Undertones Part 7

So do I still remember eyes imbued With far reflections--as the stars suggest The silence, purity and solitude Of infinite peace and rest.

She was my all. I loved her as men love A high desire, religion, an ideal-- The meaning purpose in the loss whereof G.o.d shall alone reveal.

THE SEA SPIRIT

Ah me! I shall not waken soon From dreams of such divinity!

A spirit singing in the moon To me.

White sea-spray driven of the storm Were not so wildly white as she!

She beckoned with a foam-white arm To me.

With eyes dark green, and golden-green Loose locks that sparkled drippingly, Out of the green wave she did lean To me.

And sang; till Earth and Heaven were A far, forgotten memory; For more than Heaven seemed hid in her To me:--

Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home; Love, more than immortality; And music of the dreamy foam For me.

Pa.s.s over her with all thy s.h.i.+ps With all thy stormy tides, O sea!

The memory of immortal lips For me!

A DREAM SHAPE

With moon-white hearts that held a gleam, I gathered wild flowers in a dream, And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood Was odor of the wildwood bud.

From dew, the starlight arrowed through, I wrought a woman's eyes of blue; The lids, that on her eyeb.a.l.l.s lay, Were rose-pale petals of the May.

I took the music of the breeze, And water whispering in the trees, And shaped the soul that breathed below A woman's blossom b.r.e.a.s.t.s of snow.

Out of a rose-bud's veins I drew The fragrant crimson beating through The languid lips of her, whose kiss Was as a poppy's drowsiness.

Out of the moonlight and the air I wrought the glory of her hair, That o'er her eyes' blue heaven lay Like some gold cloud o'er dawn of day.

A shadow's shadow in the gla.s.s Of sleep, my spirit saw her pa.s.s: And, thinking of it now, meseems We only live within our dreams.

For in that time she was to me More real than our reality; More real than Earth, more real than I-- The unreal things that pa.s.s and die.

THE VAMPIRE

A lily in a twilight place?

A moonflow'r in the lonely night?-- Strange beauty of a woman's face Of wildflow'r-white!

The rain that hangs a star's green ray Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness, Is not so glimmering green and gray As was her dress.

I drew her dark hair from her eyes, And in their deeps beheld a while Such shadowy moonlight as the skies Of h.e.l.l may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan, And burning cold,--I bent and kissed Such rosy snow as some wild dawn Makes of a mist.

G.o.d shall not take from me that hour, When round my neck her white arms clung!

When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower, Her white throat swung!

Or words she murmured while she leaned!

Witch-words, she holds me softly by,-- The spell that binds me to a fiend Until I die.

WILL-O'-THE-WISP

I.

There in the calamus he stands With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands; His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise; And elfishly, and elfishly, Above the gleam of owlet eyes, A death's-moth cap of downy dyes Nods out at me, nods out at me.

II.

Now in the reeds his face looks white As witch-down on a witches' night; Now through the dark old haunted mill, So eerily, so eerily, He flits; and with a whippoorwill Mouth calls, and seems to syllable, "Come follow me! come follow me!"

III.

Now o'er the sluggish stream he wends, A slim light at his finger-ends; The spotted sp.a.w.n, the toad hath clomb, Slips oozily, slips oozily; His easy footsteps seem to come-- Like bubble-gaspings of the sc.u.m-- Now near to me, now near to me.

IV.

There by the stagnant pool he stands, A fox-fire lamp in flickering hands; The weeds are slimy to the tread, And mockingly, and mockingly, With slanted eyes and eldritch head He leans above a face long dead,-- The face of me! the face of me!

THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

On the black road through the wood As I rode, There the Headless Horseman stood; By the wild pool in the wood, As I rode.

From the shadow of an oak, As I rode, Demon steed and rider broke; By the thunder-shattered oak, As I rode.