@3For Rachel@1 You are supreme mistress of counterpoint: Gradations more subtle than we may know Shed their nuances in your voice and anoint Your suppliants with delights intense as slow; Somehow sombre, somehow suggesting pain, Yet does the sound of your melodies stir Our Western hearts and we grow young again -- Swart pagans come down from the Chaldees' Ur. Rachel, your eyes are cool shadowy brooks Of Hebron: tawny dreams of Palestine Stir in their windy deeps; you are what books Are all too coarse to say: in you we glean Strange delights of the primeval songs unsung When men walked in wonder and the earth was young. @3For Vivian@1 You wore your beauty like a wanton's guise, You who were chaste and immanent with prayer, Nor ever guessed the perils of your eyes Soft with desire; a moment on the stair Of my rapt vision, poised so soon for flight, Hesitant you stood and at my plea swift turned, Tossing a rose -- then vanished in some height Of diffidence, where cooler ardors burned . . . Perhaps it is as well, for I can claim Throughout the crumbling of more constant urns, Perfection still, forever now the same, And kneel to it when disillusion burns -- While round me then a golden fragrance flows, Memorial to a moment, and a rose . . . |