Suddenly flickered a flame,
Suddenly fluttered a wing:
What, can a dead bird sing?
Somebody spoke your name.
Suddenly fluttered a wing,
Sounded a voice, the same,
Somebody spoke your name:
Oh, the remembering!
Sounded a voice, the same,
Song of the heart's wild Spring,
Oh, the remembering:
Which of us was to blame?
Song of the heart's wild Spring,
Wings that still flutter, lame,
Which of us was to blame? —
God, the slow withering!
Playing in the fire and twilight together,
My little son and I,
Suddenly--woefully--I stoop to catch him.
“Try, mother, try!”
Old Nurse Silence lifts a silent finger:
“Hush! cease your play!”
What happened? What in that tiny moment
Flew away?
By the old toy cabinet,
I stand and turn over dusty things:
Chessmen--card games--hoops and balls--
Toy rifles, helmets, swords,
In the far corner
A doll's tea-set in a box.
Where are you, golden child,
Who gave tea to your dolls and me?
The golden child is growing old,
Further than Rome or Babylon
From you have passed those foolish years.
She lives--she suffers--she forgets.
By the old toy cabinet,
I idly stand and awkwardly
Finger the lock of the tea-set box.
What matter--why should I look inside,
I can recall the day
When childhood died.
I had grown thin and tall
And eager-eyed.
Such a false happiness
Had seized me then;
A child, I saw myself
Man among men.
Now I see that I was
Ignorant, surprised,
As one for the surgeon's knife
Anæsthetized.
So that I did not know
What loomed before,
Nor how, a child, I became
A child no more.
I saw him as he went
With merry voice and eye.
I met him when he came
Back, tired but the same--
The same clear voice, bright eye,
Merry laugh, quick reply.
And now, if I but look
Unnoting at a book,
Or from the window stare
At dark woods newly bare,
I see that shining eye,
The same as when he went:
--But whose is the low sigh,
The cold shade o'er me bent?
The birds return,
The blossom brightens again the cherry bough.
The hedges are green again
In the airless lane,
And hedge and blossom and bird call, Now, now, now!
O birds, return!
Who will care if the blossom die on the bough,
Or the hedge be bare again
In the screaming lane?
For what they were these are not, are not now.
The one gone makes
All that remain seem strange and lonely now.
She will not walk here again
In the blossoming lane:--
And there's a dead bough in every blossoming bough.
If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!
Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white wake,
Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath
Than passion's death!
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.
When morning shows her first faint flush,
I think of the tender blush
That crept so gently to your cheek
When first my love I dared to speak;
How, in your glance, a dawning ray
Gave promise of love's perfect day.
When, in the ardent breath of noon,
The roses with passion swoon;
There steals upon me from the air
The scent that lurked within your hair;
I touch your hand, I clasp your form--
Again your lips are close and warm.
When comes the night with beauteous skies,
I think of your tear-dimmed eyes,
Their mute entreaty that I stay,
Although your lips sent me away;
I hear the stars still singing
To the beautiful, silent night,
As they speed with noiseless winging
Their ever westward flight.
I hear the waves still falling
On the stretch of lonely shore,
But the sound of a sweet voice calling
I shall hear, alas! no more.
The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.
And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.
When I come down to sleep death’s endless night,
The threshold of the unknown dark to cross,
What to me then will be the keenest loss,
When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?
Will it be that no more I shall see the trees
Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds
Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds?
No, I am sure it will be none of these.
But, ah! Manhattan’s sights and sounds, her smells,
Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes
From being of her a part, her subtile spells,
Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums--
O God! the stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city!