Will you glimmer on the sea?
will you fling your spear-head
on the shore?
what note shall we pitch?
we have a song,
on the bank we share our arrows;
the loosed string tells our note:
O flight,
bring her swiftly to our song.
she is great,
we measure her by the pine trees.
I breathe the lyric of my love
Across the twilit way,
The gentle echoes bear it on
Beyond the edge of day:
All vibrant is the melody
The silences repeat,
My song is but my longing heart
Pulsated with its beat.
It winds amid the dusky ways
Where far mysteries shine,
To find amid God's trackless space,
One answering song to mine.
When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming
legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should
cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought
them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on
my bier!
You cannot hurt me any more
For I am armored now
And I can look into your face
With cool, unfevered brow.
The tranquil river meets the sea,
My life flows on at rest,
Unurged, untorn, but oh, my God!
I love the old way best!
Again it is the vibrant May,
The bursting buds, the leafing trees,
The fragrant, undulating breeze,
Call to my heart in subtlest way:
Come! Come! it is a holiday.
The streamlet with unending song,
Beneath its silver veil of mist
Seems flowing, flowing, to some tryst,
While I—with inner surges strong,
Find incomplete the day, and long.
Passing ever, early, late,
No fond footsteps seek my gate,
But down the winding road they wend
To some other journey’s end.
Yet,—I would not have them wait
Here within my guarded gate,
Certain footsteps I shall know,
And for them I listen low!
There comes to my heart from regions remote
A wild desire for the hedge and the brush,
Whenever I hear the first wild note
Of the meadow lark and the hermit thrush.
The broken and upturned earth to the air,
By a million thrusting blades of Spring,
Sends out from the sod and everywhere
Its pungent aromas over everything.
Then it's Oh, for the hills, the dawn, and the dew,
The breath of the fields and the silent lake.
And watching the wings of light burst through
The scarlet blush of the new daybreak.
It is then, when the earth still nestles in sleep,
And the robes of light are scarce unfurled.
You can almost feel, in its mighty sweep.
The onward rush and roll of the world.
Leave me alone a little !
Must I be yours,
When all my heart is pouring with the sea
Out to the moon's impersonal majesty?
Leave me alone ! My little vow endures
Men's irritating love, surviving yours!
Surviving all, surviving even you.
Leave me alone. This is no rendezvous :
I am not false except with my old sea and moon,
You understand me? Wait behind the dune?
Oh, level glow, oh, soft, soft-spoken sea —
Leave me alone. Why will you follow me !
There are yellow birds within the cage;
Beside its gilded bars there stand the women
Whom the Great Prince loves to honour.
They wear silken robes and jewels in their hair,
And live in a pretty pink and yellow house.
But the women look not at the captive singing-birds,
Nor listen to their song,
Their eyes follow the flight of two white-breasted doves,
Winging their way towards the wind-torn clouds.
One day I saw the bluebird's wing
Agleam upon a waving sea
Of emerald-coloured timothy.
We walked together--you and I--
We saw the bluebird gliding by;
He came so near--the mad, wild thing--
We almost touched his sapphire wing,
But ere across our path he flew
He rose and vanished in the blue.
To-day I saw the bluebird's wing;
I heard wood-thrushes round me sing;
Wind-blown across the April sky,
Great swelling cloud-sails drifted by;
And on the sky-line's silver sheen
White birches danced in frills of green,
And all the world was mad with spring.
Gray birds of passage from another sky
Are those long hours I sit and wait for you;
Borne by strong wings across the sunlit blue
They go--dark flecks of shadow drifting by.
Sometimes they bring a song--a joyful cry,
As morn and eve your coming used to do;
But sometimes plaintive notes of sorrow too,
Amid the joyful echoes wail and die.
Then as I watch the beating of the wings
That seek a haven by far northern lakes,
And catch the note of some bird-heart that sings,
Or hear the plaintive cry of one that breaks,
I turn once more to half-forgotten things,
And the old longing in my heart awakes.
They have made me a lovely garden
With walls that are rugged and gray;
They have filled it with pinks and roses
And lilies that bloom but a day;
But the walls are so high and frowning,
And the paths are so smooth and straight,
And even their smallest winding
Leads straight to the chapel gate.
I have planted a bed of pansies
Along by the chapel wall,
But though I have watered and weeded
They never have blossomed at all.
The sunshine of God cannot fall there,
For the chapel tower is too high;
So under its cold, gray shadow
My poor little blossoms die.