Rain and a wintry wind
And trees that have shed their leaf.
If man at first had not sinned
Then Christ had not been born.
I WRITE TO YOU IN RED
I write to you in red, though not in blood,
For scarlet all my memories are dyed
With deep imaginings of what the past,
The past, the past—the unforgotten gone.
Ah, what it might have been designed upon!
I write to you in red because the flood
Of scarlet passion prisoned, long denied
Your love, yet in your bondage bonded fast,
Is freed to flow again, to stream,
And if it can, another love esteem.
But all too long your chains upon my heart
Have left a scar which testifies me dead
To all frivolity. I have no part
With lightsome love.
I write to you in red!
’TIS WINTER NOW
When spring again revisits earth,
And in the dark there comes a stirreth
Of seedlings bursting with the birth
Of summer’s future flowers,
Then will I sing you songs of love
And apple blossoms branched above
Shall know the dear devotion of
My poor poetic powers.
But wait till then—’tis winter now.
My thoughts in solitude are claimed.
Yet every wind shall hear my vow
Repeated through the hours,
It’s you alone I love,
And unashamed.
SONNET
Like solitary mountain peaks that list
And seem to sink in seas of restless grain
My love for you goes drowning through a mist
Of unrequited, unrecorded pain.