The summer sweet, unnumbered days ago
When dreams outraced the vigor of the hours;
A mild-eyed night with moon and earth and sea —
Amid the sleep-time in that summer sweet,
Through paling astral towers spinning slow
From ashen moons, I made me down a way
Unfrequented of man. Through solitudes
Of murmuring space where children never keep
A reckoning of the day, I made me down
The couchant sky’s encroaching canopy,
Amove beside the old imperious sea
On lengthened white sea-sand. Ere long there came
Invisibly, and breathing quick a pain,
Some form of argent web all wrapped around.
I tore the web, the web tore easily,
And underneath, of fragile girlishness,
I saw a queen of fairly kind stretch forth
And lean to me. Aweary then, and faint,
And crying on the world a bitter cry,
Accursed one who lived and loved and lost,
And never loved but lost, I wrapped the form,
The dream-made girlish form, within mine arms;
When lo ! I joyed to feel the wildered beat
Of heart ecstatic. Sobs, of far-off seas
Abandoned to the dead, she sobbed ; and deep,
Deep into eyes of invitation sweet.
Of various emotion, down I sank
As far as God had made; and then, ah, then
She closed her eyes! Began her lucid lips
To carve some speech that tinkled by her teeth
As virgin streams by shingly bars ; it fell
Into my passive heart, relumed the place
Where Faith had ever battled with the dark
That little gods put there — Again her eyes ! —
Dear revenants, drooped open wide and wild,
And shot lucernal ardors to my depth : —
An instant on the South where minnows school
And flash their silver bellies to the sun,
I dreamed a passing dream — then felt her lie
Along my neck in never-ending glow,
As haunting mists through all the autumn long
Sleep on the yearning soil; or very like
The patient streams of moon that wondering come
To warn the aching sea to love the sky,
Her paramour. Ah no, you other race,
You cannot understand, you cannot know
Divine communion any night. In dreams
I see you at the end, by Acheron,
With hearts of lust, and dead unmeaning hands
The spade has hardened. All alone, alone
I understand the pulsing of her flesh ;
Why tragic broke its mighty thought, and gave
A touch misunderstood of all the world.
Her heart, — I thought of cataracts afar
That thunder in their solitudes; her feet, —
Like tiny coral stems that fingered mine,
And clung as mosses to the oak. Then wind
Crept out of earth, the sea and sky, and blew
Her mellow hair, those wild magnetic streams,
Into the face of me ; and kisses soft
From deep vermilion lip to lip. My Soul !
I only knew I lived, and not in vain.
More perfect hearts, more perfect happy hearts,
Were not in sprites that thrid the slender trees
And render birth to song. I came aware
Not in the thrall of human kind was I,
Nor in the visioned thrall of fairy kind,
But weakened to a melancholy soul
That wanders to the end, and makes along
The white sea-sands unfrequented of man;
Of argent web all wrapped and wrapped around;
Of sad inconstancy ; that flees alway,
Shot through and through with foaming vein, and burns
Unhumanly. Too little in the world,
Apart from Night-folk, Sea-folk, all alone
She dwells, Earth-daemon Man may never know.
Recovered once, of pain the absolute,
I pressed my fingers through her tender neck,
Each one to one — soft, soft’ was her neck, soft
As all the foam along the restless shore.
Abuseful she was not, nor I to her,
Except in madness. Swift she floated back,
Shook free, as gray phantasmal mists have done
To rid them of the earth. I saw her face
Betray no blood, and her ensanguined lips,
Full wan as any death, grow on their turn
Acanthice beads. An echo from her throat.
The last she made this night, rang down the dark
And lost itself beyond the pale of earth.
Mine eyes have seen what Shepherds never saw,
She passed adown the lengthened moon-steeped way,
And on and on reproachfully, her feet
Of tiny coral certain to the road
And beating sadly on the wasted shells ;
Aye, passed adown the beach of argentine,
Herself more argent, white as white sea-sand.
Days after — days — I had to know her well.
Below the sun, of all dream-memories,
Not one is like the hell of this. Some god,
Lend rest to mind and freedom from her toil ! —
My amaranthine flower. I swear the Night
Gives up her glowing face, whose hated eyes,
Like deserts hot and dead, exact from man
An awful price. Afar in darker lands
I feel her kisses burning to the deep, —
Those damned uncertain lips as sweet, as faint,
As hand-pats from a babe. Deep in the waste,
In her unlimited demesne of sleep,
I hear a fountain singing lotus-songs;
But ever, when the fountain music dies,
I hear a mocking-bird who mocks its song,
And mockery is only half the truth.
With naked eyes, how often leers the Night
To see her charnel body weight me down
As tombstones weight the dead ! By night I fade
Into the old, unlimited demesne,
And there, beside the old. imperious sea,
I stir the astral webs and loiter on.
Ere long the daemon comes, then forward hurls
Upon me — “Dying, Arthur, dying,” cries ;
And when my fingers find their dreadful use
To press the tender neck to death, she turns,
And wanders far along the moon-lit way,
And dies reproachfully.
Began this toil
In summer sweet, unnumbered days ago
When dreams outraced the vigor of the hours:
A mild-eyed night with moon and earth and sea.
Arthur Wilson.
winslow wilson / pico miran 