Arthur Symons: Verses about Tears

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.

The night is light and chill,
Stars are awake in the sky,
There's a cloud over the moon;
Round the house on the hill
The wind creeps with its cry
Between a wail and a croon.

I hear the voice of the wind,
The voice of the wind in the night,
Cry and sob and weep,
As the voice of one that hath sinned
Moaning aloud in its might
In the night when he cannot sleep.

Sleep? No sleep is about.
What remembering sin
Wakes and watches apart?...
The wind wails without,
And my heart is wailing within,
And the wind is the voice of my heart.

TO YVETTE GUILBERT

That was Yvette. The blithe Ambassadeurs
Glitters, this Sunday of the Fête des Fleurs;
Here are the flowers, too, living flowers that blow
A night or two before the odours go;
And all the flowers of all the city ways
Are laughing, with Yvette, this day of days.
Laugh, with Yvette? But I must first forget,
Before I laugh, that I have heard Yvette.
For the flowers fade before her: see, the light
Dies out of that poor cheek, and leaves it white;
And a chill shiver takes me as she sings
The pity of unpitied human things;
A woe beyond all weeping, tears that trace
The very wrinkles of the last grimace.

I
When the sobbing lute complains,
Grieving for an ancient sorrow,
This poor sorrow that remains
Fain would borrow,
To give pleading unto sorrow,
Those uncapturable strains.

All, that hands upon the lute
Helped the voices to declare,
Voices mute
But for this, might I not share,
If, alas, I could but suit
Hand and voice unto the lute?
II
If time so sweetly
On true according viols make
Her own completely
The lawless laws of turn and shake;

How should I doubt then
Love, being tuned unto your mood,
Should bring about then
True time and measure of your blood?
III
Why are you sorrowful in dreams?
I am sad in the night;
The hours till morning are white,
I hear the hours' flight
All night in dreams.

Why do you send me your dreams?
For an old love's sake;
I dream if I sleep or wake,
And shall but one heart ache,
For the sake of dreams?

Pray that we sleep without dreams!
Ah, love, the only way
To put sorrow away,
Night or day, night or day,
From the way of dreams!
IV
Strange, to remember tears!
Yet I know that I wept;
And those hopes and those fears,
Strange, were as real as tears!

What's this delicate pain,
Twilight-coloured and grey?
Odour-like through my brain
Steals a shadowy pain.

What's this joy in the air?
Musical as the leaves,
When the white winds are there,
Faint joy breathes in the air.

O Lethe, hidden waters never dry,
We, all we weary and heavy-laden, cry,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

--All we have sinnèd, and yet the scars remain.
--And we, all we had sorrow.--And we had pain.
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou that dost flow from Death to Death through Sleep,
Whose waters are the tears of those that weep,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou that dost bring sweet peace to hospitals,
And to the captive openest prison-walls,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou that dost loose the soul from murdered Truth,
And youth from yesterday, and age from youth,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou from lost love remembered sett'st us free
From hopeless love, a lorn eternity;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou from repentance tak'st the sting, from vice
The memory of a forfeit Paradise;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou in our grief dost hide from us no less
The anguish of remembered happiness;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Thou that dost lay alike on all thy spell,
And free the saint from heaven, the wretch from hell,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

Bring, bring soft sleep, and close all eyes for us,
Sleep without dreams, and peace oblivious;
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

We, all we weary and heavy-laden, cry,
Too tired to live, and yet too weak to die,
O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!

These are the women whom no man has loved.
Year after year, day after day has moved.
These hearts with many longings, and with tears,
And with content; they have received the years
With empty hands, expecting no good thing;
Life has passed by their doors, not entering.
In solitude, and without vain desire,
They have warmed themselves beside a lonely fire;
And, without scorn, beheld as in a glass
The blown and painted leaves of Beauty pass.
Their souls have been made fragrant with the spice
Of costly virtues lit for sacrifice;
They have accepted life, the unpaid debt,
And looked for no vain day of reckoning. Yet
They too in certain windless summer hours
Have felt the stir of dreams, and dreamed the powers
And the exemptions and the miracles
And the cruelty of Beauty. Citadels
Of many-walled and deeply-moated hearts
Have suddenly surrendered to the arts
Of so compelling magic; entering,
They have esteemed it but a little thing
To have won so great a conquest; and with haste
They have cast down, and utterly laid waste,
Tower upon tower, and sapped their roots with flame;
And passed on that eternity of shame
Which is the way of Beauty on the earth.
And they have shaken laughter from its mirth,
To be a sound of trumpets and of horns
Crying the battle-cry of those red morns
Against a sky of triumph. On some nights
Of delicate Springtide, when the hesitant lights
Begin to fade, and glimmer, and grow warm,
And all the softening air is quick with storm,
And the ardours of the young year, entering in,
Flush the grey earth with buds; when trees begin
To feel a trouble mounting from their roots,
And all their green life blossoming into shoots,
They too, in some obscure, unblossoming strife,
Have felt the stirring of the sap of life.
And they have wept, with bowed heads; in the street
They hear the twittering of little feet,
The rocking of the cradles in their hearts.

This is a mood, and, as a mood, departs
With the dried tears; and they resume the tale
Of the dropt stitches; these must never fail
For a dream's sake; nor, for a memory,
The telling of a patient rosary.

I
Yes, I'm dying by inches; the Devil has got his way:
I fought him fourscore years, but he's gripped me hard to-day.
No, not God, not a word of God! For I let him be.
The Devil is waiting, I tell you, but God has forgotten me.
II
Sir, you know I'm a witch? Look here, lean closer down:
If you tossed me into the dyke, you know I couldn't drown;
If you pricked me over with pins, I never could feel a pin;
For the Devil has sealed me his, and I've sinned the Original Sin.
III
Fourscore years have I lived, here in the heart of the Fens,
Dragging ages of years, but fourscore years of men's;
And the pools 'll stir, and the fogs 'll rise, and the winds 'll moan;--
Ay, there were others along with me, once; but they're gone, they're gone.
IV
Ages of years alone! There was Dickon, my man, he died,
And the child didn't die, but her father was on the Almighty's side,
And he took him away to himself; but he left the girl to hell,
And me he left to the Devil, with hardly a soul to sell.
V
Cursed and motherless girl, motherless girl that was mine!
I brought her up on my knees, and she left 'em to herd with swine;
I never have named her name these twoscore years save three:
She cast me off to be harlot, and I cast her off from me.
VI
What's that crying and wailing? The wind? Oh, ay, the wind.
And the wages of sin is death, and the soul shall die that hath sinned.
She cast me off, and she came back home with her baby again;
And I spoke no word, and I shut the door in her face in the rain.
VII
And the baby wailed and wailed on the threshold out in the night;
And all night long she lay at the door, and I sat upright;
And at morn she rose, and I spoke no word, and she went her way;
And the wages of sin is death, and it's I must die to-day.
VIII
Inch by inch I'm dying, and Satan's at watch hard by,
For he'll have my soul,--it was all I had,--when I come to die;
For my man that was he died, and my girl that was she fell,
And I flung my soul away, and the Devil caught it for hell.
IX
Twoscore years save three I've lived the life of a witch,
And I've plagued the cattle and folk with cramp and murrain and stitch;
And I've sold my soul, for my girl she killed my heart: let be;
She cast me off to be harlot, and I cast her off from me.
X
Go, and leave me alone. I'm past your help. I shall lie,
As she lay, through the night, and at morn, as she went in the rain, I shall die.
Go, and leave me alone. Let me die as I lived. But oh,
If the wind wouldn't cry and wail with the baby's cry as I go!