In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.
The honey of the Hybla bees
Is not so sweet as kissing you;
Nor autumn wind in dying trees
So wistful is as missing you.
And when you are not mine to kiss,
My every thought is haunting you ;
And when your mouth is mine, I miss
The wistfulness of wanting you.
A mood whose heart was a flagon of ashes,
Met another mood whose lips were stained
With the odors of sleeping wine-songs.
The second mood kissed the breast of the first
And filled the ashen flagon with his pale purple breath.
Then the two moods died, and he who bore them,
Being an old man, sat down to make others.
Heap slumber on your eyes;
Stop your mouth with dust
Be all that you were not,
As dead folk must.
Be all that you were not,
Unmindful, cold, apart—
The kiss you gave that dusk
Tears at your heart!
On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature's whole
Are clad in April's bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.
The fountain blows its breathless spray
From me to you and back to me.
Whipped, tossed, curdled,
Crashing, quivering:
I hurl kisses like blows upon your lips.
The dance of a bee drunken with sunlight:
Irradiant ecstasies, white and gold,
Sigh and relapse.
The fountain tosses pallid spray
Far in the sorrowful, silent sky.
The breath of life imbued those few dim days!
Yet all we had was this,--
A flashing smile, a touch of hands, and once
A fleeting kiss.
Blank futile death inheres these years between!
Still naught have you and I
But frozen tears, and stifled words, and once
A sharp caught cry.
What to do
When you woo,
Listen and I'll tell it you.
Deep humility must teach
That the star's beyond your reach,
Yet must courage raise your heart
To the conqueror's lofty part.
Not too forward, shyly bold.
Not too hot, but never cold.
Fearing still to tread too near,
Treading nigher, spite of fear.
Laying all your logic down
As you pick your manhood up,
Disbelieving every frown,
Intent always on the cup.
Hold her hand,
Love's kisses spurned so long ago,
Dead as the years, that o'er them flow;
And now, my gilded treasuries
Would I might give — for memories.
I have swung to the uttermost reaches of pain,
'Mid the echo of sighs, and a deluge of rain,
But ah! I rebound to the limits of bliss.
On the rapturous swing of an infinite kiss.
The fairest lips are those we kiss,
With greatest ecstasy and bliss;
The brightest eyes, are those that shine,
Unchangingly through changing time;
The greatest love is that we know.
When life is just an afterglow.
There are tears sweet, refreshing like dewdrops
that rise,
There are tears far too deep for the lakes of the
eyes.
There are kisses like thistledown, fitfully sped,
There are kisses that live in the hearts of the
dead.