THE THIRTY-SIXTH DAY
79
She never told: but I might surely see
In the drawn face and haggard eyes
what vast
Voices of misery had held her fast,
And made her curse her own lock’s
cruelty.
So by her beauty and my love we swore,
And by the light within mine eyes, by
her
Sweet shame: that never so we sunder
again.
But she: ‘‘ You swear ‘by thy bright face’
in vain;
‘ By thy sweet self’ you grow a perjurer;
Who have shamed my face and made
me but an whore.”
THE THIRTY-FOURTH DAY.
‘* Ben. Stop there, stop there.
Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale
against the hair.”
Romeo and Jultet.
SWEET are the swift hard struggles ere the
kiss,
When the frail body blushes into tears,
and short breaths cancel the long sigh3,
and fears
Constrain delight, until their import is
Made foolish when the struggle’s synthesis
Leads to hot armistice, as dewy spheres
Glow, and increase the fury that reveres
No God, no heaven but its own hell’s
bliss.
So after desperate shifts of modesty
We could no more; loosened and lax
we lay
Breathing and holding: then in amorous
play
She laughed and left her body’s love to me,
And kissed one kiss holding the heart
of May,
And kissed again, and kissed our lives
away.
THE THIRTY-FIFTH DAY.
‘‘T cannot kiss, that is the humour of it, but
adieu.”
King Henry V.
THE third time bitterly came reason back.
Is it a fault in love when mornings find
The soul grown sober and rethroned the
‘ mind?
Or is it mere necessity to track
The candid chequer cross-wise to the black,
And love, not mutable, yet well inclined
To take his pleasure in becoming blind
After such sight mere day is wont to lack?
_So we were angry with ourselves and said
We would not kiss—two days, and we
would part.
And she prayed heaven that she might
be dead,
And I cursed heaven and my foolish head.
I strove to turn towards old shapes of
Art;
She, to some phantom faded from her
heart.
THE THIRTY-SIXTH DAY.
‘«"Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.”
Phenix and Turtle,
YET ere the stars paled slowly in the east
I could not sleep: and she—how else?
What rest
May a man know until his quiet breast
Beats to her tune? I garbed me as a
priest
And moved towards my Host—on God I
feast !
We lay in naked chastity, caressed
Child-like or dreaming, till the dawn
repressed
Our sighs: that nuptial yet hath never
ceased.