Helen Hay Whitney

“ Like little adders thro’ the leaves,
Lost ere their flitting has begun.
The cool light airs that fan our brow,
What aromatic sweets they know!
The tall tired trees that make our sky
Are lapped in spices as they bow. ”

“ Love, love, love. [Pg 17] SANS-JOY
Hide your eyes, Angels, beneath your gold phylacteries,
Israfel will charm you with the magic of his song:
Yet you will not smile for him, by reason of your memories,
For Lucifer is absent, and the cry goes up, How long!
For his expiation you would give your dreams and destinies,
Paradise is clouded by the measure of your pain;
Hide your eyes, Angels, beneath your gold phylacteries,
Till the jasper gates swing wide to bring him home again. ”

“ Deny our parents in our deeds to-day.
Let us awake—obedient to our dreams,
Let us embrace huge issues, comprehending
The scheme entire—Great Beauty’s birth, which seems
The glorious urge for life, unchecked, unending. ”

“ You are mine—by Life and Death!” [Pg 53] FOAM
I have dallied with wantons, made mad by their passionate wine,
Time, like a golden ball, I have tossed to the wastes of the air.
I have whispered with Beauty, whose song has been sister to mine,
Laughed with the long late hours who lie with the stars in their hair.
Like the spume on the crest of the wave blowing back to the sea,
Cast from the depths beneath, now to riot and dance in the light,
I have flung you the foam of my heart, to be mask unto me,
Caught to my heart again from the doom of your fugitive sight. ”

“ Desperate, golden and green, wild as a river in spate?
Her long lithe limbs were brown, and she took the world as a leopard,
Grave, disdainful and strong, takes of his prey without hate.
Glamourie slept in her eyes, terribly calm in the tumult,
Hidden and secret and sweet was the smile of her crimson mouth.
A marigold wound in her hair, she swayed like wind in the desert,
Burning and thrilling to thirst the hearts that dream of the South. [Pg 41]
Whence came the fire in her eyes? ”

“ Till the last leaf whirls thro’ the clanging gate
Of the last sunrise. Did he learn too late?
Maybe, that one may hear the moans and cries
That ring by night, and yet be calm and wise.
And teach the women how a man can hate!
I did not think a soul could live so long,
And be so little. He remembers youth
With a wry smile of disbelief; the wrong
Was this, he squeezed the fruit so dry
So long ago; and now must live, forsooth
Because a woman will not let him die. ”

“ She shall pity me not,” he said;
“Too late for the nether way of hate,
I may flout her when I’m dead.”
Out in the dark of the moonless sky, [Pg 52]
The rope was round his neck,
“’Tis the torque of gold from her throat so cold,
Why should I rue or reck?”
Tighter tangled the hempen cord;
“’Tis her fingers hot with fire,
In a tempest of fear she draws me near,—
Now dying is not so dire!”
Black, more black grew the empty void,
“And I but a broken reed,
For there’s only her face in this grisly place”—
But his love stood there indeed! ”

“ And Life empoisoned,” yet I cried, “Give Life.” [Pg 46] THE BROOK
I have a little brook in the deeps of my heart.
What does it matter if the day be chill or clear,
Coloured like a tourmaline and wingèd like a dart,
Voiced like a nightingale, it sings all the year. ”

“ At ease thro’ the exquisite hours.
My blossoms of lilies and pansies,
Pale heliotrope, rosemary, rue,
All lull me with delicate fancies
As shy as the dawn and the dew.
But the ghost—Gods—the ghost in the gloaming,
How it lures me with whispers and cries,
How it speaks of the wind and the roaming,
Free, free, ’neath the Romany skies.
’Tis the hedge that is crimson with roses,
All wonderfully crimson and gold,
And caged in my beautiful closes
I know what it is to be old. [Pg 15] THE SLAVE WOMAN ”