SURETY
We have each other’s deathless love,
A love that flies on wings of light
From star to star and sings above
The night:
We bid each other’s eyes reveal
The face whose images we are;
We find each other’s hand upon the wheel
Piloting every star.
Shall we then watch with a less lonely breath
Gradual, sudden, everlasting death?
Oh, lest a separating wind assail
The jocund stars and all their ways be dearth,
And love, undone of its immense avail,
Go homeless even on earth,
Let us be constant, though we travel far,
With every mortal token of our trust,
And not forget, piloting any star,
How dear a thing is dust!
Yale Review Witter Bynner
REMEMBRANCE: GREEK FOLK-SONG
Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
Why do you lead me to the forest?
Joy is where the temples are, lines of dancers swinging far,
Drums and lyres and viols in the town
(It is dark in the forest)
And the flapping leaves will blind me and the clinging vines will bind me
And the thorny rose-boughs tear my saffron gown—
And I fear the forest.
Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
There was one once who led me to the forest:
Hand in hand we wandered mute, where was neither lyre nor flute,
Little stars were bright against the dusk
(There was wind in the forest)
And the thicket of wild rose breathed across our lips locked close
Dizzy perfumings of spikenard and musk....
I am tired of the forest.
Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
Take me from the silence of the forest!
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears,
But here in the forest
I am still, remembering a forgotten, useless thing,
And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears—
There is memory in the forest.
The Craftsman Margaret Widdemer