MEETING-HOUSE HILL

I must be mad, or very tired,

When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track

Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune,

And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square

Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

Clear, reticent, superbly final,

With the pillars of its portico refined to a cautious elegance,

It dominates the weak trees,

And the shot of its spire

Is cool and candid,

Rising into an unresisting sky.

Strange meeting-house

Pausing a moment upon a squalid hill-top.

I watch the spire sweeping the sky,

I am dizzy with the movement of the sky;

I might be watching a mast

With its royals set full

Straining before a two-reef breeze.

I might be sighting a tea-clipper,

Tacking into the blue bay,

Just back from Canton

With her hold full of green and blue porcelain

And a Chinese coolie leaning over the rail

Gazing at the white spire

With dull, sea-spent eyes.

A LADY [^[31]]

You are beautiful and faded,

Like an old opera tune

Played upon a harpsichord;

Or like the sun-flooded silks

Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.

In your eyes

Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,

And the perfume of your soul

Is vague and suffusing,

With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.

Your half-tones delight me,

And I grow mad with gazing

At your blent colors.

My vigor is a new-minted penny,

Which I cast at your feet.

Gather it up from the dust

That its sparkle may amuse you.

FREE FANTASIA ON JAPANESE THEMES [^[32]]

All the afternoon there has been a chirping of birds,

And the sun lies warm and still on the western sides of swollen branches,

There is no wind;

Even the little twigs at the ends of the branches do not move,

And the needles of the pines are solid

Bands of inarticulated blackness

Against the blue-white sky.

Still, but alert;

And my heart is still and alert,

Passive with sunshine,

Avid of adventure.

I would experience new emotions,

Submit to strange enchantments,

Bend to influences

Bizarre, exotic,

Fresh with burgeoning.

I would climb a sacred mountain,

Struggle with other pilgrims up a steep path through pine-trees,

Above to the smooth, treeless slopes,

And prostrate myself before a painted shrine,

Beating my hands upon the hot earth,

Quieting my eyes upon the distant sparkle

Of the faint spring sea.

I would recline upon a balcony

In purple curving folds of silk,

And my dress should be silvered with a pattern

Of butterflies and swallows,

And the black band of my obi

Should flash with gold circular threads,

And glitter when I moved.

I would lean against the railing

While you sang to me of wars

Past and to come—

Sang, and played the samisen.

Perhaps I would beat a little hand drum

In time to your singing;

Perhaps I would only watch the play of light

Upon the hilt of your two swords.

I would sit in a covered boat,

Rocking slowly to the narrow waves of a river,

While above us, an arc of moving lanterns,

Curved a bridge,

A hiss of gold

Blooming out of darkness,

Rockets exploded,

And died in a soft dripping of colored stars.

We would float between the high trestles,

And drift away from other boats,

Until the rockets flared soundless,

And their falling stars hung silent in the sky,

Like wistaria clusters above the ancient entrance of a temple.

I would anything

Rather than this cold paper;

With outside, the quiet sun on the sides of burgeoning branches,

And inside, only my books.

MADONNA OF THE EVENING FLOWERS [^[33]]

All day long I have been working,

Now I am tired.

I call: “Where are you?”

But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.

The house is very quiet,

The sun shines in on your books,

On your scissors and thimble just put down,

But you are not there.

Suddenly I am lonely:

Where are you?

I go about searching.

Then I see you,

Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,

With a basket of roses on your arm.

You are cool, like silver,

And you smile.

I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes,

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,

That the columbines have overrun all bounds,

That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.

You tell me these things.

But I look at you, heart of silver,

White heart-flame of polished silver,

Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,

And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,

While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.