The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

It would be easy to forgive,

If I could but remember;

If I could hear, lost love of mine,

The music of your cruelties,

Shaking to sound the silent skies,

Could voice with them their song divine,

Red with pain’s leaping ember:

It would be easy to forgive,

If I could but remember.

It would be easy to forget,

If I could find lost Sorrow;

If I could kiss her plaintive face,

And break with her her bitter bread,

Could share again her woeful bed,

And know with tears her pale embrace.

Make yesterday, to-morrow:

It would be easy to forget,

If I could find lost Sorrow.

The stars are like gold-fish in a deep blue bowl,
Swimming round and round the centuries.

Sometimes one dies of the hot summer night;
I watch it falling—
Fading—

And I watch the others,
Floating in their blue bowl,
Eternally golden,
Immortally indifferent.

Hope gnawed at my heart like a hungry rat,
Ran in and out of my dreams high-walled,
I heard its scampering feet: “Pretty rat— pretty rat—!” I called,
And crumbled it songs to eat.

Hope peeped at me from behind my dreams,
Nibbled the crumbs of my melodies,
Grew tame and sleek and fat:
Oh, but my heart knew ease
To feel the teeth of my rat!

Then came a night — and then a day —
I heard soft feet that scuttled away —
Rats leave the sinking ship, they say.

Measure me, sky!
Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
I have been little so long!

Weigh me, high wind!
What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain,
Joy by the weight of a word!

Horizon, reach out!
Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
Rim of the world;
Widen my eyes by a thought!

Sky, be my depth.
Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
Loneliness, wings for my flight!

I wrote your name within my heart

Most carefully—

I never could remember names or faces;

And then, one day,

I lost my heart along the shining places.

I must have let it fall,

Plucking a flower I did not want

And listening to a bird I did not see:

Now would I call—

And you would answer me.

Do hearts have wings?

I am so careless about losing things.

Does the heart grieve on,
After its grief is gone
Like a slow ship moving
Across its own oblivion?

Heart! Heart! Do you not know
That I have conquered pain,
Have parted from my woe?
That my proud feet have found their path again,
After the pathless heights-long after-
And that my hands have learned to bless
Their overflowing emptiness,
My lips grown reconciled to laughter?

O laggard of dead roads,
O heart that will not heal nor break
Nor yet forget!
Tell me, whose tears are these
That greet me as I wake?
Why is my pillow wet?

Red rebel, is it you
That lifted this wild dew
Like banners from my arid dreams,
That roused this ember
From exiled ashes,
Calling me to remember?

Speak, is it you that wept
Upon my pillow while I slept?

Does the heart then grieve on,
After its grief is gone,
A treasure ship that journeys
Across its own oblivion?

Fearless riders of the gale,
In your bleak eyes is the memory
Of sinking ships:
Desire, unsatisfied,
Droops from your wings.

You lie at dusk
In the sea’s ebbing cradles,
Unresponsive to its mood;
Or hover and swoop,
Snatching your food and rising again,
Greedy,
Unthinking.

You veer and steer your callous course,
Unloved of other birds;
And in your soulless cry
Is the mocking echo
Of woman’s weeping in the night.

The squall sweeps gray-winged across the obliterated hills,

And the startled lake seems to run before it;

From the wood comes a clamor of leaves,

Tugging at the twigs,

Pouring from the branches,

And suddenly the birds are still.

Thunder crumples the sky,

Lightning tears at it.

And now the rain!

The rain—thudding—implacable—

The wind, reveling in the confusion of great pines!

And a silver sifting of light,

A coolness;

A sense of summer anger passing,

Of summer gentleness creeping nearer—

Penitent, tearful,

Forgiven!

 

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

wade
through black jade.
       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
       The barnacles which encrust the side
       of the wave, cannot hide
              there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
       glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
       into the crevices—
              in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
       of bodies. The water drives a wedge
       of iron through the iron edge
              of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
       bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
       lilies, and submarine
              toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
       marks of abuse are present on this
       defiant edifice—
              all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
       of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
       hatchet strokes, these things stand
              out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
       evidence has proved that it can live
       on what can not revive
              its youth. The sea grows old in it.

You do not seem to realise that beauty is a liability rather than
   an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing
     that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp,
   conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt through sheer
   reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us
     think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it
   is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. You would look, minus
thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere

peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew
   but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the
     infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
   the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you.

Visible, invisible,
A fluctuating charm,
An amber-colored amethyst
Inhabits it; your arm
Approaches, and
It opens and
It closes;
You have meant
To catch it,
And it shrivels;
You abandon
Your intent—
It opens, and it
Closes and you
Reach for it—
The blue
Surrounding it
Grows cloudy, and
It floats away
From you.

Openly, yes,
with the naturalness
                 of the hippopotamus or the alligator
                 when it climbs out on the bank to experience the

sun, I do these
things which I do, which please
                 no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
                 merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

in view was a
renaissance; shall I say
                 the contrary? The sediment of the river which
                 encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used

to it, it may
remain there; do away
                 with it and I am myself done away with, for the
                 patina of circumstance can but enrich what was

there to begin
with. This elephant skin
                 which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of
                 the coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light

can filter—cut
into checkers by rut
                 upon rut of unpreventable experience—
                 it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the

hairy toed. Black
but beautiful, my back
                 is full of the history of power. Of power? What
                 is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never

be cut into
by a wooden spear; through-
                 out childhood to the present time, the unity of
                 life and death has been expressed by the circumference

described by my
trunk; nevertheless, I
                 perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after
                 all; and I am on my guard; external poise, it

has its centre
well nurtured—we know
                 where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?
                 My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of

the wind. I see
and I hear, unlike the
                 wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made
                 to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear,

that tree trunk without   
roots, accustomed to shout
                 its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact   
                 by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that   

spiritual   
brother to the coral
                 plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light
                 becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to

the I of each,
a kind of fretful speech
                 which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?
                 Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that

phenomenon
the above formation,   
                 translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—
                 that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first

time, a substance
needful as an instance
                 of the indestructibility of matter; it   
                 has looked at the electricity and at the earth-

quake and is still
here; the name means thick. Will
                 depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no
                 beautiful element of unreason under it?

The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
   You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
      into close conformity, and then walk back and forth 
         on them.

Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
   Were not 'impersonal judgment in aesthetic
      matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you

might fairly achieve
It. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
   of one's attending upon you, but to question
      the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Lest by diminished vitality and abated 
   vigilance, I become food for crocodiles—for that quicksand 
   of gluttony which is legion. It is there close at hand—
      on either side 
      of me. You remember the Israelites who said in pride 

and stoutness of heart: "The bricks are fallen down, we will 
   build with hewn stone, the sycamores are cut down, we will 
   change to cedars"? I am not ambitious to dress stones, to 
      renew forts, nor to match 
      my value in action, against their ability to catch 

up with arrested prosperity. I am not like 
   them, indefatigable, but if you are a god, you will 
   not discriminate against me. Yet—if you may fulfill 
      none but prayers dressed 
      as gifts in return for your gifts—disregard the request.