What haply comes that pleases or that palls. Touched on the stand the thrice-struck baton calls, Once more I watch the unfolding curtain rise, I hear the exultant violins premise The well-known tune that thrills me and enthralls. Then trembling in my joy I see you flash Before the footlights to the cymbals' clash, With laughing lips, swift feet, and brilliant glance, You, fair as heaven and as a rainbow bright, You, queen of song and empress of the dance, Flower of mine eyes, my love, my heart's delight! EXPECTATION COME while the afternoon of May Is sweet with many a lilac-spray, 607 Come while the sparrows chirping fare Bring me release from ancient pain, A VAIN DESIRE DEAR, did you know how sweet to me Was every glance of yours, how sweet The laugh that lights your face with glee, The passing murmur of your feet, And seeing perchance with grief how vain The love that makes you sadly dear Did grant for my unuttered pain A whispered word, a smile, a tear Dropped like a star from Paradise, Then might I bless my weary state, Though you behold me from the skies And I on earth am desolate. THE SEVEN WHISTLERS WHISTLING strangely, whistling sadly, whistling sweet and clear, The Seven Whistlers have passed thy house, Pentruan of Porthmeor; It was not in the morning, nor the noonday's golden grace, It was in the dead waste midnight, when the tide yelped loud in the Race ; The tide swings round in the Race, and they're plaining whisht and low, And they come from the gray sea-marshes, where the gray sea-lavenders grow; And the cotton grass sways to and fro; And the gore-sprent sundews thrive With oozy hands alive. Canst hear the curlews' whistle through thy dreamings dark and drear, How they're crying, crying, crying, Pentruan of Porthmeor? Shall thy hatchment, mouldering grimly in yon church amid the sands, Stay trouble from thy household ? Or the carven cherub-hands Which hold thy shield to the font? Or the gauntlets on the wall Keep evil from its onward course, as the great tides rise and fall? The great tides rise and fall, and the cave sucks in the breath Of the wave when it runs with tossing spray, and the ground-sea rattles of Death; "I rise in the shallows," 'a saith, "Where the mermaid's kettle sings, And the black shag flaps his wings!" Ay, the green sea-mountain leaping may lead horror in its rear, When thy drenched sail leans to its yawning trough Pentruan of Porthmeor! Yet the stoup waits at thy doorway for its load of glittering ore, And thy ships lie in the tideway, and thy flocks along the moor; And thine arishes gleam softly when the October moonbeams wane, ALL SOULS' NIGHT O MOTHER, mother, I swept the hearth, I set his chair and the white board spread, I prayed for his coming to our kind Lady when Death's sad doors would let out the dead; A strange wind rattled the window-pane, and down the lane a dog howled on. I called his name and the candle flame burnt dim, pressed a hand the doorlatch upon. Deelish! Deelish! my woe forever that I could not sever coward flesh from fear. I called his name and the pale Ghost came; but I was afraid to meet my dear. O mother, mother, in tears I checked the sad hours past of the year that's o'er, Till by God's grace I might see his face and hear the sound of his voice once more; The chair I set from the cold and wet, he took when he came from unknown skies Of the land of the dead; on my bent brown head I felt the reproach of his sad dened eyes; I closed my lids on my heart's desire, crouched by the fire, my voice was dumb; At my clean-swept hearth he had no mirth, and at my table he broke no crumb. Deelish! Deelish! my woe forever that I could not sever coward flesh from fear: His chair put aside when the young cock cried, and I was afraid to meet my dear. |