III
Summer and spring are wed
In her—her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life, and joy, and love,
Her being seems to shed,
The magic aura of the heart of her.
THE ROSE’S SECRET
When down the west the new moon slipped,
A curved canoe that dipped and tipped,
When from the rose the dewdrop dripped,
As if it shed its heart’s blood slow;
As softly silent as a star
I climbed a lattice that I know,
A window lattice, held ajar
By one slim hand as white as snow:
The hand of her who set me here,
A rose, to bloom from year to year.
I, who have heard the bird of June
Sing all night long beneath the moon;
I, who have heard the zephyr croon
Soft music ’mid spring’s avenues,
Heard then a sweeter sound than these,
Among the shadows and the dews—
A heart that beat like any bee’s,
Sweet with a name—and I know whose:
Her heart that, leaning, pressed on me,
A rose, she never looked to see.
O star and moon! O wind and bird!
Ye harkened, too, but never heard
The secret sweet, the whispered word
I heard, when by her lips his name
Was murmured.—Then she saw me there!—
But that I heard was I to blame?
Whom in the darkness of her hair
She thrust since I had heard the same:
Condemned within its deeps to lie,
A rose, imprisoned till I die.
THE HUSHED HOUSE
I, who went at nightfall, came again at dawn;
On Love’s door again I knocked.—Love was gone.
He who oft had bade me in, now would bid no more;
Silence sat within his house; barred its door.
When the slow door opened wide through it I could see
How the emptiness within stared at me.
Through the dreary chambers, long I sought and sighed,
But no answering footstep came; naught replied.