Does the Moon love best
When the budding creeps from the sunny South
Where the crocus leaps,
And the robin cheeps,
And the earth is a-blossom with rain-wet mouth?
Does the Moon love best
The wild winds driving out of the North?
The hazel rod,
And the brown seed-pod,
And the Autumn censers swinging forth?
Oh! the Gypsy Moon,
Wandering ways so silverly!
Hers is the love of cricket-shoon,
And wigwam corn,
And the smell of morn,
And October grasses on vagrom dune!
ROOF-TREE.
Far from the highway stands the empty home,
With unhinged door and warped and shrunken stair;
Over its walls the chilly shadows roam,
Rank to its lintels huddled ivies come;
Past its blind face the startled swallows fare.
Wrapped in its memories, it stands aloof,
Strange to itself, patient in wind and rain;
No tender hearth-breath curls around its roof,
No voice within welcomes or calls reproof;
No child’s face peers behind the cobwebbed pane.
Let us not wonder why—we shame it more
With echoing voice and stir. Let us depart,
Turning in pity from the hapless door,
Closing the dumb gate in awed silence, for
This is the dead hope of a human heart.
EVENING AT FRANKLIN VALLEY FARM. 1918.
The lantern throws a wavering shadow round
The umber aisles; the cows in stanchions rowed
Turn their soft gaze, their curving horns surround
The fragrant tossing of their rustling food;
Their limpid eyes, their breathing, slow, profound,
Seem on some great unworded Theme to brood—
Some evenness of sky and solitude,
Or placid pool or hill with maples crowned.
From stall to stall the horses’ darkling eyes
And upflung heads connote our interlude;
And scenting nostrils whicker their surprise
At human forms that on this peace intrude;
The shadows smell of milk, and straw, and rude
Farm implements accent the lantern-patch;
Ringed globules tremble on the bundled thatch,
Leaping to dusky beam and rafter wood.