(Seven Rispetti.)

I.

The colour of the olives who shall say? In winter on the yellow earth they’re blue, A wind can change the green to white or gray, But they are olives still in every hue;

But they are olives always, green or white, As love is love in torment or delight; But they are olives, ruffled or at rest, As love is always love in tears or jest.

II.

We walked along the terraced olive-yard, And talked together till we lost the way; We met a peasant, bent with age and hard, Bruising the grape-skins in a vase of clay;

Bruising the grape-skins for the second wine. We did not drink, and left him, Love of mine; Bruising the grapes already bruised enough: He had his meagre wine, and we our love.

III.

We climbed one morning to the sunny height Where chestnuts grow no more and olives grow; Far-off the circling mountains cinder-white, The yellow river and the gorge below.

“Turn round,” you said, O flower of Paradise; I did not turn, I looked upon your eyes. “Turn round,” you said, “turn round, look at the view!” I did not turn, my Love, I looked at you.

IV.

How hot it was! Across the white-hot wall Pale olives stretch towards the blazing street; You broke a branch, you never spoke at all, But gave it me to fan with in the heat;

You gave it me without a sign or word, And yet, my love, I think you knew I heard. You gave it me without a word or sign: Under the olives first I called you mine.

V.

At Lucca, for the autumn festival, The streets are tulip-gay; but you and I Forgot them, seeing over church and wall Guinigi’s tower soar i’ the black-blue sky;

A stem of delicate rose against the blue; And on the top two lonely olives grew, Crowning the tower, far from the hills, alone; As on our risen love our lives are grown.

VI.

Who would have thought we should stand again together, Here, with the convent a frown of towers above us; Here, mid the sere-wooded hills and wintry weather; Here, where the olives bend down and seem to love us;

Here, where the fruit-laden olives half remember All that began in their shadow last November; Here, where we knew we must part, must part and sever; Here, where we know we shall love for aye and ever.

VII.

Reach up and pluck a branch, and give it me, That I may hang it in my Northern room, That I may find it there, and wake and see —Not you! not you!—dead leaves and wintry gloom.

O senseless olives, wherefore should I take Your leaves to balm a heart that can but ache? Why should I take you hence, that can but show How much is left behind? I do not know.

Apprehension.

I.

O foolish dream, to hope that such as I Who answer only to thine easiest moods, Should fill thy heart, as o’er my heart there broods The perfect fulness of thy memory! I flit across thy soul as white birds fly Across the untrodden desert solitudes: A moment’s flash of wings; fair interludes That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky.

Even such to thee am I; but thou to me As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea, Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill. But who, but who shall give such rest to thee? The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually Call to the land, and call unanswered still.

II.

As dreams the fasting nun of Paradise, And finds her gnawing hunger pass away In thinking of the happy bridal day That soon shall dawn upon her watching eyes; So, dreaming of your love, do I despise Harshness or death of friends, doubt, slow decay, Madness,—all dreads that fill me with dismay And creep about me oft with fell surmise.

For you are true, and all I hoped you are, O perfect answer to my calling heart! And very sweet my life is, having thee. Yet must I dread the dim end shrouded far; Yet must I dream: should once the good planks start, How bottomless yawns beneath the boiling sea!

Adam and Eve.

When Adam fell asleep in Paradise He made himself a helpmeet as he dreamed; And, lo! she stood before his waking eyes, And was the woman that his vision seemed.

She knelt beside him there in tender awe To find the living fountain of her soul, And so in either’s eyes the other saw The light they missed in Heaven, and knew the goal.

Thrice-blessed Adam, husband of thine Eve! She brought thee for her dowry death and shame; She taught thee one may worship and deceive; But yet thy dream and she were still the same; Nor ever in the desert turned thine eyes Towards Lilith by the brooks of Paradise.

Love Without Wings.

EIGHT SONGS.

I.

I thought: no more the worst endures! I die, I end the strife,— You swiftly took my hands in yours And drew me back to life!

II.

We sat when shadows darken, And let the shadows be: Each was a soul to hearken, Devoid of eyes to see.

You came at dusk to find me; I knew you well enough ... O Lights that dazzle and blind me— It is no friend, but Love!

III.

How is it possible You should forget me, Leave me for ever And never regret me!

I was the soul of you, Past Love or Loathing, Lost in the whole of you ... Now, am I nothing?

IV.

The fallen oak still keeps its yellow leaves But all its growth is o’er! So, at your name, my heart still beats and grieves, Although I love no more.

V.

And so I shall meet you Again, my dear; How shall I greet you? What shall I hear?

I, you forgot! (But who shall say You loved me not —Yesterday?)

VI.

Ah me, do you remember still The garden where we strolled together, The empty groves, the little hill Starred o’er with pale Italian heather?

And you to me said never a word, Nor I a single word to you. And yet how sweet a thing was heard, Resolved, abandoned, by us two!

VII.

I know you love me not ... I do not love you; Only at dead of night I smile a little, softly dreaming of you Until the dawn is bright.

I love you not; you love me not; I know it! But when the day is long I haunt you like the magic of a poet, And charm you like a song.

VIII.

O Death of things that are, Eternity Of things that seem! Of all the happy past remains to me, To-day, a dream!

Long blessèd days of love and wakening thought, All, all are dead; Nothing endures we did, nothing we wrought, Nothing we said.

But once I dreamed I sat and sang with you On Ida hill. There, in the echoes of my life, we two Are singing still.

Tuscan Cypress.