To Elinor Wylie

I
Song for a Lute
(1927)

Seeing how I love you utterly,
And your disdain is my despair,
Alter this dulcet eye, forbear
To wear those looks that latterly
You wore, and won me wholly, wear
A brow more dark, and bitterly
Berate my dulness and my care,
Seeing how your smile is my despair,
Seeing how I love you utterly.

Seeing how I love you utterly,
And your distress is my despair,
Alter this brimming eye, nor wear
The trembling lip that latterly
Under a more auspicious air
You wore, and thrust me through, forbear
To drop your head so bitterly
Into your hands, seeing how I dare
No tender touch upon your hair,
Knowing how I do how fitterly
You do reproach me than forbear,
Seeing how your tears are my despair,
Seeing how I love you utterly.

II
(1928)
For you there is no song . . .
Only the shaking
Of the voice that meant to sing; the sound of the
strong
Voice breaking.

Strange in my hand appears
The pen, and yours broken.
There are ink and tears on the page; only the tears
Have spoken.

III
Sonnet in Answer to a Question
(1938)

Oh, she was beautiful in every part!
The auburn hair that bound the subtle brain;
The lovely mouth cut clear by wit and pain,
Uttering oaths and nonsense, uttering art
In casual speech and curving at the smart
On startled ears of excellence too plain
For early morning!—Obit. Death from strain;
The soaring mind outstripped the tethered heart.

Yet here was one who had no need to die
To be remembered. Every word she said,
The lively malice of the hazel eye
Scanning the thumb-nail close—oh, dazzling dead,
How like a comet through the darkening sky
You raced! . . . would your return were heralded.

IV
Nobody now throughout the pleasant day,
The flowers well tended and the friends not few,
Teases my mind as only you could do
To mortal combat erudite and gay . . .
“So Mr. S. was kind to Mr. K.!
Whilst Mr. K.—wait, I’ve a word or two!”
(I think that Keats and Shelley died with you—
They live on paper now, another way.)

You left me in time, too soon; to leave too soon
Was tragic and in order—had the great
Not taught us how to die?—My simple blood,
Loving you early, lives to mourn you late . . .
As Mr. K., it may be, would have done;
As Mr. S. (oh, answer!) never would.

Gone over to the enemy and marshalled against me
Is my best friend.
What hope have I to hold with my narrow back
This town, whence all surrender?

Someone within these walls has been in love with Death longer than I care to say;
It was not you! . . . but he gets in that way.

Gone under cover of darkness, leaving a running track,
And the mark of a dusty paw on all our splendour,
Are they that smote the table with the loudest blow,
Saying, “I will not have it so!”

No, no.
This is the end.
What hope have I?
You, too, led captive and without a cry!

VI
Over the Hollow Land

Over the hollow land the nightingale
Sang out in the full moonlight.
“Immortal bird,”
We said, who heard;
“What rapture, what serene despair”;
And paused between a question and reply
To hear his varied song across the tulip-scented air.

But I thought of the small brown bird among the rhododendrons at the garden’s end,
Crouching, close to the bough,
Pale cheek wherefrom the black magnificent eye obliquely stared,
The great song boiling in the narrow throat
And the beak near splitting,
A small bird hunched and frail,
Whom the divine uncompromising note that brought the world to its window
Shook from head to tail.
Close to the branch, I thought, he cowers now,
Lest his own passion shake him from the bough.

Thinking of him, I thought of you . . .
Shaken from the bough, and the pure song half-way through.