Читать книгу Collected Poems: Volume One - Alfred Noyes - Страница 42

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Sing to me! Ah, remember how

Poor Heine here in Paris leant

Watching me play at the fall of day

And following where the music went,

Till that old cloud upon his brow

Was almost smoothed away.

"Do roses in the moonlight flame

Like this and this?" he said and smiled;

Then bent his head as o'er his dead

Brother might breathe some little child

The accustomed old half-jesting name,

With all its mockery fled,

Like summer lightnings, far away,

In heaven. O, what Bohemian nights

We passed down there for that brief year

When art revealed her last delights;

And then, that night, that night in May

When Hugo came to hear!

"Do roses in the moonlight glow

Like this and this?" I could not see

His eyes, and yet—they were quite wet,

Blinded, I think! What should I be

If in that hour I did not know

My own diviner debt?

For God has made this world of ours

Out of His own exceeding pain,

As here in art man's bleeding heart

Slow drop by drop completes the strain;

And dreams of death make sweet the flowers

Where lovers meet to part.

Recall, recall my little room

Where all the masters came that night,

Came just to hear me, Meyerbeer,

Lamartine, Balzac; and no light

But my two candles in the gloom;

Though she, she too was there,

George Sand. This music once unlocked

My heart, she took the gold she prized:

Her novel gleams no richer: dreams

Like mine are best unanalysed:

And she forgets her poor bemocked

Prince Karol, now, it seems.

I was Prince Karol; yes, and Liszt

Count Salvator Albani: she

My Floriani—all so far

Away!—My dreams are like the sea

That round Majorca sighed and kissed

Each softly mirrored star.

O, what a golden round of hours

Our island villa knew: we two

Alone with sky and sea, the sigh

Of waves, the warm unfathomed blue;

With what a chain of nights like flowers

We bound Love, she and I.

What music, what harmonious

Glad triumphs of the world's desire

Where passion yearns to God and burns

Earth's dross out with its own pure fire,

Or tolls like some deep angelus

Through Death's divine nocturnes.

"Do roses in the moonlight glow

Like this and this?" What did she think

Of him whose hands at Love's command

Made Life as honey o'er the brink

Of Death drip slow, darkling and slow?

Ah, did she understand?

She studied every sob she heard,

She watched each dying hope she found;

And yet she understood not one

Poor sorrow there that like a wound

Gaped, bleeding, pleading—for one word—

No? And the dream was done.

For her—I am "wrapped in incense gloom,

In drifting clouds and golden light;"

Once I was shod with fire and trod

Beethoven's path through storm and night:

It is too late now to resume

My monologue with God.

Well, my lost love, you were so kind

In those old days: ah, yes; you came

When I was ill! In dreams you still

Will come? (Do roses always flame

By moonlight, thus?) I, too, grow blind

With wondering if she will.

Yet, Floriani, what am I

To you, though love was life to me?

My life consumed like some perfumed

Pale altar-flame beside the sea:

You stood and smiled and watched it die!

You, you whom it illumed, Could you not feed it with your love?

Am I not starving here and now?

Sing, sing! I'd miss no smile or kiss—

No roses in Majorca glow

Like this and this—so death may prove

Best—ah, how sweet life is!