DISILLUSION
The night was like a jewell’d crown—
(Could jewels be so soft a thing!)
For stars and wind were in the town
And by the highways entering,
Plucked there as on a viol string,
Until—somewhere—a woman’s scream—
Sharply shattered the dream!
Silence within
The upper twilight of a temple lies
Asleep, with pendant plumes—a dreaming god—
And dreams the pageantry of things—and dreams
The gifts that he has given with his hands—
The gifts that he has taken with his hands—
And dreams his own eternity.
* * *
I am one that loves
The stars of labyrinthine night whom the shrill dawn
Devours, the quietude of ultimate slopes
Thoughtful of twilight, peering moons that shed
Unrisen glamours thru the umbrageous wood
With gnome and goblin rife, and the light spray
Of gray spring rains enveloping the hills.
SONG
Would I were a bird
To nest in a cover
Of leaves that hover
’Twixt earth and heaven
Where no sound is heard—
Only the uneven
Brush of winds that slumber
With no thought to cumber;
Would I were a bird!
Would I were a wave
To rise for a moment
From the ocean’s foment,
To puff my lips asunder
Blowing bubbles brave,
To dream and to wonder
Of the depths below me
And the winds that blow me—
Would I were a wave!
Bird, canst thou fashion
Song of things that grieve thee?
Wave hast thou passion
For things that will deceive thee?
Bird and wave I leave ye!
RONDEAU
A Sunday-calm, ornate, profound,
Enchanting sense, subduing sound,
Enjoins its ritual to prepare;
The day is bland with unctuous prayer
That leaps to heaven at a bound.
And bells ope throats in mellow round
Of sweet antiphonal resound,
And virtue glistens everywhere—
A Sunday-calm.
Draw breath! Away to virgin ground!
But where the fields are flower-crowned
The cattle with self-conscious stare
Chide my undeprecative air,—
Good heavens! Can they too have found
A Sunday-calm?
SUNSET BURIAL
The trees upheaven filigrane fingers of desire
To touch a ruby-throated cloud-face fanned
By a bronze breath and globous mouth of fire;
Beneath, the rigid gravestones stand,
Each one a cadaver that cannot close its hand.