I love you, malcontent
Male wind--
Shaking the pollen from a flower
Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand.
Blow on and over my dreams...
Scatter my sick dreams...
Throw your lusty arms about me...
Envelop all my hot body...
Carry me to pine forests--
Great, rough-bearded forests...
Bring me to stark plains and steppes...
I would have the North to-night--
The cold, enduring North.
And if we should meet the Snow,
Whirling in spirals,
And he should blind my eyes...
O apple blossoms
Give me your words of silence,
Yes, your charming speech.
To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go
Sailing far across the sea
All alone, just little me.
And the sea is big and strong
And the journey very long.
To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go.
Sea and sky, sea and sky,
Quietly on the deck I lie,
Having just a little rest.
I have really done my best
In an awful pirate fight,
But we captured them all right.
Sea and sky, sea and sky,
Quietly on the deck I lie
In the wide bed
Under the green embroidered quilt
With flowers and leaves always in soft motion
She is like a wounded bird resting on a pool.
The hunter threw his dart
And hit her breast,--
Hit her but did not kill.
“O my wings, lift me--lift me!
I am not dreadfully hurt!”
Down she dropped and was still.
Kind people come to the edge of the pool with baskets.
“Of course what the poor bird wants is plenty of food!”
Their bags and pockets are crammed almost to bursting
With dinner scrapings and scraps from the servants’ lunch.
Oh! how pleased they are to be really giving!
“In the past, you know you know, you were always so fly-away.
The Sea called--I lay on the rocks and said:
“I am come.”
She mocked and showed her teeth,
Stretching out her long green arms.
“Go away!” she thundered.
“Then tell me what I am to do,” I begged.
“If I leave you, you will not be silent,
But cry my name in the cities
And wistfully entreat me in the plains and forests;
All else I forsake to come to you--what must I do?”
“Never have I uttered your name,” snarled the Sea.
“There is no more of me in your body
Than the little salt tears you are frightened of shedding.
What can you know of my love on your brown rock pillow....
Come closer.”
I never see a blue jay
But I think of her;
Never hear that hoarse "dear--dear"
From a tree-top stir,
And the answering call
Far, far away,
And the flash of azure--
Oh, she would stay
Listening in the forest,
Loitering through the silence,
Hearing calls and singing
All the livelong day!
Oh, the days of the week they are constantly seven!
And as certain to stay as the fixed stars in heaven.
But my heart that denies them will wander away
To find a more likeable, well furnished day
That I know exists somewhere, invisible, real,
And shining with moments the seven days steal.
The stocking I've wanted to darn since the spring,
The folk-song, forgotten, that calls me to sing,
The little old lady I hurry to see,
The cumbersome caller, long promised to tea,
Or the half-hidden passion pushed by through the week:
These surely may people the day that I seek.
Sometimes I shall play with a soul never born:
A companion I met on the far side of morn.
I shall nod at the losses I wept for last night,
The clouds go by and by,
The heron sings in the blue--
And I lie dreaming, dreaming
Ever of you.
The stag on the hill is free,
And the wind is blowing sweet--
But I lie bound a prisoner
At your feet.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--
Enquire for Reynardine!
Sun and dark he courted me--
His eyes were red as wine:
He took me for his leman,
Did my sweet Reynardine.
Sun and dark the gay horn blows,
The beagles run like wind:
They know not where he harbours,
The fairy Reynardine.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--
Enquire for Reynardine!
Gaunt sails--bronze boats of the evening--
Float along the river where aloft
Like dim swans the clouds die
Softly.
I am afraid to traverse the long still streets of evening;
For I fear to see the ghosts that stare at me
From the shadows.
I will stay indoors instead and await my wandering dream.
She is about me, fluid yet, and formless;
The wind in her hair whispers like dim violins:
And the faint glint of her eyes shifts like a sudden movement
Over the surface of a dark pool.
She comes to me slowly down the lost streets of the evening,
And their immutable silence is in her feet.
Let no lamps flare--be still, my heart--hands, stay:
For I would touch the lips of my new love with my lips.
Yet when I am alone my eyes say, Come.
My hands cannot be still.
In that first moment all my senses ache,
Cells, that were empty fill,
The clay walls shake,
And unimprisoned thought runs where it will.
Runs and is glad and listens and doubts, and glooms
Because you are not here.
Then once more rises and is clear again
As sense is never clear,
And happy, though in vain
These eyes wait and these arms to bring you near.
Yet spite of thought my arms and eyes say, Come,
Pained with such discontent.
For though thought have you all my senses ache--
O, it was not meant
How near I walked to Love,
How long, I cannot tell.
I was like the Alde that flows
Quietly through green level lands,
So quietly, it knows
Their shape, their greenness and their shadows well;
And then undreamingly for miles it goes
And silently, beside the sea.
Seamews circle over,
The winter wildfowl wings,
Long and green the grasses wave
Between the river and the sea.
The sea's cry, wild or grave,
From, bank to low bank of the river rings;
But the uncertain river though it crave
The sea, knows not the sea.