Hunger points a bony finger
To the workhouse on the hill,
But the little children linger
While there's flowers to gather still
For my sunny window sill.
In my hands I take their faces,
Smiling to my smiles they run.
Would that I could take their places
Where the murky bye-ways shun
The benedictions of the sun.
How they laugh and sing returning
Lightly on their secret way.
While I listen in my yearning
Their laughter fills the windy day
With gladness, youth and May.
The silent music of the flowers
Wind-mingled shall not fail to cheer
The lonely hours
When I no more am here.
Then in some shady willow place
Take up the book my heart has made,
And hide your face
Against my name which was a shade.
And Gwydion said to Math, when it was Spring:
"Come now and let us make a wife for Llew."
And so they broke broad boughs yet moist with dew,
And in a shadow made a magic ring:
They took the violet and the meadow-sweet
To form her pretty face, and for her feet
They built a mound of daisies on a wing,
And for her voice they made a linnet sing
In the wide poppy blowing for her mouth.
And over all they chanted twenty hours.
And Llew came singing from the azure south
And bore away his wife of birds and flowers.
These have more language than my song,
Take them and let them speak for me.
I whispered them a secret thing
Down the green lanes of Allary.
You shall remember quiet ways
Watching them fade, and quiet eyes,
And two hearts given up to love,
A foolish and an overwise.
My mother earth I shall forget
When I am sick and like to die;
There, in a breathless chamber set,
My mother earth I shall forget,
These hedges starred with flowers wet,
These muddy roads beneath the sky.
My mother earth I shall forget,
When I am sick and like to die.
They have made for Leonora this low dwelling in the ground,
And with cedar they have woven the four walls round.
Like a little dryad hiding she’ll be wrapped all in green,
Better kept and longer valued than by ways that would have been.
They will come with many roses in the early afternoon,
They will come with pinks and lilies and with Leonora soon;
And as long as beauty’s garments over beauty’s limbs are thrown,
There’ll be lilies that are liars, and the rose will have its own.
There will be a wondrous quiet in the house that they have made,
And to-night will be a darkness in the place where she’ll be laid;
But the builders, looking forward into time, could only see
There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;
Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.
Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
Nothing will know that you are gone,
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
None but yourself sets foot upon;
Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
Nothing will know that you are dead,--
These, and perhaps a useless wagon
Standing beside some tumbled shed.
We have met, you and I, long ago,
Yesterday when I saw you I knew,
For the sight of the city was gone.
And the sky took an orient blue ;
Strange flowers and strange perfumes were there,
Strange birds without song flitted by,
O I loved you as woman ne'er loved
When we met long ago, you and I.
We have loved long ago, you and I,
Though to-day we but linger to part.
O say, do you wish to forget ?
Does no answer awake in your heart ?
Perhaps in the future 'tis writ
That we meet once again. Ah, goodbye !
You forget, but I sigh for that past
Where we met and we loved, you and I.
Tomb of a millionaire,
A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
Place of the dead where they spend every year
The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars
For upkeep and flowers
To keep fresh the memory of the dead.
The merchant prince gone to dust
Commanded in his written will
Over the signed name of his last testament
Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside
For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips.
For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance
Around his last long home.
(A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies
to-night.
In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at
Flowers all natural sweet.
That women sell on baskets in the street,
Lose half their beauty in my eyes.
They are a huckster's merchandise.
Who offers, then, to buy from me
That natural service, my maternity?
She took the summer to her blood
Through her sweet mouth.
Until her sleepy mood
Was warm as sunny walls of the old south.
It seemed the yellow light
Had fruitful powers,
Beneath her bosom's white
Leapt sudden flowers.
Each round as the breast
From whose dear core it sprang,
And in the middle of each flower a nest,
In which a young bird sang;
Sang for joy of a coming
And for joy of a name,
And the petals of the flower
Leapt like flame.
See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.
When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.