Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
SestinaHenry Dumont
T
I send the messengers that fly with song,
And bear their precious gifts from heart to heart.
They leave my lips here in the fragrant night
To seek thy casement, opened to the moon,
Whose golden beauty moves the dreaming sea.
Whose bosom stirs beneath the spell of love,
And swells, enchanted by the urgent moon!
Up through the flowery darkness flies my song,
Like bird bewildered in the maze of night,
To flutter at the portals of thy heart.
Be tenderer than is the yielding sea
Unto the moon! For what romance hath night
To offer, if it hold no flame of love?
If love be not its echo, what is song?
If love be absent, banish too the moon.
Whose light makes lonelier the lonely heart.
Arise, beloved! I will tune my song
To the wild carol of the vagrant sea,
And sing to thee a wilder song of love
Than sings the sea unto its god of night.
Their pleasure secret from the placid moon,
While I am thirsting for the dews that love
Hath gathered purely to thy lips and heart.
Thy heart, O loved one, is not as the sea
That hath no memory of love or song.
As to the nightingale its mate, this night,
Where roses droop above the sleeping sea.
Thy lips must hush my own before the moon
Shall ease its longing near the sea’s deep heart.
Awake, dear dreamer, to the voice of love!
Bereave the night; or I, with grieving heart,
Must wander by the sea, bereft of love!