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Songs of the Unblind Cupid

By J. WM. LLOYD

Who also wrote
Wind Harp Songs
and
The Red Heart in a
White World

Copyright 1899 by J. Wm. Lloyd.  English copyright secured.

She came to me brimming with love;

The cup of a red cactus flower filled with

dew,

The heart of a woman wonderful with color and strength and passionate sweetness,

Without reserve,

Unconditionally:

“All that I am of life and love is yours—take me!”

Ah, the redness of the cactus flower!

Ah, the heart of a woman!

Love is but a great desire—

Coarse, refined, or low, or higher;

Love is like the leaping fire,

Warmth and light, or scorchings dire.

Love gives blindness, insight plain,

Worth or weakness, loss or gain,

Sweetest pleasure, saddest pain,

Thrilling heart, or bursting brain.

Love is pureness, love is lust,

Brutal rape, or restful trust;

Grants full freedom, or says “Must,”

Lifts aloft, or drags in dust.

Love is what the nations need,

Love has made the nations bleed;

Love of all things holds the seed,—

Love the flower, love the weed.

There is then a lower love

Nobler souls will rise above;

To the passion that is higher,

Wiser souls will aye aspire.

A rhyming gallant, once, on wing above,

Rode Pegasus to Venus’ Court of Love;

Whereat her pretty brats came running out

To hold the heavenly horse and kiss his snout,

And pat his flank, and preen his plumey wing,

And hearken with delight his nickering;

And of his restlessness recked not, till put

Was pawing hoof on one sweet baby foot;

Then might been seen a truly curious thing,

Cupid blubbering at a horse’s bit-ring.

Quo’ poet, laughing: “Faith, I did not know

That pains of Love were ever in the toe!”

“Not that,” the darling said, “Boo-hoo!—but—shame!

No lady—e’er will—he-heed—a Love—so lame!”

In his own tears kind Venus washed his face,

And wiped it with her golden tresses’ fleece—

“Don’t cry, dear boy, for mother wills it so

That even limping Loves may often conquests know.”

In love faults foretell the future

Because only organic faults survive—

The offence that has been will be.

Liberty is a God-name forever taken in vain.

The years roll on, and the head grows grey,

But the longing heart doth ever pray,

With a prayer too deep for words to say.

Love is the fountain of youth alway.

“Thou art old!” mocks Love, “and hast had thy day.”

But the heart protesteth:

“Nay, O nay!

My life is love, alway, alway,

And the human heart is young for aye.”

Love is a fountain of youth alway.

“Thou art old,” saith Love, “and thy debt must pay.”

But the heart makes answer:

“Nay, O nay!

My hunger groweth every day,

Grows stronger with eating the years away;

Age is for earnest and youth for play,

The hottest coals ’neath the ashes stay,

And the human heart is young for aye.”

Love is the fountain of youth alway.

Oh little bird, why flutter in my hand!

O little heart, why quiver at my touch!

My hand’s caress would make thee free as air;

My touch must leave thy heart as large as love.

My hand, O sweet, is not a prison wall,

My heart, dear heart, is not a cage for thee,

My hand is but another bird to preen,

My heart is but a hiding-nest and home.

My little bird, press to me heart to heart,

Together with me nestle ’neath the bough,

Wing with me infinite blue worlds, afar,

Where all the clouds are free and winds are warm.

O sing with me, dear bird, the songs of heart,

O sing to me, sweet heart, and sing with me

Of all the bright thoughts of the upper air,

And all the love notes ’neath the skies of dawn.

Why speak of wasted love?

Love is a circle, it pays its own debt.

The lover is an artist in touch.

Love is a vine, they tell;

Ah, yes,

One tendril clingeth to Nell,

And another entwineth on Jess.

Of a truth it were well

That each should have separate hold,

I confess.

Should your trellis have only one post,

Your vine must be sharply pruned;

It cannot grow as it would,

And all luxuriance is lost;

Its bunches are very large,

But only a few are borne;

And should the one pillar give way,

Down the whole vine is torn,

Its leaves in ruin bestrewed,

Prostrate, dishevelled and swooned

Over the sward and the marge;

For many and many a day

Helpless, broken and cold—

Love is a vine, they tell.

Beautiful body of vibrant emotion,

Sweet, throbbing spirit of passion,

Love’s peculiar instrument;

Sobbing throat of my soul’s secret,

Music of all kisses thrillingly printed,

Breath of all sighs, with fettered wings flutteringly beating,

Pulse of my heart’s pain,

Quivering nerve of my love’s longing,

Fancy’s interpreter,

Voice of the world’s forever unspoken

Wine-press of feeling,

Dream-wizard;

Yearning, yearning, yearning; passionately, passionately, passionately crying;

Laughing, rejoicing, smiling, teasing.

Scream of the eagle-hearts,

Upward, upward, fiercely aspiring;

Search of the north-wind in dark pines plaining,

Wailing, mournfully moaning;

Of trade-sea-breezes, palm-palms dashing

Sharply, brightly, under hot suns glittering;

Sound of the little brooks, in wood-hollows, mossy,

Gurgling with hidden laughter;

Fairy-foot dancer of air-drops tinkling.

Word of the thunder-thought,

Of midnight’s weird silences,

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Moon-drawn mysteries,

Sun-birth ecstasies,

Noon’s manhood,

Evening’s Madonna,

Night’s unfolding—

Of the great, wide ocean, wave-tossed, restless, restless forever.

Dreams, visions invoking:—

Of lover’s eyes embracing, long, long mingling, soul-satisfied, forgetting all else, restfully resting each in dear depths of other:

Of heart-drawn lips, tenderly, thrillingly touching, pressing,

Man upon woman’s growing, glowing,

Strong hand under beautiful neck,

Breath-blown billow of silken bosom,

Waves of tresses on white pillow floating,

Souls at one, merging,

Life’s true bloom,

Heaven the chamber:

Of shell-pink babies, softly sleeping,

Under mother-eyes dewy with yearning,

Mother-lips lullabys crooning,

Unspeakable love overshading, fragrant,

Devotedly down-drooping, bending,

Brooding, brooding.

Pair, peace, aspiration, vibration, Nature!—

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O violin! O violin!—

Free spirit in bonds,

Cry incarnate,

Prophet of the over-coming future,

Seer of the ever-beyond, blue, blue distances,

Life’s melodious oracle,—

I love thee,

Thou tongue of the word ineffable!

MAGDALEN.

Unheeded to her hips her dark robe fell;—

Her sweet head bends in agony of soul,

Her long hair, hanging, wet with tears a-roll,

Dissolving pearls of pain her grief to tell,

Her flushed face drooping in her hands doth dwell,

Her beauteous flanks sob-shaken past control,

Her tear-wet bosoms heaving with the whole,

And over all the spikenard’s orient smell.

Speak quickly, Christ!—her tears erase her sin;

Sweet Type of Peace, thou canst not her condemn!

And lo! no man among us dares to stone!

“Weep not! Go forth!—new paths thy feet begin;

Thy foes are dumb, my test confoundeth them;

By love you fell, by wiser loves atone.”

Done at the Calamus House
by Alex E. Wight
MDCCCXCIX.

Now at the Calamus House
Which is in Wellesley Hills
a Village of Massachusetts
in America
Were Printed 650 Copies of
this Booklet, and the Types
Were Distributed Without
any Plates
Being Made