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

by Nora May French

PART II

I

THIS weak and silken love that meshes me
 Break strand from strand, O branches of the hill!
Brave wind that whips me breathless, tear me free!
 The witch's cobweb clings and shivers still.

Now ferns there were, and fretted sun above:
 I plunged me where the silver water fell,
But could not drown the little singing love—
 The little love that murmured like a shell.

Swift, swift, to drink my freedom at its flood,
 I ran with flying feet and lips apart,
But love was wilder than my leaping blood—
 Ah, louder than the beating of my heart.

II

I MUST not yield . . . but if he would not sing!
 My stilling hands upon my breast can feel
Its answer tremble like a muted string.
 Below the vaulted window where I kneel

He sings, he sings, to stars and listening skies.
 A white and haunted place my garden seems.—
I see the pleading beauty of his eyes
 As faces glimmer in a pool of dreams.

So wooing wind might sweep a harp awake.
 (Oh, muting fingers on each quivering string!)
I must not yield . . . I think my heart will break.
 Mother of Heaven, if he would not sing!

III

NOW bending like a windy stem I strive,
 Yet ever onward, step by step, descend.
The silence is a threat, the dark alive,
 And love how far, how far, my journey's end.

It is the girlhood dream I leave behind,
 And sweeter vision never witched a maid.
Into the threatening shades I wander blind:
 Ah, Mary, help me now! I am afraid.

Yet with my fears I sway and follow still;
 The doorway gleams, the pleading magic charms,
Step after step, with fluttering breath and will—
 Step after step . . . at last . . . into his arms.

IV

BEYOND this purple shadow glows
 My golden garden loud with bees,
And windy grey and silver flows
 Along the slopes of olive trees.

Before a sleeping flower uncurled,
 Before the early winds were born,
I woke for joy in such a world,
 And with the linnets shared the morn.

Remembering love, I woke and smiled,
 And heard the morning linnets sing,
And sang for love, and they for wild
 Delight of song and sun and spring.

V

SURELY a brightness moves with me,
 For José gazes long and sighs,
Above the pages dim to see
 For ghosts of youth that brush his eyes.

And gazing long, old Marta said:
 "Some new device has made thee fair,
Yet have I often seen these red
 Pomegranate flowers against thy hair."

I would not have them understand
 The hidden thoughts that give me grace,
Nor guess the lights that dreams have fanned,
 And read their shining in my face.

But all my heart the Virgin knows.
 Before her eyes, so wise they were,
I laid my secret like a rose:
 "Mother, I love!" I cried to her.

VI

I HAD no more imagined love
 Than dreams the moonflower of its blue.
What sun that warmed its shielding glove,—
 What long blind eve that gave it dew,

Could tell that hueless folded thing
 Of shining texture silken-loomed,
Or say what marveling birds would sing
 The morning that it thrilled and bloomed?

Always it knew in groping thought
 Some end would come, some bloom must be,
The blind fulfilment that it wrought
 Was strained from darkness restlessly;

Till exquisite completion willed
 The answered bud, the dream put by,
And left the flower all sunned, and stilled
 With sudden wonder of the sky.

VII

My eyes are level with the grass,
 And up and down each slender steep
I watch its tiny people pass.
 The sun has lulled me half asleep.

And all beneath my breath I sing . . .
 This joy of mine is sweet to hold!
Such treasure had the miser king
 Who brushed the very dew to gold.

Deep in the sunny grass I lie
 And breathe the garden scents wind-driven,
So happy that if I should die
 They could not comfort me with Heaven.