John Hay: Verses about Beautiful

Only a week ago, heaven bent so near
It bartered greetings with the jocund earth,
The sweet June day was lived with love and mirth,
A world of verdure laughed in summer cheer.
And when night came its charm was doubly dear;
Under that opulent moon joy knew no dearth;
All beautiful and gracious things had birth
In your eyes' cherishing light; for you were here.
Now all that glow of life is vanished; lorn
The world lies under the cold gleam of morn.
Withered and shrinking in the spectral blue
Hangs the sad moon, a pale and shuddering ghost
Of all that glory in your absence lost
Fading and waning, love, for lack of you.

Two thousand years these temples have been old.
Yet were they not more lovely the first day,
When o'er yon hills the young light blushed and lay
Along the tapering columns, and eve's gold
Over the Tyrrhene sea in glory rolled.
By power of truth, by beauty's royal sway,
While men, and creeds, and kingdoms pass away,
Their gift to charm and awe they calmly hold.
Beauty and truth! by that high grace divine
They force the tribute of the vassal years;
Clouds gloom, the blue wave dimples, the stars shine
To make them fairer; even Time that tears
And shames all other things, here can but bless
And beautify this crumbling loveliness.

I pray you, pardon me, Elsie,
And smile that frown away
That dims the light of your lovely face
As a thunder-cloud the day.
I really could not help it,
Before I thought, 't was done,
And those great gray eyes flashed bright and cold,
Like an icicle in the sun.

I was thinking of the summers
When we were boys and girls,
And wandered in the blossoming woods,
And the gay winds romped with your curls.
And you seemed to me the same little girl
I kissed in the alder-path,
I kissed the little girl's lips, and alas!
I have roused a woman's wrath.

There is not so much to pardon,--
For why were your lips so red?
The blond hair fell in a shower of gold
From the proud, provoking head.
And the beauty that flashed from the splendid eyes,
And played round the tender mouth,
Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind
That blows from the fragrant south.

And where, after all, is the harm done?
I believe we were made to be gay,
And all of youth not given to love
Is vainly squandered away.
And strewn through life's low labors,
Like gold in the desert sands,
Are love's swift kisses and sighs and vows
And the clasp of clinging hands.

And when you are old and lonely,
In Memory's magic shine
You will see on your thin and wasting hands,
Like gems, these kisses of mine.
And when you muse at evening
At the sound of some vanished name,
The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips
And kindle your heart to flame.

Under the high unclouded sun
That makes the ship and shadow one,
I sail away as from the fort
Booms sullenly the noonday gun.

The odorous airs blow thin and fine,
The sparkling waves like emeralds shine,
The lustre of the coral reefs
Gleams whitely through the tepid brine.

And glitters o'er the liquid miles
The jewelled ring of verdant isles,
Where generous Nature holds her court
Of ripened bloom and sunny smiles.

Encinctured by the faithful seas
Inviolate gardens lead the breeze,
Where flaunt like giant-warders' plumes
The pennants of the cocoa-trees.

Enthroned in light and bathed in balm,
In lonely majesty the Palm
Blesses the isles with waving hands,
High-Priest of the eternal Calm.

Yet Northward with an equal mind
I steer my course, and leave behind
The rapture of the Southern skies,
The wooing of the Southern wind.

For here o'er Nature's wanton bloom
Falls far and near the shade of gloom,
Cast from the hovering vulture-wings
Of one dark thought of woe and doom.

I know that in the snow-white pines
The brave Norse fire of freedom shines,
And fain for this I leave the land
Where endless summer pranks the vines.

O strong, free North, so wise and brave!
O South, too lovely for a slave!
Why read ye not the changeless truth,
The free can conquer but to save?

May God upon these shining sands
Send Love and Victory clasping hands,
And Freedom's banners wave in peace
Forever o'er the rescued lands!

And here, in that triumphant hour,
Shall yielding Beauty wed with Power;
And blushing earth and smiling sea
In dalliance deck the bridal bower.

Key West, 1864.

I'll tell the story, kissing
This white hand for my pains:
No sweeter heart, nor falser
E'er filled such fine, blue veins.

I'll sing a song of true love,
My Lilith dear! to you;
Contraria contrariis
The rule is old and true.

The happiest of all lovers
Was Ernst of Edelsheim;
And why he was the happiest,
I'll tell you in my rhyme.

One summer night he wandered
Within a lonely glade,
And, couched in moss and moonlight,
He found a sleeping maid.

The stars of midnight sifted
Above her sands of gold;
She seemed a slumbering statue,
So fair and white and cold.

Fair and white and cold she lay
Beneath the starry skies;
Rosy was her waking
Beneath the Ritter's eyes.

He won her drowsy fancy,
He bore her to his towers,
And swift with love and laughter
Flew morning's purpled hours.

But when the thickening sunbeams
Had drunk the gleaming dew,
A misty cloud of sorrow
Swept o'er her eyes' deep blue.

She hung upon the Ritter's neck,
She wept with love and pain,
She showered her sweet, warm kisses
Like fragrant summer rain.

"I am no Christian soul," she sobbed,
As in his arms she lay;
"I'm half the day a woman,
A serpent half the day.

"And when from yonder bell-tower
Rings out the noonday chime,
Farewell! farewell forever,
Sir Ernst of Edelsheim!"

"Ah! not farewell forever!"
The Ritter wildly cried,
"I will be saved or lost with thee,
My lovely Will-Bride!"

Loud from the lordly bell-tower
Rang out the noon of day,
And from the bower of roses
A serpent slid away.

But when the mid-watch moonlight
Was shimmering through the grove,
He clasped his bride thrice dowered
With beauty and with love.

The happiest of all lovers
Was Ernst of Edelsheim
His true love was a serpent
Only half the time!

My dear wife sits beside the fire
With folded hands and dreaming eyes,
Watching the restless flames aspire,
And wrapped in thralling memories.
I mark the fitful firelight fling
Its warm caresses on her brow,
And kiss her hands' unmelting snow,
And glisten on her wedding-ring.

The proud free head that crowns so well
The neck superb, whose outlines glide
Into the bosom's perfect swell
Soft-billowed by its peaceful tide,
The cheek's faint flush, the lip's red glow,
The gracious charm her beauty wears,
Fill my fond eyes with tender tears
As in the days of long ago.

Days long ago, when in her eyes
The only heaven I cared for lay,
When from our thoughtless Paradise
All care and toil dwelt far away;
When Hope in wayward fancies throve,
And rioted in secret sweets,
Beguiled by Passion's dear deceits,
The mysteries of maiden love.

One year had passed since first my sight
Was gladdened by her girlish charms,
When on a rapturous summer night
I clasped her in possessing arms.
And now ten years have rolled away,
And left such blessings as their dower,
I owe her tenfold at this hour
The love that lit our wedding-day.

For now, vague-hovering o'er her form,
My fancy sees, by love refined,
A warmer and a dearer charm
By wedlock's mystic hands intwined,
A golden coil of wifely cares
That years have forged, the loving joy
That guards the curly-headed boy
Asleep an hour ago up stairs.

A fair young mother, pure as fair,
A matron heart and virgin soul!
The flickering light that crowns her hair
Seems like a saintly aureole.
A tender sense upon me falls
That joy unmerited is mine,
And in this pleasant twilight shine
My perfect bliss myself appalls.

Come back! my darling, strayed so far
Into the realm of fantasy,-
Let thy dear face shine like a star
In love-light beaming over me.
My melting soul is jealous, sweet,
Of thy long silence' drear eclipse,
Oh, kiss me back with living lips
To life, love, lying at thy feet!

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his cheeks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He were n't no saint, them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she wouldn't be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night
The oldest craft on the line-
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,-
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He were n't no saint, but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That would n't shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.

There was never a castle seen
So fair as mine in Spain:
It stands embowered in green,
Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by the Xenil's shore,
And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
The storied Vega plain,
And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
And I toil through years of pain
Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet
Sometimes its courts I greet:
Sometimes in joy its shining halls
I tread with favored feet;
But never my eyes in the light of day
Were blest with its ivied walls,
Where the marble white and the granite gray
Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,
When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms
Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,
And whatever of bright and fair
Painters divine have caught and won
From the vault of Italy's air:
White gods in Phidian stone.
People the haunted glooms;
And the song of immortal singers
Like a fragrant memory lingers,
I know, in the echoing rooms.

But nothing of these, my soul!
Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,
Nor the waves of the river that roll
With a cadence faint and sweet
In peace by its marble feet
Nothing of these is the goal
For which my whole heart sighs.
'T is the pearl gives worth to the shell
The pearl I would die to gain;
For there does my lady dwell,
My love that I love so well
The Queen whose gracious reign
Makes glad my Castle in Spain.

Her face so pure and fair
Sheds light in the shady places,
And the spell of her girlish graces
Holds charmed the happy air.
A breath of purity
Forever before her flies,
And ill things cease to be
In the glance of her honest eyes.
Around her pathway flutter,
Where her dear feet wander free
In youth's pure majesty,
The wings of the vague desires;
But the thought that love would utter
In reverence expires.

Not yet! not yet shall I see
That face which shines like a star
O'er my storm-swept life afar,
Transfigured with love for me.
Toiling, forgetting, and learning
With labor and vigils and prayers,
Pure heart and resolute will,
At last I shall climb the hill
And breathe the enchanted airs
Where the light of my life is burning
Most lovely and fair and free,
Where alone in her youth and beauty,
And bound by her fate's sweet duty,
Unconscious she waits for me.

A hundred times the bells of Brown
Have rung to sleep the idle summers,
And still to-day clangs clamoring down
A greeting to the welcome comers.

And far, like waves of morning, pours
Her call, in airy ripples breaking,
And wanders to the farthest shores,
Her children's drowsy hearts awaking.

The wild vibration floats along,
O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying,
And wakes in every breast its song
Of love and gratitude undying.

My heart to meet the summons leaps
At limit of its straining tether,
Where the fresh western sunlight steeps
In golden flame the prairie heather.

And others, happier, rise and fare
To pass within the hallowed portal,
And see the glory shining there
Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal.

What though their eyes be dim and dull,
Their heads be white in reverend blossom;
Our mother's smile is beautiful
As when she bore them on her bosom!

Her heavenly forehead bears no line
Of Time's iconoclastic fingers,
But o'er her form the grace divine
Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers.

We fade and pass, grow faint and old,
Till youth and joy and hope are banished,
And still her beauty seems to fold
The sum of all the glory vanished.

As while Tithonus faltered on
The threshold of the Olympian dawnings,
Aurora's front eternal shone
With lustre of the myriad mornings.

So joys that slip like dead leaves down,
And hopes burnt out that die in ashes,
Rise restless from their graves to crown
Our mother's brow with fadeless flashes.

And lives wrapped in tradition's mist
These honored halls to-day are haunting,
And lips by lips long withered kissed
The sagas of the past are chanting.

Scornful of absence's envious bar
Brown smiles upon the mystic meeting
Of those her sons, who, sundered far,
In brotherhood of heart are greeting;

Her wayward children wandering on
Where setting stars are lowly burning,
But still in worship toward the dawn
That gilds their souls' dear Mecca turning;

Or those who, armed for God's own fight,
Stand by his word through fire and slaughter,
Or bear our banner's starry light
Far-flashing through the Gulf's blue water.

For where one strikes for light and truth
The right to aid, the wrong redressing,
The mother of his spirit's youth
Sheds o'er his soul her silent blessing.

She gained her crown a gem of flame
When Kneass fell dead in victory gory;
New splendor blazed upon her name
When Ives' young life went out in glory!

Thus bright forever may she keep
Her fires of tolerant Freedom burning,
Till War's red eyes are charmed to sleep
And bells ring home the boys returning.

And may she shed her radiant truth
In largess on ingenuous comers,
And hold the bloom of gracious youth
Through many a hundred tranquil summers!

C.K. loquitur.

I dreamed I was in fair Niphon.
Amid tea-fields I journeyed on,
Reclined in my jinrikishaw;
Across the rolling plains I saw
The lordly Fusi-yama rise,
His blue cone lost in bluer skies.

At last I bade my bearers stop
Before what seemed a china-shop.
I roused myself and entered in.
A fearful joy, like some sweet sin,
Pierced through my bosom as I gazed,
Entranced, transported, and amazed.
For all the house was but one room,
And in its clear and grateful gloom,
Filled with all odors strange and strong
That to the wondrous East belong,

I saw above, around, below,
A sight to make the warm heart glow,
And leave the eager soul no lack,-
An endless wealth of bric-a-brac.
I saw bronze statues, old and rare,
Fashioned by no mere mortal skill,
With robes that fluttered in the air,
Blown out by Art's eternal will;
And delicate ivory netsukes,
Richer in tone than Cheddar cheese,
Of saints and hermits, cats and dogs,
Grim warriors and ecstatic frogs.
And here and there those wondrous masks,
More living flesh than sandal-wood,
Where the full soul in pleasure basks
And dreams of love, the only good.
The walls were all with pictures hung:
Gay villas bright in rain-washed air,
Trees to whose boughs brown monkeys clung,
Outlineless dabs of fuzzy hair.

And all about the opulent shelves
Littered with porcelain beyond price:
Imari pots arrayed themselves
Beside Ming dishes; grain-of-rice
Vied with the Royal Satsuma,
Proud of its sallow ivory beam;
And Kaga's Thousand Hermits lay
Tranced in some punch-bowl's golden gleam.
Over bronze censers, black with age,
The five-clawed dragons strife engage;
A curled and insolent Dog of Foo
Sniffs at the smoke aspiring through.
In what old days, in what far lands,
What busy brains, what cunning hands,
With what quaint speech, what alien thought,
Strange fellow-men these marvels wrought!

As thus I mused, I was aware
There grew before my eager eyes
A little maid too bright and fair,
Too strangely lovely for surprise.
It seemed the beauty of the place
Had suddenly become concrete,
So full was she of Orient grace,
From her slant eyes and burnished face
Down to her little gold-bronze feet.

She was a girl of old Japan;
Her small hand held a glided fan,
Which scattered fragrance through the room;
Her cheek was rich with pallid bloom,
Her eye was dark with languid fire,
Her red lips breathed a vague desire;
Her teeth, of pearl inviolate,
Sweetly proclaimed her maiden state.
Her garb was stiff with broidered gold
Twined with mysterious fold on fold,
That gave no hint where, hidden well,
Her dainty form might warmly dwell,
A pearl within too large a shell.
So quaint, so short, so lissome, she,
It seemed as if it well might be
Some jocose god, with sportive whirl,
Had taken up a long lithe girl
And tied a graceful knot in her.

I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss!
I needed no interpreter;
I knew the Japanese for kiss,
I had no other thought but this;
And she, with smile and blush divine,
Kind to my stammering prayer did seem;
My thought was hers, and hers was mine,
In the swift logic of my dream.
My arms clung round her slender waist,
Through gold and silk the form I traced,
And glad as rain that follows drouth,
I kissed and kissed her bright red mouth.

What ailed the girl? No loving sigh
Heaved the round bosom; in her eye
Trembled no tear; from her dear throat
Bubbled a sweet and silvery note
Of girlish laughter, shrill and clear,
That all the statues seemed to hear
The bronzes tinkled laughter fine;
I heard a chuckle argentine
Ring from the silver images;
Even the ivory netsukes
Uttered in every silent pause
Dry, bony laughs from tiny jaws;
The painted monkeys on the wall
Waked up with chatter impudent;
Pottery, porcelain, bronze, and all
Broke out in ghostly merriment,
Faint as rain pattering on dry leaves,
Or cricket's chirp on summer eves.

And suddenly upon my sight
There grew a portent: left and right,
On every side, as if the air
Had taken substance then and there,
In every sort of form and face,
A throng of tourists filled the place.
I saw a Frenchman's sneering shrug;
A German countess, in one hand
A sky-blue string which held a pug,
With the other a fiery face she fanned;
A Yankee with a soft felt hat;
A Coptic priest from Ararat;
An English girl with cheeks of rose;
A Nihilist with Socratic nose;
Paddy from Cork with baggage light
And pockets stuffed with dynamite;
A haughty Southern Readjuster
Wrapped in his pride and linen duster;
Two noisy New York stock-brokérs
And twenty British globe-trottérs.

To my disgust and vast surprise
They turned on me lack-lustre eyes,
And each with dropped and wagging jaw
Burst out into a wild guffaw:
They laughed with huge mouths opened wide;
They roared till each one held his side;
They screamed and writhed with brutal glee,
With fingers rudely stretched to me,-
Till lo! at once the laughter died,
The tourists faded into air;
None but my fair maid lingered there,
Who stood demurely by my side.
"Who were your friends?" I asked the maid,
Taking a tea-cup from its shelf.
"This audience is disclosed," she said,
"Whenever a man makes a fool of himself."