Roof unto roof they stand,
Shadowing the dizzied street,
Where Vanity flaunts her gilded booths
In the noontide glare and heat.
Green-graped upon their walls
An ancient hoary vine
Hath clustered their carven, lichenous stones
With tendril serpentine.
And ever and anon,
Dazed in that clamorous throng,
I thirst for the soundless fount that stills
Those orchards mute of song.
Knock, knock, nor knock in vain:
Heart all thy secrets tell
Where Silence a fast-sealed garden hath,
Where Dark doth dwell.
FOR ALL THE GRIEF
For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
Where the lonely go.
For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
Be a dark, cool water calling—calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
When the shadows are falling.
O, be beauty for all my blindness,
A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
In the dark of the end.
THE SCRIBE
What lovely things
Thy hand hath made:
The smooth-plumed bird
In its emerald shade,
The seed of the grass,
The speck of stone
Which the wayfaring ant
Stirs—and hastes on!