Better one roaring day, one wrestling night,
The dark musician’s fiercer harmony,
And then abandoned bareness, or the light
Of strange discovered skies, if it might be.
WINTER NOONTIDE
I go forth now, but not to fill my lap
With violets and white sorrel of the wood;
This is a winter noon; and I may hap
Upon a few dry sticks, and fire is good.
A quickening shrewdness edges the fore wind;
Some things stand clear in this dismantled hour
Which deep-leaved June had hidden; earth is kind,
The heaven is wide, and fire shall be my flower.
THE POOL
A wood obscure in this man’s haunt of love,
And midmost in the wood where leaves fall sere,
A pool unplumbed; no winds these waters move,
Gathered as in a vase from year to year.
And he has thought that he himself lies drowned,
Wan-faced where the pale water glimmereth,
And that the voiceless man who paces round
The brink, nor sheds a tear now, is his wraith.