dreams & dust-第4部分
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〃Deep; deep!
Death…deep!
Deep; deep!
Death…deep!〃
And the dark tide slides and glisters and glides
Snakelike over the secret it hides。
THE SAILOR'S WIFE SPEAKS
YE are dead; they say; but ye swore; ye swore;
Ye would come to me back from the sea!
From out of the sea and the night; ye cried;
Nor the crawling weed nor the dragging tide
Could hold ye fast from me:
Come; ah; come to me!
Three spells I have laid on the rising sun
And three on the waning moon
Are ye held in the bonds of the night or the day
Ye must loosen your bonds and away; away!
Ye must come where I wait ye; soon
Ah; soon! soon! soon!
Three times I have cast my words to the wind;
And thrice to the climbing sea;
If ye drift or dream with the clouds or foam
Ye must drift again home; ye must drift again
home
Wraith; ye are free; ye are free;
Ghost; ye are free; ye are free!
Are the coasts of death so fair; so fair?
But I wait ye here on the shore!
It is I that ye hear in the calling wind
I have stared through the dark till my soul is blind!
O lover of mine; ye swore;
Lover of mine; ye swore!
HUNTED
Oh; why do they hunt so hard; so hard; who have
no need of food?
Do they hunt for sport; do they hunt for hate; do
they hunt for the lust of blood?
。 。 。 。 。 。
If I were a god I would get me a spear; I would
get me horse and dog;
And merrily; merrily I would ride through covert
and brake and bog;
With hound and horn and laughter loud; over the
hills and away
For there is no sport like that of a god with a
man that stands at bay!
Ho! but the morning is fresh and fair; and oh!
but the sun is bright;
And yonder the quarry breaks from the brush and
heads for the hills in flight;
A minute's law for the harried thingthen follow
him; follow him fast;
With the bellow of dogs and the beat of hoofs
and the mellow bugle's blast。
。 。 。 。 。 。
Hillo! Halloo! they have marked a man! there is
sport in the world to…day
And a clamor swells from the heart of the wood that
tells of a soul at bay!
A DREAM CHILD
WHERE tides of tossed wistaria bloom
Foam up in purple turbulence;
Where twining boughs have built a room
And wing'd winds pause to garner scents
And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom;
She broods in pensive indolence。
What is the thought that holds her thrall;
That dims her sight with unshed tears?
What songs of sorrow droop and fall
In broken music for her ears?
What voices thrill her and recall
The poignant joy of happier years?
She dreams 'tis not the winds which pass
That whisper through the shaken vine;
Whose footstep stirs the rustling grass
None else that listened might divine;
She sees her child that never was
Look up with longing in his eyne。
Unkissed; his lifted forehead gains
A grace not earthly; but more rare
For since her heart but only feigns;
Wherefore should love not feign him fair?
Put blood of roses in his veins;
Weave yellow sunshines for his hair?
All ghosts of little children dead
That wander wistful; uncaressed;
Their seeking lips by love unfed;
She fain would cradle on her breast
For his sweet sake whose lonely head
Has never known that tender rest。
And thus she sits; and thus she broods;
Where drifted blossoms freak the grass;
The winds that move across her moods
Pulse with low whispers as they pass;
And in their eerier interludes
She hears a voice that never was。
ACROSS THE NIGHT
MUCH listening through the silences;
Much staring through the night;
And lo! the dumb blind distances
Are bridged with speech and sight!
Magician Thought; informed of Love;
Hath fixed her on the air
Oh; Love and I laughed down the fates
And clasped her; here as there!
Across the eerie silences
She came in headlong flight;
She stormed the serried distances;
She trampled space and night!
Oh; foolish scientists might give
This miracle a name
But Love and I care but to know
That when we called she came。
And since I find the distances
Subservient to my thought;
And of the sentient silences
More vital speech have wrought;
Then she and I will mock Death's self;
For all his vaunted might
There are no gulfs we dare not leap;
As she leapt through the night!
SEA CHANGES
I
MORNING
WE stood among the boats and nets;
We saw the swift clouds fall;
We watched the schooners scamper in
Before the sudden squall;
The jolly squall strove lustily
To whelm the sheltered street
The merry squall that piled the seas
About the patient headland's knees
And chased the fishing fleet。
She laughed; as if with wings her mirth
Arose and left the wingless earth
And all tame things behind;
Rose like a bird; wild with delight
Whose briny pinions flash in flight
Through storm and sun and wind。
Her laughter sought those skies because
Their mood and hers were one;
For she and I were drunk with love
And life and storm and sun!
And while she laughed; the Sun himself
Leapt laughing through the rain
And struck his harper hand along
The ringing coast; and that wind…song
Whose joy is mixed with pain
Forgot the undertone of grief
And joined the jocund strain;
And over every hidden reef
Whereon the waves broke merrily
Rose jets and sprays of melody
And leapt and laughed again。
II
MOONLIGHT
We stood among the boats and nets 。 。 。
We marked the risen moon
Walk swaying o'er the trembling seas
As one sways in a swoon;
The little stars; the lonely stars;
Stole through the hollow sky;
And every sucking eddy where
The waves lapped wharf or rotten stair
Moaned like some stricken thing hid there
And strangled with its own despair
As the shuddering tide crept by。
I loved her; and I hated her
Or did I hate myself because;
Bound by obscure; strong; silken laws;
I felt myself the worshiper
Of beauty never wholly mine?
With lures most apt to snare; entwine;
With bonds too subtle to define;
Her lighter nature mastered mine;
Herself half given; half withheld;
Her lesser spirit still compelled
Its tribute from my franker soul:
Sorebel; slave; and worshiper!
I loved her and I hated her。
I gazed upon her; I; her thrall;
And musing; murmured; What if death
Were just the answer to it all?
Suppose some dainty dagger quaffed
Her life in one deep eager draught?
Suppose some amorous knife caressed
The lovely hollow of her breast?〃
She turned a mocking look to mine:
She read the thought within my eyne;
She held me with her lookand laughed!
Now who may tell what stirs; controls;
And shapes mad fancies into facts?
What trivial things may quicken souls
To irrevocable; swift acts?
Now who has known; who understood;
Wherefore some idle thing
May stab with deadlier sting
Than well…considered insult could?
May spur the languor of a mood
And rouse a tiger in the blood?
Ah; Christ!had she not laughed just when
That fancy came! 。 。 。 for then 。 。 。 and then 。 。 。
A sudden mist dropped from the sky;
A mist swept in across the sea 。 。 。
A mist that hid her face from me 。 。 。
A weeping mist all tinged with red;
A dripping mist that smelt like blood 。 。 。
It choked my throat; it burnt my brain 。 。 。
And through it peered one sallow star;
And through it rang one shriek of pain 。 。 。
And when it passed my hands were red;
My soul was dabbled with her blood;
And when it passed my love was dead
And tossed upon the troubled flood。
III
MOONSET
But see! 。 。 。 the body does not sink;
It rides upon the tide
(A starbeam on the dagger's haft);
With staring eyes and wide 。 。 。
And now; up from the darkling sea;
Down from the failing moon;
Are come strange shapes to mock at me 。 。 。
All pallid from the star…pale sea;
White from the paling moon 。 。 。
Or whirling fast or wheeling slow
Around; around the corpse they go;
All bloodless o'er the sickened sea
Beneath the ailing moon!
And are they only wisps of fog
That dance along the waves?
Only shapes of mist the wind
Drives along the waves?
Or are they spirits that the sea
Has cheated of their graves?
The ghosts of them that died at sea;
Of murdered men flung in the sea;
Whose bodies had no graves?
Lost souls that haunt for evermore
The sobbing reef and hollowed shore
And always…murmuring caves?
Ah; surely something more than fog;
More than starlit mist!
For starlight never makes a sound
And fogs are ever whist
But hearken; hearken; hearken; now;
For these sing as they dance!
As airily; as eerily;
They wheel about and whirl;
They jeer at me; they fleer at me;
They flout me as they swirl!
As whirling fast or swaying slow;
Reeling; wheeling; to and fro;
Around; around the corpse they go;
They chill me with their chants!
These be neither men nor mists
Hearken to their chants:
Ever; ever; ever;
Drifting like a blossom
Seaward; with the starlight
Wan upon her bosom
Ever when the quickened
Heart of night is throbbing;
Ever when the trembling
Tide sets seaward; sobbing;
Shall you see this burden
Borne upon its ebbing:
See her drifting seaward
Like a broken blossom;
Ever see the starlight
Kiss her bruised bosom。
Flight availeth nothing 。 。 。
Still the subtle beaches
Draw you back where Horror
Walks their shingled reaches 。 。