The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems quotes

… NOT OVER-KIND NOR OVER-QUICK V-X SHE HAD FORGOTTEN V-XI IT CAME INTO HER MIND V-XII TENDERLY, IN THOSE TIMES V-XIII FROM THE WAN DREAM V-XIV SHE HAD A HORROR V-XV THERE WAS UPON THE SILL V-XVI THE DOCTOR ASKED HER V-XVII GAZING UPON HIM NOW

My heart, being hungry, feeds on food The fat of heart despise.

Beauty where beauty never stood, And sweet where no sweet lies I gather to my querulous need, Having a growing heart to feed.

It may be, when my heart is dull, Having attained its girth, I shall not find so beautiful The meagre shapes of earth, Nor linger in the rain to mark The smell of tansy through the dark.

Now the autumn shudders In the rose's root.

Far and wide the ladders Lean among the fruit. Now the autumn clambers Up the trellised frame, And the rose remembers The dust from which it came. Brighter than the blossom On the rose's bough Sits the wizened, orange, Bitter berry now; Beauty never slumbers;

Now the autumn clambers Up the trellised frame, And the rose remembers The dust from which it came. Brighter than the blossom On the rose's bough Sits the wizened, orange, Bitter berry now; Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers

I am a shepherd of those sheep That climb a wall by night, One after one, until I sleep, Or the black pane goes white.

Because of which I cannot see A flock upon a hill, But doubts come tittering up to me That should by day be still.

Beat me a crown of bluer metal; Fret it with stones of a foreign style:

The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while.

Weave me a robe of richer fibre; Pattern its web with a rare device. Give away to the child of a neighbor This gold gown I was glad in twice.

I drank at every vine. The last was like the first.

I came upon no wine So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root. I ate of every plant. I came upon no fruit So wonderful as want. Feed the grape and bean To the vintner and monger; I will lie down lean With my thirst and my hunger.

It is that a wind too strong Bent my back when I was young, It is that I fear the rain Lest it blister me again.

Spring rides no horses down the hill, But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.

And all the loveliest things there be Come simply, so, it seems to me. If ever I said, in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied;

… shallows, Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem, But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem, Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows, Free of these and making a song of them, I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!

It's little I care what path I take, And where it leads it's little I care; But out of this house, lest my heart break, I must go, and off somewhere.

It's little I know what's in my heart, What's in my mind it's little I know, But there's that in me must up and start, And it's little I care where my feet go.

Year be springing or year be falling, The bark will drip and the birds be calling. There's much that's fine to see and hear In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year.

'Tis not love's going hurts my days, But that it went in little ways.

Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows across the sea. And I shall meet a fisherman Out of Capri, And he will say, seeing me, "What a strange thing! Like a fish's scale or a Butterfly's wing."

Sweet we were for a summer month As the sun on the dry white sand; Mild we were for a summer month As the wind from over the weirs. And blessed be Death, that hushed with salt The harsh and slovenly years!

Who builds her a house with love for timber Builds her a house of foam.

And I'd rather be bride to a lad gone down Than widow to one safe home.

But there was I, a great boy, And what would folks say To hear my mother singing me To sleep all day, In such a daft way? Men say the winter Was bad that year; Fuel was scarce, And food was dear.

A wind with a wolf's head Howled about our door, And we burned up the chairs And sat upon the floor.

All that was left us Was a chair we couldn't break, And the harp with a woman's head Nobody would take, For song or pity's sake. The night before Christmas I cried with the cold, I cried myself to sleep Like a two-year-old.

Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough And harvested in barrels.

The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins, In an orchard soft with rot.

No, I will go alone. I will come back when it's over. Yes, of course I love you. No, it will not be long. Why may you not come with me?-- You are too much my lover. You would put yourself Between me and song.

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough And gathered into barrels.

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

Though the branches bend like reeds, Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree, He that would eat of love may bear away with him Only what his belly can hold, Nothing in the apron, Nothing in the pockets.

No, I will go alone. I will come back when it's over. Yes, of course I love you. No, it will not be long. Why may you not come with me?-- You are too much my lover.

You would put yourself Between me and song.

If I go alone, Quiet and suavely clothed, My body will die in its chair, And over my head a flame, A mind that is twice my own, Will mark with icy mirth The wise advance and retreat Of armies without a country, Storming a …

Anyhow, it's nothing to me. I can remember, and so can you. (Though we'd better watch out for you-know-who, When we sit around remembering Spring). We shall hardly notice in a year or two.

You can get accustomed to anything.

The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro. I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . . They said: Come along! They said:

This being done, there let the matter rest. What more remains is neither here nor there. That you requite me not is plain to see; Myself your slave herein have I confessed: Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me;

But if I suffer, it is my own affair.

Love is not blind. I see with single eye Your ugliness and other women's grace. I know the imperfection of your face,-- The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high For beauty.

So am I caught that when I say, "Not fair," 'Tis but as if I said, "Not here--not there-- Not risen--not writing letters." Well I know What is this beauty men are babbling of; I wonder only why they prize it so.

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.

No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say:

Else must I turn me from the blossoming year And walk in grief the way that you have gone. Let us go forth together to the spring:

Love must be this, if it be anything.

Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by;

This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore. Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales;

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly Of all the things that are the outward you, And my gaze wanders ere your tale is through To webs of my own weaving, or I see Abstractedly your hands about your knee And wonder why I love you …

Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink! Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.

I never again shall tell you what I think.

I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more: I shall be called a wife to pattern by;

… of that, Coloured confetti, and a favour hat, Patches, and powder, dolls that work by strings And moons that work by switches, all the things That please a sick man's fancy, and a flat Spry convalescent kiss, and a small pat Upon the pillow,--paper offerings.

The light goes out with her; the shadows sprawl.

Where she has left her fragrance like a shawl I lie alone and pluck the counterpane, Or on a dizzy elbow rise and hark-- And down like dominoes along the dark Her little silly laughter spills again!

Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning;

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: In coloured fungus and the spotted fog Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows Of rust and oil, where half a city throws Its empty tins;

. . . And a black pupil in the green scum shows. Her the inhabiter of divers places Surmising at all doors, I push them all. Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge Turn back forevermore with craven faces,

I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!

How healthily their feet upon the floor Strike down!

And yet, before such beauty and such strength, Once more, as always when the dance is high, I am rebuked that I believe in death.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage;

from that day They went about together, as a rule. She told, in secret and with whispering, How he had flashed a mirror in her eyes; And as she told, it struck her with surprise That this was not so wonderful a thing.

But what's the odds?--It's pretty nice to know You've got a friend to keep you company everywhere you go.

She had forgotten how the August night Was level as a lake beneath the moon, In which she swam a little, losing sight Of shore;

. . So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late . . . And if the man were not her spirit's mate, Why was her body sluggish with desire? Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,

But the oak tree's shadow was deep and black and secret as a well.

By day She would forget somewhat, and it would seem A silly thing to go with just this dream And get a neighbor to come at night and stay. But it would strike her sometimes, making the tea:

She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company.

There was upon the sill a pencil mark, Vital with shadow when the sun stood still At noon, but now, because the day was dark, It was a pencil mark upon the sill.