fell on her eye-brows....

These pages are as silent as drowned cries....
Come back, my Love, and with more fervent eyes
Than pity, Lips that bear the ivy-leaf
Once chose for emblem Love that never dies?

Bow thy head, O shadow on the wall,
And weep a shadows grief.
... And so the rain arrived instead of you!
Its falling tears on the seas bitterness....

... But I, who am loves prodigal and fool,
What right have I to that high horse of verse?
Whose wings in cadenced soaring sweep the sky
Taking the waning moons for virgin dawns!
Etherial beast to find a home in clouds
And pasture on the plenteous voids of heaven!

... Small are these in love and in understanding ...
Lift your voice in song, you alone can sing me
Songs as white and strong as the marble columns
Of Mitylene

Songs as pure pure as stars on the silver midnights,
Near as moonbeams over the limbs of lovers,
Strange as sleep in fields of lethean stillness
Heavy with summer.

You alone can waken my soul to sorrow,
You alone can mend all the broken music:
Subtler tones of thought than this shattered singing
Words have divided!

I cannot weep for you as others weep.
My last and dearest dead,
For all my tears on lesser griefs are shed!

I BUILT A FIRE


I built a fire to welcome her,
And my voice sighed
Aloud her name. To be with her
This night, I would have died....
Upon the hours, all in vain
My tears, the rain,
Fall uselessly, unceasingly....
The heavy door
Has closed again ... again!
I wait, yet know she will not brave
The midnight,—give
One hour more, so utterly to live;
Wise and mild and shy,
Afraid as the heart of a child,
I know her heart to be.
And mine, that naught will save,
Must love and live and crave
And break unceasingly!

HOW COLD ...


How cold the autumn night,
Fearing that never more,
As before,
Will she pour
In with the moonlight through my door.
—On nights when the moon over-brimmed with light
Was like a loving-cup she bore.
... My love, my love's delight,
How are you lost? How fight
Against an angels flight?
Tarnished upon the floor
The halo desire kept bright!
Like a lonely child afright
Questions each empty fold —
When loves fairy tales are told,
In midnights anguish might
My golden head turn white
Under the moons down-pour:
In a moment a million moons more
Drown, chill and cover me quite ...
Rather than feel the cold,
The gradual growing cold—
Make me one with the autumn night.

HABIT


Ah! habit, how unmusical and shy
That outworn miracle: our ecstacy!
Between our hands that clasp their empty palms,
This daily prayer is this our psalm of psalms!
What is this nothing that was more than all?
Thinned as a golden ring that dare not fall,
That unsuspected danger: faithfulness,
Has linked us strangers, and a something less!
Exchanging vows and other platitudes,
As beggars chained in separate solitudes,
Though jealousy keep live the rotten core,
Lovers that were be lovers nevermore.

THE NEAR ENEMY


Rash games of chess do hateful lovers play,
Their towers, queens and kings all thrown away
In wild offensives, desperate retreats.
To that sick inner-sounding drum that beats
In terror of some tender thing just killed!
New warriors on the battle-field, unskilled
In prudent war-fare: friends of yesterday
What they most cherished seem most keen to slay.
More treacherous than Prussians in command,
Entrenched and feigning not to understand,
They plan how best to poison, maim and mar!
Masked in bad silence, turned against their star.
Through what black forces are so changed to foes
Those fed on our high hearts, yes, even those!

LIFE


Life,
The unloosening of hands
—The unloosening of little hands—
About the heart.
The welling up of tears:
Old habits, old deaths, good-bye!
You are sacred ground under my on-faring,
I shall tread so lightly that you will not feel my leave-taking?
Yet the breath of a new world—the ever promised-land—exalts my nostrils.
I am on the war-path towards peace:
The peace of single choice.
Determination—onward,
Evolutions open your arcana,
Shower down your nearest spears of truth,
Great fear throbs in me, fear that leads me on,
I have shut my eyes long enough
—Shut eyes grow blind!—
Clinging to just one little human life!
Limiting, repressing all it would not share,
I who had an easy world to give
In the first heart-beats of my hope—
Yet now, with forty years, has come another youth
—A youth in which I recognize myself!
—Myself, how long you've lingered, waited, strayed—
Beauty seems an empty shell—out-worn.
Great longing of my sea, break forth, be uncontained!...
Count not your shipwrecks—every spar may save.
So I, not cruelly, not impetuously,
But with keen, shrewd resolve—rise up.
Why do I rise on timid stealthy feet?
In the dark to take leave of the dark,
To kiss the eyes of night farewell,
And turn love's withered face full on the dawn.
May the dawn learn through me,