Last night the Prophet saw me;
And, while he held me there,
The holy fire within his eyes
Burned all my secret bare.
“What! Sigh you so for Babylon?”
(I turned away my face)
“Here’s one who turns to Babylon,
Heart traitor to her race!”
I follow and I follow!
My heart upon the rack;
I follow to Jerusalem—
The long road stretches back
To Babylon, to Babylon!
And every step I take
Bears farther off from Babylon
A heart that cannot break.
Last Spring
THIS morning at the door
I heard the Spring.
Quickly I set it wide
And, welcoming,
“Come in, sweet Spring,” I cried,
“The winter ash, long dried,
Waits but your breath to rise
On phantom wing.”
A brown leaf shivered by,
A soulless thing—
My heart in quick dismay
Forgot to sing—
Twisted and grim it lay,
Kin to the ghost-ash gray,
Dead, dead—strange herald this
Of jocund Spring!
I spurned it from the door.
I longed that Spring
Should come with song and glow
And rush of wing,
Not this, not this!—But O
Dead leaf, a year ago
You were the dear first-born
Of Hope and Spring!
Presence
BY a sense of Presence, keenly dear,
I, who thought her distant,
Knew her near.