Eleonora Duse

I

Seeing's believing, so the ancient wordChills buds to shrivelled powder flecks, turns flaxTo smoky heaps of straw whose small flames waxOnly to gasp and die. The thing's absurd!Have blind men ever seen or deaf men heard?What one beholds but measures what one lacks.Where is the prism to draw gold from blacks,Or flash the iris colours of a bird?Not in the eye, be sure, nor in the ear,Nor in an instrument of twisted glass,Yet there are sights I see and sounds I hearWhich ripple me like water as they pass.This that I give you for a dear love's sakeIs curling noise of waves marching along a lake.

II

A letter or a poem—the words are setTo either tune. Be careful how you sliceThe flap which is held down by this deviceImpressed upon it. In one moment metA cameo, intaglio, a fretOf workmanship, and I. Like melted iceI took the form and froze so, turned preciseAnd brittle seal, a creed in silhouette.Seeing's believing? What then would you see?A chamfered dragon? Three spear-heads of steel?A motto done in flowered charactry?The thin outline of Mercury's winged heel?Look closer, do you see a name, a face,Or just a cloud dropped down before a holy place?

III

Lady, to whose enchantment I took shapeSo long ago, though carven to your grace,Bearing, like quickened wood, your sweet sad faceCut in my flesh, yet may I not escapeMy limitations: words that jibe and gapeAfter your loveliness and make grimaceAnd travesty where they should interlaceThe weave of sun-spun ocean round a cape.Pictures then must contain you, this and more,The sigh of wind floating on ripe June hay,The desolate pulse of slur beyond a door,The grief of mornings seen as yesterday.All that you are mingles as one sole cryTo point a world aright which is so much awry.

IV

If Beauty set her image on a stageAnd bid it mirror moments so intenseWith passion and swift largess of the senseTo a divine exactness, stamp a pageWith mottoes of hot blood, and disengageNo atom of mankind's experience,But lay the soul's complete incontinenceBare while it tills grief's gusty acreage.Doing this, you, spon-image to her needs,She picked to pierce, reveal, and soothe again,Shattering by means of you the tinsel creedsOffered as meat to the pinched hearts of men.So, sacrificing you, she fed those othersWho bless you in their prayers even before their mothers.

V

Life seized you with her iron hands and shookThe fire of your boundless burning outTo fall on us, poor little ragged routOf common men, till like a flaming bookWe, letters of a message, flashed and tookThe fiery flare of prophecy, devoutTorches to bear your oil, a dazzling shout,The liquid golden running of a brook.Who, being upborne on racing streams of light,Seeing new heavens sprung from dusty hells,Considered you, and what might be your plight,Robbed, plundered—since Life's cruel plan compelsThe perfect sacrifice of one great soulTo make a myriad others even a whit more whole.

VI

Seeing you stand once more before my eyesIn your pale dignity and tenderness,Wearing your frailty like a misty dressDraped over the great glamour which deniesTo years their domination, all disguiseTime can achieve is but to add a stress,A finer fineness, as though some caressTouched you a moment to a strange surprise.Seeing you after these long lengths of years,I only know the glory come again,A majesty bewildered by my tears,A golden sun spangling slant shafts of rain,Moonlight delaying by a sick man's bed,A rush of daffodils where wastes of dried leaves spread.