Canto 12Night by the Sea
Book 1. Part One - England and Baroda 1883 – 1898
Love, a moment drop thy hands;
Night within my soul expands.
Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair
In that dark and showering hair.
5Coral kisses ravish not
When the soul is tinged with thought;
Burning looks are then forbid.
Let each shyly-parted lid
Hover like a settling dove
10O’er those deep-blue wells of Love.
Darkness brightens; silvering flee
Pomps of foam the driven sea.
In this garden’s dim repose
Lighted with the burning rose,
15Soft narcissi’s golden camp
Glimmering or with rosier lamp
Censered honeysuckle guessed
By the fragrance of her breast, —
Here where summer’s hands have crowned
20Silence in the fields of sound,
Here felicity should be.
Hearken, Edith, to the sea.
What a voice of grief intrudes
On these happy solitudes!
25To the wind that with him dwells
Ocean, old historian, tells
All the dreadful heart of tears
Hidden in the pleasant years.
Summer’s children, what do ye
30By the stern and cheerless sea?
Not we first nor we alone
Heard the mighty Ocean moan
England and Baroda, 1883–1898
By this treasure-house of flowers
35In the sweet ambiguous hours.
Many a girl’s lips ruby-red
With their vernal honey fed
Happy mouths, and soft cheeks flushed
With Love’s rosy sunlight blushed.
40Ruddy lips of many a boy
Blithe discovered hills of joy
Ruby-guided through a kiss
To the sweet highways of bliss.
Here they saw the evening still
45Coming slowly from the hill
And the patient stars arise
To their outposts in the skies;
Heard the ocean shoreward urge
The speed and thunder of his surge,
50Singing heard as though a bee
Noontide waters on the sea.
These no longer. For our rose
In her place they wreathed once, blows,
And thy glorious garland, sweet,
55Kissed not once those wandering feet.
All the lights of spring are ended,
To the wintry haven wended.
Beauty’s boons and nectarous leisure,
Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure,
60Cheeks enrosed, Love’s natal soil,
Breasts, the ardent conqueror’s spoil,
Spring rejects; a lovelier child
His brittle fancies has beguiled.
O her name that to repeat
65Than the Dorian muse more sweet
Could the white hand more relume
Writing and refresh the bloom
Of lips that used such syllables then,
Dies unloved by later men.
70Songs to Myrtilla
Are we more than summer flowers?
Shall a longer date be ours,
Rose and springtime, youth and we
By the everlasting sea?
75Are they blown as legends tell
In the smoke and gurge of hell?
Writhe they in relucent gyres
O’er a circle sad of fires?
In what lightless groves must they
80Or unmurmuring alleys stray?
Fields no sunlight visits, streams
Where no happy lotus gleams?
Yet, where’er their steps below,
Memories sweet for comrades go.
85Lethe’s waters had their will,
But the soul remembers still.
Beauty pays her boon of breath
To thy narrow credit, Death,
Leaving a brief perfume; we
90Perish also by the sea.
We shall lose, ah me! too soon
Lose the clear and silent moon,
The serenities of night
And the deeper evening light.
95We shall know not when the morn
In the widening East is born,
Never feel the west-wind stir,
Spring’s delightful messenger,
Never under branches lain
100Dally with the sweet-lipped rain,
Watch the moments of the tree,
Nor know the sounds that tread the sea.
With thy kisses chase this gloom: —
Thoughts, the children of the tomb.
105Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light.
Nature’s vernal darlings dead
From new founts of life are fed.
Dawn relumes the immortal skies.
110Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?
Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
Haste — a million is to pay —
Lest too soon the allotted day
115End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
See! the moon from heaven falls.
In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
120Shut my heart up; keep it closed
Like a rose of Indian grain,
Like that rose against the rain,
Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
125And the airs that burdened be
With such thoughts as shake the sea.