WHAT is there left? The wind makes answer
“I saw the green leaves grow brown and fall;
I danced with the shadows, I the dancer
Among bare branches. For I,” he saith,
“Hear the thin music whistle and call,
Music, horn-music, the music of death.”
“There stands at the edge of the wood the player
Dark in the darkness, but I have seen,
Ere my feet were lifted, the branches stir.
Darker than dark, than light more fair,
Before I have come he slips between;
But I, the dancer,” wind saith, “do not care.”
“The leaves have fallen and who shall discover
What there is left in the blackened tree?
And who will know when the years are over,
Among bare branches if I,” wind saith,
“Dance where the shadows and music be,
Music, horn-music, the music of death?”
GABRIEL.
SUPPOSE I gave you what my heart has given—
A door to dreams, a little road to heaven.
Would you pass through the door, my dreams forgetting,
And turn the corner when my sun is setting?
So I should only have (as I have only)
Your hair remembered, eyes that left me lonely,
A mouth as cold as roses, and the kiss
Of Gabriel, sealing love’s defeat with this!
OPALS AND AMBER.
CALL it an age, call it a day,
What’s in the world with love away?
The sun a round and golden ghost,
The moon the shadow he has lost;
And spring herself for all her green
The bare and brown a pause between.
Call it an age, call it a day,
When love is gone, what’s there to say?
Opal or gold, amber or gray,
What’s in the world with love away?
Opal a pool of changeling fires,
Where the gold angel stirs desires
That do not heal Bethesda way
But only turn the amber gray.
Call it an age, call it a day,
When love is gone, what’s there to say?
Call it a dream, call it a play,
What’s in the world with love away?
With love away can a man clamber
To heaven by a rope of amber?
Or can an opal stretch a wire
To lead a girl to her desire?