John Hay: Verses about Passion

Each shining light above us
Has its own peculiar grace;
But every light of heaven
Is in my darling's face.

For it is like the sunlight,
So strong and pure and warm,
That folds all good and happy things,
And guards from gloom and harm.

And it is like the moonlight,
So holy and so calm;
The rapt peace of a summer night,
When soft winds die in balm.

And it is like the starlight;
For, love her as I may,
She dwells still lofty and serene
In mystery far away.

I gazed upon my love while music smote
The soft night air into glad harmony;
Lapt on the ripples of a silver sea,
I heard the bright tones rapturous dance and float.
Hearing and sight were wed; each flattering note
Meant some perfection of my love to me.
Caressed by music, it was bliss to see
Her form, white-robed, the jewel at her throat,
Her glimmering hands, her dusky, perfumed hair,
Her low, clear brow, her deep, proud, dreaming eyes,
Bent kindly upon me, her worshiper;
The dulcet, delicate sounds that shook the air-
As if love's joy rained from the starlit skies
Seemed all sweet, inarticulate thoughts of her.

He came in victory's lambent flame
'Mid myriad shouts and trumpets' blare,
While the glad people's loud acclaim
Made vocal all the summer air.

But while the cannon's thunder boomed
Half-heard amid the loyal cry,
And starry banners glowed and bloomed
In beauty neath that western sky,

He from the highway turned apart
And to a quiet nook drew near,
The dearest pulses of his heart
Beating the question, "Is she here?"

The glory well and hardly earned
In civic toil and battle's fire
Was all forgotten as he turned
To meet his human heart's desire.

And light as dust lay in the scale
The favor of a flattering world
Weighed by that joy which cannot fail
In love and faith and honor furled.

Like fire within the opal's heart,
Like fragrance in the rose's breast,
A sacred joy, serene, apart,
The highest and the holiest.

What man is there so bold that he should say
"Thus, and thus only, would I have the sea"?
For whether lying calm and beautiful,
Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst;
Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
It bears the trade and navies of the world
To ends of use or stern activity;
Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way
To elemental fury, howls and roars
At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust
Of ruin drinks the blood of living things,
And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore,
Always it is the sea, and men bow down
Before its vast and varied majesty.

So all in vain will timorous ones essay
To set the metes and bounds of Liberty.
For Freedom is its own eternal law;
It makes its own conditions, and in storm
Or calm alike fulfills the unerring Will.
Let us not then despise it when it lies
Still as a sleeping lion, while a swarm
Of gnat-like evils hover round its head;
Nor doubt it when in mad, disjointed times
It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry
Shrills o'er the quaking earth, and in the flame
Of riot and war we see its awful form
Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe
Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings.
Forever in thine eyes, O Liberty,
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved,
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee!

To Peter by night the faithfullest came
And said, "We appeal to thee!
The life of the Church is in thy life;
We pray thee to rise and flee.

"For the tyrant's hand is red with blood,
And his arm is heavy with power;
Thy head, the head of the Church, will fall,
If thou tarry in Rome an hour."

Through the sleeping town Saint Peter passed
To the wide Campagna plain;
In the starry light of the Alban night
He drew free breath again:

When across his path an awful form
In luminous glory stood;
His thorn-crowned brow, His hands and feet,
Were wet with immortal blood.

The godlike sorrow which filled His eyes
Seemed changed to a godlike wrath,
As they turned on Peter, who cried aloud,
And sank to his knees in the path.

"Lord of my life, my love, my soul!
Say, what wilt Thou with me?"
A voice replied, "I go to Rome
To be crucified for thee."

The apostle sprang, all flushed, to his feet,
The vision had passed away;
The light still lay on the dewy plain,
But the sky in the east was gray.

To the city walls Saint Peter turned,
And his heart in his breast grew fire;
In every vein the hot blood burned
With the strength of one high desire.

And sturdily back he marched to his death
Of terrible pain and shame;
And never a shade of fear again
To the stout apostle came.

In the whole wide world there was but one,
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet
There was not a curve nor a waving line

But moved in a harmony firm and sweet
With all of passion my life could know.
By knowledge perfect and faith complete

I was bound to her, as the planets go
Adoring around their central star,
Free, but united for weal or woe.

She was so near and Heaven so far-
She grew my heaven and law and fate
Rounding my life with a mystic bar

No thought beyond could violate.
Our love to fulness in silence nursed
Grew calm as morning, when through the gate

Of the glimmering East the sun has burst,
With his hot life filling the waiting air.
She kissed me once, that last and first

Of her maiden kisses was placid as prayer.
Against all comers I sat with lance
In rest, and, drunk with my joy, I sware

Defiance and scorn to the world's worst chance.
In vain! for soon unhorsed I lay
At the feet of the strong god Circumstance-

And never again shall break the day,
And never again shall fall the night
That shall light me, or shield me, on my way

To the presence of my sad soul's delight.
Her dead love comes like a passionate ghost
To mourn the Body it held so light,

And Fate, like a hound with a purpose lost,
Goes round bewildered with shame and fright.

A sentinel angel sitting high in glory
Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory:
"Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story!

"I loved, and, blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell.
For God is just, and death for sin is well.

"I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be;
But for my love on earth who mourns for me.

"Great Spirit! Let me see my love again
And comfort him one hour, and I were fain
To pay a thousand years of fire and pain."

Then said the pitying angel, "Nay, repent
That wild vow! Look, the dial-finger's bent
Down to the last hour of thy punishment!"

But still she wailed, "I pray thee, let me go!
I cannot rise to peace and leave him so.
Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!"

The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,
And upward, joyous, like a rising star,
She rose and vanished in the ether far.

But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,
She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing.

She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea
Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee,
She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me!"

She wept, "Now let my punishment begin!
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in
To expiate my sorrow and my sin."

The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher!
To be deceived in your true heart's desire
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!"

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."