So this was all there was to the great play
She came so far to act in, this was all--
Except the short last scene and the slow fall
Of the final curtain, that might catch half-way,
As final curtains do, and leave the grey
Lorn end of things too long exposed. The hall
Clapped faintly, and she took her curtain call,
Knowing how little she had left to say.
And in the pause before the last act started,
Slowly unpinning the roses she had worn,
She reconsidered lines that had been said,
And found them hardly worthy the high-hearted
Ardor that she had brought, nor the bright, torn,
Roses that shattered round her, dripping red.
If we took the old path
In the old field
The same gate would stand there
That will never yield.
Where the sun warmed us
With a cloak made of gold,
The rain would be falling
And the wind would be cold;
And we would stop to search
In the wind and the rain,
But we would not find the stargrass
By the path again.
I thought I should not walk these dunes again,
Nor feel the sting of this wind-bitten sand,
Where the coarse grasses always blow one way,
Bent, as my thoughts are, by an unseen hand.
I have returned; where the last wave rushed up
The wet sand is a mirror for the sky
A bright blue instant, and along its sheen
The nimble sandpipers run twinkling by.
Nothing has changed; with the same hollow thunder
The waves die in their everlasting snow--
Only the place we sat is drifted over,
Lost in the blowing sand, long, long ago.
I had three friends in Gotham,
And one of them is dead.
And one of them has palsy
And cannot leave his bed.
And now I know the other
Will soon desert me too,
And end his days in Sing Sing,
For something he will do.
I plucked a rose, a red rose rare,
I placed her on a throne
Within my heart; and there I dare
To worship her alone.
An idol, thus, I paid to her
My constant vigil, love, and care.
Upon my knees, I prayed to her,
My whole heart in my prayer.
Alas ! my love, my care, my prayer,
Failed! failed to keep my treasure fair.
I saw (my heart filled with despair)
Her drooping head ;
Her beauty, grace and fragrance flown,
Her every leaf and petal shorn,
I gazed in silence — and alone —
Upon my dead.
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end--
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release--
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best--
God! but the interest!
A sky that has never known sun, moon, or stars,
A sky that is like a dead, kind face
Would have the color of your eyes,
O servant-girl singing of pear-trees in the sun
And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked
When your lavender-white eyes were alive.
On the porch above you sit two women
With faces the color of dry brown earth;
They knit grey rosettes and nibble cakes.
And on the porch above them are three children
Gravely kissing each other’s foreheads,
And an ample nurse with a huge red fan....
The death of the afternoon to them
Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls.
I walked upon a hill
And the wind, made solemnly drunk with your presence,
Reeled against me.
I stooped to question a flower,
And you floated between my fingers and the petals,
Tying them together.
I severed a leaf from its tree
And a water-drop in the green flagon
Cupped a hunted bit of your smile.
All things about me were steeped in your remembrance
And shivering as they tried to tell me of it.
Blinder than oak-trees in the wind
Endlessly weaving sighs into a poem
To sight,
He sits, the light of one pale purple lantern
Seeping into his dream-hollowed face,
Like floating, transparent words
Pale with unuttered meanings.
He mends a flute and sighs as though
Its shadow leaned heavily upon his heart
And told him things his dead eyes could not grasp.
The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.
But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.
The ruins of your face were twined with youth.
Vines of starlight questioned your face when you smiled.
Your eyes dissolved over distances
And steeped the graves of many loves.
Night was kind to your body:
The careless vehemence of curves
Softened beneath your darkly-loosened dress.
And your heart toyed with an emotion
That left you vague hunger poised over death.
Your mind is a little, clandestine pastel
Shaped into a posture of rigid grief.
Its colors huddle together
And make a stunted, aching lyric....
Ah frail-flowered moment preceding reality--
Your eyelids open; the little pastel dies.