I
Now the sick earth revives, and in the sun
The wet soil gives a fragrance to the air;
The days of many colours are begun,
And early promises of meadows fair
With starry petals, and of trees now bare
Soon to be lyric with the trilling choir,
And lovely with new leaves, spread everywhere
A subtle flame that sets the heart on fire
With thoughts of other springs and dreams of new desire.
The mind will never dwell within the present,
It weeps for vanished years or hopes for new;
This morn of wakened warmth, so calm, so pleasant,
So gaily gemmed with diadems of dew,
When buds swell on the bough, and robins woo
Their loves with notes bell-like and crystal-clear,
The spirit stirs from sleep, yet wonders, too,
Whence comes the hint of sorrow or of fear
Making it move rebellious within its narrow sphere.
This flash of sun, this flight of wings in riot,
This festival of sound, of sight, of smell,
Wakes in the spirit a profound disquiet,
And greeting seems the foreword of farewell.
Budding like all the world, the soul would swell
Out of its withering mortality;
Flower immortal, burst from its heavy shell,
Fly far with love beyond the world and sea,
Out of the grasp of change, from time and twilight free.
Could the unknowing gods, waked in compassion,
Eternalize the splendour of this hour,
And from the world's frail garlands strongly fashion
An ageless Paradise, celestial bower,
Where our long-sundered souls could rise in power
To the complete fulfilment of their dream,
And never know again that years devour
Petals and light, bird-note and woodland theme,
And floods of young desire, bright as a silver stream,
Should we be happy, thou and I together,
Lying in love eternally in spring,
Watching the buds unfold that shall not wither,
Hearing the birds calling and answering,
When the leaves stir and all the meadows ring?
Smelling the rich earth steaming in the sun,
Feeling between caresses the light wing
Of the wind whose gracious flight is never done,—
Should we be happy then? happy, elusive One?
But no, here in this fragile flesh abides
The secret of a measureless delight,
Hidden in dying beauty there resides
Something undying, something that takes its flight
When the dust turns to dust, and day to night,
And spring to fall, whose joys in love redeem
Eternally, life's changes and death's blight,
Even as these pale, tender petals seem
A glimpse of infinite beauty, flashed in a passing dream.
Cambridge, 1916
II
The heavy bee burdened the golden clover
Droning away the afternoon of summer,
Deep in the rippling grass I called to you
Under the sky's blue flame.
Then when the day was over,
When petals fell fresh with the falling dew,
Stepped from the dusk a radiant newcomer,
Fled by the waters of the sleeping river,
Swift to the arms of your impatient lover,
Gladly you came.
And the long wind in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Thin rain of the saddest of Septembers
Bent the tall grasses of the sloping meadows,
But spring was with me in your slender form,
And the frail joy of spring.
Although the chilly embers
Of summer vanished into the gathering storm
And the wind clung to the overhanging shadows,
Fair seemed the spirit's desperate endeavour,
(And even fair to the spirit that remembers)
Joy on the wing!
And the long wind in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Years, and in slow lugubrious succession
Drop from the trees the leaves' first yellowed leaders,
Autumn is in the air and in the past,
Desolate, utterly.
Sunlight and clouds in hesitant procession,
Laughter and tears, and winter at the last.
There is a battle-music in the cedars,
High on the hills of life the grasses shiver.
Hail, dead reality and living vision,
Thrice hail in memory.
And the long wind in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Tours, 1918
III
Of days and nights under the living vine,
Memory singing from a tree has given
The plan of my buried heaven,
That I may dig therein as in a mine.
Did I call you, little Vigilant One, under the waning sun?
Did you come barefooted through the dew,
Through the fine dew-drenched grass when the colours faded
Out of the sky?
Who is that shadow holding over you a veil of tempest woven,
Shaded with streaks of cloud and lightning on the edges?
Lean nearer, I fear him, and the sigh
Of the rising wind worries the sedges,
And the cry
Of a white, long-legged bird from the marsh
Cuts through the twilight with a threat of night.
The receding voice is harsh
And echoes in my spirit.
Hark, do you hear it wailing against the hollow rocks of the hill,
As it takes its lonely outgoing towards the sea?
Lean nearer still.
Your silence is an ecstasy of speech,
You are the only white
Unconquered by the overwhelming frown.
Who stands behind you so impassively?
Bid him begone, or let me reach
And tear away his veil. But he is gone.
Who was he? surely no comrade of the dawn,
No lover from an earthly town,
Was he then Love? or Death? . . . but he is gone.
Come, I will take your hand,—this little glade
Of stunted trees,—do you remember that?
You dropped the Persian vase here on this stone,
And the white grape was spilled;
And then you cried, half angry, half afraid;
Yonder we sat
And carefully took the pieces one by one,
And tried to make them fit.
I brought another vessel filled
With a deeper wine, and there on that dark bank,
When the first star stepped from immensity,
We lay and drank….
Do you remember it?
White flame you burned against the star grey grass.
Drink deep and pass
The insufficient cup to me.
Paris, 1919
IV
You seek to hurt me, foolish child, and why?
How cunningly you try
The keen edge of your words against me, yea,
The death you would not dare inflict on me,
Yet would you welcome if it tore the day
In which I pleasure from my sight.
You would be happy if that sombre night
Ravished me into darkness where there are
No flowers and no colours and no light,
Nor any joy, nor you, O morning star.
What have I done to hurt you? You have given
What I have given, and both of us have taken
Bravely and beautifully without regret.
When have I sinned against you? or forsaken
Our secret vow? Think you that I forget
One syllable of all your loveliness?
What is this crime that shall not be forgiven?
Spring passes, the pale buds upon the pond
Shrink under water from my lonely oars,
The fern is squandering its final frond,
And gypsy smoke drifts grey from distant shores.
O soon enough the end of love and song,
And soon enough the ultimate farewell;
Blazon our lives with one last miracle,—
We have not long.
Genoa, 1918
V
By these shall you remember
The syllables of me;
The grass in cushioned clumps around
The root of cedar tree.
The blue and green design
Of sky and budding leaves,
The joyous song that in the sun
A golden ladder weaves.
When soil is wet and warm
And smells of the new rain,
When frogs accost the evening
With their recurrent strain,
Then damn me if you dare.
I know how you will call,
But this time I will laugh and run,
Nor look at you at all.
Or, if you will, go walking
With immortality,
But never shall you once forget
The syllables of me.
Paris, 1919
VI
Two black deer uprise
In ghostly silhouette
Against the frozen skies,
Against the snowy meadow;
The moonlight weaves a net
Of silver and of shadow.
The sky is cold above me,
The icy road below
Leads me from you who love me,
To unknown destinies.
Was that your whistle?—No,
The wind among the trees.
Sheffield, 1917
VII
When in the ultimate embrace
Our blown dust mingles in the wind,
And others wander in the place
Where we made merry;
When in the dance of spring we spend
Our ashen powers with the gale,
What will these tears and joys avail,
The winged kiss, the laughing face,
Where we make merry?
Save that with everlasting grace
Thy soul shall linger in this place,
And haunt with music, or else be
A lyric in the memory.
Boston, 1915
VIII
Tonight it seems to be the same
As when we two would sit
With struggling breath beside the river.
How slowly the moon came
Above the hill; how wet
With shaking silver she arose
Above the hill.
Now in the sultry garden close
I hear the katydid
Strumming his foolish mandolin.
The wind is lying still,
And suddenly amid
The trembling boughs the moon expands into a scarlet flame.
What charm can bid the mind forget,
And sleep in peace forever,
Beyond the ghosts of ancient sin,
Lost laughter, barren tears.
And you, my dear, have slept four thousand years,
Beneath the Pyramid.
Brussels, 1918
IX
If you should come tonight
And say, "I could not go, and leave
You here alone in pain,"
How should I take delight
In that or dare believe,
Lest I deceive myself with dreams again?…
If you should come tonight.
Cambridge, 1916
X
You are very far to-night;
So far that my beseeching hands
Clasp on the bright
Metallic lock of some forbidden portal,
Where you alone may enter in;
And my long gaze
Blurs in a memory of other lands,
And other times.
You stand immortal.
You have fought clear beyond these nights and days
Whose rusty chimes
Shake the frail, faded tapestries of sin.
You stand immortal,
Intense with peace, immaculate as stone,
Raising white arms of praise,
Far from this night, triumphantly alone.
Cambridge, 1917
XI
O lonely star moving in still abodes
Where fear and strife lie indolently furled,
You cannot hear the rushing autumn hurled
Against these wanderers bent with futile loads.
Our broken dreams like withered leaves are swirled
Where wind-dashed lanterns fail upon the roads,
And all our tragic gestured episodes
End in forgotten graveyards of the world.
But in those twilights where you spread your fires,
Tempest and clarion are heard no more;
Autumn no sorrow, spring no hope inspires,
Nor can the distant closing of a door
Affright the soul to dark imagining
Beneath deflowered boughs where no birds sing.
Pomfret, 1919
XII
A chalice singing deep with wine,
Set high among the starry groves,
Welcomes every man to dine
With his old familiar loves.
Sheffield, 1917