Laurence Hope

“ Song by Valgovind The fields are full of Poppies, and the skies are very blue, By the Temple in the coppice, I wait, Beloved, for you. The level land is sunny, and the errant air is gay, With scent of rose and honey; will you come to me to-day? From carven walls above me, smile lovers; many a pair. "Oh, take this rose and love me!" she has twined it in her hair. He advances, she retreating, pursues and holds her fast, The sculptor left them meeting, in a close embrace at last. Through centuries together, in the carven stone they lie, In the glow of golden weather, and endless azure sky. ”

“ Beauty maddens the sense like Wine! "She triumphs to think that your heart is won, Stately, dark-eyed Lover of mine! I had not a thought of myself, not one: Beauty maddens the brain like Wine! "She will speak you softly, while skies are blue, Dear, deluded Lover of mine! I would lose both body and soul for you: Beauty maddens the brain like Wine! "While the ways are fair she will love you well, Dear, disdainful Lover of mine! But I would have followed you down to Hell: Beauty maddens the soul like Wine! "Though you lay at her feet the days to be, Now no longer Lover of mine! ”

“ The Plains How one loves them These wide horizons; whether Desert or Sea,— Vague and vast and infinite; faintly clear— Surely, hid in the far away, unknown "There," Lie the things so longed for and found not, found not, Here. Only where some passionate, level land Stretches itself in reaches of golden sand, Only where the sea line is joined to the sky-line, clear, Beyond the curve of ripple or white foamed crest,— Shall the weary eyes Distressed by the broken skies,— Broken by Minaret, mountain, or towering tree,— Shall the weary eyes be assuaged,—be assuaged,—and rest. ”

“ What will your brother say, to-night returning With laden camels homewards to the hills, Finding you dead, and me asleep beside you, Will he awake me first before he kills? For I shall sleep. Here on the cot beside you When you, my Heart's Delight, are cold in death. When your young heart and restless lips are silent, Grown chilly, even beneath my burning breath. When I have slowly drawn my knife across you, Taking my pleasure as I see you swoon, I shall sleep sound, worn out by love's last fervour, And then, God grant your kinsmen kill me soon! ”

“ Why was our passion so fleeting, why had the flush of your beauty Only so slender a spell, only so futile a power? Yet, even thus ever is life, save when long custom or duty Moulds into sober fruit Love's fragile and fugitive flower. Fain would my soul have been faithful; never an alien pleasure Lured me away from the light lit in your luminous eyes, But we have altered the World as pitiful man has leisure To criticise, balance, take counsel, assuredly lies. All through the centuries Man has gathered his flower, and fenced it, —Infinite strife to attain ”

“ Pleasure is one with Pain, if too intense. I envy these: the steps that you will tread, The jasmin that will touch you by its leaves, When, in your slender height, you stoop your head At the low door beneath the palm-thatched eaves. For though you utterly belong to me, And love has done his utmost 'twixt us twain, Your slightest, careless touch yet seems to be That keen delight so much akin to pain. The night breeze blows across the still Lagoon, And stirs the Palm-trees till they wave above Our pile-built huts; Oh, come, my Lord, come soon, There is no Breeze to cool the heat of love. ”

“ But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings; Poor beasts, and poorer men. Nay, who shall blame them? Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things. The world is horrible and I am lonely, Let me rest here where yellow roses bloom And find forgetfulness, remembering only Your face beside me in the scented gloom. Nay, do not shrink! I am not here for passion, I crave no love, only a little rest, Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion, Against the tender coolness of your breast. ”

“ Never escape Your memory woven about the beautiful things of life. The sudden Thought of your Face is like a Wound When it comes unsought On some scent of Jasmin, Lilies, or pale Tuberose. Any one of the sweet white fragrant flowers, Flowers I used to love and lay in your hair. Sunset is terribly sad. I saw you stand Tall against the red and the gold like a slender palm; The light wind stirred your hair as you waved your hand, Waved farewell, as ever, serene and calm, To me, the passion-wearied and tost and torn, Riding down the road in the gathering grey. ”

“ Song of the Colours: by Taj Mahomed Rose-colour Rose Pink am I, the colour gleams and glows In many a flower; her lips, those tender doors By which, in time of love, love's essence flows From him to her, are dyed in delicate Rose. Mine is the earliest Ruby light that pours Out of the East, when day's white gates unclose. On downy peach, and maiden's downier cheek I, in a flush of radiant bloom, alight, Clinging, at sunset, to the shimmering peak I veil its snow in floods of Roseate light. ”

“ Some one who plays, and smokes, and loves, no more! Some one who took last night his fill of pleasure, As I took mine at dawn! The knife went home Straight through his heart! God only knows my rapture Bathing my chill hands in the warm red foam. And so I pain you? This is only loving, Wait till I kill you! Ah, this soft, curled hair! Surely the fault was mine, to love and leave you Even a single night, you are so fair. Cold steel is very cooling to the fervour Of over passionate ones, Beloved, like you. Nay, turn your lips to mine. ”

“ I am weary unto death, Oh my rose with jasmin breath, With this longing for your beauty and your light.
Youth I am not sure if I knew the truth What his case or crime might be, I only know that he pleaded Youth, A beautiful, golden plea! Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes, Its roseate velvet skin— A plea to cancel a thousand lies, Or a thousand nights of sin. The men who judged him were old and grey Their eyes and their senses dim, He brought the light of a warm Spring day To the Court-house bare and grim. ”

“ When Passion folds his wearied wings Sleep should be follower, never Thought. "Ay, let us sleep. The window pane Grows pale against the purple sky. The dawn is with us once again, The dawn; which always means good-bye." Within her little trellised room, beside the palm-fringed sea, She wakeful in the scented gloom, spoke of her youth to me.
Ojira, to Her Lover I am waiting in the desert, looking out towards the sunset, And counting every moment till we meet. I am waiting by the marshes and I tremble and I listen Till the soft sands thrill beneath your coming feet. ”

“ Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing, But know that death must win the game at last. As round the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter, The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,— As the pink Lotus floats on azure water, Innocent of the mud from whence it springs. You walk through life, unheeding all the sorrow, The fear and pain set close around your way, Meeting with hopeful eyes each gay to-morrow, Living with joy each hour of glad to-day. I love to have you thus (nay, dear, lie quiet, How should these reverent fingers wrong your hair?) ”

“ Death is a transient thing.
This Month the Almonds Bloom at Kandahar I hate this City, seated on the Plain, The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar, Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain, This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar. The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight, Screening my happiness as evening fell. It was well worth—that most Enchanted Night— This life in torment, and the next in Hell! People are kind to me; one More than Kind, Her lashes lie like fans upon her cheek, But kindness is a burden on my mind, And it is weariness to hear her speak. ”

“ Whose fingers traced, In this arid waste, These rioting, twisted, figures of love and lust. Strange, weird things that no man may say, Things Humanity hides away;— Secretly done,— Catch the light of the living day, Smile in the sun. Cruel things that man may not name, Naked here, without fear or shame, Laughed in the carven stone. Deep in the Temple's innermost Shrine is set, Where the bats and shadows dwell, The worn and ancient Symbol of Life, at rest In its oval shell, By which the men, who, of old, the land possessed, Represented their Great Destroying Power. ”

“ You were mine, from dusk until dawning light, For the perfect whole of that bygone night You belonged to me! They say that Love is a light thing, A foolish thing and a slight thing, A ripe fruit, rotten at core; They speak in this futile fashion To me, who am wracked with passion, Tormented beyond compassion, For ever and ever more. They say that Possession lessens a lover's delight, As radiant mornings fade into afternoon. I held what I loved in my arms for many a night, Yet ever the morning lightened the sky too soon. ”

“ Loved with a love beyond all words or sense, Lost with a grief beyond the saltest tear, So lovely, so removed, remote, and hence So doubly and so desperately dear! Stars! from your skies so purple and so calm, That through the centuries your secrets keep, Send to this worn-out brain some Occult Balm, Send me, for many nights so sleepless, sleep. And ere the sunshine of the Desert jars My sense with sorrow and another day, Through your soft Magic, oh, my Silver Stars! Turn sleep to Death in some mysterious way. ”

“ They find no Respite and reach no Rest, Though passion fail and desire grow dim, No assuagement comes from the thing possessed For possession feeds the fire. "Oh, for the life of the bright hued things Whose marriage and death are one, A floating fusion on golden wings. Alit with passion and sun! "But we who re-marry a thousand times, As the spirit or senses will, In a thousand ways, in a thousand climes, We remain unsatisfied still." As her lover left her, alone, awake she lies, With a sleepless brain and weary, half-closed eyes. ”

“ Lie still and let me in my desolation Caress the soft loose hair a moment's span. Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation, And love the only Lethe left to man. Ah, give me here beneath the trees in flower, Beside the river where the fireflies pass, One little dusky, all consoling hour Lost in the shadow of the long grown grass Give me, oh you whose arms are soft and slender, Whose eyes are nothing but one long caress, Against your heart, so innocent and tender, A little Love and some Forgetfulness. ”

“ Perhaps, still further back than this, In times ere men were men, You granted me a moment's bliss In some dark desert den, When, with your amber eyes alight With iridescent flame, And fierce desire for love's delight, Towards my lair you came Ah laughing, ever-brilliant eyes, These things men may not know, But something in your radiance lies, That, centuries ago, Lit up my life in one wild blaze Of infinite desire To revel in your golden rays, Or in your light expire. ”

“ He takes no heed, Their bones, unburied, strewn upon the plain, Only increase the frenzy of His greed To add more victims to th' already slain. He loves the haggard frame, the shattered mind, Gloats with delight upon the glazing eye, Yet, in one thing, His cruelty is kind, He sends them lovely dreams before they die; Dreams that bestow on them their heart's desire, Visions that find them mad, and leave them blest, To sink, forgetful of the fever's fire, Softly, as in a lover's arms, to rest. ”

“ Strong am I, over strong, to eyes that tire, In the hot hue of Rapine, Riot, Flame. Death and Despair are black, War and Desire, The two red cards in Life's unequal game. Green I am the Life of Forests, and Wandering Streams, Green as the feathery reeds the Florican love, Young as a maiden, who of her marriage dreams, Still sweetly inexperienced in ways of Love. Colour of Youth and Hope, some waves are mine, Some emerald reaches of the evening sky. ”

“ The Girl from Baltistan Throb, throb, throb, Far away in the blue transparent Night, On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness, She hears the sound of her lover's nearing boat Afar, afloat On the river's loneliness, where the Stars are the only light; Hear the sound of the straining wood Like a broken sob Of a heart's distress, Loving misunderstood. She lies, with her loose hair spent in soft disorder, On a silken sheet with a purple woven border, Every cell of her brain is latent fire, Every fibre tense with restrained desire. ”