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It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
   Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea,
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Allah is merciful, Allah is kind,
His heart, in the tears of the earth, is enshrined;
                   He chains the desire
                   Of whirlwind and fire:—
The Drought, the Simoon and their forces entire,
In the fast spreading shades of his pity, suspire;—
                   It rains, it rains.

Allah is gracious, Allah is sweet,
The desert is flowering under his feet;
                   E’en the fires he fanned,
                   And the mountains they spanned,
And the caverns that groan under burdens of sand
Are dazed with the bounties that flow from his hand;—
                   It rains, it rains!  

Allah’s all-seeing, Allah is wise,
The palm from the stone to praise him shall rise;
                   The deer in the dale,
                   The plant in the shale,
The bird in the nest, and the gull in the gale
Are joyously chanting, Hail, Allah, hail!
                   It rains, it rains!

Allah is mighty, Allah is great,
His hands all things resuscitate;
                   He burns the shroud,
                   He shakes the cloud,
And the dead of the earth with new life are endowed,—
The bones of the earth are joyous and proud;—
                   It rains, it rains!

It's an earth song,—
And I've been waiting long for an earth song. 
It's a spring song,—
And I've been waiting long for a spring song. 
    Strong as the shoots of a new plant 
    Strong as the bursting of new buds
    Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother's womb. 
It's an earth song, 
A body song, 
A spring song, 
I have been waiting long for this spring song. 

At midnight, in the month of June, 
I stand beneath the mystic moon. 
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim, 
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop, 
Upon the quiet mountain top, 
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley. 
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest; 
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take, 
And would not, for the world, awake. 
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
(Her casment open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinles! 

Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop—
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully—so fearfully—
Above the closed and fringéd lid
’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And wingéd pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals—

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,—      
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—   
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay,—   
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother — rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—      
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead tonight,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby song:
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep! 

    She looked over his shoulder
       For vines and olive trees,
    Marble well-governed cities
       And ships upon untamed seas,
    But there on the shining metal
       His hands had put instead
    An artificial wilderness
       And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
   No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
   Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
   An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
   Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
   No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
   Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

    She looked over his shoulder
       For ritual pieties,
    White flower-garlanded heifers,
       Libation and sacrifice,
    But there on the shining metal
       Where the altar should have been,
    She saw by his flickering forge-light
       Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
   Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
   A crowd of ordinary decent folk
   Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

    She looked over his shoulder
       For athletes at their games,
    Men and women in a dance
       Moving their sweet limbs
    Quick, quick, to music,
       But there on the shining shield
    His hands had set no dancing-floor
       But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
   Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
   That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
   Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

    The thin-lipped armorer,
       Hephaestos, hobbled away,
    Thetis of the shining breasts
       Cried out in dismay
    At what the god had wrought
       To please her son, the strong
    Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
       Who would not live long.

O’Driscoll drove with a song,
The wild duck and the drake,
From the tall and the tufted weeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.

And he saw how the weeds grew dark
At the coming of night tide,
And he dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.

He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.

The dancers crowded about him,
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve,
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.

The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.

He played with the merry old men,
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.

He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.

O’Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like drifting smoke;

But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

The twilight’s inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah, quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God’s daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird’s wing
Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah, never any more when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
Beyond the lure of light Alcæus’ lyre,
Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna’s voice.
Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,
Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,
Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
The quiver and the crying of my heart.
Still I remember how I strove to flee
The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head
To hurry faster, but upon the ground
I saw two wingèd shadows side by side,
And all the world’s spring passion stifled me.
Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
In many guises didst thou come to me;
I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,
Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
In Anactoria I knew thy grace,
I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
But never wholly, soul and body mine,
Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.
Now I have found the peace that fled from me;
Close, close, against my heart I hold my world.
Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry,
Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,
I taught the world thy music, now alone
I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

23–29 October 1962

Moon tonight,
Beloved . . .
When twilight
Has gathered together
The ends
Of her soft robe
And the last bird-call
Has died.
Moon tonight—
Cool as a forgotten dream,
Dearer than lost twilights
Among trees where birds sing
No more.

Slanting, driving, Summer rain
How you wash my heart of pain!
How you make me think of trees,
Ships and gulls and flashing seas!
In your furious, tearing wind,
Swells a chant that heals my mind;
And your passion high and proud,
Makes me shout and laugh aloud!

Autumn rains that start at dawn,
“Dropping veils of thinnest lawn,”
Soaking sod between dank grasses,
Sweeping golden leaves in masses,—
Blotting, blurring out the Past,
In a dream you hold me fast;
Calling, coaxing to forget
Things that are, for things not yet.

Winter tempest, winter rain,
Hurtling down with might and main,
You but make me hug my hearth,
Laughing, sheltered from your wrath.
Now I woo my dancing fire,
Piling, piling drift-wood higher.
Books and friends and pictures old,
Hearten while you pound and scold!

Pattering, wistful showers of Spring
Set me to remembering
Far-off times and lovers too,
Gentle joys and heart-break rue,—
Memories I’d as lief forget,
Were not oblivion sadder yet.
Ah! you twist my mind with pain,
Wistful, whispering April rain!

Summer, Autumn, Winter rain,
How you ease my heart of pain!
Whispering, wistful showers of Spring,
How I love the hurt you bring!

A stranger in a stranger land,
    Too calm to weep, too sad to smile,
I take my harp of broken strings,
    A weary moment to beguile;
And tho no hope its promise brings,
    And present joy is not for me,
Still o’er that harp I love to bend,
    And feel its broken melody
With all my shattered feelings blend.

I love to hear its funeral voice
    Proclaim how sad my lot, how lone;
And when, my spirit wilder grows,
    To list its deeper, darker tone.
And when my soul more madly glows
    Above the wrecks that round it lie,
It fills me with a strange delight,
    Past mortal bearing, proud and high,
To feel its music swell to might.

When beats my heart in doubt and awe,
    And Reason pales upon her throne,
Ah, then, when no kind voice can cheer
    The lot too desolate, too lone,
Its tones come sweet upon my ear,
    As twilight o’er some landscape fair:
As light upon the wings of night
    (The meteor flashes in the air,
The rising stars) its tones are bright.

And now by Sacramento’s stream,
    What mem’ries sweet its music brings—
The vows of love, its smiles and tears,
    Hang o’er this harp of broken strings.
It speaks, and midst her blushing fears
    The beauteous one before me stands!
Pure spirit in her downcast eyes,
    And like twin doves her folded hands!

It breathes again—and at my side
    She kneels, with grace divinely rare—
Then showering kisses on my lips,
    She hides our busses with her hair;
Then trembling with delight, she flings
    Her beauteous self into my arms,
As if o’erpowered, she sought for wings
    To hide her from her conscious charms!

It breathes once more, and bowed in grief,
    The bloom has left her cheek forever,
While, like my broken harp-strings now,
    Behold her form with feeling quiver!
She turns her face o’errun with tears,
    To him that silent bends above her,
And, by the sweets of other years,
    Entreats him still, oh, still to love her!

He loves her still—but darkness falls
    Upon his ruined fortunes now,
And ’t is his exile doom to flee.
    The dews, like death, are on his brow,
And cold the pang about his heart
    Oh, cease—to die is agony:
’T is more than death when loved ones part!

Well may this harp of broken strings
    Seem sweet to me by this lonely shore.
When like a spirit it breaks forth,
    And speaks of beauty evermore!
When like a spirit it evokes
    The buried joys of early youth,
And clothes the shrines of early love,
    With all the radiant light of truth!

She felt alone
In that garden unfrequented,
Where the winds make moan
For blossom sweetly scented,
Perfumed but far away.
And as the sunset died,
Lost the last long twilight ray,
She felt so lone and cried.

Her face protesting revealed
The trace of promises and prayers unreturned,
Deep disillusions learned,
Sorrows silence-sealed.

And as she wept
Like a lost child
When the shadow of twilight crept
On the forest wild,
Not knowing the ground,
As tears and tear-drops falling,
Moistened the cheek of the night around,
I called, she heard me calling,
And longer cried in that garden frequented only
By her spirit loving and lovely.

Silently without my window,
    Tapping gently at the pane,
    Falls the rain.
Through the trees sighs the breeze
    Like a soul in pain.
Here alone I sit and weep;
Thought hath banished sleep.

Wearily I sit and listen
    To the water's ceaseless drip.
    To my lip
Fate turns up the bitter cup,
    Forcing me to sip;
'Tis a bitter, bitter drink,
Thus I sit and think,—

Thinking things unknown and awful,
    Thoughts on wild, uncanny themes,
    Waking dreams.
Spectres dark, corpses stark,
    Show the gaping seams
Whence the cold and cruel knife
Stole away their life.

Bloodshot eyes all strained and staring,
    Gazing ghastly into mine;
    Blood like wine
On the brow—clotted now—
    Shows death's dreadful sign.
Lonely vigil still I keep;
Would that I might sleep!

Still, oh, still, my brain is whirling!
    Still runs on my stream of thought;
    I am caught
In the net fate hath set.
    Mind and soul are brought
To destruction's very brink;
Yet I can but think!

Eyes that look into the future, —
    Peeping forth from out my mind,
    They will find
Some new weight, soon or late,
On my soul to bind,
Crushing all its courage out,—
Heavier than doubt.

Dawn, the Eastern monarch's daughter,
    Rising from her dewy bed,
    Lays her head
'Gainst the clouds' sombre shrouds
    Now half fringed with red.
O'er the land she 'gins to peep;
Come, O gentle Sleep!

Hark! the morning cock is crowing;
    Dreams, like ghosts, must hie away;
    'Tis the day.
Rosy morn now is born;
    Dark thoughts may not stay.
Day my brain from foes will keep;
Now, my soul, I sleep.

I have a friend in ghostland—
   Early found, ah me, how early lost!—
Blood-red seaweeds drip along that coastland
   By the strong sea wrenched and tossed.
In every creek there slopes a dead man’s islet,
   And such an one in every bay;
All unripened in the unended twilight:
   For there comes neither night nor day.

Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it
   From the watery misty place;
Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it
   In unprofitable space.
Living flocks and herds are nowhere found there;
   Only ghosts in flocks and shoals:
Indistinguished hazy ghosts surround there
   Meteors whirling on their poles;
Indistinguished hazy ghosts abound there;
   Troops, yea swarms, of dead men’s souls.—

Have they towns to live in?—
   They have towers and towns from sea to sea;
Of each town the gates are seven;
   Of one of these each ghost is free.
Civilians, soldiers, seamen,
   Of one town each ghost is free:
They are ghastly men those ghostly freemen:
   Such a sight may you not see.—

How know you that your lover
   Of death’s tideless waters stoops to drink?—
Me by night doth mouldy darkness cover,
   It makes me quake to think:
All night long I feel his presence hover
   Thro’ the darkness black as ink.

Without a voice he tells me
   The wordless secrets of death’s deep:
If I sleep, his trumpet voice compels me
   To stalk forth in my sleep:
If I wake, he hunts me like a nightmare;
   I feel my hair stand up, my body creep:
Without light I see a blasting sight there,
   See a secret I must keep.

I cannot live with You – 
It would be Life – 
And Life is over there – 
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to – 
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain – 
Like a Cup – 

Discarded of the Housewife – 
Quaint – or Broke – 
A newer Sevres pleases – 
Old Ones crack – 

I could not die – with You – 
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down – 
You – could not – 

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze – 
Without my Right of Frost – 
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You – 
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ – 
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye – 
Except that You than He
Shone closer by – 

They’d judge Us – How – 
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to – 
I could not – 

Because You saturated Sight – 
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be – 
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame – 

And were You – saved – 
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not – 
That self – were Hell to Me – 

So We must meet apart – 
You there – I – here – 
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer – 
And that White Sustenance – 
Despair – 

One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing 
Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight—meeting 
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—

Far safer, through an Abbey—gallop—
The Stones a’chase—
Than moonless—One’s A’self encounter—
In lonesome place—

Ourself—behind Ourself—Concealed—
Should startle—most—
Assassin—hid in Our Apartment—
Be Horror’s least—

The Prudent—carries a Revolver—
He bolts the Door, 
O’erlooking a Superior Spectre
More near—

If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,—
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, —
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
 

The night was made for rest and sleep, 
For winds that softly sigh; 
It was not made for grief and tears; 
So then why do I cry? 

The wind that blows through leafy trees
Is soft and warm and sweet; 
For me the night is a gracious cloak 
To hide my soul’s defeat. 

Just one dark hour of shaken depths, 
Of bitter black despair—
Another day will find me brave,
And not afraid to dare. 

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.
     And he said:
     Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
     Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
     And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
     And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

     Much of your pain is self-chosen.
     It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
     Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
     And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

On such a day as this I think,
      On such as day as this,
When earth and sky and nature’s whole
      Are clad in April’s bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
      Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
      On such a day as this.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year’s song and next year’s bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
I am as helpless in the toil
Of spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover
Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death’s dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

“John Keats is dead,” they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.
And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.

The spring has many sounds:
Roller skates grind the pavement to noisy dust.
Birds chop the still air into small melodies.
The wind forgets to be the weather for a time
And whispers old advice for summer.
The sea stretches itself
And gently creaks and cracks its bones….

The spring has many silences:
Buds are mysteriously unbound
With a discreet significance,
And buds say nothing.

There are things that even the wind will not betray.
Earth puts her finger to her lips
And muffles there her quiet, quick activity….

Do not wonder at me
That I am hushed
This April night beside you.

The spring has many silences.

After the winter rain, 
   Sing, robin! Sing, swallow!
Grasses are in the lane, 
   Buds and flowers will follow.

Woods shall ring, blithe and gay,
   With bird-trill and twitter,
Though the skies weep to-day, 
   And the winds are bitter. 

Though deep call unto deep
   As calls the thunder, 
And white the billows leap
   The tempest under;

Softly the waves shall come
   Up the long, bright beaches, 
With dainty, flowers of foam
   And tenderest speeches …

After the wintry pain, 
   And the long, long sorrow, 
Sing, heart!—for thee again
   Joy comes with the morrow.

I.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

III.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

And now the sun in tinted splendor sank,
  The west was all aglow with crimson light;
The bay seemed like a sheet of burnished gold,
  Its waters glistened with such radiance bright.

At anchor lay the yachts with snow-white sails,
  Outlined against the glowing, rose-hued sky.
No ripple stirred the waters’ calm repose
  Save when a tiny craft sped lightly by.

Our boat was drifting slowly, gently round,
  To rest secure till evening shadows fell;
No sound disturbed the stillness of the air,
  Save the soft chiming of the vesper bell.

Yes, drifting, drifting; and I thought that life,
  When nearing death, is like the sunset sky:
And death is but the slow, sure drifting in
  To rest far more securely, by and by.

Then let me drift along the Bay of Time,
  Till my last sun shall set in glowing light;
Let me cast anchor where no shadows fall,
  Forever moored within Heaven’s harbor bright.

Oh science sequestered much,
And by wisdom’s gentler touch,
         Accelerated more!
Did not they voice give the command
That man must venture from his strand
In quest of other distant land,
         Or was it ancient lore?

For sure into his peaceful breast,
Thou breathed the spirit of unrest,
         And bade him search the skies:
Thou pictured earth a moving sphere
Whose revolutions make the year,
And whispered to his listening ear,
          “Search heaven and be wise.”

Thy presence round him, charming fell.
And break did it the magic spell
         That ignorance had wrought:
And plain did seem the merry race
Of myriad planets thrown in space—
Just how each kept in his place,
         Has fostered wondrous thought.

And oft the would-be infidel
Has list the story that you tell
         And wisely gave a nod;
For now the planet checkered sky
And tangle comments hissing by
Have seized and borne his thoughts on high,
         Acknowledging a God.

No day has dawned, no sunbeam shone,
Where thought of man has not yet gone:
         And the rugged panoply,
Encasing of his mental frame,
Doth burst with unbounding fame
And conquers heaven in thy name,
         Science of the canopy.

Ah! could the Alexander brave
Be resurrected from his grave?
         Weep he would no more,
That no worlds to conquer still
He had; for science would fulfil
The very letter of his will,
         Of worlds, would give him more.

There is snow, now—
A thing of silent creeping—
And day is strange half-night . . .
And the mountains have gone, softly murmuring something . . .

And I remember pale days, 
Pale as the half-night . . . and as strange and sad.

I remember times in this room
When but to glance thru an opened window
Was to be filled with an ageless crying wonder:
The grand slope of the meadows,
The green rising of the hills,
And then far-away slumbering mountains—
Dark, fearful, old—
Older than old, rusted, crumbling rock,
Those mountains . . .
But sometimes came a strange thing
And theirs was the youth of a cloudlet flying,
Sunwise, flashing . . .

                  And such is the wisdom of the mountains!
                  Knowing it nothing to be old,
                  And nothing to be young!

There is snow, now—
A silent creeping . . .

And I have walked into the mountains,
Into canyons that gave back my laughter,
And the lover-girl’s laughter . . .
And at dark,
When our skin twinged to the night-wind,
Built us a great marvelous fire
And sat in quiet,
Carefully sipping at scorching coffee . . .

But when a coyote gave to the night
A wail of all the bleeding sorrow,
All the dismal, grey-eyed pain
That those slumbering mountains had ever known—
Crept close to each other
And close to the fire—
Listening—
Then hastily doused the fire
And fled (giving many excuses)
With tightly-clasping hands.

Snow, snow, snow—
A thing of silent creeping

And once,
On a night of screaming chill,
I went to climb a mountain’s cold, cold body
With a boy whose eyes had the ancient look of the mountains,
And whose heart the swinging dance of a laughter-child . . .
Our thighs ached
And lungs were fired with frost and heaving breath—
The long, long slope—
A wind mad and raging . . .
Then—the top!

                  There should have been . . . something . . .
                  But there was silence, only—
                  Quiet after the wind’s frenzy,
                  Quiet after all frenzy—
                  And more mountains,
                  Endlessly into the night . . .

                  And such is the wisdom of mountains!
                  Knowing how great is silence,
                  How nothing is greater than silence!

And so they are gone, now,
And they murmured something as they went—
Something in the strange half-night . . .

I snatch at my eagle plumes and long hair.
A hand cut my hair; my robes did deplete.
Left heart all unchanged; the work incomplete.
These favors unsought, I’ve paid since with care.
Dear teacher, you wished so much good to me,
That though I was blind, I strove hard to see.
Had you then, no courage frankly to tell
Old-race problems, Christ e’en failed to expel?

My light has grown dim, and black the abyss
That yawns at my feet. No bordering shore;
No bottom e’er found my hopes sunk before.
Despair I of good from deeds gone amiss.
My people, may God have pity on you!
The learning I hoped in you to imbue
Turns bitterly vain to meet both our needs.
No Sun for the flowers, vain planting seeds.

I’ve lost my long hair; my eagle plumes too.
From you my own people, I’ve gone astray.
A wanderer now, with no where to stay.
The Will-o-the-wisp learning, it brought me rue.
It brings no admittance. Where I have knocked
Some evil imps, hearts, have bolted and locked.
Alone with the night and fearful Abyss
I stand isolated, life gone amiss.

Intensified hush chills all my proud soul.
Oh, what am I? Whither bound thus and why?
Is there not a God on whom to rely?
A part of His Plan, the atoms enroll?
In answer, there comes a sweet Voice and clear,
My loneliness soothes with sounding so near.
A drink to my thirst, each vibrating note.
My vexing old burdens fall far remote.

“Then close your sad eyes. Your spirit regain.
Behold what fantastic symbols abound,
What wondrous host of cosmos around.
From silvery sand, the tiniest grain
To man and the planet, God’s at the heart.
In shifting mosaic, souls doth impart.
His spirits who pass through multiformed earth
Some lesson of life must learn in each birth.”

Divinely the Voice sang. I felt refreshed.
And vanished the night, abyss and despair.
Harmonious kinship made all things fair.
I yearned with my soul to venture unleashed.
Sweet freedom. There stood in waiting, a steed
All prancing, well bridled, saddled for speed.
A foot in the stirrup! Off with a bound!
As light as a feather, making no sound.

Through ether, long leagues we galloped away.
An angry red river, we shyed in dismay,
For here were men sacrificed (cruel deed)
To reptiles and monsters, war, graft, and greed.
A jungle of discord drops in the rear.
By silence is quelled suspicious old fear,
And spite-gnats’ low buzz is muffled at last.
Exploring the spirit, I must ride fast.

Away from these worldly ones, let us go,
Along a worn trail, much travelled and—Lo!
Familiar the scenes that come rushing by.
Now billowy sea and now azure sky.
Amid that enchanted spade, as they spun
Sun, moon, and the stars, their own orbits run!
Great Spirit, in realms so infinite reigns;
And wonderful wide are all His domains.

Hark! Here in the Spirit-world, He doth hold
A village of Indians, camped as of old.
Earth-legends by their fires, some did review,
While flowers and trees more radiant grew.
“Oh, You were all dead! In Lethe you were tossed!”
I cried, “Every where ’twas told you were lost!
Forsooth, they did scan your footprints on sand.
Bereaved, I did mourn your fearful sad end.”

Then spoke One of the Spirit Space, so sedate.
“My child, We are souls, forever and aye.
The signs in our orbits point us the way.
Like planets, we do not tarry nor wait.
Those memories dim, from Dust to the Man,
Called Instincts, are trophies won while we ran.
Now various stars where loved ones remain
Are linked to our hearts with Memory-chain.”

“In journeying here, the Aeons we’ve spent
Are countless and strange. How well I recall
Old Earth trails: the River Red; above all
The Desert sands burning us with intent.
All these we have passed to learn some new thing.
Oh hear me! Your dead doth lustily sing!
‘Rejoice! Gift of Life pray waste not in wails!
            The maker of Souls forever prevails!’”

Direct from the Spirit-world came my steed.
The phantom has place in what was all planned.
He carried me back to God and the land
Where all harmony, peace and love are the creed.
In triumph, I cite my Joyous return.
The smallest wee creature I dare not spurn.
I sing “Gift of Life, pray waste not in wails!
The Maker of Souls forever prevails!”

I

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.

II

No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master’s will. Henceforth I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.

Men hasten to the King’s market. All the buyers and sellers are there. But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work.

Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time, and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.

Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence!

III

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.

That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

IV

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou are not seen.

If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart—thy love for me still waits for my love.

V

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.

VI

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours. There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.

But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never never a word.

The ringèd moon sits eerily 
Like a mad woman in the sky,
Dropping flat hands to caress
The far world’s shaggy flanks and breast,
Plunging white hands in the glade
Elbow deep in leafy shade
Where birds sleep in each silent brake
Silverly, there to wake
The quivering loud nightingales 
Whose cries like scattered silver sails
Spread across the azure sea.
Her hands also caress me:
My keen heart also does she dare;
While turning always through the skies
Her white feet mirrored in my eyes 
Weave a snare about my brain
Unbreakable by surge or strain,
For the moon is mad, for she is old,
And many’s the bead of a life she’s told;
And many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

The hushèd earth, so calm, so old,
Dreams beneath its heath and wold—
And heavy scent from thorny hedge 
Paused and snowy on the edge 
Of some dark ravine, from where
Mists as soft and thick as hair
Float silver in the moon.

Stars sweep down—or are they stars?—
Against the pines’ dark etchèd bars.
Along a brooding moon-wet hill
Dogwood shine so cool and still,
Like hands that, palm up, rigid lie
In invocation to the sky
As they spread there, frozen white,
Upon the velvet of the night.

Her eyes?   Dark pools of deepest shade,
    Like sylvan lakes that lie
In some sequestered forest glade
    Beneath a starry sky.

Her cheeks?   The ripened chestnut’s hue,—
    Rich autumn’s sun-kissed brown!
Caressed by sunbeams dancing through
    Red leaves that flutter down.

Her form?   A slender pine that sways
    Before the murmuring breeze
In summer, when the south wind plays
    Soft music through the trees.

Herself?   A laughing, joyous sprite
    Who smiles from dawn till dark,
As lovely as a summer night
    And carefree as a lark.

Softly blow lightly
O twilight breeze
Scarcely bend slightly
O silver trees:
Night glides slowly down hill . . down stream
Bringing a myriad star-twinkling dream. . . . .
Softly blow lightly
O twilight breeze
Scarcely bend slightly
O silver trees:
Night will spill sleep in your day weary eye
While a soft yellow moon steals down the sky. . . .
Softly blow
Scarcely bend
So . . . . !
Lullaby. . . . . . . .

We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
White stars is no less lovely, being dark;
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

I once beheld the end of time!
   Its stream had ceased to be.
The drifting years, all soiled with crime,
   Lay in a filthy sea.

The prospect o’er the reeking waste
   Was plain from where I stood.
From shore to shore the wreckage faced
   The surface of the flood.

There all that men were wont to prize
   When time was flowing on,
Seemed here to sink and there to rise
   In formless ruin blown.

In slimy undulations roiled
   The glory of the brave;
The scholar’s fame, the rich man’s gold,
   Alike were on the wave.

There government, a monstrous form
   (The sea groaned ’neath the load),
A helpless mass blown by the storm,
   On grimy billows rode.

The bodies of great syndicates
   And corporations, trusts,
Proud combinations, and e’en states,
   All beasts of savage lusts,

With all the monsters ever bred
   In civilization’s womb,
Lay scattered, floating, dead,
   Throughout that liquid tomb.

It was the reign of general death,
   Wide as the sweep of eye,
Save two vile ghosts that still drew breath
   Because they could not die.

Ambition climbed above the waves
   From wreck to wreck he strove.
And as they sank to watery waves,
   He on to glory rode.

And there was Greed—immortal Greed—
   Just from the shores of time.
Of all hell’s hosts he took the lead,
   A monarch of the slime.

He neither sank below nor rose
   Above the brewing flood;
But swam full length, down to his nose,
   And steered where’er he would.

Whatever wreckage met his snout
   He swallowed promptly down—
Or floating empire, or redoubt,
   Or drifting heathen town.

And yet, it seemed in all that streaming waste
There nothing so much gratified his taste
As foetid oil in subterranean tanks,
And cliffs of coal untouched in nature’s banks,
Or bits of land where cities might be built,
As foraging plats for vileness and guilt;
Or fields of asphalt, soft as fluent salve
Or anything the Indian asked to have.

I once beheld the end of time!
   Its stream had run away;
The years all drifted down in slime,
   In filth dishonored lay.

^{An Indian Grandmother’s Parable}

Many times in my life I have heard the white sages,
Who are learned in the knowledge and lore of past ages,
Speak of my people with pity, say, “Gone is their hour
Of dominion. By the strong wind of progress their power,
Like a rose past its brief time of blooming, lies shattered;
Like the leaves of the oak tree its people are scattered.”
This is the eighty-first autumn since I can remember.
Again fall the leaves, born in April and dead by December;
Riding the whimsied breeze, zigzagging and whirling,
Coming to earth at last and slowly upcurling,
Withered and sapless and brown, into discarded fragments,
Of what once was life; dry, chattering parchments
That crackle and rustle like old women’s laughter
When the merciless wind with swift feet coming after
Will drive them before him with unsparing lashes
’Til they are crumbled and crushed into forgotten ashes;
Crumbled and crushed, and piled deep in the gulches and hollows,
Soft bed for the yet softer snow that in winter fast follows
But when in the spring the light falling
Patter of raindrops persuading, insistently calling,
Wakens to life again forces that long months have slumbered,
There will come whispering movement, and green things unnumbered
Will pierce through the mould with their yellow-green, sun-searching fingers,
Fingers—or spear-tips, grown tall, will bud at another year’s breaking,
One day when the brooks, manumitted by sunshine, are making
Music like gold in the spring of some far generation. 
And up from the long-withered leaves, from the musty stagnation,
Life will climb high to the furthermost leaflets.
The bursting of catkins asunder with greed for the sunlight; the thirsting
Of twisted brown roots for earth-water; the gradual unfolding
Of brilliance and strength in the future, earth’s bosom is holding
Today in those scurrying leaves, soon to be crumpled and broken.
Let those who have ears hear my word and be still. I have spoken.

You are disdainful and magnificent—
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so despise—
Your shoulders towering high above the throng,
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.
Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake
And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold.
Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
I love your laughter arrogant and bold.
You are too splendid for this city street.

I waited on
In the late autumn moonlight,
A train droning out of thought—

The mind on moonlight
And on trains.

Blind as a thread of water
Stirring through a cold like dust,
Lonely beyond all silence

And humming this to children,
The nostalgic listeners in sleep,

Because no guardian
Strides through distance upon distance,
His eyes a web of sleep.

Off the coast of Ireland
    As our ship passed by
We saw a line of fishing ships
    Etched against the sky.

Off the coast of England
    As we rode the foam
We saw an Indian merchantman
    Coming home.

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today.
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

With gypsies and sailors,
Wanderers of the hills and seas,
I go to seek my fortune.
With pious folk and fair
I must have a parting.
But you will not miss me,––
You who live between the hills
And have never seen the seas.

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun,—
My dream.

And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose slowly, slowly,
Dimming,
Hiding,
The light of my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky,—
The wall.

Shadow.
I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.

My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Don’t knock at my door, little child,
     I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
     Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
     Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
     I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
     I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
     Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
     Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
     I must not give you birth!

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors . . .
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall . . .
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.

The air is dark, the sky is gray,
    The misty shadows come and go,
And here within my dusky room
Each chair looks ghostly in the gloom.
    Outside the rain falls cold and slow—
Half-stinging drops, half-blinding spray.

Each slightest sound is magnified,
    For drowsy quiet holds her reign;
The burnt stick in the fireplace breaks,
The nodding cat with start awakes,
    And then to sleep drops off again,
Unheeding Towser at her side.

I look far out across the lawn,
    Where huddled stand the silly sheep;
My work lies idle at my hands,
My thoughts fly out like scattered strands
    Of thread, and on the verge of sleep—
Still half awake—I dream and yawn.

What spirits rise before my eyes!
    How various of kind and form!
Sweet memories of days long past,
The dreams of youth that could not last,
    Each smiling calm, each raging storm,
That swept across my early skies.

Half seen, the bare, gaunt-fingered boughs
    Before my window sweep and sway,
And chafe in tortures of unrest.
My chin sinks down upon my breast;
    I cannot work on such a day,
But only sit and dream and drowse.

Night like purple flakes of snow
Falls with ease
Catching on the roofs of houses
In the tops of trees
Down upon the distant grass
And the distant flower
It will drift into this room
In an hour. . . . . . . . .

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

The quality of what I am
Encases what I am not,
Smooths the strange world.
I perceive it slowly
In my time,
In my material,
As my pride,
As my possession:
The vision is love.

When life crashes like a cracked pane,
Still shall I love
Even the slight grass and the patient dust.
Death also sees, though darkly,
And I must trust then as now
Only another kind of prism
Through which I may not put my hands to touch.

It was running down to the great Atlantic.
I called it back to me,
But it slyly looked and said,
“I have not time to waste,”
And just went arunning running on.

The dandelion stares
In the yellow sunlight.
How very still it is!
When it is old and grey,
I blow its white hair away,
And leave it with a bald head.

I dream of Lebanon by an azure sea;
Wave-kissed shores, and rocky glades;
Snowcaps on mountains, glistening gorgeously;
O sweet-scented pines’ serenades.

I see a land laden with fruits of the earth;
A tropical jewel ablaze 
With myriad flowers and wee children’s mirth.
Rainbow sunsets prolong their days. 

Purple dusk is tinted by a lustrous moon 
And broidered with a million stars.
For lullabies—the sea plays a crooning tune 
Of golden notes on silv’ry bars. 

Blessed of Christ, O, Lebanon, my paeans 
Echo the lyrics of sages.
Thy beauty is lovelier than gossamer dreams. 
Thy glory shall crown all ages.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
     O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
     Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
     O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
     "Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
       Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
       I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
       And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
     "I got the Weary Blues
       And I can’t be satisfied.
       Got the Weary Blues
       And can’t be satisfied—
       I ain’t happy no mo’
       And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

What happens to a dream deferred?

       Does it dry up
       like a raisin in the sun?
       Or fester like a sore—
       And then run?
       Does it stink like rotten meat?
       Or crust and sugar over—
       like a syrupy sweet?

       Maybe it just sags
       like a heavy load.

       Or does it explode?

All yesterday the thought of you was resting in my soul.
And when sleep wandered o’er the world that very thought she stole
To fill my dreams with splendour such as stars could not eclipse,
And in the morn I wakened with your name upon my lips.


Awakened, my beloved, to the morning of your eyes,
Your splendid eyes, so full of clouds, wherein a shadow tries
To overcome the flame that melts into the world of grey,
As coming suns dissolve the dark that veils the edge of day.

Cool drifts the air at dawn of day, cool lies the sleeping dew,
But all my heart is burning, for it woke from dreams of you;
And O ! these longing eyes of mine look out and only see
A dying night, a waking day, and calm on all but me.
 

So gently creeps the morning through the heavy air,
The dawn grey-garbed and velvet-shod is wandering everywhere
To wake the slumber-laden hours that leave their dreamless rest,
With outspread, laggard wings to court the pillows of the west.
 

Up from the earth a moisture steals with odours fresh and soft,
A smell of moss and grasses warm with dew, and far aloft
The stars are growing colourless, while drooping in the west,
A late, wan moon is paling in a sky of amethyst.

The passing of the shadows, as they waft their pinions near,
Has stirred a tender wind within the night-hushed atmosphere,
That in its homeless wanderings sobs in an undertone
An echo to my heart that sobbing calls for you alone.

The night is gone, belovéd, and another day set free,
Another day of hunger for the one I may not see.
What care I for the perfect dawn?  the blue and empty skies?
The night is always mine without the morning of your eyes.

From out the west, where darkling storm-clouds float,
The ’waking wind pipes soft its rising note.

From out the west, o’erhung with fringes grey,
The wind preludes with sighs its roundelay,

Then blowing, singing, piping, laughing loud,
It scurries on before the grey storm-cloud;

Across the hollow and along the hill
It whips and whirls among the maples, till

With boughs upbent, and green of leaves blown wide,
The silver shines upon their underside.

A gusty freshening of humid air,
With showers laden, and with fragrance rare;

And now a little sprinkle, with a dash
Of great cool drops that fall with sudden splash;

Then over field and hollow, grass and grain,
The loud, crisp whiteness of the nearing rain.

A dash of yellow sand,
Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;
Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;
And, creeping close to these
Long shores that lounge at ease,
Old Erie rocks and ripples to a fresh sou’-western breeze.

A sky of blue and grey;
Some stormy clouds that play
At scurrying up with ragged edge, then laughing blow away,
Just leaving in their trail
Some snatches of a gale;
To whistling summer winds we lift a single daring sail.

O! wind so sweet and swift,
O! danger-freighted gift
Bestowed on Erie with her waves that foam and fall and lift,
We laugh in your wild face,
And break into a race
With flying clouds and tossing gulls that weave and interlace.

Sea charm
The sea’s own children
Do not understand.
They know
But that the sea is strong
Like God’s hand.
They know
But that sea wind is sweet
Like God’s breath,
And that the sea holds
A wide, deep death.

The lazy, laughing South
With blood on its mouth.
The sunny-faced South,
     Beast-strong,
     Idiot-brained.
The child-minded South
Scratching in the dead fire’s ashes
For a Negro’s bones.
     Cotton and the moon,
     Warmth, earth, warmth,
     The sky, the sun, the stars,
     The magnolia-scented South.
Beautiful, like a woman,
Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,
     Passionate, cruel,
     Honey-lipped, syphilitic—
     That is the South.
And I, who am black, would love her
But she spits in my face.
And I, who am black,
Would give her many rare gifts
But she turns her back upon me.
     So now I seek the North—
     The cold-faced North,
     For she, they say,
     Is a kinder mistress,
And in her house my children
May escape the spell of the South.

Hey! Hey!
That’s what the
Blues singers say.
Singing minor melodies
They laugh,
Hey! Hey!

My man’s done left me,
Chile, he’s gone away.
My good man’s left me,
Babe, he’s gone away.
Now the cryin’ blues
Haunts me night and day.

Hey! . . . Hey!

Weary,
Weary,
Trouble, pain.
Sun’s gonna shine
Somewhere
Again.

I got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.

Sing ’em, sister!

Got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.
And when I get on the train
I’ll cast my blues aside.

Laughing,
Hey! . . . Hey!
Laugh a loud,
Hey! Hey!

Why do men smile when I speak,
And call my speech
The whimperings of a babe
That cries but knows not what it wants?
Is it because I am black?

Why do men sneer when I arise
And stand in their councils,
And look them eye to eye,
And speak their tongue?
Is it because I am black?

Full many lift and sing
Their sweet imagining;
Not yet the Lyric Seer,
The one bard of the throng,
With highest gift of song,
Breaks on our sentient ear.

Not yet the gifted child,
With notes enraptured, wild,
That storm and throng the heart,
To make his rage our own,
Our hearts his lyric throne;
Hard won by cosmic art.

I hear the sad refrain,
Of slavery’s sorrow-strain;
The broken half-lispt speech
Of freedom’s twilit hour;
The greater growing reach
Of larger latent power.

Here and there a growing note
Swells from a conscious throat;
Thrilled with a message fraught
The pregnant hour is near;
We wait our Lyric Seer;
By whom our wills are caught.

Who makes our cause and wrong
The motif of his song;
Who sings our racial good,
Bestows us honor’s place,
The cosmic brotherhood
Of genius—not of race.

Blind Homer, Greek or Jew,
Of fame’s immortal few
Would still be deathless born;
Frail Dunbar, black or white.
In Fame’s eternal light,
Would shine a Star of Morn.

An unhorizoned range,
Our hour of doubt and change,
Gives song a nightless day,
Whose pen with pregnant mirth
Will give our longings birth,
And point our souls the way?

     Some men, some men 
     Cannot pass a 
     Book shop. 
(Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.)

     Some men, some men 
     Cannot pass a 
     Crap game. 
(He said he’d come a moonrise, and here’s another day!) 

     Some men, some men, 
     Cannot pass a 
     Bar-room. 
(Wait about, and hang about, and that’s the way it goes.)

     Some men, some men
     Cannot pass a 
     Woman. 
(Heaven never send me another one of those!)

     Some men, some men, 
     Cannot pass a 
     Golf course. 
(Read a book, and sew a seam, and slumber if you can.) 

      Some men, some men, 
      Cannot pass a 
      Haberdasher’s. 
(All your life you wait around for some damn man!) 

The dreams of the dreamer
   Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
   To the soul’s hour-glass.

The songs of the singer
   Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
   ‘Till it ceases to beat.

The right to make my dreams come true,
    I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!

I’m folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.

For Time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art—
I’m folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart!

                     I. 

Do you hear the witches wailing? 
       Witches wailing, wailing, wailing, 
Do you see the ghost robes trailing?
Ghost robes trailing, trailing, trailing
It is but a nighttime whisper, 
But a whisper of the zephyr?
Or my soul in secret meeting
The dim soul whose fate is loving? 
     Tell me, tell me, tell me, 
            Voices of the dusk. 
 
                       II. 

Do you see those spirits lonely? 
    Spirits lonely, lonely, lonely. 
Can they be for lost souls only? 
    Lost souls only, only, only. 
Are they but the fearful phantoms, 
Fearful phantoms from my fancy? 
Or the sprites of conscience stricken 
From a region long forgotten? 
    Tell me, tell me, tell me, 
           Voices of the Dusk. 

Strut and wiggle,
Shameless gal.
Wouldn’t no good fellow
Be your pal.

Hear dat music. . . .
Jungle night.
Hear dat music. . . .
And the moon was white.

Sing your Blues song,
Pretty baby.
You want lovin’
And you don’t mean maybe.

Jungle lover. . . .
Night black boy. . . .
Two against the moon
And the moon was joy.

Strut and wiggle,
Shameless Nan.
Wouldn’t no good fellow
Be your man

Like tiny drops of crystal rain,
       In every life the moments fall,
To wear away with silent beat,
       The shell of selfishness o’er all.

And every act, not one too small,
       That leaps from out the heart’s pure glow,
Like ray of gold sends forth a light,
       While moments into seasons flow.

Athwart the dome, Eternity,
       To Iris grown resplendent, fly
Bright gleams from every noble deed,
       Till colors with each other vie.

’Tis glimpses of this grand rainbow,
       Where moments with good deeds unite,
That gladden many weary hearts,
       Inspiring them to seek more Light.

                            1

Wilt thou go with me sweet maid
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of night and dark obscurity,
Where the path has lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there’s nor life nor light to see
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?

                            2

Where stones will turn to flooding streams
Where plains will rise like ocean waves
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not?

                            3

Say maiden wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be
To live in death and be the same
Without this life, or home, or name
At once to be, and not to be
That was, and is not—yet to see
Things pass like shadows—and the sky
Above, below, around us lie? 

                            4

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look—nor know each other’s face,
The present mixed with reasons gone
And past, and present all as one.
Say, maiden can thy life be led
To join the living to the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me
We’re wed to one eternity.

^{translated from the Spanish by Roderick Gill}

O faint remembrances of vanished days
    That stole away on such a velvet wing
O’er meads and groves, o’er plains and mountain ways,
    What grief and sorrow to my heart you bring!

Come back without the shadow of your care,
    Come back in silence and without a moan,
As the birds cross the unregarding air
    Till none may tell the whence or whither flown.

Come back amid the pallor of the moon
    That silvers all the azure rifts at sea,
Or in the deadly mist that in a swoon
    Engulfs afar the green palm’s royal tree.

Bring back the murmur of the doves that made
    Their little nests so neighborly to mine;
The vibrant airs—the fragrances that played
     Around the peaks that saw my cradle shine.

Sing in my ear the melodies of old,
    So sweet and joyous to my inmost heart;
O faint remembrances two breasts should hold,
    Two breasts that Destiny was loath to part!

What matter if a sigh steals through the dream
    That shows the withered vine in flower again?—
So that remembrances in singing seem,
    O tremulous lyre, to speak my endless pain!

One night, 
One night filled with murmurs and perfumes and the music of wings, 
One night
When fantastic fireflies blazed in the moist nuptial shadows, 
By my side slowly, clasped to me, pale and silent, 
As if a presentiment of infinite bitterness
Agitated the most secret depths of your heart,
Over the blossomy path through the meadow
You wandered; 
And the full moon
Scattered white light over bluish skies, boundless and deep. 
And your shadow, 
Frail and languid,
And my shadow
By the rays of the moon projected 
Over the gloomy sand, 
Joined together 
And were one,
And were one, 
And were one, 
And were one long shadow, 
And were one long shadow, 
And were one long shadow. . . . 

Tonight 
Along—my soul
Filled with infinite bitterness and pain of your death, 
Separated from you by time and space and the tomb, 
By the black infinity
Whither the voice cannot reach: 
Silent and alone
I wandered along the path, 
And I heard the dogs baying the moon, 
The pallid moon, 
And the chirrup of frogs. . . . 

I was cold, with the cold of your cheek and your brow and your beloved hands 
Among the white snows of your shroud: 
It was the cold of the sepulchre, the ice of death, 
The chill of nothingness. . . . 
And my shadow, 
By the rays of the moon projected, 
Went alone, 
Went alone, 
Went alone over the lonely plain. 
And your shadow quick and slender, 
Frail and languid, 
As in that warm night of vanished spring, 
As in that night filled murmurs and perfumes and the music of wings, 
Came close and walked with mine, 
Came close and walked with mine, 
Came close and walked with mine, 

Oh, the shadows knit together! 
Oh, the shadows of the body joined with shadows of the soul! 
Oh, shadows which seek one another in nights of sorrow and tears! 

It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven—
Their bases on the mountains—their white tops
Shining in the far ether—fire the air
With a reflected radiance, and make turn
The gazer’s eye away. For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays his coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?
Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life! Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes;
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion. He is come,
Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and the borders of the brook,
Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet, and silver waters break
Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

Plant, above my lifeless heart
   Crimson roses, red as blood.
As if the love, pent there so long
   Were pouring forth its flood.

Then, through them, my heart may tell,
   Its Past of Love and Grief,
And I shall feel them grow from it,
   And know a vague relief.

Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
   And unto them myself shall grow,
And when I blossom at her feet,
   She, on that day, shall know!

These truly are the Brave,
These men who cast aside
Old memories, to walk the blood-stained pave
Of Sacrifice, joining the solemn tide
That moves away, to suffer and to die
For Freedom—when their own is yet denied!
O Pride! O Prejudice! When they pass by,
Hail them, the Brave, for you now crucified!

These truly are the Free,
These souls that grandly rise
Above base dreams of vengeance for their wrongs,
Who march to war with visions in their eyes
Of Peace through Brotherhood, lifting glad songs,
Aforetime, while they front the firing line.
Stand and behold! They take the field today,
Shedding their blood like Him now held divine,
That those who mock might find a better way!

Pink faces—(worlds or flowers or seas or stars),
You all alike are patterned with hot bars

Of coloured light; and falling where I stand,
The sharp and rainbow splinters from the band

Seem fireworks, splinters of the Infinite—
(Glitter of leaves the echoes). And the night

Will weld this dust of bright Infinity
To forms that we may touch and call and see:—

Pink pyramids of faces: tulip-trees
Spilling night perfumes on the terraces.

The music, blond airs waving like a sea
Draws in its vortex of immensity

The new-awakened flower-strange hair and eyes
Of crowds beneath the floating summer skies.

And, ’gainst the silk pavilions of the sea
I watch the people move incessantly

Vibrating, petals blown from flower-hued stars
Beneath the music-fireworks’ waving bars;

So all seems indivisible, at one:
The flow of hair, the flowers, the seas that run,—

A coloured floating music of the night
Through the pavilions of the Infinite.

To be forever young
and ride like a tipsy Triton
on the crest of a wave
that is just forever breaking. . . .
Days—an eternal dawning
heralded with the fanfare of sun,
Nights—a blaze of glory
the swishing tail of a comet,
Life—an infinite loving
Sweeping to the peak of anticipation
Trembling breathlessly at the brink of realization. . . .

Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—

Nay—said the May—
Show me the Snow—
Show me the Bells—
Show me the Jay!

Quibbled the Jay—
Where be the Maize—
Where be the Haze—
Where be the Bur?
Here—said the Year—

Beat the drums of tragedy for me.
Beat the drums of tragedy and death.
And let the choir sing a stormy song
To drown the rattle of my dying breath.

Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun
To go with me
                       to the darkness
                                                where I go.

I like grey skies,
At least they tell the truth;
Grey skies,
Reflective skies
That do not laugh at all
Nor weep vain tears.
Unpromising,
Unhoping,
Cold.

Grey skies,
No fear in them
Nor any joy,
No tragedy,
All grey.
I like grey skies,
Unweeping, smileless skies.
They do not lie.

^{to Maurice Maeterlinck}

Weird phantoms rise in the dawn-winds blow,
   In the land of shadows the dawn-flowers grow;
      The night-worn moon yields her weary glow
         To the morn-rays that over the dream-waste flow.

Oh, to know what the dawn-wind murmurs
   In chapels of pines to the ashen moons;
What the forest-well whispers to dale and dell
   With her singular, reticent runes;
To know the plaint of each falling leaf
   As it whirls across the autumnal plain;
To know the dreams of the desolate shore
   As sails, like ghosts, pass o’er the dawnlit main!
                     To know, oh, to know
   ​​​​​​​    Why all life’s strains have the same refrain
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   As of rain,
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​  Beating sadly against the window pane.

   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​We do not know and we can not know,
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​And all that is left for us here below
   ​​​​​​​   (Since "songs and singers are out of date")
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​And the muses have met with a similar fate)
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   Is to flee to the land of shadows and dreams,
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​  ​​​​​​​Where the dawn-flowers grow
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   And the dawn-winds blow,
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   As morn-rays over life’s dream-waste of flow
   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​   ​​​​​​​  To drown the moon in their ambient glow.

                       Envoy

Oh, gray dawn-poet of Flanders,
   Though in this life we ne’er may meet,
      I'll linger where thy dream-maids wander
      ​​​​​​​   To strew these dawn-flowers at their feet.

                                    I

The colors of the rainbow are fading in the silent
      and distant West, and the heartache of
      twilight trembles within my aching breast.

   For the light of my love has faded like sunbeams
         in the West, and the color of twilight will
         tremble forever in my breast.

                                   II

I think of thy kindness often, when lonesome I feel
      and cold, I have not forgotten our childhood,
      nor your loving words of old.

   And still my sweetest songs of life are floating
         in dreams to thee, like whisperings at eventide,
         across a clouded sea.

                                   III

We two are sitting in the bark, and listen to the
      wavelets’ play, the shore is melting in the
      dark, day’s echoes silently decay.

   Oh life, with all thy hopes so fair, wilt thou
         too float away, like visions rising in the
         air that greet the parting day!

                                   IV

She stands amidst the roses, and tears dart from her
      eyes that like the fragrant roses her soul
      must fade and die.

   He stares at the twilight ocean on the shore of a
         foreign land, a faded rose is trembling
         within his soft white hand.

                                   V

The rushes whisper softly, the sounds of silence wake,
      large flowers like sad remembrance float
      on the dark green lake.

   Were life but like the waters, so bright and calm
         and deep, and love like floating flowers
         that on the surface meet.

                                   VI

The naked trees of autumn grope shivering through
      twilight’s gloom, athwart the whispering branches
      its dying embers loom.

   I dream of life’s defoliation, as I watch with
         silent dread, leaf after leaf departing, like
         hopes long withered and dead.

                                  VII

In haunting hours of twilight dreams restless the
      turbulent sea, and heaves her white wanton
      bosom in endless mystery.

   Dream on, dream on, titanic queen, beloved sea, at
         thy wanton breast, I would find rest
         in endless mystery.

I wander among the hills of alien lands
   Where Nature her prerogative resigns
To Man; where Comfort in her shack reclines
   And all the arts and sciences commands.
      But in my soul
      The eastern billows roll—
I hear the voices of my native strands.

My lingering eyes, a lonely hemlock fills
   With grace and splendor rising manifold;
Beneath her boughs the maples spread their gold
   And at her feet, the silver of rills.
      But in my heart
      A peasant void of art
Echoes the voices of my native hills.

On every height a studied art confines
   All human joy in social pulchritude;
The boxwood frowns where beckoning birches stood,
   And where the thrushes caroled Fashion dines.
      But through the spreading cheer
      The shepherd’s reed I hear
Beneath my Lebanon terebinths and pines.

And though no voices here are heard of toil,
   Nor accents least of sorrow, nor the din
Of multitudes, nor even at the Inn
   The City is permitted aught to spoil,
      Yet in my breast,
       A shack at best,
Laments the mother of my native soil.

Even where the sumptuous solitudes deny
   A shelter to a bird or butterfly,
As in the humblest dwelling of the dale
   A gracious welcome’s shown the passer-by;
       But evermore clear
       Allwhere I hear
The calling of my native hut and sky.

Land of my birth! a handful of thy sod
   Resuscitates the flower of my faith;
For whatsoever the seer of science sayth,
   Thou art the cradle and the tomb of God;
      And forever I behold
      A vision old
Of Beauty weeping where He once hath trod.

O Freedom, in thy cause I fought, 
   For twenty years I fought in vain; 
And in my mountain shelter naught
   But worthless trophies now remain. 
Yet in my heart I hear a cry, 
   Which never there makes a vain appeal:
I would once more beneath thy sky
   Brandish my sharp and shining steel. 

How much one stakes upon thy dream, 
   How much for but thy name we pay; 
How cheap the passing ages seem, 
   When years are given for thy day. 
How many still would fight and die
   In thine old cause and for thy weal! 
I would once more beneath thy sky
   Brandish my sharp and shining steel. 

The purest love I give away, 
   The bliss of it I set at naught; 
Again I'm on my wayward way 
   Seeking what I have often sought. 
My wounded hopes, my bleeding ties, 
   No peace inglorious e’er shall heal: 
I would once more beneath thy skies 
   Brandish my sharp and shining steel. 

O Freedom, though thy price be high, 
   Though one for thee his life must seal, 
I would once more beneath thy sky
  Brandish my sharp and shining steel. 

Upon the silent sea-swept land
     The dreams of night fall soft and gray,
          The waves fade on the jeweled sand
               Like some lost hope of yesterday.

The dreams of night fall soft and gray
     Upon the summer-colored seas,
          Like some lost hope of yesterday,
               The sea-mew’s song is on the breeze.

Upon the summer-colored seas
     Sails gleam and glimmer ghostly white,
          The sea-mew’s song is on the breeze
               Lost in the monotone of night.

Sails gleam and glimmer ghostly white,
     They come and slowly drift away,
          Lost in the monotone of night,
               Like visions of a summer-day.

They shift and slowly drift away
     Like lovers’ lays that wax and wane,
          The visions of a summer-day
               Whose dreams we ne’er will dream again.

Like lovers’ lays wax and wane
     The star dawn shifts from sail to sail,
          Like dreams we ne’er will dream again;
               The sea-mews follow on their trail.

The star dawn shifts from sail to sail,
     As they drift to the dim unknown,
          The sea-mews follow on their trail
               In quest of some dreamland zone.

In quest of some far dreamland zone,
     Of some far silent sea-swept land,
          They are lost in the dim unknown,
               Where waves fade on jeweled sand
                    And dreams of night fall soft and gray,
                         Like some lost hope of yesterday.

Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,
Flitting thy lonely way,
A meteor in the summer's day,
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field and rill,
What wouldst thou say?
Why shouldst thou haunt the day?
What makes thy melancholy float?
What bravery inspires thy throat,
And bears thee up above the clouds,
Over desponding human crowds,
Which far below
Lay thy haunts low?

The rabbit leaps,
The mouse out-creeps,
The flag out-peeps
⁠Beside the brook;
The ferret weeps,
The marmot sleeps,
The owlet keeps
⁠In his snug nook.

The apples thaw,
The ravens caw,
The squirrels gnaw
⁠The frozen fruit.
To their retreat
I track the feet
Of mice that eat
⁠The apple's root.

The snow-dust falls,
The otter crawls,
The partridge calls,
Far in the wood.
The traveller dreams,
The tree-ice gleams,
The blue-jay screams
⁠In angry mood.

The willows droop,
The alders stoop,
The pheasants group
⁠Beneath the snow.
The catkins green
Cast o'er the scene
A summer's sheen,
⁠A genial glow.

Conscience is instinct bred in the house,

Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin

By an unnatural breeding in and in.

I say, Turn it out doors,

Into the moors.

I love a life whose plot is simple,

And does not thicken with every pimple,

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,

That makes the universe no worse than ’t finds it.

I love an earnest soul,

Whose mighty joy and sorrow

Are not drowned in a bowl,

And brought to life to-morrow

That lives one tragedy,

And not seventy;

A conscience worth keeping,

Laughing not weeping;

A conscience wise and steady,

And for ever ready;

Not changing with events,

Dealing in compliments;

A conscience exercised about

Large things, where one may doubt.

I love a soul not all of wood,

Predestinated to be good,

But true to the backbone

Unto itself alone,

And false to none;

Born to its own affairs,

Its own joys and own cares;

By whom the work which God begun

Is finished, and not undone;

Taken up where he left off,

Whether to worship or to scoff;

If not good, why then evil,

If not good god, good devil.

Goodness!—you hypocrite, come out of that,

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

I have no patience towards

Such conscientious cowards.

Give me simple laboring folk,

Who love their work,

Whose virtue is a song

To cheer God along.

O Nature! I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy quire,—
To be a meteor in the sky,
Or comet that may range on high;
Only a zephyr that may blow
Among the reeds by the river low;
Give me thy most privy place
Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
Let me sigh upon a reed,
Or in the woods, with leafy din,
Whisper the still evening in:
Some still work give me to do,—
Only—be it near to you!

For I’d rather be thy child
And pupil, in the forest wild,
Than be the king of men elsewhere,
And most sovereign slave of care:
To have one moment of thy dawn,
Than share the city’s year forlorn.

Ghosts of all my lovely sins,
     Who attend too well my pillow,
Gay the wanton rain begins;
     Hide the limp and tearful willow.

Turn aside your eyes and ears,
     Trail away your robes of sorrow,
You shall have my further years,—
     You shall walk with me tomorrow.

I am sister to the rain;
     Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane,
     Quickly lost, remembered slowly.

I have lived with shades, a shade;
     I am hung with graveyard flowers.
Let me be tonight arrayed
     In the silver of the showers.

Every fragile thing shall rust;
     When another April passes
I may be a furry dust,
     Sifting through the brittle grasses.

All sweet sins shall be forgot;
     Who will live to tell their siring?
Hear me now, nor let me rot
     Wistful still, and still aspiring.

Ghosts of dear temptations, heed;
     I am frail, be you forgiving.
See you not that I have need
     To be living with the living?

Sail, tonight, the Styx’s breast;
     Glide among the dim processions
Of the exquisite unblest,
     Spirits of my shared transgressions. 

Roam with young Persephone,
     Plucking poppies for your slumber …
With the morrow, there shall be
     One more wraith among your number.

(In the Expected Manner)

Enter April, laughingly,
     Blossoms in her tumbled hair,
High of heart, and fancy-free—
     When was maiden half so fair?
Bright her eyes with easy tears,
     Wanton-sweet, her smiles for men.
“Winter’s gone,” she cries, “and here’s Spring again.”

When we loved, ’twas April, too;
     Madcap April—urged us on.
Just as she did, so did you—
     Sighed, and smiled, and then were gone.
How she plied her pretty arts,
     How she laughed and sparkled then!
April, make love in our hearts
     Spring again!

When my eyes are weeds, 
And my lips are petals, spinning 
Down the wind that has beginning 
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds; 
When my arms are elder-bushes, 
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart; 

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on 
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky; 
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern, 
With her dusty laces’ pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by. 

If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.

"Good-bye," I said to my conscience—
    "Good-bye for aye and aye,"
And I put her hands off harshly,
    And turned my face away;
And conscience smitten sorely
    Returned not from that day.

But a time came when my spirit
    Grew weary of its pace;
And I cried: "Come back, my conscience;
    I long to see thy face."
But conscience cried: "I cannot;
    Remorse sits in my place."

That is solemn we have ended,—
     Be it but a play,
Or a glee among the garrets,
     Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,
     Parting with a world
We have understood, for better
     Still it be unfurled.

Before the ice is in the pools,
      Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
      Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
      Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
      Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
      On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
      Just a bridge away;

That which sings so, speaks so,
      When there’s no one here,—
Will the frock I wept in
      Answer me to wear?

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road -

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain -
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again -

It reaches to the Fence -
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces -
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -
A Summer’s empty Room -
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them -

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen -
Then stills its Artisans - like Ghosts -
Denying they have been -

The rhythm of life
Is a jazz rhythm,
Honey.
The gods are laughing at us.

The broken heart of love,
The weary, weary heart of pain,—
       Overtones,
       Undertones,
To the rumble of street cars,
To the swish of rain.

Lenox Avenue,
Honey.
Midnight,
And the gods are laughing at us.

When you and I were young, the days
    Were filled with scent of pink and rose,
    And full of joy from dawn till close,
From morning’s mist till evening’s haze.
    And when the robin sung his song
    The verdant woodland ways along,
      We whistled louder than he sung.
And school was joy, and work was sport
For which the hours were all too short,
    When you and I were young, my boy,
      When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, the woods
    Brimmed bravely o’er with every joy
    To charm the happy-hearted boy.
The quail turned out her timid broods;
    The prickly copse, a hostess fine,
    Held high black cups of harmless wine;
      And low the laden grape-vine swung
With beads of night-kissed amethyst
Where buzzing lovers held their tryst,
    When you and I were young, my boy,
      When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, the cool
    And fresh wind fanned our fevered brows
    When tumbling o'er the scented mows,
Or stripping by the dimpling pool,
    Sedge-fringed about its shimmering face,
    Save where we'd worn an ent'ring place.
      How with our shouts the calm banks rung!
How flashed the spray as we plunged in,—
Pure gems that never caused a sin!
    When you and I were young, my boy,
      When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, we heard
    All sounds of Nature with delight,—
    The whirr of wing in sudden flight,
The chirping of the baby-bird.
    The columbine’s red bells were rung;
    The locust’s vested chorus sung;
      While every wind his zithern strung
To high and holy-sounding keys,
And played sonatas in the trees—
    When you and I were young, my boy,
      When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, we knew
    To shout and laugh, to work and play,
    And night was partner to the day
In all our joys. So swift time flew
    On silent wings that, ere we wist,
    The fleeting years had fled unmissed;
      And from our hearts this cry was wrung—
To fill with fond regret and tears
The days of our remaining years—
    "When you and I were young, my boy,
      When you and I were young."

The moon is naked.
The wind has undressed the moon.
The wind has blown all the cloud-garments
Off the body of the moon
And now she’s naked,
Stark naked.

But why don’t you blush,
O shameless moon?
Don’t you know
It isn’t nice to be naked?

A Drop fell on the Apple Tree -
Another - on the Roof -
A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves -
And made the Gables laugh -

A few went out to help the Brook
That went to help the Sea -
Myself Conjectured were they Pearls -
What Necklaces could be -

The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads -
The Birds jocoser sung -
The Sunshine threw his Hat away -
The Bushes - spangles flung -

The Breezes brought dejected Lutes -
And bathed them in the Glee -
The Orient showed a single Flag,
And signed the fête away -

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

Sleek black boys in a cabaret.
Jazz-band, jazz-band,—
Play, plAY, PLAY!
Tomorrow. . . . who knows?
Dance today!

White girls’ eyes
Call gay black boys.
Black boys’ lips
Grin jungle joys.

Dark brown girls
In blond men’s arms.
Jazz-band, jazz-band,—
Sing Eve’s charms!

White ones, brown ones,
What do you know
About tomorrow
Where all paths go?

Jazz-boys, jazz-boys,—
Play, plAY, PLAY!
Tomorrow. . . . is darkness.
Joy today!

Then the golden hour
Will tick its last
And the flame will go down in the flower.

A briefer length of moon
Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.

Then we may think of this, yet
There will be something forgotten
And something we should forget.

It will be like all things we know: 
A stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.

It will be quiet then and we may stay
Long at the picket gate,—
But there will be less to say.

Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
Like the roistering wind
That laughs through stalwart pines.
It floods me like the sun
On rain-drenched trees
That flash with silver and green.

I abandon myself to joy—
I laugh—I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered.

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 

The faint shadow of the morning moon?
Nay, the snow falling on the earth.
The mist of blossoming flowers?
Nay, poetry smiling up the sky.

Let us walk in the white snow
    In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
    At a tranquil pace,
    Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
    And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
    More beautiful
    Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
    In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
    Upon silver fleece,
    Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
    Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
    On white silence below.
    We shall walk in the snow.

                                I

Out of the barrenness of earth,
And the meager rain—
Mile upon mile of exultant
Fields of grain.

Out of the dimness of morning—
Sudden and stark,
A hot sun dispelling
The hushed dark.

Out of the bleakness of living,
Out of the unforgivable wrongs,
Out of the thin, dun soil of my soul—
These songs.

                                II

Only the rhythm of the rain
Can ease my sorrow, end my pain.

He was a wilful lad,
Laughter the burden he had;

Songs unsung haunted his mouth,
Velvet as soft airs from the languid south;

He was sprung from the dawn,
Flame-crested. He is gone!

Only the lashing, silver whips
Of the rain can still my lips …

Down in the deep my spirit will creep
    Out of the window into the air
No one knows where.
     Deathless and lifeless, sleepless of fears
Indians will keep their spirits near—
    Creeping about in the open air
No one knows where.

Down in the deep my spirit will creep,
    Fearless of sorrow and fearless of time,
Indian will seek a spirit to help his creed.
     Out of the window into the air
No one knows where.
    Indian spirit shall share
Deathless and lifeless, sleepless of fear
     The noise of my spirit shall speak very clear.

Out of the window into the air
     No one knows where
When far into the darkened night a change in the air
    The Indian spirit shall creep out of no where.

My heart is like an opal, flashing fire
And flaming gleams of pointed light
At thy approach; or lying cold and white
When thou art gone; robbed of a dream’s desire
Is left moon-white and dull; no darting flame
Or sapphire gleam to mark a sweet suspense.
But only still, benumbed indifference
Unwaked at thy soft whisper of my name.
Come now, I tire of waiting to know love;
Teach me to scorn indifference white and dim
For I would drain fate’s cup of joy or strife;
Would play to the lost chord the vibrant hymn
That passion sings; my heart lifted above
Dull apathy; pulsating; knowing Life.

A flower bloomed out on a woodland hill,
A song rose up from the woodland rill;
But the floweret bloomed but to wither away,
And no man heard what the stream had to say,
  For the drowsy world dreamed on.

Thro the frills of a curtain a moonbeam crept,
Till it fell on the crib where a nursling slept;
And a whisper and smile lit a wee dimpled face,
But none save the angels their beauty could trace,
  For the drowsy world dreamed on.

A wee bird piped out mid the corn,
A rose bloomed out beneath the thorn;
But the scent of the rose and the birdling’s lay
On the winds of the morning were wafted away
  While the drowsy world dreamed on.

And the drowsy old world’s growing gloomy and gray,
While the joys that are sweetest are passing away;
And the charms that inspire like the picture of dawn
Are but playthings of Time—they gleam and are gone,
    While the drowsy world dreams on. 

Whether awake or sleeping,
   I cannot rest for long:
By my casement comes creeping
  A distant song.

A song like the chiming of silver
  Bells which the breezes play,
Seeming to float for ever
  Towards an unseen day:

A song that is weary with sorrow,
  Yet knows not any defeat:
Through the past, through to-day, through to-morrow,
  It echoes on life’s long street.

Could I but make words of its power,
  Bring it from the future here,
Men’s souls would be waking, that hour,
  To the victory against fear.

But the vague sweet stanza befools me
  With its calm joy, time after time,
And no failure here ever schools me
  To cease from an idle rhyme.

That music afar, unspoken,
    ’Tis I have done it wrong:
I caught, and I have broken,
    A distant song. 

We should have a land of sun, 
Of gorgeous sun, 
And a land of fragrant water
Where the twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief
Of rose and gold, 
And not this land
Where life is cold.

We should have a land of trees,
Of tall thick trees,
Bowed down with chattering parrots
Brilliant as the day,
And not this land where birds are gray.

Ah, we should have a land of joy, 
Of love and joy and wine and song, 
And not this land where joy is wrong.

Because my mouth 
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think 
I suffer after 
I have held my pain 
So long. 

Because my mouth 
Is wide with laughter, 
You do not hear
My inner cry, 
Because my feet 
Are gay with dancing, 
You do not know 
I die. 

What is this nameless something that I want,
Forever groping blindly, without light,—
A ghost of pain that does forever haunt
My days, and make my heart eternal night?
I think it is your face I so long for,
Your eyes that read my soul at one warm glance;
Your lips that I may touch with mine no more
Have left me in their stead a thrusting lance
Of fire that burns my lips and sears my heart
As all the dreary wanton years wear through
Their hopeless dragging days. No lover’s art
Can lift full, heavy sorrow from my view
Or still my restless longing, purge my hate,
Because I learned I loved you, dear, too late. 

If you could know the empty ache of loneliness,
          Masked well behind the calm indifferent face
Of us who pass you by in studied hurriedness,
          Intent upon our way, lest in the little space
Of one forgetful moment hungry eyes implore
          You to be kind, to open up your heart a little more,
I’m sure you’d smile a little kindlier, sometimes,
          To those of us you’ve never seen before.