THE TWO POETS
Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?
Out of the long West did this wild wind come—
Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,
Ready and dumb, until
The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.
Two memories,
Two powers, two promises, two silences
Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves
Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves
The purpose of the past,
Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.
“Whose is the word?
Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?”
“Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!”
“Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,
Thou visitant divine.”
“O thou my Voice, the word was thine.”
“Was thine.”
A POET’S WIFE
I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land
Within a field’s embrace—
The very sea! Afar it fled the strand
And gave the seasons chase,
And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,
Saw sunrise face to face.
O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!
In inaccessible rest
And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir,
Scattered through east to west,—
Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her
Who locks thee to her breast.
VENERATION OF IMAGES
Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,
Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat
With love of thine own kind;