In the pine-sweet valley of Carmel the cream-cups scatter in foam.
Azures of early lupin there!
Now the wild lilac floods the air
Like a broken honey-comb.
So could the flowers of Paradise
Pour their souls to the morning skies;
So like a ghost your fragrance lies
On the path that once led home.
On the emerald hills of Carmel the spring and winter have met.
Here I find in a gentled spot
The frost of the wild forget-me-not,
And — I cannot forget.
Heart once light as the floating feather
Borne aloft in the sunny weather,
Spring and winter have come together —
Shall you and she meet yet?
On the rocks and beaches of Carmel the surf is mighty to-day.
Breaker and lifting billow call
To the high, blue Silence over all
With the word no heart can say.
Time-to-be, shall I hear it ever?
Time-that-is, with the hands that sever,
Cry all words but the dreadful "Never"!
And name of her far away.
Music I heard. [Conrad Aiken]
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved, —
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always, —
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Dusk at Sea. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
To-night eternity alone is near:
The sea, the sunset, and the darkening blue;
Within their shelter is no space for fear,
Only the wonder that such things are true.
The thought of you is like the dusk at sea —
Space and wide freedom and old shores left far,
The shelter of a lone immensity
Sealed by the sunset and the evening star.