I sang that song in summer,
All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.
Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair?
A WET AUGUST
Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:
—’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine—
When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
Or was there then no noted radiancy
Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,
Gilt over by the light I bore in me,
And was the waste world just the same as now?
It can have been so: yea, that threatenings
Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray,
By the then possibilities in things
Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.
1920.
THE DISSEMBLERS
“It was not you I came to please,
Only myself,” flipped she;
“I like this spot of phantasies,
And thought you far from me.”
But O, he was the secret spell
That led her to the lea!
“It was not she who shaped my ways,
Or works, or thoughts,” he said.
“I scarcely marked her living days,
Or missed her much when dead.”
But O, his joyance knew its knell
When daisies hid her head!