Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 23

Comes he from seas afar, Where islands are?

Or from unkempt Forests, or from sterile plains, Whose vastness never any man has dreamt?

Naked and white is he. The stones that clot The road, his feet and knees have wounded not; There is upon his brow something we dread ...

Whence comes he, with his beauty dight, He who has halted with us in the night?

His hair is spread Like a wave of light; His closed hand holds a flower unknown; And all his white of an enchanted thing Is like a cloud-scape doubly shown In waters mirroring.

O brothers, take Care that his sleep ye do not break!

But what a snow is this that trembling gleams Frail on his flank, and buries him in our sight?

And these strange beams, That like a white and scintillant raiment drape His limbs in folds of light?

O brothers! I have seen ... It is a wing ...

Look ye: this is, immortal shape, An angel slumbering.

In the light morn, where the holm its shadow flings, The wanderer adown Heaven's azure steep Has closed his mystic wings: An angel here has gone to sleep!

Never a movement quivers To trouble the transparent, limpid air: Not a leaf s.h.i.+vers ...

It is an angel sleeping there.

What silence! O what calm without an end!

Whence did the stranger unto us descend?

Did he, a weak, frail enemy advance Before the One who strikes, and wills us p.r.o.ne?

Or were there monsters to be overthrown, Some day of courage blind, pierced with his lance, And then his wing grazed Death?

But no, for with a smile his mouth uncloses; And in the silence he reposes.

O let us whisper! Let the shadow's dome Lengthen the hour of sleep with its fresh gloam.

Perchance his soul loved s.p.a.ce, but tender And human still, grew weary of the bare And arid splendour of unvaulted air, And all this sun-swept ether limitless ...

Sad was his heart one day, feebler his soul, His brow too heavy; and, without a goal, Wandering through deathless radiance loathing it, He closed his eyes above The dizzy vast of love, And, keeping at his flank his shamed wings, Down floating, on the earth alit.

But when, awakening, to his feet he springs, Angered, his resistless wings will soar and fly, Resounding through the Azure they devour; And, virgin, with a supernatural, clear cry, He in the dawn will fade, in the infinite hour, Like the keen dream that darts through cosmos deeps, When a flaming meteor leaps, And lights the worlds between.

THE MAN WITH THE LYRE.

No man knows whence, from very far, Came a man who bore a lyre, And his eyes were as bright as a madman's are, And he sang a song of fire To the short strings of his lyre, The love of women, and vain, languis.h.i.+ng desire, Upon his lyre.

His lyre was frail, and flowered with roses pale; And so sweet rose the voice of his breath, That as far as a man's eye wandereth, From the mountain to the vale, From the valley to the forest, from the forest to the plain, Ran the young men, and the la.s.ses sprang To hear the dulcet strain of pain he sang.

"He's a proud man," said all the men.

"Like a soul speaking is this voice of his, So sad and tender, fit to make you swoon, His voice is like a woman's kiss!"-- "Ho!" they said--said all the la.s.ses then-- "He is a lover, with his lyre!

Sweetly he speaks, so sweetly with his lyre, We fain would weep, and would be dying soon...."

But now the singer's voice has changed, he sings Upon the long chords of his lyre The deeds of men, and dukes, and kings, Warring afar from Ophir to Cathay, And over all the earth in great array, And weapons shocked by which the soul is rocked,-- And golden oriflammes spread to the breeze's breath To celebrate the joy of life in death.

"O!" the men, "Alas!" the la.s.ses said, "We understand no longer what you say.

Your voice that soared, like any wing Freed but now from the great paradise, Has gone,--perhaps more proudly hovering,-- We know not in what country now it flies."

"O!" the men, "Alas!" the la.s.ses said.

And children, string by string, Cried under dazzled skies.

Now for his grave man's voice the singer tries The greatest chord of all the lyre.

And to the gravest chord of all he saith Hope that for very youth soars in a breath, And stretching like a wakened beast desire....

And lo! already, by the willows of the river, Beautiful Joy who pa.s.ses binding crowns turns her aside.

And suddenly tempestuous grief rings far and wide, Its strength awakening from the mystery of the chords Dream-voices that deliver....

And lo! our fists are clenched and leaping towards Death's iron gates, and bruised recoiling thence.

"Holla!" the men said; and the la.s.ses laughed.

"Holla!" the men said, "surely he is daft!

He sings, he comes we know not whence; What would he have from us? We have no pence."

(And the la.s.ses laughed.) "Follow," the la.s.ses said, "the werwolf we have started."

And men and maids stoned him with pebbles of the way, And, twining arms and waists, so glad and gay, Singing and laughing, all departed, Laughing and singing, laughing all the way.

But now the solitude is moulding A long music folding and unfolding.

Is it an unseen angel's touch? As in the grey Silence might a phantom shape's, That comes, unrolls its raiment, and escapes, A voice flees, when the breeze has touched and pa.s.sed, And glides within the singing chords....

As a light wind sings at a vessel's mast, The sweet breath mounting from the river towards The singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords.

It is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it gla.s.sed: It is the vague word moving Nature through and through, And which the human lip shall never speak....

And now it bears a soul into the blue; And of a sudden all the melody Rings out with such a grave accord towards The skies, that in the radiant deeps of s.p.a.ce the chords, Magnified, no man can fathom how, Have brushed G.o.d's viewless brow!

SONG OF TEARS AND LAUGHTER.

Two women on the hill-side stood, Where the long road winds through the wood, At dusk of day.

One of them laughs, a-laughing glad and gay, One of them sings, mocking all grisly care; The other moans, and sighs in her despair, The other sobs, crying her heart away.

"Ho!" (says the one) "sweet glides the breeze, My drunken heart upon it flees...."

The other moans, "The wind blows chill, My heart is O! so sad and ill."

One told her story to the gra.s.s-green hill:

"Years and years gone my husband went from me, (Upon the breeze my laughter bounds and blows!) He went to sail upon the doleful sea, And G.o.d knows he has slain his thousand foes.

But let the drunken breeze be blowing strong, He will come back with April's sun ere long, And we shall laugh at troubles o'er and done, Counting the golden booty he has won."

So glad and gay, she laughs and sings her song.

And the other moans in sorrow broken-hearted; The words are broken in her voice that grieves.

"The wind groans; my soul with sorrow heaves; My lord, my lover he is far departed!

His flesh with mine was one, His soul and mine were blent.

And yet one day from me he went, And on my lips held out in vain, Like a drop hung on the rim Of pa.s.sion's cup filled full for him, Is trembling still a kiss I gave not back again.