Ирландский поэтарх

Scarce did he my body touch,

Scarce sank he from the west

Or found a subterranean rest

On the maternal midnight of my breast

Before I had marked him on his northern way,

And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.

I struggled with the horror of daybreak,

I chose it for my lot! If questioned on

My utmost pleasure with a man

By some new-married bride, I take

That stillness for a theme

Where his heart my heart did seem

And both adrift on the miraculous stream

Where – wrote a learned astrologer —

The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

VII. PARTING

i {He.} Dear, I must be gone

While night Shuts the eyes

Of the household spies;

That song announces dawn.

i {She.} No, night’s bird and love’s

Bids all true lovers rest,

While his loud song reproves

The murderous stealth of day.

i {He.} Daylight already flies

From mountain crest to crest

i {She.

i {He.} That bird…

i {She.} Let him sing on,

I offer to love’s play

My dark declivities.

VIII. HER VISION IN THE WOOD

DRY timber under that rich foliage,

At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,

Too old for a man’s love I stood in rage

Imagining men. Imagining that I could

A greater with a lesser pang assuage

Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,

I tore my body that its wine might cover

Whatever could recall the lip of lover.

And after that I held my fingers up,

Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran

Down every withered finger from the top;

But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,

And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop

Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,

Or smote upon the string and to the sound

Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.

All stately women moving to a song

With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,

It seemed a Quattrocento painter’s throng,

A thoughtless image of Mantegna’s thought —

Why should they think that are for ever young?

Till suddenly in grief’s contagion caught,

I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast

And sang my malediction with the rest.