Читать книгу The Rainbow and the Rose - Эдит Несбит - Страница 3

  SWEET, I have loved before. I know

  This longing that invades my days;

  This shape that haunts life's busy ways

  I know since long and long ago.

  This starry mystery of delight

  That floats across my eager eyes,

  This pain that makes earth Paradise,

  These magic songs of day and night—

  I know them for the things they are:

  A passing pain, a longing fleet,

  A shape that soon I shall not meet,

  A fading dream of veil and star.

  Yet, even as my lips proclaim

  The wisdom that the years have lent,

  Your absence is joy's banishment,

  And life's one music is your name.

  I love you to my heart's hid core:

  Those other loves? how should one learn

  From marshlights how the great fires burn?

  Ah, no! I never loved before!

  THE sunshine of your presence lies

  On the glad garden of my heart

  And bids the leaves of silence part

  To show the flowers to your dear eyes,

  And flower on flower blooms there and dies

  And still new buds awakened spring,

  For sunshine makes the garden wise,

  To know the time for blossoming.

  Night is no time for blossoming,

  Your garden then dreams otherwise,

  Of vanished Summer, vanished Spring,

  And how the dearest flower first dies.

  Yet from your ministering eyes

  Though night hath drawn me far apart

  On the still garden of my heart

  The moonlight of your memory lies.

  IF I only had time!

  I could make you a rhyme.

  But my time is kept flying

  By smiling and sighing

  And living and dying for you.

  The song-seed, I sow it,

  I water and hoe it,

  But never can grow it.

  Ah, traitress, you know it!

  What is a poor poet to do?

  Ah, let me take breath!

  I am harried to death

  By the loves and the graces

  That crowd where your face is

  That lurk in your laces and throng.

  Call them off for a minute,

  Once let me begin it

  The devil is in it

  If I can not spin it

  As sweet as a linnet, your song!

  ALL the flight of thoughts here, shy, bold, scared, intrusive,

  Fluttering in the sun, between the green and blue,

  Wheeling, whirling, poising, lovely and elusive,

  How to cage the flying thoughts, my winged delight, for you?

  Set a springe of rhyme, and hope to catch them in it?

  Strew my love as grain to lure them to the snare?

  Watch the hours built up, slow minute piled on minute?

  Still the wide sky guards their flight, and still the cage is bare.

  Gleam of hovering feathers, brushing me to flout me!

  Wings, be weary! Rest! Who loves you more than I?

  Caught? Oh fluttering pinions whitening air about me!

  Rustling wings, and distant flight, and empty cage and sky!

  SPRING, pretty Spring, what treasure do you bring to me?

  Green grass and buttercups, cherry-bloom and may?

  Sunshine to be glad with me, and little birds to sing to me?

  Warm nests to call me along the woodland way?

  Spring, happy Spring, what wonder will you do for me?

  Light the tulip lanterns, and set the furze a-fire?

  Fill your sky with sails of cloud on waves of living blue for me?

  Show me green cornfields and budding of the briar?

  Spring, darling Spring, my days will not return to me,

  You who see them fleeting, you, all time above,

  You who move the whole world's heart, ah move one heart to turn to me,

  —Bring me a lover, and teach me how to love!

  "LOVE me little, love me long,"

  Is the burden of my song,

  And if nothing more may be

  Little shall suffice for me.

  But if you could crown with flowers

  All my radiant, festal hours,

  And console for hours of sorrow

  Love me more with each to-morrow.

  And if you would turn my days

  To one splendid hymn of praise,

  And set hopes like stars above me

  Love me much, and always love me!

  THROUGH many days and many days

  The seed of love lay hidden close;

  We walked the dusty tiresome ways

  Where never a leaf or blossom grows.

  And in the darkness, all the while,