Poems

by Nora May French

II

HE loves no more. Upon the failing streams
The summer burns—so burns another flame:
I see his eyes alight with alien dreams ...
That long-forgotten country whence he came.

Calls to him past my words; beyond my eyes
Lost waters shine, remembered sunsets die.
Ay, in my kiss another mouth replies,
And speaks of kisses past, of lips put by.

Now this my heart divines, for words of love
He gives me still (O woeful heart and bruised
To still complain!).... But surely, when I move
His eyes will never follow as they used.

III

THE soul that made love exquisite is gone,
It is not that the word, the kiss, is changed.
I cannot say, “Here was his thought withdrawn;
So once was love, so now is love estranged.”

But all of love that I could touch and know
I held as one a lamp that makes his day,
And touch it still, and see its flame burn low,
Its shining figures fade to painted clay.

Ah, I would hold the semblance, keep the kiss;
But watching in its heart the paling spark,
I cry out when the shadows menace this,
As children weep for terror of the dark.

IV

THAT all tomorrows have no wound in store
For shrinking Joy, nor any prick of dread,
I know, who closed its eyes forevermore,
And keep this night a vigil with my dead.

This little space my out-thrown hands have stirred
Is happy earth, for once it knew love’s feet;
Here once love stood and called the heart that heard,
And all the garden, all the world, grew sweet.

I lay my joy within this hollowed space
(I had not thought so blithe a thing could die!)
And heap the happy earth upon the face
That has no will to smile nor breath to sigh.

With dew beneath and hushing night above
I cannot tell how long my grief has lain—
Virgin, I will not plead you for my love,
Only the pain,—if you would ease the pain.

V

THE world below was deep in stormy cloud;
But high in sun we flew along the ledge,
And to the strength I rode I cried aloud
And spurred it near against the trembling edge.

(I rode Ramon along the mountain wall.
Today he had no wilder mood than I—
No wilder will for lawless wind to call
Upon the narrow trail that meets the sky.)

The sharp air flowed like water through my hands.
Heart, how I skirted death and laughed at pain!
Forgotten pain in half-remembered lands
Below me in the valleys with the rain.

VI

WHAT alters with my changing? Not José,
Content in little duties that he loves.
Not Marta’s dimming eyes that stare away
Beyond the tranquil court, the circling doves.

I, too, I float on peace, forget almost,
And then as drowning sight may pierce the sea
To find the sun a green and wavering ghost,
And shapes of earth distorted monstrously,—

I see a mocking earth, a sun distraught,
I lose the buoying instant of relief
And sink again as wearying soul and thought
Drown in the sick amazement of my grief.

VII

I TILT my hollowed life and look within:
The wine it held has left a purple trace—
Behold, a stain where happiness had been.
If I should shatter down this empty vase,

Through what abysses would my soul be tossed
To meet its judge in undiscovered lands?
What sentence meted me, alone and lost,
Before him with the fragments in my hands?

Better the patient earth that loves me still
Should drip her clearness on this purple stain;
Better my life upheld to her should fill
With limpid dew, and gradual gift of rain.

VIII

SOME whim of Marta’s shields me from the night,
And fretted that my curtain should be kept
Close drawn, and wakeful candles over bright,
I welcomed in the quiet moon and slept;

Then woke again in fear—the night was old,
The witching tide of silver shut away,
And Marta’s shaking hand on mine was cold,
Her bending face above me strange and grey.

“Who sleeps beneath the moon,” she whispered low,
“Must pale with her, nor wind nor noon-day sky
Be his again whose pulses beat more slow,
More faint, till with the waning moon ... they die.”

THE END

THE GARDEN OF DOLORES

THE garden of Dolores! Here she walked
When fretted in the twilight’s pallid space
The trees were black and delicate as lace,
And palms were etchings, sharp and slender-stalked.

Now riots summer in these magic closes,
And life is rounded in the frailest spray....
Dolores, cold and buried yesterday,
Is it thy spirit here among the roses?

For restless murmurs through the garden seek;
To shadowy caress the flowers unclose;
A blossom in the dark magnolia glows—
Or leaning pallor of an oval cheek?

Upon the dusk is borne a strange long cry,
And one quick sob of wind the air has moved.
Ah, perfect garden that Dolores loved,
Her soul has called to thee ... a far goodbye.

INDIFFERENCE

THERE is a thread from you to me?
I know, I feel it drawing still,
A cobweb on my careless thought—
Old habit-likeness—what you will.

Because it once was strong as Fate
To bind a life to your desire,—
Because its knots about my heart
Could burn me like a witch’s wire,

You will not think it loosed. And I
(Ah, woman soul that prayed “Destroy!”)
Free from the fretting of my pain,
Have killed the fitful strength of joy.

AFTER-KNOWLEDGE

YOU found my soul an untried instrument.
I closed it fast and bade you take the key,
Serene in my unquestioning content
That you alone could wake the harmony.

I gave the key, indifferent though it cost
Familiar lightness of unskilful touch,
The music to the master. If I lost,
He lets the little go who profits much.

Ah, then the keen, reluctant knowledge grew
That though the chords were helpless at your will
You had nor wit nor power to sound them true:
Discordant they, or else forever still.

TWO SPENDTHRIFT KINGS

These tawny sheaves, this fragrant land,
Two spendthrift kings have found and seized,
And Vagabondia may demand
Its pockets lined, its troubles eased.

We hold or deed as fancy wills.
We own the world by right and law—
The hidden gold in all the hills,
The sweetness in a yellow straw.

GROWTH

I TWINE you, little trellis, close and fond,
And swing in wistful threads above, beyond,
For air and space to blossom. Be it so.
Ah me! I love you, but the plant must grow.

I quiver with the call of summer heat,
With all the wild sap stirring at my feet.
My quiet trellis, impotent to know
The earth and sun command me: I must grow.

You cannot share my ardent life apart,
Nor feel the upward straining of my heart.
In every vein the urging currents flow,
Leaf after leaf unfolds: the plant must grow.

CHANGE

BELOVED, have I turned indeed so cold?
My eyes are faithful, grieving with your grief;
And if the year itself could grow not old,
Could stand at waking sap and budding leaf,

An April heart might keep its first unrest,
An April love the petals of its spring.
When all the birds are silent in my breast,
How can I answer when you bid me sing?

The autumn hills are brown: you will not see.
The saddened woodland speaks, and finds you strange.
Ah, dear one, all my world is kin to me,
And with the swerving days I change, I change.

WISTARIA

THE blue wistaria hangs with bloom
The Place of Memories far away.
My heart has ached with it today—
The blue wistaria is in bloom.

And one may pass so near, so near,
With half-remembering eyes and cold,
Where quickening with the budding year
It clusters perfect as of old;

And one at sight of wizened sprays,
Reluctant in an alien spring,
Must feel the sharp, unblunted sting,
The pang of unforgotten days.

MY NOOK[6]

OH, half way up the hill it was, where one might sit leaf-hidden,
And stare across the canyoned depths to distant miles of blue;
Upon the little path to it no foot might step unbidden.
It was my nook, and mine alone, and not another knew.
And when my doll was sawdust, or my little hopes were fated,
Or all my world was shaken by a little idol’s fall,
Up to my dear retreat I’d climb, with grief or anger weighted,
And, hands behind fern-pillowed head, straightway forget it all.
With tears yet damp upon my cheeks I’d fall to castle-building
(The careless linnets fluttered near a little maid so still),
And all the gorgeous tints I knew, and all the wealth of gilding,
Were lavished on the future that I summoned there at will.
“When one is small the troubles come, and then the tears must follow;
When one is small one finds it good to run and cry alone,
But I shall laugh to think that once I found my world so hollow—
I shall not need this little nook,” I thought, “when I am grown.”

Now heart whose voice I drown by day to hear in hours of waking,
Now eyes whose tears must burn the more because they may not flow,
From sight of face or sound of speech if I could bear your aching,
And bury it deep-hidden in the ferns of long ago!
But oh! the pensive little ghost among her visions sitting
Would view her weeping Future with so piteous surprise!
No, I must leave her in her nook to dream her dreams unwitting—
I could not take my trouble there, I could not meet her eyes.

WHEN PLAINTIVELY AND NEAR THE CRICKET SINGS

NOW evening comes. Now stirs my discontent....
Oh, ache of smallest, unforgotten things!
How sharp you are when day and dark are blent,
When beetles hurry by with vibrant wings,
And plaintively and near the cricket sings.

The sighing garden calls me from the door;
Above the hills a little crescent swings—
Above the path where you will come no more
When beetles hurry by on vibrant wings,
And plaintively and near the cricket sings.

THE LITTLE MEMORIES

MY thoughts of you ... although I strain and sigh
At stubborn roots, at boughs that tear my face,
No plants in all my garden grow so high,
Nor fill with sturdier life a wider place.

It pleases me, and wakes an old delight,
To go with wordy shears in idle times
And trim them as a patient gardener might,
Clipping the thorny boughs to curves and rhymes.

If these were all, opposing strength with strength
To make my hurt an easier thing to bear;
If these alone usurped my garden’s length,
It would not be so hard—I should not care.

But close against the ground, oh, small and weak!
The trodden flowers, the little memories, grow.
Uprooting fingers press them to my cheek....
Dear heart, I love you, and I miss you so.

PASS BY

MIND said, “Pass by.
The garden withers, for the spring is dry.
For words of thine, for tears, it will not flow.
The long road calls a wanderer: rise and go.”

Heart said, “Pass by.
The flowers were pale and scentless; let them die,
And down the road Forget your pathway take
To find beneath the Song my fine, small ache,
And gather flowers blue and flowers red
To hear my whisper of the white ones dead.”

IN EMPTY COURTS

HIS love is warm and constant as the sun,
Like sunlight in the outer spaces spent,
In empty courts where tumbling fountains run,
And flowers bloom, and he is well content.

To you my heart must turn for all its light—
Alas, the grudging taper that you give!
So small to make the inner temple bright,
So dim to give the glow by which I live.

He is the sun, for all the world to mark,
So warm and fair he shines! nor understands
That I must still be crouching in the dark,
Shielding a little flame with loving hands.

DOWN THE TRAIL

BREAK camp, the dawn is here!
A sea has swept beneath us in the night—
Poured outward in a wrinkled floor of white,
And left our eyrie clear.
There in the deeps the little trail is curled—
We plunge like divers to the under-world.

The manzanita stirs!
Look, in that little thicket just ahead!
Down, down, the covey whirrs,
Mocking us, careful, led,
Slow-slipping beads along a slender thread.

Here the stream flows;
Here we tread yellow leaves.
(Sun in the sycamores,
Sun on the granite walls.)
All is so still,
Never wind blows,
Only the singing stream
Shouts little waterfalls.

We round the mighty shoulder of a hill—
Oh, sweet airs damp with ferns!
The day is old, the lengthening shadows chill—
The wanderer returns.

Traffic, and wakeful eyes of little lights;
The black crowd passing near; and far away
A fading rose of sunset hanging low
Above the roofs of indigo and grey.

“BELLS FROM OVER THE HILLS SOUND SWEET.”—Russian Proverb.

OH, when the afternoon is long and hazy,
So still the valley lies, so still, so still,
With sweeping smoky spirals blue and lazy,
With yellow light aglow from hill to hill.
Sometimes the echoes startle with my singing;
Sometimes a bird the heavy silence fills,
And always I can hear them ringing, ringing,
My mocking bells, my Bells from over the Hills.

Sweetly, faintly ring they, cruel ring they:
“Captive in your prison hear us call!”
Message from a life of action bring they,
Life beyond these hills more sweet than all.
Would that I could heed their call and follow,
Waking while this drowsy valley sleeps,
Follow Fortune over hill and hollow,
Wrest from her the treasures that she keeps!

My freedom gained, what fate would be for telling?
Still hills and hills beyond would stretch for aye.
Peace in this little valley has its dwelling,
And that the chase would profit who shall say?
For hopes and dear delights, ah, who can near them?
Something ungained, the heart with longing fills,
And follow though I might I still should hear them,
The mocking bells, the Bells from over the Hills.

IN TOWN

THE long street where the people go—
It is not like the paths I know,
Yet can I find the morning there,
All crystal light and early air.

Sharp-angled roofs in slanting sun
Grow dimmer as they slope and blend,
Until they crowd no more, and one
May see his mountains at the end.

Then, when the day has had her will,
I lean upon my window-sill,
And watch them floating, clean and high—
My sunset ships across the sky.

MOODS