XLVI
Between the sunset and the stars
Long clouds lie—as fierce sachems loom,
In war-paint and the eagle-plume,
Among their wampumed warriors,
When council fires burn red and set
On stoic cheeks the battle-bloom,
That puff the smoking calumet.
Beneath the stars and hunter’s-moon
The frost spreads ghostly pearls, that glance
Like dewy jewels in the dance
That whirls on fairied hills of June:
The night is calm; no luminous veil
Conceals the spirit utterance
Of her dark beauty, pure and pale.
XLVII
I sat alone with song and sleep,
And in the singing silence heard
The darkness draw from forth the deep
With star on star, like word on word:
A sound of twilight and swift shades
Materializing into night,
Who hears the breaking waves of light,
And towards the shores of morning wades.
I sat alone with dawn and death,
And in my waking vision saw
The form of silence, like a breath
Of bodiless beauty and of awe,
Whose sibyl eyes said unto me
The things the sealed lips would not word,
That eons of the stars record
In volumes of eternity.
XLVIII
The dead gold of the marybud,
The dusky, tarnished orange-red
Of zinnias, flush the flower-bed,
Like frosty autumn gleams that scud
Tempestuous dusks and stormy dawns
Above the wind-dishevelled lawns.
With tired eyes and heart grown grave,
And thoughts more weary than the night,
I watch the dwindling of the light,
And hear the rising night-winds rave,
As one might hear, when half asleep,
Another self make moan and weep.