| XXXVII Believe, if ever the bridges of this town, Whose towers are builded without fault or stain, Be taken, and its battlements go down, No mortal roof shall shelter me again: I shall not prop a branch against a bough To hide me from the whipping east or north, Nor tease to flame a heap of sticks, who now Am warmed by all the wonders of the earth. Do you take ship unto some happier shore In such event, and have no thought for me, I shall remain; — to share the ruinous floor With roofs that once were seen far out at sea; To cheer a mouldering army on the march . . . And beg from spectres by a broken arch. XXXVIII You say: "Since life is cruel enough at best;" You say: "Considering how our love is cursed, And housed so bleakly that a sea-gull's nest Were better shelter, even as better nursed Between the breaker and the stingy reeds Ragged and course that hiss against the sand The gull's brown chick, and hushed in all his needs, Than our poor love so harried through the land — You being tender, even with all your scorn, To line his cradle with the world's reproof, And I too devious, too surrendered, born Too far from home to hunt him even a roof Out of the rain —" Oh, tortured voice, be still! Spare me your premise: leave me when you will. XXXIX Love me no more, now let the god depart, If love be grown so bitter to your tongue! Here is my hand; I bid you from my heart Fare well, fare very well, be always young. As for myself, mine was a deeper drouth: I drank and thirsted still; but I surmise My kisses now are sand against your mouth, Teeth in your palm and pennies in your eyes. Speak but one cruel word, to shame my tears; Go, but in going, stiffen up my back To meet the yelping of the mustering years — Dim, trotting shapes that seldom will attack Two with a light who match their steps and sing: To one alone and lost, another thing. XL You loved me not at all, but let it go; I loved you more than life, but let it be. As the more injured party, this being so, The hour's amenities are all to me — The choice of weapons; and I gravely choose To let the weapons tarnish where they lie; And spend the night in eloquent abuse Of senators and popes and such small fry And meet the morning standing, and at odds With heaven and earth and hell and any fool Who calls his soul his own, and all the gods, And all the children getting dressed for school . . . And you will leave me, and I shall entomb What's cold by then in an adjoining room. XLI I said in the beginning, did I not? — Prophetic of the end, though unaware How light you took me, ignorant that you thought I spoke to see my breath upon the air: If you walk east at daybreak from the town To the cliff's foot, by climbing steadily You cling at noon whence there is no way down But to go toppling backward to the sea. And not for birds nor birds'eggs, so they say, But for a flower that in these fissures grows, Forms have been seen to move throughout the day Skyward; but what its name is no one knows. 'Tis said you find beside them on the sand This flower, relinquished by the broken hand. XLII O ailing Love, compose your struggling wing! Confess you mortal; be content to die. How better dead, than be this awkward thing Dragging in dust its feathers of the sky; Hitching and rearing, plunging beak to loam, Upturned, disheveled, uttering a weak sound Less proud than of the gull that rakes the foam, Less kind than of the hawk that scours the ground. While yet your awful beauty, even at bay, Beats off the impious eye, the outstretched hand, And what your hue or fashion none can say, Vanish, be fled, leave me a wingless land . . . Save where one moment down the quiet tide Fades a white swan, with a black swan beside. XLIII Summer, be seen no more within this wood; Nor you red Autumn, down its paths appear; Let no more the false mitrewort intrude Nor the dwarf cornel nor the gentian here; You too be absent, unavailing Spring, Nor let those thrushes that with pain conspire From out this wood their wild arpeggios fling, Shaking the nerves with memory and desire. Only that season which is no man's friend, You, surly Winter, in this wood be found; Freeze up the year; with sleet these branches bend Though rasps the locust in the fields around. Now darken, sky! Now shrieking blizzard, blow! — Farewell, sweet bank; be blotted out with snow. XLIV If to be left were to be left alone, And lock the door and find one's self again — Drag forth and dust Penates of one's own That in a corner all too long have lain; Read Brahms, read Caucer, set the chessmen out In classic problem, stretch the shrunken mind Back to its stature on the rack of thought — Loss might be said to leave its boon behind. But fruitless conference and the interchange With callow wits of bearded cons and pros Enlist the neutral daylight, and derange A will too sick to battle for repose. Neither with you nor with myself, I spend Loud days that have no meaning and no end. XLV I know my mind and I have made my choice; Not from your temper does my doom depend; Love me or love me not, you have no voice In this, which is my portion to the end. Your presence and your favours, the full part That you could give, you now can take away: What lies between your beauty and my heart Not even you can trouble or betray. Mistake me not — unto my inmost core I do desire your kiss upon my mouth; They have not craved a cup of water more That bleach upon the deserts of the south; Here might you bless me; what you cannot do Is bow me down, who have been loved by you. |
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