Читать книгу Poems - Edward Dowden - Страница 9

Past the town’s clamour is a garden full

Of loneness and old greenery; at noon

When birds are hushed, save one dim cushat’s croon,

A ripen’d silence hangs beneath the cool

Great branches; basking roses dream and drop

A petal, and dream still; and summer’s boon

Of mellow grasses, to be levelled soon

By a dew-drenchèd scythe, will hardly stop

At the uprunning mounds of chestnut trees.

Still let me muse in this rich haunt by day,

And know all night in dusky placidness

It lies beneath the summer, while great ease

Broods in the leaves, and every light wind’s stress

Lifts a faint odour down the verdurous way.

Here I am slave of visions. When noon heat

Strikes the red walls, and their environ’d air

Lies steep’d in sun; when not a creature dare

Affront the fervour, from my dim retreat

Where woof of leaves embowers a beechen seat,

With chin on palm, and wide-set eyes I stare,

Beyond the liquid quiver and the glare,

Upon fair shapes that move on silent feet.

Those Three strait-robed, and speechless as they pass,

Come often, touch the lute, nor heed me more

Than birds or shadows heed; that naked child

Is dove-like Psyche slumbering in deep grass;

Sleep, sleep,—he heeds thee not, you Sylvan wild

Munching the russet apple to its core.

The grass around my limbs is deep and sweet;

Yonder the house has lost its shadow wholly,

The blinds are dropped, and softly now and slowly

The day flows in and floats; a calm retreat

Of tempered light where fair things fair things meet;

White busts and marble Dian make it holy,

Within a niche hangs Dürer’s Melancholy

Brooding; and, should you enter, there will greet

Your sense with vague allurement effluence faint

Of one magnolia bloom; fair fingers draw

From the piano Chopin’s heart-complaint;

Alone, white-robed she sits; a fierce macaw

On the verandah, proud of plume and paint,

Screams, insolent despot, showing beak and claw.

“That was the thrush’s last good-night,” I thought,

And heard the soft descent of summer rain

In the drooped garden leaves; but hush! again

The perfect iterance,—freer than unsought

Odours of violets dim in woodland ways,

Deeper than coilèd waters laid a-dream

Below mossed ledges of a shadowy stream,

And faultless as blown roses in June days.

Full-throated singer! art thou thus anew

Voiceful to hear how round thyself alone

The enrichèd silence drops for thy delight

More soft than snow, more sweet than honey-dew?

Now cease: the last faint western streak is gone,

Stir not the blissful quiet of the night.

Queen-moon of this enchanted summer night,

One virgin slave companioning thee,—I lie

Vacant to thy possession as this sky

Conquered and calmed by thy rejoicing might;

Swim down through my heart’s deep, thou dewy bright

Wanderer of heaven, till thought must faint and die,

And I am made all thine inseparably,

Resolved into the dream of thy delight.

Ah no! the place is common for her feet,

Not here, not here,—beyond the amber mist,

And breadths of dusky pine, and shining lawn,

And unstirred lake, and gleaming belts of wheat,

She comes upon her Latmos, and has kissed

The sidelong face of blind Endymion.

If any sense in mortal dust remains

When mine has been refined from flower to flower,

Won from the sun all colours, drunk the shower

And delicate winy dews, and gained the gains

Which elves who sleep in airy bells, a-swing

Through half a summer day, for love bestow,

Then in some warm old garden let me grow

To such a perfect, lush, ambrosian thing

As this. Upon a southward-facing wall

I bask, and feel my juices dimly fed

And mellowing, while my bloom comes golden grey:

Keep the wasps from me! but before I fall

Pluck me, white fingers, and o’er two ripe-red

Girl lips O let me richly swoon away!

If while I sit flatter’d by this warm sun

Death came to me, and kissed my mouth and brow,

And eyelids which the warm light hovers through,

I should not count it strange. Being half won

By hours that with a tender sadness run,

Who would not softly lean to lips which woo

In the Earth’s grave speech? Nor could it aught undo

Of Nature’s calm observances begun

Still to be here the idle autumn day.

Pale leaves would circle down, and lie unstirr’d

Where’er they fell; the tired wind hither call

Her gentle fellows; shining beetles stray

Up their green courts; and only yon shy bird

A little bolder grow ere evenfall.

This is the year’s despair: some wind last night

Utter’d too soon the irrevocable word,

And the leaves heard it, and the low clouds heard;

So a wan morning dawned of sterile light;

Flowers drooped, or showed a startled face and white;

The cattle cowered, and one disconsolate bird

Chirped a weak note; last came this mist and blurred

The hills, and fed upon the fields like blight.

Ah, why so swift despair! There yet will be

Warm noons, the honey’d leavings of the year,

Hours of rich musing, ripest autumn’s core,

And late-heaped fruit, and falling hedge-berry,

Blossoms in cottage-crofts, and yet, once more,

A song, not less than June’s, fervent and clear.