PAROLES SANS MUSIQUE

By Frederic Manning

Ah, the night! The eyes!

You are white beneath the plum-blossoms,

As an oread beneath the shadow

Of flowering branches: immobile,

Among things fugitive and frail.

For God hath filled you with the memory

Of things forgotten by man; and your eyelids

Close upon lost splendours.

Yea! They are heavy with the secrets of time;

Troubled by the strangeness of beauty.

But mine heart knoweth the secret

Of your subtile lips and eyes: the silence

Wherein throng presently, with maddening cymbals,

With bright-tressed torches, the maenads,

Their cool flesh wreathed with dark vines.

Ah, the night! The eyes!

Honey pale are you, pallid as ivory:

An amber grape, whose sweetness will be wine

On some king's lip!

Here‘ mid these golds and purples,

These dusked magnificences,

Amid strange faces

Only your face against the plum-blossom

Know I: remembering

Bright spear heads in the moonlight

By the still tents, the red embers,

The strings and flutes of pain....

And again the weariness of desiring.

Ah, the night! The eyes!