The lovely years went lightly by
As April flowers go,
And often you would laugh or cry
To see how I could grow.
The lonely years drift by in rain,
As leaves in autumn do.
I long, when we shall meet again,
To be as tall as you.
The bindweed roots pierce down
Deeper than men do lie,
Laid in their dark-shut graves
Their slumbering kinsmen by.
Yet what frail thin-spun flowers
She casts into the air,
To breathe the sunshine, and
To leave her fragrance there.
But when the sweet moon comes,
Showering her silver down,
Half-wreathèd in faint sleep,
They droop where they have blown.
So all the grass is set,
Beneath her trembling ray,
With buds that have been flowers,
Brimmed with reflected day.
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees,
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.
When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
While from Time's woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.
First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
Third Girl
Oh, la ... le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
The bird that now
On bush and tree,
Near leaves so green
Looks down to see
Flowers looking up--
He either sings
In ecstasy
Or claps his wings.
Why should I slave
For finer dress
Or ornaments;
Will flowers smile less
For rags than silk?
Are birds less dumb
For tramp than squire?
Sweet birds, I come.
Saw this day sweet flowers grow thick-
But not one like the child did pick.
I heard the packhounds in green park —
But no dog like the child heard bark.
I heard this day bird after bird —
But not one like the child has heard.
A hundred butterflies saw I —
But not one like the child saw fly.
I saw the horses roll in grass —
But no horse like the child saw pass.
My world this day has lovely been —
But not like what the child has seen.
This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.
These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.
"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue."
All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun;
All the heart broke to forego
Shall be ours without pain,
We shall take them as lightly as girls
Pluck flowers after rain.
And when they are ours in the end
Perhaps after all
The skies will not open for us
Nor heaven be there at our call.
Blue dust of evening over my city,
Over the ocean of roofs and the tall towers
Where the window-lights, myriads and myriads,
Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.
Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,
So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,
Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished
Bronze of sea-grasses.
Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas
And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean
Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,
Jewels of water.
Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges,
Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow--
Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff
Slim in his khaki.
Though love has grown cold
The woods are bright with flowers,
Why not as of old
Go to the wildwood bowers
And dream of — bygone hours!
Bring to me then all passionate, crimson flowers
And lay them on my breast.
They shall be symbols of the love-lit hours —
And Love is best.
Folk who believe in Immortality,
Why should they pass in panoply of woe?
I would be linked with colour and ecstacy
That day I go.
Linked with glad dancers, their white limbs set free,
And rhythmical through veils of filmy green,
With children, rose-flushed with a mystic glee —
All these I mean
To leave as wishes for my funeral day.
But, lest I burden those I leave behind,
Let me add, hastily, that any way
They care to manage —