I have imagined how it might be so,
When Earth takes home this wandering dust again,
There may be stories I shall come to know,
Of tragic queens and towns and valiant men,—
Old honoured tales that Earth may tell to me,
As mothers do, for children at the knee.
AFFINITIES
Young girls love a slender birch,
Tall and blowing in the wind,
Silvered in the sun and rain,
And beautifully thinned.
Old men love an apple-tree
Twisted and gnarled as they;
But when new blossoms line the bough,
The old men look away.
TRANSFIGURATION
What old historic dust gives back the rose!
What crumbled empires yield the creeping vine!
And purple grapes have sucked a pleasant wine
From ramparts that had bowed to sudden blows.
Where now the unregarded river flows,
Old dissolute cities, their debauches done,
Lift up a slender blossom to the sun,
Steeped in the thoughtful silence where it grows.