Nothing is new, I have seen the spring too often;
There have been other plum-trees white as this one
Like a silvery cloud tethered beside the road,
I have been waked from sleep too many times
By birds at dawn boasting their love is beautiful.
The grass-blades gleam in the wind, nothing is changed.
Nothing is lost, it is all as it used to be,
Unopened lilacs are still as deep a purple,
The boughs of the elm are dancing still in a veil of tiny leaves,
Nothing is lost but a few years from my life.
I love to hear the little bird
Into song by morning stirred.
Provided that he doesn't sing
Before my own awakening.
A bird that wakes a fellow up,
Should have been a buttercup.
A trickle of dawn insinuated itself
Through the crevices of black satiation.
The elderly trees coughed, lightly, hurriedly,
In remonstrance against the invasion.
Lean with a virginal poison,
The grass-blades shook, immune to light and time.
A bird lost in a tree
Shrilly flirted with its energy....
One fool, in the garden, spoke to another.
You took the rare blue from my cloudy sky;
You shot the one bird in my silent wood;
You crushed my rose — one rose alone had I.
You have not known. You have not understood.
I would have shown you pictures I have seen
Of unimagined mountains, plains and seas;
I would have made you songs of leafy green,
If you had left me some small ecstasies.
Now let the one dear field be only field,
That was a garden for the mighty gods.
Take you its corn. I keep its better yield —
The glory that I found within its clods.
Once I stood at the edge o' the world —
Were you ever there?
The sky came down to an opal sea,
Out there in space hung a dream-made ship
And the earth was only a narrow strip
Of sea-shells, ground by the wheels of Time.
No living things but my Love and I,
And one white bird that was sailing by —
But ah how foolish ! Why do I try
To tell it now . . . like a stifled cry!
My edge o' the world !
Back to day in the valley !
Small, green world, so sheltered and warm,
Fruit trees white where the brown bees swarm,
Gay little crowded gardens blow,
Gay little feet run to and fro—
Powder
Of diamond
Upon a silver birch;
Old stone wall
Buried deep.
And you ...
A scarlet bird
Whose wild wings flutter here
Against my soul. How still
The world!
The earth is motionless
And poised in space...
A great bird resting in its flight
Between the alleys of the stars.
It is the wind's hour off....
The wind has nestled down among the corn....
The two speak privately together,
Awaiting the whirr of wings.
We lift our heads to drink,
Beloved, you and I !
Let others sink
Their faces to the cup.
Or bending lower still.
In thirsty herds,
Lap at the drops we spill!
But you and I,
Like birds,
Scorning the crowded brink.
Up, up.
Heads lifted to the sky,
From the sun's brim that tips
To meet the laughing splendor of our lips,
Will drink — will drink!
Suddenly flickered a flame,
Suddenly fluttered a wing:
What, can a dead bird sing?
Somebody spoke your name.
Suddenly fluttered a wing,
Sounded a voice, the same,
Somebody spoke your name:
Oh, the remembering!
Sounded a voice, the same,
Song of the heart's wild Spring,
Oh, the remembering:
Which of us was to blame?
Song of the heart's wild Spring,
Wings that still flutter, lame,
Which of us was to blame? —
God, the slow withering!
All night the crickets chirp,
Like little stars of twinkling sound
In the dark silence.
They sparkle through the stillness
With a crisp rhythm:
They lift the shadows on their tiny voices.
But at the flickering note of birds that wake,
Flashing from tree to tree till all the wood is lit
With their golden coloratura of dawn,
The cricket-stars fade softly,
One by one.
The wood is talking in its sleep.
Have a care, trees!
You are heard by the brook and the breeze
And the listening lake;
And some of the birds are awake,
I know.
Green, garrulous wood, I trusted you so!
I climbed up the karaka tree
Into a nest all made of leaves
But soft as feathers.
I made up a song that went on singing all by itself
And hadn’t any words, but got sad at the end.
There were daisies in the grass under the tree.
I said just to try them:
“I’ll bite off your heads and give them to my little children to eat.”
But they didn’t believe I was a bird;
They stayed quite open.
The sky was like a blue nest with white feathers
And the sun was the mother bird keeping it warm.
That’s what my song said: though it hadn’t any words.
Little Brother came up the patch, wheeling his barrow.
I made my dress into wings and kept very quiet.
Then when he was quite near I said: “Sweet, sweet!”