Soror Tua
For the statue of Lorenzetti, in the Venice Exhibition, 1887, representing a chained and recumbent figure larger than life; who, if she broke the silence of her misery, might speak thus:--
Ye that pass by, come near and look on me;
I am despised, rejected and out-thrust;
My garments are acquainted with the dust,
My soul is bosom-mate of misery.
Come near and look upon me, sons of men.
Would I were dead; yea, peace is with the dead,
The dead are happy, having no desire.
I rise and fall, and rise and fall again,
Something is in me, famishing for bread,
Baffled and unappeasable as fire.
Woe, woe is me, I tire and may not tire!
Eternal strength in weariness is mine.
Raise me, I call. Come nearer, I am thine.
What? Knowest thou not thy sister? I am she.
poem by Arthur Symons
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Modern Beauty
I am the torch, she saith, and what to me
If the moth die of me? I am the flame
Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see
Beauty, and I have neither joy nor shame.
But live with that clear light of perfect fire
Which is to men the death of their desire.
I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen
Troy burn, and the most loving knight lies dead.
The world has been my mirror, time has been
My breath upon the glass; and men have said,
Age after age, in rapture and despair,
Love's poor few words, before my image there.
I live, and am immortal; in my eyes
The sorrow of the world, and on my lips
The joy of life, mingle to make me wise;
Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse:
Who is there lives for beauty? Still am I
The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?
poem by Arthur Symons
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O Flame of Living Love
O flame of living love,
That dost eternally
Pierce through my soul with so consuming heat,
Since there's no help above,
Make thou an end of me,
And break the bond of this encounter sweet.
O burn that burns to heal!
O more than pleasant wound!
And O soft hand, O touch most delicate,
That dost new life reveal,
That dost in grace abound,
And, slaying, dost from death to life translate!
O lamps of fire that shined
With so intense a light,
That those deep caverns where the senses live,
Which were obscure and blind,
Now with strange glories bright,
Both heat and light to his beloved give!
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poem by Arthur Symons
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At Toledo
The little stones chuckle against the fields:
'We are so small: God will not think of us;
We are so old already, we have seen
So many generations blunt their ploughs,
Tilling the fields we lie in; and we dream
Of our first sleep among the ancient hills.'
The grass laughs, thinking: 'I am born and die,
And born and die, and know not birth or death,
Only the going on of the green earth.'
The rivers pass and pass, and are the same,
And I, who see the beauty of the world,
Pass, and am not the same, or know it not,
And know the world no more. O is not this
Some horrible conspiracy of things,
That I have known and loved and lingered with
All my days through, and now they turn like hosts
Who have grown tired of a delaying guest?
They cast me out from their eternity:
God is in league with their forgetfulness.
poem by Arthur Symons
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At Toledo
The little stones chuckle against the fields:
'We are so small: God will not think of us;
We are so old already, we have seen
So many generations blunt their ploughs,
Tilling the fields we lie in; and we dream
Of our first sleep among the ancient hills.'
The grass laughs, thinking: 'I am born and die,
And born and die, and know not birth or death,
Only the going on of the green earth.'
The rivers pass and pass, and are the same,
And I, who see the beauty of the world,
Pass, and am not the same, or know it not,
And know the world no more. O is not this
Some horrible conspiracy of things,
That I have known and loved and lingered with
All my days through, and now they turn like hosts
Who have grown tired of a delaying guest?
They cast me out from their eternity:
God is in league with their forgetfulness.
poem by Arthur Symons
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Javanese Dancers
Twitched strings, the clang of metal, beaten drums,
Dull, shrill, continuous, disquieting:
And now the stealthy dancer comes
Undulantly with cat-like steps that cling;
Smiling between her painted lids a smile,
Motionless, unintelligible, she twines
Her fingers into mazy lines,
The scarves across her fingers twine the while.
One, two, three, four glide forth, and, to and fro,
Delicately and imperceptibly,
Now swaying gently in a row,
Now interthreading slow and rhythmically,
Still, with fixed eyes, monotonously still,
Mysteriously, with smiles inanimate,
With lingering feet that undulate,
With sinuous fingers, spectral hands that thrill
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poem by Arthur Symons
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Renée
Rain, and the night, and the old familiar door,
And the archway dim, and the roadway desolate;
Faces that pass, and faces, and more, yet more:
Renée! come, for I wait.
Pallid out of the darkness, adorably white,
Pale as the spirit of rain, with the night in her hair,
Renée undulates, shadow-like, under the light,
Into the outer air.
Mournful, beautiful, calm with that vague unrest,
Sad with that sensitive, vaguely ironical mouth;
Eyes that flame with the loveliest, deadliest
Fire of her passionate youth;
Mournful, beautiful, sister of night and rain,
Elemental, fashioned of tears and fire,
Ever desiring, ever desired in vain,
Mother of vain desire;
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poem by Arthur Symons
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At the Foresters
The shadows of the gaslit wings
Come softly crawling down our way;
Before the curtain someone sings,
The music sounds from far away;
I lounge beside you in the wings.
Prying and indiscreet, the lights
Illumine, if you haply move,
The prince's dress, the yellow tights,
That fit your figure like a glove:
You shrink a little from the lights.
Divinely rosy rouged, your face
Smiles, with its painted little mouth,
Half tearfully, a quaint grimace;
The charm and pathos of your youth
Mock the mock roses of your face.
And there is something in your look
(Ambiguous, independent Flo!)
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poem by Arthur Symons
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At Tarragona
If I could know but when and why
This piece of thoughtless dust begins
To think, and straightway I am I,
And these bright hopes and these brave sins,
That have been freer than the air,
Circle their freedom with my span;
If I could know but why this care
Is mine and not the care or man;
Why, thus unwilling, I rejoice,
And will the good I do not do,
And with the same particular voice
Speak the old folly and the new;
If I could know, seeing my soul
A white ship with a bending sail,
Rudderless, and without a goal,
Fly seaward, humble to the gale,
Why, knowing not from whence I came,
Nor why I seek I know not what,
I bear this heavy, separate name,
While winds and waters bear it not;
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poem by Arthur Symons
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At Fontainebleau
It was a day of sun and rain,
Uncertain as a child's swift moods;
And I shall never spend again
So blithe a day among the woods.
Was it because the Gods were pleased
That they were awful in our eyes,
Whom we in very deed appeased
With barley-cakes of sacrifice?
The forest knew her and was glad,
And laughed for very joy to know
Her child was with her; then, grown sad,
She wept, because her child must go.
And Alice, like a little Faun,
Went leaping over rocks and ferns,
Coursing the shadow-race from dawn
Until the twilight-flock returns.
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poem by Arthur Symons
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