Upon a Western prairie once I met
A flock of pelicans — a glorious sight!
Now in the sun they gleamed a dazzling white,
Now, circling, darkened to a silhouette;
Great-breasted things, with sweeping pinions set
To rhythmic curves of slow, majestic flight,
They rose into the measureless blue height,
Undaunted, radiant — I see them yet.
I see them yet ! for when I turn my eyes
Beyond these city walls of my despite,
Behold their buoyant forms still sweep the skies
Like spirits of the air, incarnate, bright,
And something untamed in me seems to rise
And with them breast those boundless seas of light!
When I rise above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air.
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
I have moved west, I travel with the sun;
You cannot hold, you cannot hinder me.
There are no ends for what I have begun —
There are no resting places where I run,
Until I am surrendered to the sea.
I THOUGHT she was a country squire's daughter:
Along the leafless hedges drowned in sun,
She galloped on her pony — coat undone,
And hair flung up like golden flakes of water.
Turn down the lamp; my life is done.
The fitful moments drift to ease —
Rosemary for the dreams that died.
And mignonette for cherished hopes.
Turn down the lamp; my soul gains life;
I rise above the narrow pale
Of cities bought with gold and slime,
I spread my sorrow strengthened wings
Above the armies of the world,
In quest of kingdoms built in youth.
The hour of death that men call life
Is closing as a troubled dream,
The flame within my lamp is low,
I seek eternal liberty.
The freedom of the endless sky.
Good nurse, enfold my arms.
We who are mourners make no moan
For the Body lost in the grave,
For the Soul is a shining wave
And the Body is but a stone
Dragged out in the under tow
And tossed by the waves to and fro,
And worn and tormented and cast
Back again on the rocks at last.
Ah, the body lost in the grave
Is freed from the tyrant soul,
Delivered from wind and wave.
Current and quicksand and shoal.
Freed from the cruel sea ... .
But the spirit is never free ....
There is no truce in that war
Of the tides that clash near the shore.
Have any of you, passers-by,
Had an old tooth that was an unceasing discomfort?
Or a pain in the side that never quite left you?
Or a malignant growth that grew with time?
So that even in profoundest slumber
There was shadowy consciousness or the phantom of thought
Of the tooth, the side, the growth?
Even so thwarted love, or defeated ambition,
Or a blunder in life which mixed your life
Hopelessly to the end,
Will like a tooth, or a pain in the side,
Float through your dreams in the final sleep
Till perfect freedom from the earth-sphere
Comes to you as one who wakes
Healed and glad in the morning!
Aleta mentions in her tender letters,
Among a chain of quaint and touching things,
That you are feeble, weighted down with fetters,
And given to strange deeds and mutterings.
No longer without trace or thought of fear,
Do you leap to and ride the rebel roan;
But have become the victim of grim care,
With three brown beauties to support alone.
But none the less will you be in my mind,
Wild May that cantered by the risky ways,
With showy head-cloth flirting in the wind,
From market in the glad December days;
Wild May of whom even other girls could rave
Before sex tamed your spirit, made you slave.
Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say--
When at the noon-hour from the chapel school
The children dash and scamper down the dale,
Scornful of teacher’s rod and binding rule
Forever broken and without avail,
Do they still stop beneath the giant tree
To gather locusts in their childish greed,
And chuckle when they break the pods to see
The golden powder clustered round the seed?
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
Passing through huddled and ugly walls
By doorways where women
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
Out from the huddled and ugly walls,
I came sudden, at the city's edge,
On a blue burst of lake,
Long lake waves breaking under the sun
On a spray-flung curve of shore ;
And a fluttering storm of gulls,
Masses of great gray wings
And flying white bellies
Veering and wheeling free in the open.
She sits in the dust at the walls
And makes cigars,
Bending at the bench
With fingers wage-anxious,
Changing her sweat for the day's pay.
Now the noon hour has come.
And she leans with her bare arms
On the window-sill over the river,
Leans and feels at her throat
Cool-moving things out of the free open ways
At her throat and eyes and nostrils
The touch and the blowing cool
Of great free ways beyond the walls.