Drunk

Too far away, oh love, I know,     To save me from this haunted road,     Whose lofty roses break and blow     On a night-sky bent with a load     Of lights: each solitary rose,     Each arc-lamp golden does expose     Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows     Night blenched with a thousand snows.     Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,     White lilac; shows discoloured night     Dripping with all the golden lees     Laburnum gives back to light     And shows the red of hawthorn set     On high to the purple heaven of night,     Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,     Blood shed in the noiseless fight.     Of life for love and love for life,     Of hunger for a little food,     Of kissing, lost for want of a wife     Long ago, long ago wooed.     Too far away you are, my love,     To steady my brain in this phantom show     That passes the nightly road above     And returns again below.     The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees     Has poised on each of its ledges     An erect small girl looking down at me;     White-night-gowned little chits I see,     And they peep at me over the edges     Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call     Them down to my arms;     "But, child, you're too small for me, too small     Your little charms."     White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,     Some other will thresh you out!     And I see leaning from the shades     A lilac like a lady there, who braids     Her white mantilla about     Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight     Of a man's face,     Gracefully sighing through the white     Flowery mantilla of lace.     And another lilac in purple veiled     Discreetly, all recklessly calls     In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed     Her forth from the night: my strength has failed     In her voice, my weak heart falls:     Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering     Her draperies down,     As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering     White, stand naked of gown.     The pageant of flowery trees above     The street pale-passionate goes,     And back again down the pavement, Love     In a lesser pageant flows.     Two and two are the folk that walk,     They pass in a half embrace     Of linkd bodies, and they talk     With dark face leaning to face.     Come then, my love, come as you will     Along this haunted road,     Be whom you will, my darling, I shall     Keep with you the troth I trowed.