Читать книгу Eyes of Youth - Various - Страница 3

O woman, shapely as the swan,

On your account I shall not die.

The men you've slain—a trivial clan—

Were less than I.

I ask me shall I die for these:

For blossom-teeth and scarlet lips?

And shall that delicate swan-shape

Bring me eclipse?

Well shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,

The cheeks are fair, the tresses free;

And yet I shall not suffer death,

God over me.

Those even brows, that hair like gold,

Those languorous tones, that virgin way;

The flowing limbs, the rounded heel

Slight men betray.

Thy spirit keen through radiant mien,

Thy shining throat and smiling eye,

Thy little palm, thy side like foam—

I cannot die.

O woman, shapely as the swan,

In a cunning house hard-reared was I;

O bosom white, O well-shaped palm,

I shall not die.

You stay at last at my bosom, with your beauty

young and rare,

Though your light limbs are as limber as the

foal's that follows the mare,

Brow fair and young and stately where thought

has now begun—Hair

bright as the breast of the eagle when he

strains up to the sun!

In the space of a broken castle I found you on

a day

When the call of the new-come cuckoo went

with me all the way.

You stood by the loosened stones that were

rough and black with age:

The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's

broken cage!

And we went down together by paths your

childhood knew—

Remote you went beside me, like the spirit of

the dew;

Hard were the hedge-rows still: sloe-bloom

was their scanty dower—

You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom

that scarce is flower.

And now you stay at my bosom with you

beauty young and rare,

Though your light limbs are as limber as the

foal's that follows the mare;

But always I will see you on paths your childhood

knew,

When remote you went beside me like the

spirit of the dew.

Christ, by thine own darkened hour

Live within my heart and brain!

Let my hands not slip the rein.

Ah, how long ago it is

Since a comrade rode with me!

Now a moment let me see

Thyself, lonely in the dark,

Perfect, without wound or mark.

Saadi the Poet stood up and he put forth his

living words.

His songs were the hurtling of spears and

his figures the flashing of swords.

With hearts dilated our tribe saw the creature

of Saadi's mind;

It was like to the horse of a king, a creature

of fire and of wind.

Umimah my loved one was by me: without

love did these eyes see my fawn,

And if fire there were in her being, for me

its splendour had gone;

When the sun storms up on the tent, he makes

waste the fire of the grass—

It was thus with my loved one's beauty: the

splendour of song made it pass.

The desert, the march, and the onset—these

and these only avail,

Hands hard with the handling of spear-shafts,

brows white with the press of the mail!

And as for the kisses of women—these are

honey, the poet sings;

But the honey of kisses, beloved, it is lime

for the spirit's wings.