He had a whim and laughed it out
Upon the exit of a chance;
He floundered in a sea of doubt--
If life was real--or just romance.
Sometimes upon his brow would come
A little pucker of defiance;
He totalled in a word the sum
Of all man made of facts and science.
And then a hearty laugh would break,
A reassuring shrug of shoulder;
And we would from his fancy take
A faith in death which made life bolder.
The day that I come home,
What will you find to say,--
Words as light as foam
With laughter light as spray?
Yet say what words you will
The day that I come home;
I shall hear the whole deep ocean
Beating under the foam.
Remember me as I was then;
Turn from me now, but always see
The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew--
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
I came upon a maiden
Blowing rose petals in the air
And catching them, as they fell,
Upon quick fingertips
Her laugh fell lighter than the petals
And dropped little gestures upon my forehead.
I gave her sadness and she blew it up
As she had blown the rose petals:
And it almost seemed joy as her fingers caught it.
But I was only a wanderer plaited with dust,
Who gave her new petals to play with.
On city pavements
Two muffled, sombre nuns pace,
Behind laughing girls.
When my little girl plays Beethoven Sonatas,
The big, black Steinway flashes all its teeth at her
In a broad, good-natured grin:
And suddenly
I hear a deep, rumbling, beautiful roar of laughter.
But, ah! before he came
You were only a name:
Four little rooms and a cupboard
Without a bone,
And I was alone!
Now with your windows wide
Everything from outside
Of sun and flower and loveliness
Comes in to hide,
To play, to laugh on the stairs,
To catch unawares
Our childish happiness,
And to glide
Through the four little rooms on tip-toe
With lifted finger,
Pretending we shall not know
Heavens above! here’s an old tie of yours--
Sea-green dragons stamped on a golden ground.
Ha! Ha! Ha! What children we were in those days.
Do you love me enough to wear it now?
Have you the courage of your pristine glories?
Ha! Ha! Ha! You laugh and shrug your shoulders.
Those were the days when a new tie spelt a fortune:
We wore it in turn--I flaunted it as a waist-belt.
Ha! Ha! Ha! What easily satisfied babies.
“I think I’ll turn it into a piano duster.”
“Give it to me, I’ll polish my slippers on it!”
Ha! Ha! Ha! The rag’s not worth the dustbin.
“Throw the shabby old thing right out of the window;
Fling it into the faces of other children!”
Ha! Ha! Ha! We laughed and laughed till the tears came!
In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor butterfly.”
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of the plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother’s lap.
A gulf of silence separates us from each other.
I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other.
I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there.
Often I call you by your childish name
And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice.
How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch.
Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears.
Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.
In the Cafe where I sit
The four old men who look like bards
Are playing at a game of cards ;
And they are enjoying it.
They are so eager at their play,
They shout together joyously,
They laugh with all their voices, they
Are like the little boys you see
Playing in your nursery.
But they'd be angry, they would rave
And swear and take it quite amiss,
If you walked across and gave
Each a penny and a kiss.
And then she saw me creeping,
Saw and stood
Transfixed upon the fringes of the wood,
And straight went leaping.
Headlong down the pitch
Of the curved hill,
Over the ditch
And through the skirt of bushes by the rill
She pelted screaming,
Swerved from the water sideways with a twist
Just as I clutched and missed.
Flashed white beneath my hand and doubled back,
Swift as a twisting hare upon her track,
Hot for the hill again,
But all in vain.
Her hair swung far behind,