Westerly wind with a rainy smell,
Eaves that drip in the mud;
And the pain of the tender miracle
Stabbing the languid blood.
Over the long, wet meadow-land,
Beyond the deep sunset,
There is a hand that pressed your hand,
And eyes that shall not forget.
Now the West is the door of wrath,
Now 'tis a burnt-out coal;
Petals fall on the orchard path;
Darkness falls on the soul.
Washington, 1918
VII
When voices sink in twilight silences,
Like swimmers in a sea of quietude,
And faint farewells re-echo from the hill;
When the last thrush his sleepy vesper says,
And the lost threnody of the whip-poor-will
Gropes through the gathering shadows in the wood;
Then in the paths where dusk fades into grey,
And sighing shapes stir that I never see,
I follow still a quest of old despair
To find at last,—ah, but I cannot say,
Except that I have known a face somewhere,
And loved in times beyond all memory.
O soulless face! white flash in solitude,
Forgotten phantom of a moonless night,
Shall I kiss thy sad mouth once again, or wait
Drowned beneath fathoms of a tideless mood
Until the stars flee through the western gate
Driven in shivering fear before the light?
Cambridge, 1916