KATHERINE LEE BATES
YELLOW CLOVER
Must I, who walk alone,
come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love’s grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet
With a strange dew of tears?
So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our homely, laureate flowers.
Sonnets and odes
Fringing our daily roads.
Can amaranth and asphodel
Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?
Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,
Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,
Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,
Simplicities of mirth,
Must follow them above
With touches of vague homesickness that pass
Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.
Beneath some foreign arch of sky,
How many a time the rover
You or I,
For life oft sundered look from look,
And voice from voice, the transient dearth
Schooling my soul to brook
This distance that no messages may span,
Would chance
Upon our wilding by a lonely well,
Or drowsy watermill,
Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,
Or where the nightingales of old romance
With tragical contraltos fill
Dim solitudes of infinite desire;
And once I joyed to meet
Our peasant gadabout
A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,
Twinkling a saucy eye
As potentates paced by.
Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame
From friendship’s altar fire!
How proudly we would pluck and tame
The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!
How swiftly they were sent
Far, far away
On journeys wide,
By sea and continent,
Green miles and blue leagues over,
From each of us to each,
That so our hearts might reach,
And touch within the yellow clover,
Love’s letter to be glad about
Like sunshine when it came!
My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;
Let love then make me brave
To bear the keen hurts of
This careless summertide,
Ay, of our own poor flower,
Changed with our fatal hour,
For all its sunshine vanished when you died;
Only white clover blossoms on your grave.
KATHERINE LEE BATES
THE RETURNING
We long for her, we yearn for her—
Yes, ardently we yearn
For her return.
Recalling those beloved days
(Days intimate with ways
Of friends so near to us
And life so dear to us),
We yearn unspeakably for her return.
And come she must… Yet while we trust
We soon may see the passing of this agony
Which makes intrusive years still seem
A fearsome dream,
We know that when she comes
She really comes not back again.
She’ll come in other guise
And under fairer skies—
And yet to bitter pain!
That day she went away
Our homes with laughing youth were filled.
Where then was happiness
Is now distress,
The laughter stilled;
For when she left
Youth followed her—
We stay bereft.
So all our golden joy
For what she brings
Must carry gray alloy:
The sorrow that she can not lay,
The mysery that she can not stay—
While all the gladsome songs she sings
Must bear for undertones
Old sighs and echoed moans.
As they who go away
In flush of youth
May come quite worn and gray
And bringing naught but ruth—
So, when the strife shall cease,
And when she comes at last,
When all the armies vast
Shall at her feet
Kneel down to greet
Thrice welcome Peace,
This world will be so changed
(So many dear ones dead,
So many friends estranged,
So many blessings fled,
So many wonted ways forever barred,
So many coming days forever marred)
That then
She truly comes not back again—
She, the Peace we knew.
Yet how we long for her!
How ardently we yearn
For her return!
SYLVESTER BAXTER