ON THE DEATH

]lJ eath , what hast thou to do with me } So saith Love, with eyes set against the face of Death;

What hâve Idone, o thou strong Death, to thee, That mine own lips should wither from thy breath )

Though thou be blind as rire or as the sea,

Why should thy waves and storms make war on me )

Is it for hâte thou hast to flnd me fair, Or for désire to kiss , if it might be ,

My very mouth of song, and kill me there? So with keen rains vexing his crownless hair,

With bright feetbruised from no delightful way, Through darkness and the disenchanted air,

Lost Love went weeping half a winter's day. And the armed wind that smote him seemed to say, How shall the dew live when the dawn is fled, Or wherefore should the Mayflower outlast May }

Then Death took Love by the right hand and said, Smiling : Corne now and look upon thy dead. But Love cast down the glories of his eyes And bowed down like a flower his flowerless head.

And Death spake, saying : What ails thee in such wise, Being god , to shut thy sight up from the skies } If thou canst see not, hast thou ears to hear) Or is thy soûl too as a leaf that dies }

Even as he spake with fleshless lips of fear, But soft as sleep sings in a tired man's ear,

Behold, the wintër was not, and its might Fell , and fruits broke forth of the barren year.

And upon earth was largess of great light ,

And moving music winged for world-wide flight,

And shapes and sounds of gods beheld and heard , And day's foot set upon the neck of night.

And with such song the hollow ways were stirred As of a god's heart hidden in a bird ,

Or as the whole soûl of the sun in spring Should find full utterance in one flower-soft word,

And ail the season should break forth and sing From one flower's lips, in one rose triumphing; Such breath and light of song as of a flame Made ears and spirits of them that heard it ring.

And Love beholding knew not for the same The shape that led him, nor in face nor name,

For he was bright and great of thews and fair, And in Love's eyes he was not Death but Famé.

Not that grey ghost whose life is empty and bare And his limbs mpulded out of mortal air,

A cloud of change that shifts into a shower And dies and leaves no light for time to wear :

But a god clothed with his own joy and power. A god rerisen out of his mortal hour

Immortal , king and lord of time and space , With eyes that look on them as from a tower.

And where he stood the pale sepulchral place Bloomed , as new life might in a bloodless face ,

And were men sorrowing came to seek a tomb With funeral flowers and tears for grief and grâce ,

They saw with light as of a world in bloom The portai of the House of Famé illume

The ways of life wherein we toiling tread, And watched the darkness as a brand consume.

And through the gâtes where rule the deathless dead The sound of a new singer's soûl was shed

That sang among his kinsfolk, and a beam Shot from the star on a new ruler's head.

A new star lighting the Lethean stream, A new song mixed into the song suprême

Made of ail soûls of singers and their might , That makes of life and time and death a dream.

Thy star, thy song, o soûl that in our sight Wast as a sun that made for man's delight

Flowers and ail fruits in season, being so near The sun-god's face, our god that gives us light.

To him of ail gods that we love or fear Thou among ail men by thy name wast dear, 'Dear to the god that gives us spirit of song To bind and burn ail hearts of men that hear.

The god that makes men's words too sweet and strong For life or time or death to do them wrong, Who sealed with his thy spirit for a sign And fîlled it with his breath thy whole life long.

Who made thy moist lips flery with new wine Pressed from the grapes of song the sovereign vine ,

And with ail love of ail things loveliest Gave thy soûl power to make them more divine.

That thou mighf st breathe upon the breathless rest Of marble , till the brows and lips and breast Felt fall from off them as a cancelled curse That speechless sleep wherewith they lived opprest.

i6o LE TOMBEAU

Who gave thee strength and heat of spirit to pierce Ail clouds of form and colour that disperse

And leave the spirit of beauty to remould In types of clean chryselephantine verse.

Who gave thee words more golden than fine gold To carve in shapes more glorious than of old

And build thy songs up in the sight of time As statues set in godhead manifold :

In sight and scorn of temporal change and clime That meet the sun rerisen with refluent rhyme

As god to god might answer face to face From lips whereon the morning strikes sublime.

Dear to the god , our god who gave thee place Among the chosen of days, the royal race,

The lords of light, whose eyes of old and ears Saw even on earth and heard him for a space.

There are the soûls of those once mortal years That wroughtwith fire of joy and light of tears, In words divine as deeds that grew thereof, Such music as he swoons with love who hears.

There are the lives that lighten from above Our under lives, the spheral soûls that move

Through the ancient heaven of song-illumined air Whence we that hear them singing die with love.

DE THEOPHILE GAUTIER. i6t

There ail the crowned Hellenic heads, and there The old gods who made men godlike as they were,

The lyric lips wherefrom ail songs take flre, Live eyes , and light of Apollonian hair.

There round the sovereign passion of that lyre Which the stars hear and tremble with désire ;

The ninefold light Pierian is made one That hère we see divided, and aspire,

Seeing, after this or that crown to be won; But where they hear thé singing of the sun

Ail form , ail sound , ail colour and ail thought Are as one body and soûl in unison.

There the song sung shines as a picture wrought, The painted mouths sing that on earth say nought,

The carven limbs hâve sensé of blood and growth And large -eyed life that seeks nor lacks not aught.

There ail the music of thy living mouth Lives , and ail loves wrought of thine hand in youth And bound about the breasts and brows with gold And coloured pale or dusk from north or south.

Fair living things made to thy will of old, Born of thy lips, no births ofmortal mould,

That in the world of song about thee wait Where thought and truth are one and manifold.

iÔ2 LE TOMBEAU

Within the graven lintels of the gâte That hère divides our vision and our fate,

The dreams we walk in and the truths of sleep , Ail sensé and spirit hâve life inseparate.

There what one thinks , is his to grasp and keep ; There are no dreams, but very joys to reap, No foiled desires that die before delight , No fears to see across our joys and weep.

There hast thou ail thy will of thought and sight, Ail hope for harvest , and ail heaven for flight ;

The sunrise of whose golden- mouthed glad head To paler songless ghosts was heat and light.

Hère where the sunset of our year is red Men think of thee as of the summer dead ,

Gone forth before the snows , before thy day, With unshod feet, with brows unchapleted.

Couldst thou not wait till âge had wound, they say, Round those wreathed brows his soft white blossoms? Nay, Why shouldst thou vex thy soûl with this harsh air, Thy bright-winged soûl, once free to take itsway>

Nor for men's révérence hadst thou need to wear The holy flower of grey time-hallowed hair;

Nor were it fit that aught of thee grew old , Fair lover ail thy days of ail things fair.

And hear we not thy words of mclten gold Singing> or is their light and heat acold

Whereat men warmed their spirits ? Nay, for ail Thèse yet are with us , ours to hear and hold.

The lovely laughter, the clear tears, the call Of love to love on ways where shadows fall ,

Through doors of dim division and disguise, And music made of doubts unmusical ;

The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes, And filled death's lips with flery words and sighs,

And half asleep let feed from veins of his Her close red warm snake's mouth, Egyptian-wise ;

And that great night of love more strange than this , When she that made the whole world's baie and bliss

Made king of the whole world's désire a slave , And killed him in mid kingdom with a kiss ;

Veiled loves that shifted shapes and shafts , and gave , Laughing, strange gifts to hands that durst not crave,

Flowers double -blossomed, fruits of scent and hue Sweet as the bride -bed, stranger than the grave;

Ail joys and wonders of old lives and new That ever in love's shine or shadow grew,

And ail the grief whereof he dreams and grieves , And ail sweet roots fed on his light and dew;

i64 LE TOMBEAU

Ail thèse through thee our spirit of sensé perceives, As threads in the unseen woof thy music weaves,

Birds caught and snared that hil our ears with thee, Bay-blossoms in thy wreath of brow-bound leaves.

Mixed with the masque of death's old comedy Though thou too pass, hâve hère our flowers, that we

For ail the flowers thou gav'st upon thee shed, And pass not crownless to Persephone.

Blue lotus-blooms and white and rosy-red We wind with poppies for thy silent head,

And on this margin of the sundering sea Leave thy sweet light to rise upon the dead.