Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics by Bliss Carman (best books to read TXT) 📕

5
In their serene unswerving mighty course;

Ask how the wood-flowers waken to the sun,
Unsummoned save by some mysterious word;

Ask how the wandering swallows find your eaves
Upon the rain-wind with returning spring; 10

Ask who commands the ever-punctual tide
To keep the pendulous rhythm of the sea;

And you shall know what leads the heart of man
To the far haven of his hopes and fears.

LXIX

Like a tall forest were their spears,
Their banners like a silken sea,
When the great host in splendour passed
Across the crimson sinking sun.

And then the bray of brazen horns 5
Arose above their clanking march,
As the long waving column filed
Into the odorous purple dusk.

O lover, in this radiant world
Whence is the race of mortal men, 10
So frail, so mighty, and so fond,
That fleets into the vast unknown?

LXX

My lover smiled, "O friend, ask not
The journey's end, nor whence we are.
That whistling boy who minds his goats
So idly in the grey ravine,

"The brown-backed rower drenched with spray, 5
The lemon-seller in the street,
And the young girl who keeps her first
Wild love-tryst at the rising moon,—

"Lo, these are wiser than the wise.
And not for all our questioning 10
Shall we discover more than joy,
Nor find a better thing than love!

"Let pass the banners and the spears,
The hate, the battle, and the greed;
For greater than all gifts is peace, 15
And strength is in the tranquil mind."

LXXI

Ye who have the stable world
In the keeping of your hands.
Flocks and men, the lasting hills,
And the ever-wheeling stars;

Ye who freight with wondrous things 5
The wide-wandering heart of man
And the galleon of the moon,
On those silent seas of foam;

Oh, if ever ye shall grant
Time and place and room enough 10
To this fond and fragile heart
Stifled with the throb of love,

On that day one grave-eyed Fate,
Pausing in her toil, shall say,
"Lo, one mortal has achieved 15
Immortality of love!"

LXXII

I heard the gods reply:
"Trust not the future with its perilous chance;
The fortunate hour is on the dial now.

"To-day be wise and great,
And put off hesitation and go forth 5
With cheerful courage for the diurnal need.

"Stout be the heart, nor slow
The foot to follow the impetuous will,
Nor the hand slack upon the loom of deeds.

"Then may the Fates look up 10
And smile a little in their tolerant way,
Being full of infinite regard for men."

LXXIII

The sun on the tide, the peach on the bough,
The blue smoke over the hill,
And the shadows trailing the valley-side,
Make up the autumn day.

Ah, no, not half! Thou art not here 5
Under the bronze beech-leaves,
And thy lover's soul like a lonely child
Roams through an empty room.

LXXIV

If death be good,
Why do the gods not die?
If life be ill,
Why do the gods still live?

If love be naught, 5
Why do the gods still love?
If love be all,
What should men do but love?

LXXV

Tell me what this life means,
O my prince and lover,
With the autumn sunlight
On thy bronze-gold head?

With thy clear voice sounding 5
Through the silver twilight,—
What is the lost secret
Of the tacit earth?

LXXVI

Ye have heard how Marsyas,
In the folly of his pride,
Boasted of a matchless skill,—
When the great god's back was turned;

How his fond imagining 5
Fell to ashes cold and grey,
When the flawless player came
In serenity and light.

So it was with those I loved
In the years ere I loved thee. 10
Many a saying sounds like truth,
Until Truth itself is heard.

Many a beauty only lives
Until Beauty passes by,
And the mortal is forgot 15
In the shadow of the god.

LXXVII

Hour by hour I sit,
Watching the silent door.
Shadows go by on the wall,
And steps in the street.

Expectation and doubt 5
Flutter my timorous heart.
So many hurrying home—
And thou still away.

LXXVIII

Once in the shining street,
In the heart of a seaboard town,
As I waited, behold, there came
The woman I loved.

As when, in the early spring, 5
A daffodil blooms in the grass,
Golden and gracious and glad,
The solitude smiled.

LXXIX

How strange is love, O my lover!
With what enchantment and power
Does it not come upon mortals,
Learned or heedless!

How far away and unreal, 5
Faint as blue isles in a sunset
Haze-golden, all else of life seems,
Since I have known thee!

LXXX

How to say I love you:
What, if I but live it,
Were the use in that, love?
  Small, indeed.

Only, every moment 5
Of this waking lifetime
Let me be your lover
  And your friend!

Ah, but then, as sure as
Blossom breaks from bud-sheath, 10
When along the hillside
  Spring returns,

Golden speech should flower
From the soul so cherished,
And the mouth your kisses 15
  Filled with fire.

LXXXI

Hark, love, to the tambourines
Of the minstrels in the street,
And one voice that throbs and soars
Clear above the clashing time!

Some Egyptian royal love-lilt, 5
Some Sidonian refrain,
Vows of Paphos or of Tyre,
Mount against the silver sun.

Pleading, piercing, yet serene,
Vagrant in a foreign town, 10
From what passion was it born,
In what lost land over sea?

LXXXII

Over the roofs the honey-coloured moon,
With purple shadows on the silver grass,

And the warm south-wind on the curving sea,
While we two, lovers past all turmoil now,

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