Why did I sketch an upland green,
And put the figure in
Of one on the spot with me?—
For now that one has ceased to be seen
The picture waxes akin
To a wordless irony.
If you go drawing on down or cliff
Let no soft curves intrude
Of a woman’s silhouette,
But show the escarpments stark and stiff
As in utter solitude;
So shall you half forget.
Let me sooner pass from sight of the sky
Than again on a thoughtless day
Limn, laugh, and sing, and rhyme
With a woman sitting near, whom I
Paint in for love, and who may
Be called hence in my time!
From an old note.
CONJECTURE
If there were in my kalendar
No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now—
A hermit’s?—wanderer’s weary?—
How should I live, and how
Near would be death, or far?
Could it have been that other eyes
Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
Would catch from this dim byway
Prized figures different quite
From those that now arise?
With how strange aspect would there creep
The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
In song-time, toil, or pray-time.—
O were it else than this,
I’d pass to pulseless sleep!
THE BLOW
That no man schemed it is my hope—
Yea, that it fell by will and scope
Of That Which some enthrone,
And for whose meaning myriads grope.