
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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The New Aspasia
If I have given myself to you, and you,
And if these pale hands are not virginal,
Nor these bright lips beneath your own lips true,
What matters it? I do not stand nor fall
By your old foolish judgments of desire:
If this were Helen's way it is not mine;
I bring you Beauty, but no Troys to fire:
The cup I hold brims not with Borgia's wine.
You, so sudden snared of brows and breasts,
Lightly you think upon these lips, this hair.
My thoughts are kinder: you are pity's guests:
Compassion's bed you share.
It was not lust delivered me to you;
I gave my wondering mouth for pity's sake,
For your strange, sighing lips I did but break
Many times this bread, and poured this wine anew.
My body's woven sweetness and kindling hair
Were given for heal of hurts unknown of me,
For something I could slake but could not share.
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poem by Muriel Stuart
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