Two orange candles like cat’s eyes
glittered. The yellow tapestries
were smooth against the dark, and all
the room, like a hushed waterfall,
plunged softly down between the two,
who sat together all night through.
She spoke across the darkness “Slow
the dark dividing moments go
between us, and, before we guess,
there is an end of loveliness.
What do we gain by sitting still?
The distant dawn on daffodil
cities, unseen of us, awakes,
and even now the mountain-lakes,
between that touch of lips and this,
change with the sun to topazes.
Or slimmer than slim willow-trees,
in silver secret, Javanese
Srimpis—cold ballet—weave in trance,
still, save for sliding hands, their dance
unseen by us. By us unseen
under red eaves in gold Pekin
the yellow dotards, peering, gage
the leap of crickets in a cage.
Beauty is spilling thus even now
through all the world, while I and thou—
we sit in dark, where no winds stir,
nor seas, each other’s prisoner.
For orange moons in skies of jade,
these candles. For the ambuscade
of drifting isles on lifting seas
we have these quiet tapestries.
For distance, and all adventurings,
this room, and for the white bird’s wings
up, up, and still white wings above—”
“For all these things” he answered “Love.”
“Tell me of love,” she whispered. Stale
jewels—the candle flames grew pale,
and sunk. The room a midnight pool
with night’s dark shape was beautiful.
Pool-charméd he spoke with the grave
cold accent that still waters have.
“What is the world but a guess and a blending
of what was never with that which has an ending?
The waves—those crumpled lions—are but a shadow
of motion in the green mind, sky’s loamy meadow
is with the punctual gold of vision starry,
and on her shoulders slim a dream must carry
—Atlas—the weight of the world’s loveliness.
And Eastern cities, though daffodil, no less
oar, and are anchored in the mind. At most
built of an air so delicate, so ghost,
a whisper of death’s wind, and each one slips
her cable for the dark. And these dim ships
no port for all their burthen of beauty have,
and there is no sea, no landfall in the grave.
These are the ensigns of mortality,
but love from their bright difference is free.
And where he is, what sees and what is seen
are one, and he has healed the old chagrin
’twixt the thinker and his thought. And there’s no war
between the star that sets and the rising star;
for all love’s battles are civil victories,
war self-declared, and internecine peace.
Is he accused of quiet? But love goes riding
to adventure beyond the world, and still he’s chiding
the measurable hearts, whose fears would bind him,
and the cries of the cowards failing shrill behind him.
But love (for you) is only wings that brush
the spirit afraid, and a whisper in the hush,
that stops the heart on a beat? Yet think of this!
When you are old, a pale forgotten kiss
will touch your eyelids, where you sit and ponder,
and all will be gone from you then, all youth, all wonder
—the coloured cities you knew, the amethyst
pennons on the lance of dawn, and the white mist
unrolling from the world—all will be gone,
but the kiss will touch your eyes, where you sit alone.”
Thus he. With lips that hardly move
“Let in the dawn,” she said, “and love.”
He drew the curtains, and at that
from where he lay a silver cat
rose, stretched his silky paws to yawn
at the geraniums of the dawn,
whose petals splashed the window. Then
curled himself up to sleep again.
