Helen Whitney - Sonnets and Songs

As a blown leaf across the face of Time
Your name falls emptily upon my heart.
In this new symmetry you have no part,
No lot in my fair life. The stars still chime
Autumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime.
I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art,
Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses start
To hear your soul remembered in a rhyme.

You may not vex me any more. The stark
Terror of life has passed, and all the stress.
Winds had their will of me, and now caress,
Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I,
As on a mirror, see the days go by
In nonchalant procession to the dark.

I, living love and laughter, have forgot
The way the heart has uttered melody.
As sobbing, plaintive cadence of the sea
A poet’s soul should rest, remembering not
The inland paths of green, the flowers, the spot
Where fairies ring. In hermit ecstasy
Music is born, and gay or wofully
Lovers of Poesy share her lonely lot.

For you and me, Beloved, crowned with Spring,
Catching Love’s flowers from off the lap of Time,
What are the songs my voice has scorned to sing?
Ghostly they hover round my heart-wise lips;
Into a kiss I fold my rose of Rhyme,
Laid like a martyr on your finger-tips.

As a pale child, hemmed in by windy rain,
Patiently turns to touch his well-known toys,
Playing as children play who make no noise,
Yet happy in a way; then sighs again,
To watch the world across the storm-dim pane,
And sees with wistful eyes glad girls and boys
Who romp beneath the rain’s unlicensed joys,
And feels wild longings sweep his gentle brain.

So I, contented with my flowers for stars,
Stroll in my fair, walled garden happily,
Knowing no gladder game till, shrill and sweet,
I hear life’s cry ring down the silent street,
And press my face against the sunlit bars
To watch the joyous spirits who are free.

Ah, Love, have pity!—I am but a child;
I ask but light and laughter, and the tears
Darken the sunlight of my fairest years.
By love made desolate, by love beguiled,
I waste the Spring. Love’s harvest wains are piled
With poppies and gold grain—I glean but fears
Of empty hands, grim hunger, and the jeers
Of happy wives whose loves are reconciled.

But mine! Ah, mine is like a tattered leaf
Upon a turbid stream. I have no pride,
No life, but love, which is a bitter grief.
As a lost star I wander down your sky.
Give me your heart. Open it wide—so wide!
I must have love and laughter, or I die.

Upon your stone the wine of my desire
Is spilled. Your poppy lips have grown too pale
From fasting. Your white hands will not avail
The cold eyes of your heart to light the fire.
I did not think my prayers could ever tire.
Now, like doomed ships, they flutter without sail.
Lost in a calm which held no rock, no gale—
Now, when your chilly smile bids me aspire!

So, without history, my soul is slain—
Woman of barren love; the wine was red—
Beautiful for your spending. Not again
Will the bud blossom where the frost has sped.
Timid, you dared not hark when angels sang.
All, all is lost, without one saving pang.

Better than life, better than sea and morn,
And all the sun-stained fragments of the day—
Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that stray
Across dim twilights—I, the tempest-torn,
Fighting the stars for glory, who must scorn
Heart-drops bespread along love’s cruel way
Like scattered petals on the breast of May—
Better than life I love you, I forlorn.

Better than death—the sleeping and the peace
When warm within the breast of brooding Earth
My weary heart should give its woes release,
The pitiful dark remembering not my loss,
The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth—
Better than death, my love, my burning cross.

Out of the purple treasuries of night
Came the dark wind of evening silver-starred—
Stirred on his cheek. The forest keeping ward
Breathed with a tremulous silence, and the bright,
Bare moon crowned his adoring brow with light.
The exquisite dream of beauty held him hard
In a great love, a forest love, unmarred—
Still unprofaned—by human nature’s sight.

Guarding the temple gates of peace he stood,
Statue of bronze with pagan heart of stone.
Sudden, a dazzling glory lit the wood—
Moon in his soul that dimmed the moon above.
Life was revealed, a Spring-sweet maid, alone—
Beauty was woman, and the woman—Love.

As one who looks too long upon the sun
When he must turn to earth from flame-shot skies
Sees all else dark through his bereaved eyes,
And yet may watch the rainbow ribbons run
Athwart the gravity of gray and dun,
He holds the darkness dearer for the prize
Wherein his only pledge of radiance lies
When he the vast magnificence must shun.

So we who play with rainbows, having seen
The sun’s own face. We may not hold the west,
Which burns against the bosom of the night,
But in the after-glow, with eyes serene,
We still may find, dear heart, the sun’s bequest,
An echoed glory of our passionate light.

How we would live! We’d drink the years like wine,
With all to-morrows hid behind the veil,
Which is your hair; between two lilies pale—
Your slender hands—my heart should lie and shine,
A crimson rose. We’d catch the wind and twine
The evening stars—a chaplet musical—
To crown our folly, lure the nightingale
To sing the bliss your lips should teach to mine.

And if the sage, declaring life is vain,
Should frown upon the flower of all our days
And chide the sun that knows no tears of rain,
He should not tease our heart with cynic eye—
The soul’s vast altar stands beyond his gaze
When two have lived—then shall they fear to die?

Nay, touch me not, nor even with your eyes
Hold mine, for I would speak you, thus afar,
Aloof and chill and lonely as a star.
The hands that urge, the hungry heart that cries,
Have wrapped my love with love’s elusive lies;
The lips that burn have laid a ruddy scar
Against the truth that stands without the bar,
And blinded faith with passion’s mysteries.

Night holds a single moon, day one desire—
Her golden sun; and life a love supreme,
Wherein one moment poises, crowned with fire,
White with the naked truth. Beyond control,
’Tis here, my Sun, in love’s last hour extreme,
I hold aloft my bare, adoring soul.