Or if some pass nor heed their sweet,
Nor feel their subtle dart,
Their softness stills the noisy feet,
And stills the noisy heart.
O poet pine, thy needles high
In starry light abode,
And now for footsore passers-by
They make a velvet road.
The Sound of the Axe
WITH the sound of an axe on the light wind’s tracks
For my only company,
And a speck of sky like a human eye
Blue, bending over me,
I lie at rest on the low moss pressed,
Whose loose leaves downward drip;
As light they move as a word of love
Or a finger to the lip.
’Neath the canopies of the sunbright trees
Pierced by an Autumn ray,
To rich red flakes the old log breaks
In exquisite decay.
While in the pines where no sun shines
Perpetual morning lies.
What bed more sweet could stay her feet,
Or hold her dreaming eyes?
No sound is there in the middle air
But sudden wings that soar,
As a strange bird’s cry goes drifting by—
And then I hear once more
That sound of an axe till the great tree cracks,
Then a crash comes as if all
The winds that through its bright leaves blew
Were sorrowing in its fall.