William Howells - Poems

Red roses, in the slender vases burning,
Breathed all upon the air,–
The passion and the tenderness and yearning,
The waiting and the doubting and despair.

Still with the music of her voice was haunted,
Through all its charméd rhymes,
The open book of such a one as chanted
The things he dreamed in old, old summer-times.

The silvern chords of the piano trembled
Still with the music wrung
From them; the silence of the room dissembled
The closes of the songs that she had sung.

The languor of the crimson shawl’s abasement,–
Lying without a stir
Upon the floor,–the absence at the casement,
The solitude and hush were full of her.

Without, and going from the room, and never
Departing, did depart
Her steps; and one that came too late forever
Felt them go heavy o’er his broken heart.

And, sitting in the house’s desolation,
He could not bear the gloom,
The vanishing encounter and evasion
Of things that were and were not in the room.

Through midnight streets he followed fleeting visions
Of faces and of forms;
He heard old tendernesses and derisions
Amid the sobs and cries of midnight storms.

By midnight lamps, and from the darkness under
That lamps made at their feet,
He saw sweet eyes peer out in innocent wonder,
And sadly follow after him down the street.

The noonday crowds their restlessness obtruded
Between him and his quest;
At unseen corners jostled and eluded,
Against his hand her silken robes were pressed.

Doors closed upon her; out of garret casements
He knew she looked at him;
In splendid mansions and in squalid basements,
Upon the walls he saw her shadow swim.

From rapid carriages she gleamed upon him,
Whirling away from sight;
From all the hopelessness of search she won him
Back to the dull and lonesome house at night.

Full early into dark the twilights saddened
Within its closéd doors;
The echoes, with the clock’s monotony maddened,
Leaped loud in welcome from the hollow floors;

But gusts that blew all day with solemn laughter
From wide-mouthed chimney-places,
And the strange noises between roof and rafter,
The wainscot clamor, and the scampering races

Of mice that chased each other through the chambers,
And up and down the stair,
And rioted among the ashen embers,
And left their frolic footprints everywhere,–

Were hushed to hear his heavy tread ascending
The broad steps, one by one,
And toward the solitary chamber tending,
Where the dim phantom of his hope alone

Rose up to meet him, with his growing nearer,
Eager for his embrace,
And moved, and melted into the white mirror,
And stared at him with his own haggard face.

But, turning, he was ’ware her looks beheld him
Out of the mirror white;
And at the window yearning arms she held him,
Out of the vague and sombre fold of night.

Sometimes she stood behind him, looking over
His shoulder as he read;
Sometimes he felt her shadowy presence hover
Above his dreamful sleep, beside his bed;

And rising from his sleep, her shadowy presence
Followed his light descent
Of the long stair; her shadowy evanescence
Through all the whispering rooms before him went.

Upon the earthy draught of cellars blowing
His shivering lamp-flame blue,
Amid the damp and chill, he felt her flowing
Around him from the doors he entered through.

The spiders wove their webs upon the ceiling;
The bat clung to the wall;
The dry leaves through the open transom stealing,
Skated and danced adown the empty hall.

About him closed the utter desolation,
About him closed the gloom;
The vanishing encounter and evasion
Of things that were and were not in the room

Vexed him forever; and his life forever
Immured and desolate,
Beating itself, with desperate endeavor,
But bruised itself, against the round of fate.

The roses, in their slender vases burning,
Were quenchéd long before;
A dust was on the rhymes of love and yearning;
The shawl was like a shroud upon the floor.

Her music from the thrilling chords had perished;
The stillness was not moved
With memories of cadences long cherished,
The closes of the songs that she had loved.

But not the less he felt her presence never
Out of the room depart;
Over the threshold, not the less, forever
He felt her going on his broken heart.

Full of beautiful blossoms
Stood the tree in early May:
Came a chilly gale from the sunset,
And blew the blossoms away;

Scattered them through the garden,
Tossed them into the mere:
The sad tree moaned and shuddered,
“Alas! the Fall is here.”

But all through the glowing summer
The blossomless tree throve fair,
And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,
With sunny rain and air;

And when the dim October
With golden death was crowned,
Under its heavy branches
The tree stooped to the ground.

In youth there comes a west-wind
Blowing our bloom away,–
A chilly breath of Autumn
Out of the lips of May.

We bear the ripe fruit after,–
Ah, me! for the thought of pain!–
We know the sweetness and beauty
And the heart-bloom never again.

One sails away to sea,
One stands on the shore and cries;
The ship goes down the world, and the light
On the sullen water dies.

The whispering shell is mute,
And after is evil cheer:
She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,
Many and many a year.

But the stately, wide-winged ship
Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;
Far under, dead in his coral bed,
The lover lies asleep.

Through the silent streets of the city,
In the night’s unbusy noon,
Up and down in the pallor
Of the languid summer moon,