The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.
But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.
With crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose
And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose
Was sullenly reflective since he feared
That life, regarding him, had merely jeered.
His vanity was small and could not call
His egoism to the dubious hall
Of fame, where average artists spend their hour.
Doubting his powers he was forced to cower
Within the shrill, damp alleys of his time,
Immersed in that brisk midnight known as crime.
He shunned the fiercely shrewd stuff that he sold
To other people, and derived a cold
Enjoyment from the writhing of their hearts.
A speechless artist, he admired the arts
Of blundering destruction, like a monk
Viewing a play that made him mildly drunk.
FLORENCE
How this old terrace of mellow, creamy stone
Grows warm in this noontide sun of Italy ...
I sit alone
And dream a piteous dream of ecstasy
And suddenly wake!
In that raw town by a Canadian lake
Does she pause now ... to watch the falling snow?
Before me stretch the olive trees that glow
With their soft silvery radiance; far below
The towers of Florence rise, like tall carved flowers.
Ah I know well she does not count her hours
That swiftly pass from dawn to candle-light ...
She has the sun-filled day ...
I but the night!
VENICE
When Loneliness stalked ...
Black panther through gold wheat-fields ...
You used Love’s arrows.
She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.
Always in the heart she loved
Others had lived, — she heard their laughter.
She lies where none has lain before,
Where certainly none will follow after.
She was a wild plum flower,
As fair as that fair thing;
A breathless blowing hers,
As it were the last spring.
Not anything to her
A spire with stars for fold;
A rose though but the one;
Or a sack full of gold.
We could not make her care
For sheep bells coming home;
For yarrow in a field;
For gilded frock or comb.
Once, like a wild plum flower.
She strewed her leaves to night,
All her white loneliness
In a moment gone from sight.
KINGS' wares; and dreams; and April dusks
Out in the golden dew,
One sighing in a secret lane;—
These wrought the look of you.
God made you out of lonely things;
To set you at our door,
He tumbled down into the dark
A hundred towns or more.
And now Spring has come
Blossoming up my garden.
I alone unchanged.
Moving in my house of Autumn.
One leaf alone saves a tree.
Drink in moods of joy!
Why should the sky be lonely?
Neither sun nor moon--
How my heart is shy of night
Like Autumn’s leaf brown pendants.
Through the eyes of life
I looked in at my own heart:
A long furrowed field
Grown cement waiting for seed
Baking in desolation.
The baby in the looking-glass
Is smiling through at me;
She has her teaspoon in her hand,
Her feeder on for tea.
And if I look behind her I
Can see the table spread;
I wonder if she has to eat
The nasty crusts of bread.
Her doll, like mine, is sitting close
Beside her special chair,
She has a pussy on her lap;
It must be my cup there.
Her picture-book is on the floor,
The cover’s just the same;
And tidily upon the shelf
I see my Ninepin game.
I wish I had not got a cold,
The wind is big and wild,
I wish that I was very old,
Not just a little child.
Somehow the day is very long
Just keeping here, alone;
I do not like the big wind’s song,
He’s growling for a bone.
He’s like an awful dog we had
Who used to creep around
And snatch at things--he was so bad,
With just that horrid sound.
I’m sitting up and nurse has made
Me wear a woolly shawl;
I wish I was not so afraid;
It’s horrid to be small.