Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/385

MARTINIQUE IDYL I weary of the sky's eternal balm,

The ceaseless droop and rustle of the palm;

Only your whisper, love, constrains me here

From that brave clime I would you might desire.

Cold, ah, cold is the sky, and leaden,

There where earth rounds off to the pole!

Still by kisses the moments number,—

Here are sweetness, and rest, and slumber,

All to lighten and naught to deaden

The heart's low murmur, the captured soul.

Dear, I would have you yearn, amid these sweets,

For the clear breeze that blows from waters gray,—

For some fresh, northern hill-top, overgrown

With bush and bloom and brake to you unknown;

There, while the hidden thrush his song repeats,

The rose shall tinge your cheek the livelong day.

Stay in the clime where living is loving

And the lips make music unaware;

Where copses thrill with the wood-doves' cooing,

And astral moths on the flight are wooing;

While the light colibris poise unmoving,—

Winged Loves that mate in the trembling air.

Nay, love itself will languish in the days

When Summer never doffs his burning helm.

No lasting links to bind the soul are wrought

Where passion takes no deeper cast from thought;

Ah! lend your ear a moment to the lays

Our poets sing you of a trustier realm!

Under the cocoa-fronds that flutter,

Here, where the lush white trumpet-flower

And the curled lianas roof us over,

So that no evil thing discover 355