Collected Works (Vol. III)

62 ROSA MUNDI, AND OTHER LOVE-SONGS Let the lake of thought be as still as dark- mans ! Broeding over magian pools of madness ! Love, the sun, arise and abide above us, Mary Mavourneen. XII. XANTIPPE. SWEET, do you scold? I had rather have you scold Than from another earn a million kisses. The tiger rapture on your skin’s Greek gold Is worth a million smiles of sunken cold And Arctic archangelic passion rolled From any other woman. Heaven misses The half of God’s delight who doth not see Some lightning anger dart like love and strike Into the sacred heart its iterant glee Of scathing tortures worth Hell’s agony To melt—ah, sweet, I know ! in foam and free Lustre of love redoubled. Come to me! I will avenge that anger, like to like, With gentle fires of smitten love, will burn Into your beauty with the athletic rush Of conquering godhead; and your cheek shall] burn From red of wrath to shame’s adorable blush, And so in tears and raptures mix the cup Of dreadful wine we are wont to drain and —well !— Needs but one glance to lift the liquor up, One angry grip to wake me, and to swell The anguish into rapture—come, to sup The liquid lava of the lake of Hell ! XIII, EILEEN. THE frosty fingers of the wind ; the eyes Of the melancholy wind : the voice serene Of the love-moved wind: theexulling secrecies Of the subtle wind: lament, O harmonies Of the most musical wind! Eileen! 1 Night—an old English canting word. The peace of the nameless loch: the waiting heart Of the amorous loch: the lights unguessed, unseen, Of the midnight loch; the winter’s sorrow apart Of the ice-bound loch: O majesty of art Ot the most motionless loch ! Eileen ! The gleam of the hills: the stature of the hills Facing the wind and the loch: the cold and clean Sculpture of the stalwart hills ; the iron wills Of the inscrutable hills! O strength that stills The cry of the agonised hills! Eileen! Come back, O thought, alike from burn and ben And sacred loch and rapture strong and keen Of the wind of the moor, A race of little men Lives with the little. The exalted ken Knows the synthetic soul. Eileen! Close in the silence cling the patient eyes Of love: the soul accepts her time of teen, Awaits the answer. Midnight droops and dies, A floral hour; what dawn of love shall rise On a world of sorrow? Teace! Eileen! Mazed in a Titan world of rock and snow? Horséd among the bearded Bedawin ? Drowsed on a tropic river in the glow Of sunset? Whither? Who shall care or know, When one and all are this? [ileen! XIV Tuk night is void of stars: the moon is full, Veiling their radiance with her beautiful Mist of still light. O slumbrous air ! Wings of the winter, droop to-mght ! Behold The mirror of shuddering silver in the gold Setting of louse involving hair !