I feel all primal and savage to-day.
I could eat and drink deep and love strong
I could fight and exult and boast and be glad!
I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it!
I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman
A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door!
I could glory in folly and fire and ruin,
And race naked-limbed with the wind,
And slink on the heels of my foes
And dabble their blood on my brows—
For to-day I am sick of it all,
This silent and orderly empty life,
And I feel all savage again!
MARCH TWILIGHT
Black with a batter of mud
Stippled with silvery pools
Stands the pavement at the street-end;
And the gutter snow is gone
From cobble and runnelling curb;
And no longer the ramping wind
Is rattling the rusty signs;
And moted and soft and misty
Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets,
And the home-bound crowds of the city
Walk in a flood of gold.
And suddenly out of the dusk
There comes the ancient question:
Can it be that I have lived
In earlier worlds unknown?
Or is it that somewhere deep
In this husk that men call Me
Are kennelled a motley kin
I never shall know or name,—
Are housed still querulous ghosts
That sigh and awaken and move,
And sleep once more?
THE ECHO
I
I am only a note in the chorus,
A leaf in the fluttering June,
A wave on the deep.
These things that I struggle to utter
Have all been uttered before.
In many another heart
The selfsame song was born,
The ancient ache endured,
The timeless wonder faced,
The unanswered question nursed,
The resurgent hunger felt,
And the eternal failure known!