Now a sudden bud is born
Burning in the dew;
There the fog rose palely lifting
All as if it knew
The faint flowing speech
Of the friendly blue.
Oh the little hurrying wing
Like a blowing leaf;
Oh the shadows gathering in
Many a sheaf;
There a cloud is carved like some
Airy coral reef.
Like a new sense these venture
In the veins and lo,
All the blood is musical
In its beat and flow;
And we wait wondering
What new thing we know.
III
TO A POET
Woo a little choir of words,
Teach them to sing;
Let them thrill the air like birds
Love-summoning.
Thread the silence with a lute,
Sound the spiral of a flute.
... Vain, but vain. The words are mute.
Open now your own heart
Where a rose may be;
Live your love and use your art,
Make melody,
For your joy, your joy is there,
Sing the secret thing you bear!
... Only silence everywhere.
... Show the ancient pain that lies
With remembered things
Down the dark within your eyes
Where nothing sings.
Now at last there throng
Images that waited long,
And the silence flowers in song.
EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS
The air is purged of gold and in its stead
Is poured a fire of silver on the green;
And now the moon new-risen from the dead
Of dearer nights than this finds her demesne
Lonely of stars, as they to greet their queen
Had rushed in argent riot from the blue
To spill themselves like flowers or waste unseen
In stealing perfumes that elude and woo
As now eludes now woos the wind the sweet night through.
Down from her turret when the dusk was new
The Lady Margot stepped and lured by wile
Of faint near things that croon of what they do
With wandering touch she thought to walk the while
The hours were printless on the idle dial.
Deep in a garden lamped with lily bells
Which hold the light as does some opal vial
She took her way near where a fountain wells
And wakes its rainbow ribbons into madrigals.