The music dies upon the strings
But lingers on
Like other sweetly treasured things
Here once - and gone.
The breeze that blurs the mirror pool
Cannot erase
The outline of the forest cool
Upon its face.
The haunting fragrance of the flowers
Of yesterday
Not all the intervening hours
Can steal away.
And loving friends we used to know
Nor e’er forget
Although they left us long ago
Seem with us yet.
Three deep breaths, palms together,
Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may
Rise and take. A habit she has formed,
Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found,
Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,
Even those most like faith, as taught her,
Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.
By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?
Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,
Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen
To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to
Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices
Spending both hope and pain. She bows.
My friends lean
Across the table.
My breath stops.
What was it
They saw?
Death sneaked up and took you,
my friend.
She found the door open,
and you lying there alone,
To the mill of hate
we had gone
grinding our tricks and our defamations
against each other.
Too many people had come to your funeral
my friend.
All of them downhearted, blubbering.
‘Why did you leave us, our friend?
Ah, man, you were too young to pass away.’
Friend,
if we really loved you that much
while you were still alive,
You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
You promised true, but we were very blind
And very young, and in our ignorance
We never called to mind
That truth is seldom kind.
You promised love, immortal as a star.
You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
And, deathless, still we cry,
Nor hope for a reply.
You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
Behold a reaper strode across the field,
And man of woman born
Was gathered in as corn.
You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
Midsummer night without a moon, but the stars
In a serene bright multitude were there,
Even the shyest ones, even the faint motes shining
Low in the north, under the Little Bear.
When I have said, “This tragic farce I play in
Has neither dignity, delight nor end,”
The holy night draws all its stars around me,
I am ashamed, I have betrayed my Friend.
Maid of Gotham, ere we part.
Have a hospitable heart —
Since our own delights must end,
Introduce me to your friend.
I had three friends in Gotham,
And one of them is dead.
And one of them has palsy
And cannot leave his bed.
And now I know the other
Will soon desert me too,
And end his days in Sing Sing,
For something he will do.
We've kept the faith. Our souls' high dreams
Untouched by bondage and its rod,
Burn on! and on! and on! It seems
We shall have FRIENDS--while God is God!
Beauty lies so deep
On all the fields,
Nothing for the eyes
But blessing yields.
Tall elms, greedy of light,
Stand tip-toe. See
The last light linger in
Their tracery.
The guns are dumb, are still
All evil noises.
The singing heart in peace
Softly rejoices,
Only unsatisfied
With Beauty’s hunger
And sacramental thirst--
Nothing of anger.
“MAIL’S UP!” The vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
(His wife, his sister, or his lover.)
Mail’s up, the vast of night is over,
The grey-faced heaven joy does cover
With love, and God once more seems kind.
“Mail’s up!” the vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
So, my proud soul, so you, whose shining force
Had galloped with me to eternity,
Stand now, appealing like a tired horse:
Unharness me.
O passionate world! O faces of my friends!
O half-grasped meanings, intricate and deep! —
Sudden, as with a child, the tumult ends,
Silenced by sleep.