I saw how he would come each night and wait
An hour or more beside that broken gate—
Just stand, and stare across the road with dim,
Grey eyes. Nothing was there but an old pine tree,
Cut down and sawn in lengths; and absently
He answered questions that I put to him.
He spoke as if some horrid deed were done—
Murder—no less—it seemed to be;
A week before, under his very eyes,
A gang of men had slain a tree.
The pine was planted seventy years ago
To celebrate his birth,
It had a right, he said, to live and grow,
And then into the earth,
By a mild and understanding law,
To pass with nature's quiet burial.
But they had come, those men, with axe and saw,
And killed it like a criminal,
And with the hangman's rope about its neck,
It swayed a moment, then with heavy sound,
Dropped with a crash of branches to the ground.
In Lantern Light
I could not paint, nor could I draw
The look that searched the night;
The bleak refinement of the face I saw
In lantern light.
A cunning hand might seize the crag,
Or stay the flight of a gull,
Or the rocket's flash; or more—the lightning jag
That lit the hull.
But as a man born blind must steal
His colors from the night
By hand, I had to touch that face to feel
It marble white.
The Secret of the Sea
Tell me thy secret, O Sea,
The mystery sealed in thy breast;
Come, breathe it in whispers to me,
A child of thy fevered unrest.