I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Editors of The English Review, The New World, Poetry in America, and to Mr. Cecil Palmer, for several poems included in this volume.
CONTENTS
[The Seed Shop]
[Man and his Makers]
[The New Aspasia]
[A Song For Old Love]
[Sic Transit]
[Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song]
[Annunciation]
[Boys Bathing]
[Lady Hamilton]
[White Magic]
[In the Orchard]
[The Wood and the Shore]
[The Tryst]
[Leda]
[The Harebell]
[Words]
[Shrift]
[The Thief of Beauty]
[Forgotten Dead, I Salute You]
[Madala Goes by the Orphanage]
[Obsession]
[Enough]
[In Memory of Douglas Vernon Cow]
[The Cloudberry]
[To ——]
[For Fasting Days]
[The Father]
[Andromeda Unfettered]
THE SEED SHOP.
Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry—
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.
Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,
Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,
Though birds pass over, unremembering,
And no bee seek here roses that were his.
In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century's streams,
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.
Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.