path: root/69866-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69866 ***

                                  DARK
                                   OF
                                  THE
                                  MOON




_BOOKS BY SARA TEASDALE_


  SONNETS TO DUSE (out of print)
  HELEN OF TROY AND OTHER POEMS
  RIVERS TO THE SEA
  LOVE SONGS
  FLAME AND SHADOW


_ANTHOLOGIES_:

  THE ANSWERING VOICE: ONE HUNDRED LOVE LYRICS BY WOMEN
  RAINBOW GOLD: POEMS OLD AND NEW, SELECTED FOR BOYS AND GIRLS




                            DARK OF THE MOON

                                   BY
                             SARA TEASDALE


                                NEW YORK
                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                  1926




      _Copyright, 1921, by Harper Brothers, Charles
          Scribner’s Sons, The Century Company, Harcourt
          Brace and Company, George H. Doran Company, The
          New Republic, Inc., and The Yale Publishing
          Association._

      _Copyright, 1922, by The Century Company, Harcourt
          Brace and Company, Vanity Fair Publishing
          Company, Inc., and George H. Doran Company._

      _Copyright, 1923, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, The
          Century Company, The New Republic, Inc., Gene
          Derwood and The Atlantic Monthly Company._

      _Copyright, 1924, by The Dial Publishing Company,
          Inc., The Century Company, George H. Doran Co.,
          and Harriet Monroe._

      _Copyright, 1925, by Harcourt Brace and Company, and
          The Yale Publishing Association._

      _Copyright, 1926, by The Atlantic Monthly Company,
          The Yale Publishing Association, The New
          Republic, Inc., The Saturday Review Co., Inc.,
          Charles Scribner’s Sons, and The New York
          Herald-Tribune, Inc._


      COPYRIGHT, 1926,
      BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.




                                _to_ E.




            _Thanks are due to the editors of Scribner’s
            Magazine, The New Republic, The Yale Review,
            Poetry, The Dial, The Atlantic Monthly, The
            London Mercury and other publications for their
            permission to reprint certain of the following
            poems._

            _For permission to set any of the poems to
            music, application should be made to the
            author._




_Contents_


                                   I

  _THERE WILL BE STARS_                                             PAGE
      ON THE SUSSEX DOWNS                                             15

      AUGUST NIGHT                                                    16

      TWO MINDS                                                       17

      WORDS FOR AN OLD AIR                                            18

      MOUNTAIN WATER                                                  19

      AT TINTAGIL                                                     20

     “THERE WILL BE STARS”                                            21


                                  II

  _PICTURES OF AUTUMN_
      AUTUMN                                                          25

      SEPTEMBER DAY                                                   26

      FONTAINEBLEAU                                                   27

      LATE OCTOBER                                                    28


                                  III

  _SAND DRIFT_
     “BEAUTIFUL, PROUD SEA”                                           31

      LAND’S END                                                      32

      SAND DRIFT                                                      33

      BLUE STARGRASS                                                  34

      SEPTEMBER NIGHT                                                 35

      LOW TIDE                                                        36


                                  IV

  _PORTRAITS_
      EFFIGY OF A NUN                                                 39

      THOSE WHO LOVE                                                  41

      EPITAPH                                                         42

      APPRAISAL                                                       43

      THE WISE WOMAN                                                  44

     “SHE WHO COULD BIND YOU”                                         45

     “SO THIS WAS ALL”                                                46


                                   V

  _MIDSUMMER NIGHTS_
      TWILIGHT                                                        49

      FULL MOON                                                       50

      THE FOUNTAIN                                                    51

      CLEAR EVENING                                                   52

      NOT BY THE SEA                                                  53

      MIDSUMMER NIGHT                                                 54


                                  VI

  _THE CRYSTAL GAZER_
      THE CRYSTAL GAZER                                               57

      THE SOLITARY                                                    58

      DAY’S ENDING                                                    59

      A REPLY                                                         60

      LEISURE                                                         61

     “I SHALL LIVE TO BE OLD”                                         62

      WISDOM                                                          63

      THE OLD ENEMY                                                   64


                                  VII

  _BERKSHIRE NOTES_
      WINTER SUN                                                      67

      A DECEMBER DAY                                                  68

      FEBRUARY TWILIGHT                                               69

     “I HAVE SEEN THE SPRING”                                         70

      WIND ELEGY                                                      71

      IN THE WOOD                                                     72

      AUTUMN DUSK                                                     73


                                 VIII

  _ARCTURUS IN AUTUMN_
      ARCTURUS IN AUTUMN                                              77

     “I COULD SNATCH A DAY”                                          78

      AN END                                                          79

      FOREKNOWN                                                       80

      WINTER                                                          81

      WINTER NIGHT SONG                                               82

      NEVER AGAIN                                                     83

      THE TUNE                                                        84


                                  IX

  _THE FLIGHT_
      THE BELOVED                                                     87

     “WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU”                                         88

      DEDICATION                                                      89

      ON A MARCH DAY                                                  90

      LET IT BE YOU                                                   91

      THE FLIGHT                                                      92




                                   I

                                 THERE
                                  WILL
                                   BE
                                 STARS




_On the Sussex Downs_


    Over the downs there were birds flying,
      Far off glittered the sea,
    And toward the north the weald of Sussex
      Lay like a kingdom under me.

    I was happier than the larks
      That nest on the downs and sing to the sky,
    Over the downs the birds flying
      Were not so happy as I.

    It was not you, though you were near,
      Though you were good to hear and see,
    It was not earth, it was not heaven
      It was myself that sang in me.




_August Night_


    On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
      In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
    You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
      But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.

    I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
      I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
    I heard your voice, you said, “Look down, see the glow-worm!”
      It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.

    We watched while it brightened as though it were breathed on and
         burning,
      This tiny creature moving over earth’s floor--
   “‘_L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle_,’”
      You said, and no more.




_Two Minds_


    Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
    Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
    And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
    They ride above us in extreme delight;
    We see them, we look up with a lone envy
    And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
    That changes not for winter or the night.




_Words for An Old Air_


    Your heart is bound tightly, let
      Beauty beware,
    It is not hers to set
      Free from the snare.

    Tell her a bleeding hand
      Bound it and tied it,
    Tell her the knot will stand
      Though she deride it;

    One who withheld so long
      All that you yearned to take,
    Has made a snare too strong
      For Beauty’s self to break.




_Mountain Water_


    You have taken a drink from a wild fountain
      Early in the year;
    There is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain
      But down, my dear;
    And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
      Will never seem fresh or clear
    For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
      In the feathery green of the year.




_At Tintagil_


    Iseult, Iseult, by the long waterways
      Watching the wintry moon, white as a flower,
    I have remembered how once in Tintagil
      You heard the tread of Time hour after hour.

    By casements hung with night, while all your women slept
      You turned toward Brittany, awake, alone,
    In the high chamber hushed, save where the candle dripped
      With the slow patient sound of blood on stone.

    The ache of empty arms was an old tale to you,
      And all the tragic tunes that love can play,
    Yet with no woman born would you have changed your lot,
      Though there were greater queens who had been gay.




“_There Will Be Stars_”


    There will be stars over the place forever;
      Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
    Every time the earth circles her orbit
      On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
    Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
      Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
    There will be stars over the place forever,
      There will be stars forever, while we sleep.




                                   II

                                PICTURES
                                   OF
                                 AUTUMN




_Autumn_

(Parc Monceau)


    I shall remember only these leaves falling
      Small and incessant in the still air,
    Yellow leaves on the dark green water resting
      And the marble Venus there--
    Is she pointing to her breasts or trying to hide them?
     There is no god to care.

    The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
      And its reflection seems
    Lost in the mass of leaves and unavailing
      As a dream lost among dreams;
    The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
      A dream lost among dreams.




_September Day_

(Pont de Neuilly)


    The Seine flows out of the mist
      And into the mist again;
    The trees lean over the water,
      The small leaves fall like rain.

    The leaves fall patiently,
      Nothing remembers or grieves;
    The river takes to the sea
      The yellow drift of the leaves.

    Milky and cold is the air,
      The leaves float with the stream,
    The river comes out of a sleep
      And goes away in a dream.




_Fontainebleau_


    Interminable palaces front on the green parterres,
      And ghosts of ladies lovely and immoral
    Glide down the gilded stairs,
      The high cold corridors are clicking with the heel taps
    That long ago were theirs.

    But in the sunshine, in the vague autumn sunshine,
      The geometric gardens are desolately gay;
    The crimson and scarlet and rose-red dahlias
      Are painted like the ladies who used to pass this way
    With a ringletted monarch, a Henry or a Louis
      On a lost October day.

    The aisles of the garden lead into the forest,
      The aisles lead into autumn, a damp wind grieves,
    Ghostly kings are hunting, the boar breaks cover,
      But the sounds of horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves,
      Four centuries of autumns, four centuries of leaves.




_Late October_

(Bois de Boulogne)


    Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing
      With a ghost of sound;
    Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
      From the low trees to the ground?

    If I had gone before, I could have remembered
      Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
    I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
      Whatever she has to say.




                                  III

                                  SAND
                                 DRIFT




“_Beautiful, Proud Sea_”


    Careless forever, beautiful proud sea,
      You laugh in happy thunder all alone,
    You fold upon yourself, you dance your dance
      Impartially on drift-weed, sand or stone.

    You make us believe that we can outlive death,
      You make us for an instant, for your sake,
    Burn, like stretched silver of a wave,
      Not breaking, but about to break.




_Land’s End_


    The shores of the world are ours, the solitary
      Beaches that bear no fruit, nor any flowers,
    Only the harsh sea-grass that the wind harries
      Hours on unbroken hours.

    No one will envy us these empty reaches
      At the world’s end, and none will care that we
    Leave our lost footprints where the sand forever
      Takes the unchanging passion of the sea.




_Sand Drift_


    I thought I should not walk these dunes again,
      Nor feel the sting of this wind-bitten sand,
    Where the coarse grasses always blow one way,
      Bent, as my thoughts are, by an unseen hand.

    I have returned; where the last wave rushed up
      The wet sand is a mirror for the sky
    A bright blue instant, and along its sheen
      The nimble sandpipers run twinkling by.

    Nothing has changed; with the same hollow thunder
      The waves die in their everlasting snow--
    Only the place we sat is drifted over,
      Lost in the blowing sand, long, long ago.




_Blue Stargrass_


    If we took the old path
      In the old field
    The same gate would stand there
      That will never yield.

    Where the sun warmed us
      With a cloak made of gold,
    The rain would be falling
      And the wind would be cold;

    And we would stop to search
      In the wind and the rain,
    But we would not find the stargrass
      By the path again.




_September Night_


    We walked in the dew, in the drowsy starlight
      To the sleepless, sleepy sound
    Of insects singing in the low sea-meadows
      For miles and miles around;
    With a wheel and a whirr the resistless rhythm
      Trembled incessantly;
    Antares was red in the sky before us,
      And behind us, the blackness of the sea.




_Low Tide_


    The birds are gathering over the dunes,
      Swerving and wheeling in shifting flight,
    A thousand wings sweep darkly by
      Over the dunes and out of sight.

    Why did you bring me down to the sea
      With the gathering birds and the fish-hawk flying,
    The tide is low and the wind is hard,
      Nothing is left but the old year dying.

    I wish I were one of the gathering birds,
      Two sharp black wings would be good for me--
    When nothing is left but the old year dying,
      Why did you bring me down to the sea?




IV

PORTRAITS




_Effigy of a Nun_

(Sixteenth Century)


    Infinite gentleness, infinite irony
      Are in this face with fast-sealed eyes,
    And round this mouth that learned in loneliness
      How useless their wisdom is to the wise.

    In her nun’s habit carved, patiently, lovingly,
      By one who knew the ways of womankind,
    This woman’s face still keeps, in its cold wistful calm,
      All of the subtle pride of her mind.

    These long patrician hands, clasping the crucifix,
      Show she had weighed the world, her will was set;
    These pale curved lips of hers, holding their hidden smile,
      Once having made their choice, knew no regret.

    She was of those who hoard their own thoughts carefully,
      Feeling them far too dear to give away,
    Content to look at life with the high, insolent
      Air of an audience watching a play.

    If she was curious, if she was passionate
      She must have told herself that love was great,
    But that the lacking it might be as great a thing
      If she held fast to it, challenging fate.

    She who so loved herself and her own warring thoughts,
      Watching their humorous, tragic rebound,
    In her thick habit’s fold, sleeping, sleeping,
      Is she amused at dreams she has found?

    Infinite tenderness, infinite irony
      Are hidden forever in her closed eyes,
    Who must have learned too well in her long loneliness
      How empty wisdom is, even to the wise.




_Those Who Love_


    Those who love the most,
    Do not talk of their love,
    Francesca, Guinevere,
    Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
    In the fragrant gardens of heaven
    Are silent, or speak if at all
    Of fragile, inconsequent things.

    And a woman I used to know
    Who loved one man from her youth,
    Against the strength of the fates
    Fighting in somber pride,
    Never spoke of this thing,
    But hearing his name by chance,
    A light would pass over her face.




_Epitaph_


    Serene descent, as a red leaf’s descending
      When there is neither wind nor noise of rain,
    But only autumn air and the unending
      Drawing of all things to the earth again:

    So be it; let the snow sift deep and cover
      All that was drunken once with light and air;
    The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
      Nor he awake to know she does not care.




_Appraisal_


    Never think she loves him wholly,
    Never believe her love is blind,
    All his faults are locked securely
    In a closet of her mind;
    All his indecisions folded
    Like old flags that time has faded,
    Limp and streaked with rain,
    And his cautiousness like garments
    Frayed and thin, with many a stain--
    Let them be, oh let them be,
    There is treasure to outweigh them,
    His proud will that sharply stirred,
    Climbs as surely as the tide,
    Senses strained too taut to sleep,
    Gentleness to beast and bird,
    Humor flickering hushed and wide
    As the moon on moving water,
    And a tenderness too deep
    To be gathered in a word.




_The Wise Woman_


    She must be rich who can forego
      An hour so jewelled with delight,
    She must have treasuries of joy
      That she can draw on day and night,
    She must be very sure of heaven--
      Or is it only that she feels
    How much more safe it is to lack
      A thing that time so often steals.




“_She Who Could Bind You_”


    She who could bind you
      Could bind fire to a wall;
    She who could hold you
      Could hold a waterfall;
    She who could keep you
      Could keep the wind from blowing
    On a warm spring night
      With a low moon glowing.




“_So This Was All_”


    So this was all there was to the great play
      She came so far to act in, this was all--
      Except the short last scene and the slow fall
    Of the final curtain, that might catch half-way,
    As final curtains do, and leave the grey
      Lorn end of things too long exposed. The hall
      Clapped faintly, and she took her curtain call,
    Knowing how little she had left to say.
    And in the pause before the last act started,
      Slowly unpinning the roses she had worn,
        She reconsidered lines that had been said,
    And found them hardly worthy the high-hearted
      Ardor that she had brought, nor the bright, torn,
        Roses that shattered round her, dripping red.




                                   V

                               MIDSUMMER
                                 NIGHTS




_Twilight_

(Nahant)


    There was an evening when the sky was clear,
      Ineffably translucent in its blue;
      The tide was falling and the sea withdrew
    In hushed and happy music from the sheer
    Shadowy granite of the cliffs; and fear
      Of what life may be, and what death can do,
      Fell from us like steel armor, and we knew
    The wisdom of the Law that holds us here.
    It was as though we saw the Secret Will,
      It was as though we floated and were free;
        In the south-west a planet shone serenely,
        And the high moon, most reticent and queenly,
    Seeing the earth had darkened and grown still,
      Misted with light the meadows of the sea.




_Full Moon_

(Santa Barbara)


    I listened, there was not a sound to hear
      In the great rain of moonlight pouring down,
    The eucalyptus trees were carved in silver,
      And a light mist of silver lulled the town.

    I saw far off the grey Pacific bearing
      A broad white disk of flame,
    And on the garden-walk a snail beside me
      Tracing in crystal the slow way he came.




_The Fountain_


    Fountain, fountain, what do you say
      Singing at night alone?
    “It is enough to rise and fall
      Here in my basin of stone.”

    But are you content as you seem to be
    So near the freedom and rush of the sea?
      “I have listened all night to its laboring sound,
      It heaves and sags, as the moon runs round;
    Ocean and fountain, shadow and tree,
    Nothing escapes, nothing is free.”




_Clear Evening_


    The crescent moon is large enough to linger
      A little while after the twilight goes,
    This moist midsummer night the garden perfumes
      Are earth and apple, dewy pine and rose.

    Over my head four new-cut stars are glinting
      And the inevitable night draws on;
    I am alone, the old terror takes me,
      Evenings will come like this when I am gone;

    Evenings on evenings, years on years forever--
      Be taut, my spirit, close upon and keep
    The scent, the brooding chill, the gliding fire-fly,
      A poem learned before I fall asleep.




_Not by the Sea_


    Not by the sea, but somewhere in the hills,
    Not by the sea, but in the uplands surely
    There must be rest where a dim pool demurely
    Watches all night the stern slow-moving skies;

    Not by the sea, that never was appeased,
    Not by the sea, whose immemorial longing
    Shames the tired earth where even longing dies,
    Not by the sea that bore Iseult and Helen,
    But in a dark green hollow of the hills
    There must be sleep, even for sleepless eyes.




_Midsummer Night_


    Midsummer night without a moon, but the stars
      In a serene bright multitude were there,
    Even the shyest ones, even the faint motes shining
      Low in the north, under the Little Bear.

    When I have said, “This tragic farce I play in
      Has neither dignity, delight nor end,”
    The holy night draws all its stars around me,
      I am ashamed, I have betrayed my Friend.




                                   VI

                                  THE
                                CRYSTAL
                                 GAZER




_The Crystal Gazer_


    I shall gather myself into myself again,
      I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
    Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
      Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

    I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
      Watching the future come and the present go,
    And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
      In restless self-importance to and fro.




_The Solitary_


    My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
      I have less need now than when I was young
    To share myself with every comer
      Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

    It is one to me that they come or go
      If I have myself and the drive of my will,
    And strength to climb on a summer night
      And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

    Let them think I love them more than I do,
      Let them think I care, though I go alone;
    If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
      Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.




_Day’s Ending_

(Tucson)


    Aloof as aged kings,
    Wearing like them the purple,
    The mountains ring the mesa
    Crowned with a dusky light;
    Many a time I watched
    That coming-on of darkness
    Till stars burned through the heavens
    Intolerably bright.

    It was not long I lived there
    But I became a woman
    Under those vehement stars.
    For it was there I heard
    For the first time my spirit
    Forging an iron rule for me,
    As though with slow cold hammers
    Beating out word by word:

    “Only yourself can heal you,
    Only yourself can lead you,
    The road is heavy going
    And ends where no man knows;
    Take love when love is given,
    But never think to find it
    A sure escape from sorrow
    Or a complete repose.”




_A Reply_


    Four people knew the very me,
    Four is enough, so let it be;
    For the rest I make no chart,
    There are no highroads to my heart;
    The gates are locked, they will not stir
    For any ardent traveller.
    I have not been misunderstood,
    And on the whole, I think life good--
    So waste no sympathy on me
    Or any well-meant gallantry;
    I have enough to do to muse
    On memories I would not lose.




_Leisure_


    If I should make no poems any more
      There would be rest at least, so let it be;
    Time to read books in other tongues and listen
      To the long mellow thunder of the sea.

    The year will turn for me, I shall delight in
      All animals, and some of my own kind,
    Sharing with no one but myself the frosty
      And half ironic musings of my mind.




“_I Shall Live to be Old_”


    I shall live to be old, who feared I should die young,
      I shall live to be old,
    I shall cling to life as the leaves to the creaking oak
      In the rustle of falling snow and the cold.

    The other trees let loose their leaves on the air
      In their russet and red,
    I have lived long enough to wonder which is the best,
      And to envy sometimes the way of the early dead.




_Wisdom_


    It was a night of early spring,
      The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;
    Around us shadows and the wind
      Listened for what was never spoken.

    Though half a score of years are gone,
      Spring comes as sharply now as then--
    But if we had it all to do
      It would be done the same again.

    It was a spring that never came,
      But we have lived enough to know
    What we have never had, remains;
      It is the things we have that go.




_The Old Enemy_


    Rebellion against death, the old rebellion
      Is over; I have nothing left to fight;
    Battles have always had their meed of music
      But peace is quiet as a windless night.

    Therefore I make no songs--I have grown certain
      Save when he comes too late, death is a friend,
    A shepherd leading home his flock serenely
      Under the planet at the evening’s end.




                                  VII

                               BERKSHIRE
                                 NOTES




_Winter Sun_

(Lenox)


    There was a bush with scarlet berries
      And there were hemlocks heaped with snow;
    With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches
      They took the wind and let it go.

    The hills were shining in their samite,
      Fold after fold they flowed away--
    “Let come what may,” your eyes were saying,
      “At least we two have had to-day.”




_A December Day_


    Dawn turned on her purple pillow
      And late, late came the winter day,
    Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow,
      The sunless world was white and grey.

    At noon we heard a blue-jay scolding,
      At five the last thin light was lost
    From snow-banked windows faintly holding
      The feathery filigree of frost.




_February Twilight_


    I stood beside a hill
      Smooth with new-laid snow,
    A single star looked out
      From the cold evening glow.

    There was no other creature
      That saw what I could see--
    I stood and watched the evening star
      As long as it watched me.




“_I Have Seen the Spring_”


    Nothing is new, I have seen the spring too often;
    There have been other plum-trees white as this one
    Like a silvery cloud tethered beside the road,
    I have been waked from sleep too many times
    By birds at dawn boasting their love is beautiful.
    The grass-blades gleam in the wind, nothing is changed.
    Nothing is lost, it is all as it used to be,
    Unopened lilacs are still as deep a purple,
    The boughs of the elm are dancing still in a veil of tiny leaves,
    Nothing is lost but a few years from my life.




_Wind Elegy_

(W. E. W.)


    Only the wind knows he is gone,
      Only the wind grieves,
    The sun shines, the fields are sown,
      Sparrows mate in the eaves;

    But I heard the wind in the pines he planted
      And the hemlocks overhead,
    “His acres wake, for the year turns,
      But he is asleep,” it said.




_In the Wood_


    I heard the water-fall rejoice
      Singing like a choir,
    I saw the sun flash out of it
      Azure and amber fire.

    The earth was like an open flower
      Enamelled and arrayed,
    The path I took to find its heart
      Fluttered with sun and shade.

    And while earth lured me, gently, gently,
      Happy and all alone,
    Suddenly a heavy snake
      Reared black upon a stone.




_Autumn Dusk_


    I saw above a sea of hills
      A solitary planet shine,
    And there was no one near or far
      To keep the world from being mine.




                                  VIII

                                ARCTURUS
                                   IN
                                 AUTUMN




_Arcturus in Autumn_


    When, in the gold October dusk, I saw you near to setting,
      Arcturus, bringer of spring,
    Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn,
      Having no pity on our withering;

    Oh then I knew at last that my own autumn was upon me,
      I felt it in my blood,
    Restless as dwindling streams that still remember
      The music of their flood.

    There in the thickening dark a wind-bent tree above me
      Loosed its last leaves in flight--
    I saw you sink and vanish, pitiless Arcturus,
      You will not stay to share our lengthening night.




“_I Could Snatch a Day_”


    I could snatch a day out of the late autumn
      And set it trembling like forgotten springs,
    There would be sharp blue skies with new leaves shining
      And flying shadows cast by flying wings.

    I could take the heavy wheel of the world and break it,
      But we sit brooding while the ashes fall,
    Cowering over an old fire that dwindles,
      Waiting for nothing at all.




_An End_


    I have no heart for any other joy,
      The drenched September day turns to depart,
    And I have said good-bye to what I love;
      With my own will I vanquished my own heart.

    On the long wind I hear the winter coming,
      The window panes are cold and blind with rain;
    With my own will I turned the summer from me
      And summer will not come to me again.




_Foreknown_


    They brought me with a secret glee
      The news I knew before they spoke,
        And though they hoped to see me riven,
        They found me light as dry leaves driven
      Before the storm that splits an oak.

    For I had learned from many an autumn
      The way a leaf can drift and go,
        Lightly, lightly, almost gay
        Taking the unreturning way
      To mix with winter and the snow.




_Winter_


    I shall have winter now and lessening days,
    Lit by a smoky sun with slanting rays,
    And after falling leaves, the first determined frost.
    The colors of the world will all be lost.
    So be it; the faint buzzing of the snow
    Will fill the empty boughs,
    And after sleet storms I shall wake to see
    A glittering glassy plume of every tree.
    Nothing shall tempt me from my fire-lit house,
    And I shall find at night a friendly ember
    And make my life of what I can remember.




_Winter Night Song_


    Will you come as of old with singing,
      And shall I hear as of old?
    Shall I rush to open the window
      In spite of the arrowy cold?

        Ah no, my dear, ah no,
          I shall sit by the fire reading,
        Though you sing half the night in the snow
          I shall not be heeding.

    Though your voice remembers the forest,
      The warm green light and the birds,
    Though you gather the sea in your singing
      And pour its sound into words,

        Even so, my dear, even so,
          I shall not heed you at all;
        Though your shoulders are white with snow,
          Though you strain your voice to a call,
        I shall drowse and the fire will drowse,
          The draught will be cold on the floor,
        The clock running down,
          Snow banking the door.




_Never Again_


    Never again the music blown as brightly
      Off of my heart as foam blown off a wave;
    Never again the melody that lightly
      Caressed my grief and healed the wounds it gave.

    Never again--I hear my dark thoughts clashing
      Sullen and blind as waves that beat a wall--
    Age that is coming, summer that is going,
      All I have lost or never found at all.




_The Tune_


    I know a certain tune that my life plays;
      Over and over I have heard it start
    With all the wavering loveliness of viols
      And gain in swiftness like a runner’s heart.

    It climbs and climbs; I watch it sway in climbing
      High over time, high even over doubt,
    It has all heaven to itself--it pauses
      And faltering blindly down the air, goes out.




                                   IX

                                  THE
                                 FLIGHT




_The Beloved_


    It is enough of honor for one lifetime
      To have known you better than the rest have known,
    The shadows and the colors of your voice,
      Your will, immutable and still as stone.

    The shy heart, so lonely and so gay,
      The sad laughter and the pride of pride,
    The tenderness, the depth of tenderness
      Rich as the earth, and wide as heaven is wide.




“_When I Am Not With You_”


    When I am not with you
    I am alone,
    For there is no one else
    And there is nothing
    That comforts me but you.
    When you are gone
    Suddenly I am sick,
    Blackness is round me,
    There is nothing left.
    I have tried many things,
    Music and cities,
    Stars in their constellations
    And the sea,
    But there is nothing
    That comforts me but you;
    And my poor pride bows down
    Like grass in a rain-storm
    Drenched with my longing.
    The night is unbearable,
    Oh let me go to you
    For there is no one,
    There is nothing
    To comfort me but you.




_Dedication_


    At least I have loved you;
      Though much went wrong,
    This was good,
      This was strong.

    Unshaken
      In spite of the going of years,
    Too sure to retract,
      Too proud for tears.

    Let my love be the pillow
      Under your head,
    On your lips like a song,
      To your hunger, bread.




_On a March Day_


    Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
      That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
    Making a key-board of the earth to strike
      From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,

    Bear witness for me that I loved my life,
      All things that hurt me and all things that healed,
    And that I swore to it this day in March,
      Here at the edge of this new-broken field.

    You only knew me, tell them I was glad
      For every hour since my hour of birth,
    And that I ceased to fear, as once I feared,
      The last complete reunion with the earth.




_Let It Be You_


    Let it be you who lean above me
      On my last day,
    Let it be you who shut my eyelids
      Forever and aye.

    Say a “Good-night” as you have said it
      All of these years,
    With the old look, with the old whisper
      And without tears.

    You will know then all that in silence
      You always knew,
    Though I have loved, I loved no other
      As I love you.




_The Flight_


    We are two eagles
    Flying together
    Under the heavens,
    Over the mountains,
    Stretched on the wind.
    Sunlight heartens us,
    Blind snow baffles us,
    Clouds wheel after us
    Ravelled and thinned.

    We are like eagles,
    But when Death harries us,
    Human and humbled
    When one of us goes,
    Let the other follow,
    Let the flight be ended,
    Let the fire blacken,
    Let the book close.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69866 ***