Poems (Nora May French)/The Spanish Girl—Part I

by Nora May French

THE SPANISH GIRL

PART I

I

 

THE VINE

TO screen this depth of shade that sleeps,
 Beyond the garden's shine,
On José's careful strings there creeps
 A little slender vine.

José is kind . . . but age is cold:
 My laughter meets his sigh.
The house is old the garden old—
 Oh, young, the vine and I!

I love the web of light it weaves
 Across my half-drawn thread;
It's speech to me of waking leaves,
 While José hears his Dead.

So, ever reaching, tendril-fine,
 My eager visions run;
So, as the long day passes, twine
 My thoughts, shot through with sun.

II

 

THE CHAPEL

THE vanished women of my race,
 The daughters of a moldering year,
Set often in this quiet place
 Their votive tapers burning clear.

The patient waxen wreaths they wove,
 They hung before the Virgin's shrine;
To them it was a work of love,
 José decrees it task of mine!

They glimmer where a portrait swings—
 Women as proud and white as death—
Ah, they could mold those lifeless things;
 They had no blood, they had no breath.

"For holiness and meekness strive"
 (José would have me pray their prayers).
Now, Mary, warm and all alive,
 You shall not think me child of theirs.

So many waxen prayers you heard!
 If I should heap your altar high
With boughs that knew the nesting bird,
 With flowers that bloomed against the sky,

And let my wondering soul ascend
 In vivid question, swift surmise—
I think your shadowy face would bend,
 And look at me with startled eyes.

III

 

THE GARDEN

THEY planted lilies where they might,
 A drift of Vestals slim and tall,
That lined these winding paths with white,
 That filled the court from wall to wall.

They shrank from savage, splendid heat,
 As from their teasing fires of Hell—
Only when morns and eves were sweet
 They walked and liked their garden well.

Slow moving through a pallid mist,
 Always in black, in black they came,
With busy rosary on wrist . . .
 And all the summer world aflame!

I planted flowers that know the sun,
 I brought them in from field and stream,
I passed not by the smallest one
 That pleased me with a yellow gleam;

Then in a hidden chest I found
 The marvel of an old brocade—
Strange figures on an azure ground,
 With threads of crimson overlaid,

And when the noon is fierce and bright,
 Along the garden, fold on fold,
My silken splendor like a light
 I trail between the aisles of gold.

IV

ACROSS José's unending drone
 (Some ancient tale of arms and doom)
There came a poignant sweetness blown
 From sleeping leagues of orange bloom.

And lo! the steady candles blurred
 Like shining fishes in a net,
And Josh's kindly voice I heard—
 "But little one, thine eyes are wet."

He vowed the tale had made me weep,
 Its shadowy woes in courtly speech,
Nor knew they passed like wraiths of sleep
 The heart a vagrant wind could reach.

How can I tell, whose fancy floats
 As swift and passionate impulse veers,
What gust may sweep its roseleaf boats
 Adown a sudden tide of tears?

V

WHERE man has marred and nature yields,
 And never plant nor beast is free,
Along the tame and trampled fields
 An old unrest has followed me.

Now walk alone the night and I
 On foaming reaches curving stark,
And battling with a windy sky
 The stormy moon is bright and dark.

Facing the sea with streaming hair,
 My broken singing flung behind,
Whipped by the keen exultant air
 Till lips must dose and eyes are blind,

Loving the sharp and cruel spray,
 The great waves thundering, might on might,
The pagan heart must shout and sway,
 Tossed in the passion of the night.

VI

OH, never wings the Sisters chide,
 Wild upward wings that shine and blur,
Nor mourn they winds of eventide
 That bid the rhythmic garden stir,

And yet this life I cannot still,
 This winged and restless strength of flight,
That swings me down a singing hill
 Or answers to the calling night,

They curb when I would dance, would dance!
 By all the graven Saints, it seems
Most strange they make for my mischance
 No grim confessional of dreams!

The flower of Heart's Desire is sown
 In fields unknown to waking sight,
Down glittering spaces, all alone
 I whirl the fire of my delight—

Then, on the music's ebb and flow,
 Pause as a poising bird is hung,
With supple body swaying slow,
 With parted lips and arms up-flung.

VII

ALWAYS of Heaven the Sisters tell,
 Although of earth I question most—
I would I knew the world as well
 As Peter and the Angel host!

José may journey, never I.
 In all the lonely hours I spend
He bids me tell my beads and sigh. . . .
 I wonder if the Saints attend?

For when the moon is small and thin,
 And night is fragrant on the land,
The earth and I are so akin
 I think no Saint could understand.

Something within me sleeps by day;
 To moon and wind its petals part. . . .
It is not for my soul I pray;
 Ah Virgin!—for my untried heart.