Pacchiarotto/St. Martin's Summer
For works with similar titles, see St. Martin's Summer.
ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER.
1.No protesting, dearest!Hardly kisses even!Don't we both know how it endsHow the greenest leaf turns serest,Bluest outbreak—blankest heaven,Lovers—friends?
2.You would build a mansion,I would weave a bower—Want the heart for enterprise.Walls admit of no expansion:Trellis-work may haply flowerTwice the size.
3.What makes glad Life's Winter?New buds, old blooms after.Sad the sighing "How suspectBeams would ere mid-Autumn splinter,Rooftree scarce support a rafter,Walls lie wrecked?"
4.You are young, my princess!I am hardly older:Yet—I steal a glance behind!Dare I tell you what convincesTimid me that you, if bolder,Bold—are blind?
5.Where we plan our dwellingGlooms a graveyard surely!Headstone, footstone moss may drape,—Name, date, violets hide from spelling,—But, though corpses rot obscurely,Ghosts escape.
6.Ghosts! O breathing Beauty,Give my frank word pardon!What if I—somehow, somewhere—Pledged my soul to endless dutyMany a time and oft? Be hard onLove—laid there?
7.Nay, blame grief that's fickle,Time that proves a traitor,Chance, change, all that purpose warps,—Death who spares to thrust the sickleLaid Love low, through flowers which laterShroud the corpse!
8.And you, my winsome lady,Whisper with like frankness!Lies nothing buried long ago?Are yon—which shimmer mid the shadyWhere moss and violet run to rankness—Tombs or no?
9.Who taxes you with murder?My hands are clean—or nearly!Love being mortal needs must pass.Repentance? Nothing were absurder.Enough: we felt Love's loss severely;Though now—alas!
10.Love's corpse lies quiet therefore,Only Love's ghost plays truant,And warns us have in wholesome aweDurable mansionry; that's whereforeI weave but trellis-work, pursuant—Life, to law.
11.The solid, not the fragile,Tempts rain and hail and thunder.If bower stand firm at Autumn's close,Beyond my hope,—why, boughs were agile;If bower fall flat, we scarce need wonderWreathing—rose!
12.So, truce to the protesting,So, muffled be the kisses!For, would we but avow the truth,Sober is genuine joy. No jesting!Ask else Penelope, Ulysses—Old in youth!
13.For why should ghosts feel angered?Let all their interferenceBe faint march-music in the air!"Up! Join the rear of us the vanguard!Up, lovers, dead to all appearance,Laggard pair!"
14.The while you clasp me closer,The while I press you deeper,As safe we chuckle,—under breath,Yet all the slyer, the jocoser,—"So, life can boast its day, like leap-year,Stolen from death!"
15.Ah me—the sudden terror!Hence quick—avaunt, avoid me,You cheat, the ghostly flesh-disguised!Nay, all the ghosts in one! Strange error!So, 't was Death's self that clipped and coyed me,Loved—and lied!
16.Ay, dead loves are the potent!Like any cloud they used you,Mere semblance you, but substance they!Build we no mansion, weave we no tent!Mere flesh—their spirit interfused you!Hence, I say!
17.All theirs, none yours the glamour!Theirs each low word that won me,Soft look that found me Love's, and leftWhat else but you—the tears and clamourThat's all your very own! Undone me—Ghost-bereft!