Victorian Women Writers Project

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LOVE IN EXILE

I.

• SHE stood against the Orient sun,
• Her face inscrutable for light;
• A myriad larks in unison
• Sang o’er her, soaring out of sight.

• A myriad flowers around her feet
• Burst flame‐like from the yielding sod,
• Till all the wandering airs were sweet
• With incense mounting up to God.

• A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
• Towards her, from the Occident,
• Girdling the cloud‐wrack which enshrined
• Half the light‐bearing firmament.

• Lit showers flashed golden o’er the hills,
• And trees flung silver to the breeze,
• And, scattering diamonds, fleet‐foot rills
• Fled laughingly across the leas.

• Yea, Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
• And writ in flowers thine awful name;
• Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
• And life a brand which feeds thy flame.

II.

• WINDING all my life about thee,
• Let me lay my lips on thine;
• What is all the world without thee,
• Mine —oh mine!

• Let me press my heart out on thee,
• Grape of life’s most fiery vine,
• Spilling sacramental on thee
• Love’s red wine.

• Let thy strong eyes yearning o’er me
• Draw me with their force divine;
• All my soul has gone before me
• Clasping thine.

• Irresistibly I follow,
• As whenever we may run
• Runs our shadow, as the swallow
• Seeks the sun.

• Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
• All my spirit to thy sway,
• As a star is drowned in splendour
• Of the day.

III.

• I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
• That ye blow o’er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

• I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
• That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

• I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
• That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

• I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
• That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

• O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
• A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

• Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love’s fire,
• Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

• I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
• That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

• I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
• To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

• The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
• The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

• The pale‐faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
• My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne’er soothed into sleep.

• The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
• But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

IV.

• THOU walkest with me as the spirit‐light
• Of the hushed moon, high o’er a snowy hill,
• Walks with the houseless traveller all the night,
• When trees are tongueless and when mute the rill.
• Moon of my soul, O phantasm of delight,
• Thou walkest with me still.

• The vestal flame of quenchless memory burns
• In my soul’s sanctuary. Yea, still for thee
• My bitter heart hath yearned, as moonward yearns
• Each separate wave‐pulse of the clamorous sea:
• My Moon of love, to whom for ever turns
• The life that aches through me.

V.

• I THINK of thee in watches of the night,
• I feel thee near;
• Like mystic lamps consumed with too much light
• Thine eyes burn clear.

• The barriers that divide us in the day
• And hide from view,
• Like idle cobwebs now are brushed away
• Between us two.

• I probe the deep recesses of thy mind
• Without control,
• And in its inmost labyrinth I find
• My own lost soul.

• No longer like an exile on the earth
• I wildly roam,
• I was thy double from the hour of birth
• And thou my home.

VI.

• I WAS again beside thee in a dream:
• Earth was so beautiful, the moon was shining;
• The muffled voice of many a cataract stream
• Came like a love‐song, as, with arms entwining,
• Our hearts were mixed in unison supreme.

• The wind lay spell‐bound in each pillared pine,
• The tasselled larches had no sound or motion,
• As my whole life was sinking into thine—
• Sinking into a deep, unfathomed ocean
• Of infinite love—uncircumscribed, divine.

• Night held her breath, it seemed, with all her stars:
• Eternal eyes that watched in mute compassion
• Our little lives o’erleap their mortal bars,
• Fused in the fulness of immortal passion,
• A passion as immortal as the stars.

• There was no longer any thee or me;
• No sense of self, no wish or incompleteness
• The moment, rounded to Eternity,
• Annihilated time’s destructive fleetness:
• For all but love itself had ceased to be.

VII.

• OUR souls have touched each other,
• Two fountains from one jet;
• Like children of one mother
• Our leaping thoughts have met.

• We were as far asunder
• As green isles in the sea;
• And now we ask in wonder
• How that could ever be.

• I dare not call thee lover
• Nor any earthly name,
• Though love’s full cup flows over
• As water quick with flame.

• When two strong minds have mated
• As only spirits may,
• The wold shines new created
• In a diviner day.

• Yea, though hard fate may sever
• My fleeting self from thine,
• Thy thought will live for ever
• And ever grow in mine.

VIII.

• I AM athirst, but not for wine;
• The drink I long for is divine,
• Poured only from your eyes in mine.

• I hunger, but the bread I want,
• Of which my blood and brain are scant,
• Is your sweet speech, for which I pant.

• I am a‐cold, and lagging lame,
• Life creeps along my languid frame;
• Your love would fan it into flame.

• Heaven’s in that little word—your love!
• It makes my heart coo like a dove,
• My tears fall as I think thereof.

IX.

• I WOULD I were the glow‐worm, thou the flower,
• That I might fill thy cup with glimmering light;
• I would I were the bird, and thou the bower,
• To sing thee songs throughout the summer night.

• I would I were a pine tree deeply rooted,
• And thou the lofty, cloud‐beleaguered rock,
• Still, while the blasts of heaven around us hooted,
• To cleave to thee and weather every shock.

• I would I were the rill, and thou the river;
• So might I, leaping from some headlong steep,
• With all my waters lost in thine for ever,
• Be hurried onwards to the unfathomed deep.

• I would—what would I not? O foolish dreaming!
• My words are but as leaves by autumn shed,
• That, in the faded moonlight idly gleaming,
• Drop on the grave where all our love lies dead.

X.

• THE woods shake in an ague‐fit,
• The mad wind rocks the pine,
• From sea to sea the white gulls flit
• Into the roaring brine.

• The moon as if in panic grief
• Darts through the clouds on high,
• Blown like a wild autumnal leaf
• Across the wilder sky.

• The gusty rain is driving fast,
• And through the rain we hear,
• Above the equinoctial blast,
• The thunder of the Weir.

• The voices of the wind and rain
• Wail echoing through my heart—
• That love is ever dogged by pain
• And fondest souls must part.

• You made heart’s summer, O my friend,
• But now we bid adieu,
• There will be winter without end
• And tears for ever new.

XI.

• DOST thou remember ever, for my sake,
• When we two rowed upon the rock‐bound lake?
• How the wind‐fretted waters blew their spray
• About our brows like blossom‐falls of May
• One memorable day?

• Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried—
• “Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
• To lie together tangled in the deep
• Close as the heart‐beat to the heart—so keep
• The everlasting sleep?”

• Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
• Had set the seal upon my heart’s young bliss!
• But, wrenched asunder, severed and apart,
• Life knew a deadlier death: the blighting smart
• Which only kills the heart.

XII.

• LIKE some wild sleeper who alone at night
• Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
• With death below and only stars above;
• I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep,
• Along the edges of life’s perilous steep,
• The lost somnambulist of love.

• I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
• Led on in safety by the starry gleam
• Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
• Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
• Startled to find how far I’ve gone astray,
• I dash my life out in my fall.

XIII.

• O MOON, large golden summer moon,
• Hanging between the linden trees,
• Which in the intermittent breeze
• Beat with the rhythmic pulse of June!

• O night‐air, scented through and through
• With honey‐coloured flower of lime,
• Sweet now as in that other time
• When all my heart was sweet as you!

• The sorcery of this breathing bloom
• Works like enchantment in my brain,
• Till, shuddering back to life again,
• My dead self rises from its tomb.

• And, lovely with the love of yore,
• Its white ghost haunts the moon‐white ways;
• But, when it meets me face to face,
• Flies trembling to the grave once more.

XIV.

• I PLANTED a rose tree in my garden,
• In early days when the year was young;
• I thought it would bear me roses, roses,
• While nights were dewy and days were long.

• It bore me once, and a white rose only—
• A lovely rose with petals of light;
• Like the moon in heaven, supreme and lonely;
• And the lightning struck it one summer night.

XV.

• WHY will you haunt me unawares,
• And walk into my sleep,
• Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
• Where long‐dried perfume scents the airs,
• While ghosts of sorrow creep,
• Where on Hope’s ruined altar‐stairs,
• With ineffectual beams,
• The Moon of Memory coldly glares
• Upon the land of dreams?

• My yearning eyes were fain to look
• Upon your hidden face;
• Their love, alas! you could not brook,
• But in your own you mutely took
• My hand, and for a space
• You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
• And woke with wildest moan
• And wet face channeled like a brook
• With your tears or my own.

XVI.

• WHEN you wake from troubled slumbers
• With a dream‐bewildered brain,
• And old leaves which no man numbers
• Chattering tap against the pane;
• And the midnight wind is wailing
• Till you very life seems quailing
• As the long gusts shudder and sigh:
• Know you not that homeless cry
• Is my love’s, which cannot die,
• Wailing through Eternity?

• When beside the glowing embers,
• Sitting in the twilight lone,
• Drop on drop you hear November’s
• Melancholy monotone,
• As the heavy rain comes sweeping,
• With a sound of weeping, weeping,
• Till your blood is chilled with fears;
• Know you not those falling tears,
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• Flowing fast through years on years,
• For my sobs within your ears?

• When with dolorous moan the billows
• Surge around where, far and wide,
• Leagues on leagues of sea‐worn hollows
• Throb with thunders of the tide,
• And the weary waves in breaking
• Fill you, thrill you, as with aching
• Memories of our love of yore,
• Where you pace the sounding shore,
• Hear you not, through roll and roar,
• Soul call soul for evermore?

XVII.

• IN a lonesome burial‐place
• Crouched a mourner white of face;
• Wild her eyes—unheeding
• Circling pomp of night and day—
• Ever crying, “Well away,
• Love lies a‐bleeding!”

• And her sighs were like a knell,
• And her tears for ever fell,
• With their warm rain feeding
• That purpureal flower, alas!
• Trailing prostrate in the grass,
• Love lies a‐bleeding.

• Through the yews’ black‐tufted gloom
• Crimson light fell on the tomb,
• Funeral shadows breeding:
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• In the sky the sun’s light shed
• Dyed the earth one awful red—
• Love lies a‐bleeding.

• Came grey mists, and blanching cloud
• Bore one universal shroud;
• Came the bowed moon leading,
• From the infinite afar
• Star that rumoured unto star—
• Love that lies a‐bleeding.

XVIII.

• DEEP in a yew‐sequestered grove
• I sat and wept my heart away;
• A child came by at close of day
• With eyes as sweet as new‐born love.

• He came from sun‐bleached meadows where
• High on the hedge the topmost rose
• Curtsies to every wind that blows.
• A wanton of the summer air.

• The sunset aureoled his brow,
• Kindling the roses in his hand,
• And by my side I saw him stand
• To offer me his rose‐red bough:

• Take back thy gift—I sighed forlorn,
• And showed where like the yew’s red seed,
• My blood had trickled, bead on bead,
• From wounds made by his cruel thorn.

• He smiled and said:—Nay, take my Rose;
• You know, when all is said and done,
• There’s not a joy beneath the sun
• Worth lovers’ joys but lovers’ woes.

XIX.

• ON life’s long round by chance I found
• A dell impearled with dew;
• Where hyacinths, gushing from the ground,
• Lent to the earth heaven’s native hue
• Of holy blue.

• I sought that plot of azure light
• Once more in gloomy hours;
• But snow had fallen overnight
• And wrapped in mortuary white
• My fairy ring of flowers.

XX.

• AH, yesterday was dark and drear,
• My heart was deadly sore;
• Without thy love it seemed, my Dear,
• That I could live no more.

• And yet I laugh and sing to‐day;
• Care or care not for me,
• Thou canst not take the love away
• With which I worship thee.

• And if to‐morrow, Dear, I live,
• My heart I shall not break:
• For still I hold it that to give
• Is sweeter than to take.

XXI.

XXII.

• WE met as strangers on life’s lonely way,
• And yet it seemed we knew each other well;
• There was no end to what thou hadst to say,
• Or to the thousand things I found to tell.
• My heart, long silent, at thy voice that day
• Chimed in my breast like to a silver bell.

• How much we spoke, and yet still left untold
• Some secret half revealed within our eyes:
• Didst thou not love me once in ages old?
• Had I not called thee with importunate cries,
• And, like a child left sobbing in the cold,
• Listened to catch from far thy fond replies?

• We met as strangers, and as such we part;
• Yet all my life seems leaving me with thine;
• Ah, to be clasped once only heart to heart,
• If only once to feel that thou wert mine!
• These lips are locked, and yet I know thou art
• That all in all for which my soul did pine.

XXIII.

• YOU make the sunshine of my heart
• And its tempestuous shower;
• Sometimes the thought of you is like
• A lilac bush in flower,
• Yea, honey‐sweet as hives in May.
• And then the pang of it will strike
• My bosom with a fiery smart,
• As though love’s deeply planted dart
• Drained all its life away.

• My thoughts hum round you, Dear, like bees
• About a bank of thyme,
• Or round the yellow blossoms of
• The heavy‐scented lime.
• Ah, sweeter you than honeydew,
• Yet dark the ways of love,
• For it has robbed my soul of peace,
• And marred my life and turned heart’s‐ease
• Into funereal rue.

XXIV.

• AH, if you knew how soon and late
• My eyes long for a sight of you
• Sometimes in passing by my gate
• You’d linger until fall of dew,
• If you but knew!

• Ah, if you knew how sick and sore
• My life flags for the want of you,
• Straightway you’d enter at the door
• And clasp my hand between your two,
• If you but knew!

• Ah, if you knew how lost and lone
• I watch and weep and wait for you,
• You’d press my heart close to your own
• Till love had healed me through and through,
• If you but knew!

XXV.

• YOUR looks have touched my soul with bright
• Ineffable emotion;
• As moonbeams on a stormy night
• Illume with transitory light
• A seagull on her lonely flight
• Across the lonely ocean.

• Fluttering from out the gloom and roar,
• On fitful wing she flies,
• Moon‐white above the moon‐washed shore;
• Then, drowned in darkness as before,
• She’s lost, as I when lit no more
• By your beloved eyes.

XXVI.

• WHAT magic is there in thy mien
• What sorcery in thy smile,
• Which charms away all cark and care,
• Which turns the foul days into fair,
• And for a little while
• Changes this disenchanted scene
• From the sere leaf into the green,
• Transmuting with love’s golden wand
• This beggared life to fairyland?

• My heart goes forth to thee, oh friend,
• As some poor pilgrim to a shrine,
• A pilgrim who has come from far
• To seek his spirit’s folding star,
• And sees the taper shine;
• The goal to which his wanderings tend,
• Where want and weariness shall end,
• And kneels ecstatically blest
• Because his heart hath entered rest.