One dawn she woke me when the darkness lay
Faint on the Summer fields. The air
Was like a question. Green was grey
With dew distilled in delitesence where
Covert, the night-folk wrought. She said: “Dear one,
It is our holiday.” Forth we went
Finding new kindred, new bequest of sun,
Inheriting again the firmament.
Long ago ...
The old years lie upon her grave like flowers.
The alchemy of hours
Has made me someone whom she would not know.
How strangely that frail morning lives and towers
When I am other and when she lies low.
THERE ARE WITHIN US LIVES WE NEVER LIVE
There are within us lives we never live
By sense or soul, for being does not know
To tell their depth or breast their flow
Or to taste the sweetness that they give.
And now in distance, now in voices still,
In pity or in harmony, in sleep,
We lead unconscious lives, old, deep,
Upon the far slope of an unknown hill.
Is it not here that life walks wreathed at last?
Many a soul meets many a soul with this:
That muted lips and wistful eyes are passed
In silence; yet a sign there is
Burning in air, though but a shadow fall
Or some pale sunbeam steal along the wall.
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW MY MOTHER YOUNG
Last night I dreamed I saw my mother young.
I never knew her till her hair was grey;
Last night I saw the shadows lit away
And pearls about her shoulders strung.
Out from our haunts of home among
She came as if she knew them not. There lay
Old hope in her young eyes. And gay
Her speech came in some laughing tongue.
I who had watched the stolen march of days
And would not see the theft which was their sign
Moved happily to meet her, mute with praise
For this the witchery that made her fair.
But yet the pretty hand that lay in mine
Was not the one I love upon my hair.
WHY AM I SILENT?
Why am I silent? Tell me how to speak
With all the sweet familiars of the way;
Call Summer by her name; and with the Day
Walk royally companioned cheek on cheek
For that faint speech awhile withheld, that weak
Task of the Word undone is the great Nay,
The winged thunder that denies the ray.
Yet once when first I saw the hapless Greek
By present impulse of the god urged on
Seek out the shadow of the awful grove,
I felt the word. I caught it once again
In a sweet flash of arrowy sun that shone
Thickening on flowers. But when
You sorrowed, Love,
I knew it then....