This singing Summertime has never done
With afternoons all gold and dust and fire,
And windy trees blown silver in the sun,
The lights of earth, her musics and desire;—
But day by day, and hour by lighted hour,
Something beyond the summer earth and sky,
Burns through this passion of a world in flower,—
Some ghostly sense of lovers thronging by.
And I have thought, upon this windy hill,
Where bends and sways the long, dream-troubled grass,
That I may know the heart-beats, tender still,
Of gone, forgotten lovers where they pass,—
Their love, too long for one brief life to hold,
Beating and burning through this dust and gold.
VINES
No hint was told to these untutored seed:
Along the mould wherein their roots are curled,
No whisper runs of station, caste or creed,
To guide their tendrils through a jealous world.
From palace wall or cottage door, these blooms,
In careless disarray of white and red,
Will peer through open windows into rooms
Where princes sit, or women kneading bread.
Along these tender twilights where they lean,
They send no whispered gossip down at all,
Of cradle songs, or counsels of a queen,
To roots indifferent if that upper wall
Be loud with battles and the clash of Kings,
Or quiet, where a mother sits and sings.