Without you, love, I must contend
With longing that has never end ;
With loneliness, against whose bars
The sun is shattered and the stars;
With silence deeper than the sea.
That drowns the very thoughts of me.
With you, my sweet, I must endure
The cross of all who hold unsure
The precious boon ; must ever hear
The insistent monotone of Fear;
Must ever toward the zenith ache.
Abasing self, for your dear sake.
In those serene and potent eyes
Is there no kindly compromise?
Will they not grant me this release:
To see their light and still have peace.
Sleeping together ... how tired you were ...
How warm our room ... how the firelight spread
On walls and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers as children do,
And now it was I--and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake--“My dear,
I’m not at all sleepy,” one of us said...
Was it a thousand years ago?
I woke in your arms--you were sound asleep--
And heard the pattering sound of sheep.
Softly I slipped to the floor and crept
To the curtained window, then, while you slept,
I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.
O flock of thoughts with their shepherd Fear
Shivering, desolate, out in the cold,
That entered into my heart to fold!
By my bed, on a little round table
The Grandmother placed a candle.
She gave me three kisses telling me they were three dreams
And tucked me in just where I loved being tucked.
Then she went out of the room and the door was shut.
I lay still, waiting for my three dreams to talk;
But they were silent.
Suddenly I remembered giving her three kisses back.
Perhaps, by mistake, I had given my three little dreams.
I sat up in bed.
The room grew big, oh, bigger far than a church.
The wardrobe, quite by itself, as big as a house.
And the jug on the washstand smiled at me:
It was not a friendly smile.
I looked at the basket-chair where my clothes lay folded:
Because the night is so still,
Because there is no one about,
Not the tiny squeak of a mouse over the carpet,
Nor the slow beat of a clock at the top of the stairway,
I am afraid of the night that is coming to me.
I know out there
Some one is thinking of me, some one is wondering about me,
Some one is needing me, some one is dying for my sake,
Yet I remain alone.
I know that life is calling: I cannot resist it:
Too much of myself I have given ever to turn away,
I know that shame, sickness, death itself shall befall me,
And I am afraid.
O night, hide me in your long cold arms:
Let me sleep, but let me not live this life!
There are too many people with haggard eyes standing before me
There are three ancient oaks,
That grow near to each other.
They lift their branches
High as beckoning
With outstretched arms,
For some one to come and stand
Under the canopy of their leaves.
Once long ago I remember
As I lay in the very centre,
Between them:
A rotten branch suddenly fell
Near to me.
I will not go back to those oaks:
Their branches are too black for my liking.
I wonder how long it has been
Since this old calendar hung here,
With my birthday date upon it,
Nothing else--not a word of writing--
Not a mark of any hand.
Perhaps it was my father
Who left it thus
For me to see.
Perhaps my mother
Smiled as she saw it;
But in later years did not smile.
If I could tear it down,
From the wall
Somehow
I would be content.
But I am afraid, as a little child, to touch it.
All the night through I drank
Sleep like water or cool cider;
Life flowed over and I sank
Down below the night of clouds....
Then on a pale horse was rider
Through long brushing woods
Where the owl in silence broods,
Quavers, and is quiet again;
Where the grass dark and rank
Breathes on the still air its rain.
Rain and dark and green and sound
Closing slowly round
Swept me as I rode,
And rode on until I came
Where a white cold river flowed
Under woods thin and bare
Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears,
Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years,
Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.
There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes,
Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries:
There were great silences under clear dark skies.
Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done.
The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun:
But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.
Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears,
And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears,
Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.
Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring.
Gray were the rushes
Beside the budless bushes,
Green-patched the pond.
The lark had left soaring
Though yet the sun was pouring
His gold here and beyond.
Bramble-branches held me,
But had they not compelled me
Yet had I lingered there
Hearing the frogs and then
Watching the water-hen
That stared back at my stare.
There amid the bushes
Were blackbird's nests and thrush's,
Soon to be hidden
In leaves on green leaves thickening,
Surely I must have ailed
On that dark night,
Or my childish courage failed
Because there was no light;
Or terror must have come
With his chill wing,
And made my angel dumb,
Or found him slumbering.
Because I could not sleep
Terror began to wake,
Close at my side to creep
And sting me like a snake.
And I was afraid of death,
But when I thought of pain--
O, language no word hath
To recall that thought again!
Under the linden branches
They sit and whisper;
Hardly a quiver
Of leaves, hardly a lisp or
Sigh in the air.
Under the linden branches
They sit, and shiver
At the slow air's fingers
Drawn through the linden branches
Where the year's sweet lingers;
And sudden avalanches
Of memories, fears,
Shake from the linden branches
Upon them sitting
With hardly a sigh or a whisper
Or quiver of tears.
The angry wind
That cursed at me
Was nothing but an evil sprite
Vexed with any man's delight.
And strange it seemed
That a dark wind
Should run down from a mountain steep
And shout as though the world were asleep.
But when he ceased
And silence was--
Who could but fear what evil sprite
Crept through the tunnels of the night?