Textarchiv - Adelaide Crapsey

Release

mrbot — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 21:10:02 +0000

With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

1922

Birth-moment

mrbot — Sun, 03 Feb 2019 21:10:09 +0000

Behold her,
Running through the waves,
Eager to reach the land:
The water laps her,
Sun and wind are on her,
Healthy, brine-drenched and young,
Behold Desire new-born;—
Desire on first fulfilment's radiant edge,
Love at miraculous moment of emergence,
This is she,
Who running,
Hastens, hastens to the land.

Look…Look…
Her brown gold hair and lucent eyes of youth,
Her body rose and ivory in the sun…
Look,
How she hastens,
Running, running to the land.

Her hands are yearning and her feet are swift
To reach and hold
She knows not what,
Yet knows that it is life;
Need urges her,
Self, uncomprehended but most deep divined,
Unwilled but all-compelling, drives her on.
Life runs to life.
She who longs,
But hath not yet accepted or bestowed,
All virginal dear and bright,
Runs, runs to reach the land.

And she who runs shall be
Married to blue of summer skies at noon,
Companion to green fields,
Held bride of subtle fragrance and of all sweet sound,
Belovéd of the stars,
And wanton mistress to the veering winds.

Oh, breathless space between:
Womb-time just passed,
Dark-hidden, chaotic-formative, unpersonal,
And individual life of fresh-created force
Not yet begun:
One moment more
Before desire shall meet desire
And new creation start:
Oh breathless space,
While she,
Just risen from the waves,
Runs, runs to reach the land.

(Ah, keenest personal moment
When mouth unkissed turns eager-slow and tremulous
Towards lover's mouth,
That tremulous and eager-slow
Droops down to it:
But breathless space of breath or two
Lies in between
Before the mouth upturned and mouth down-drooped
Shall meet and make the kiss.)

Look…Look…
She runs…
Love fresh-emerged,
Desire new-born…
Blown on by wind,
And shone on by the sun,
She rises from the waves
And running,
Hastens, hastens to the land.

Belovéd and Belovéd and Belovéd,
Even so right
And beautiful and undenied

Is my desire;
Even so longing-swift
I run to your receiving arms.
O Aphrodite!
O Aphrodite, hear!
Hear my wrung cry flame upward poignant-glad....
This is my time for me.
I too am young;
I too am all of love!

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Madness

mrbot — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 21:10:02 +0000

Burdock,
Blue aconite,
And thistle and thorn…of these,
Singing, I wreathe my pretty wreath
O' death.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Night Winds

mrbot — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 21:10:08 +0000

The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Fate Defied

mrbot — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 21:10:09 +0000

As it
Were tissue of silver
I'll wear, O fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Avis

mrbot — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 21:10:02 +0000

Avis, the fair, at dawn
Rose lightly from her bed,
Herself arrayed.
Avis, the fair, the maid,
In vestiment of lawn;
Across the fields she sped,
Five flowerets there she found,
In fragrant garland wound,
Avis, the fair, at dawn,
Five roses red.

Go thou from thence of thy pity!
Thou lovest not me.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Old Love

mrbot — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 21:10:10 +0000

More dim than waning moon
Thy face, more faint
Than is the falling wind
Thy voice, yet do
Thine eyes most strangely glow,
Thou ghost… thou ghost.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Arbutus

mrbot — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 21:10:09 +0000

Not Spring's
Thou art, but her's,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter's, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Mad Song

mrbot — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 21:10:02 +0000

Grey gaolers are my griefs
That will not let me free;
The bitterness of tears
Is warder unto me.

I may not leap or run;
I may nor laugh nor sing.
"Thy cell is small," they say,
"Be still thou captived thing."

But in the dusk of the night,
Too sudden-swift to see,
Closing and ivory gates
Are refuge unto me.

My griefs, my tears must watch,
And cold the watch they keep;
They whisper, whisper there—
I hear them in my sleep.

They know that I must come,
And patient watch they keep,
Whispering, shivering there,
Till I come back from sleep.

But in the dark of a night,
Too dark for them to see,
The refuge of black gates
Will open unto me.

Whisper up there in the dark…
Shiver by bleak winds stung…
My dead lips laugh to hear
How long you wait…how long!

Grey gaolers are my griefs
That will not let me free;
The bitterness of tears
Is warder unto me.

Adelaide Crapsey

1922

Adventure

mrbot — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 21:10:09 +0000

Sun and wind and beat of sea,
Great lands stretching endlessly…
Where be bonds to bind the free?
All the world was made for me!

Adelaide Crapsey

1922