Ninety-Four
I look
to see if she's
still in there —
but nothing doing.
What will it take
to bring us both
to life again?
Poems on the topic: loss
Poems on the topic “loss” on Poets.by.
Seeds from My Garden
Back for a holiday, I visit
My home, that old cottage,
Conduct the new tenant over the grounds,
Say, “Here are the onions, back
From last year, I planted these.
A little ground fire in spring
Will weed through the blackberries,
In summer they’ll go to eight feet.
The sod here is cleared, for last summer
I took shovel, planted peas, lettuce,
Carrot, red radish. The sour kind
Of clover grows here on the lawn,
Boon to salads. Wild flowers,
Good for a week in the house.”
(By the wall, a garrulous stalk,
Alien seed pods clumped in the sun,
The Passing of Summer
An empty cup whence the light of passion is drunk !-
To-day a sad rumour passes through the trees,
A chill wind is borne by the stream,
The waves shiver in pain ;
Where now the cicada's song long and hot ?
Nocturne
I have grown pale and paler
Since one went away,
Who passed from me as softly
As daylight leaves the day.
My hair has lost its gleaming,
The light has left my face,
I am a grey-eyed wanderer
In any lonely place.
And on my heart is moonlight
Like white rain on the sea.
And I am of the evening
As the evening is of me.
A gentle moan, remembrance,
A folded wing is love,
Since my dream stepped into shadow
On the soft feet of a dove.
Two Songs of Bitterness
Dear to me is Ruth, a bowl of crystal
She brims her heart with laughter and I look
And see her clear as the dew on a cobweb,
Or green water over white sand in a brook.
Mary is dearer, color and story
Are wound in her and like soft cloths unfold,
And when she moves her footsteps are of silver,
And where she will her touch can turn to gold.
Oh sweet as wine is laughter with the loving,
And speech with the living good as bread,
But only with a ghost can I feast in silence,
With Eunice, who is dearest, being dead.
The princess that I could not be,
The fairy that was not for me,
The game begun and never ended,
The castle dreamed, the play pretended.
One Voice
You were the princess of the fairy tale
Who spoke in emeralds instead of words,
Whose laughter left an exquisite, bright trail
Of sounds as winged and visible as birds.
I never knew until yours went from me,
That any voice could love my name so much,
That just to speak it made it seem to be
A fragrance and a color and a touch.
My days are gestures of bewilderment,
My nights are attitudes of listening.
For fear you may have whispered as you went,
And I shall lose the starlike echoing.
Sandy Star: Sculptured Worship
The zones of warmth around his heart,
No alien airs had crossed;
But he awoke one morn to feel
The magic numbness of autumnal frost.
His thoughts were a loose skein of threads,
And tangled emotions, vague and dim;
And sacrificing what he loved
He lost the dearest part of him.
In sculptured worship now he lives,
His one desire a prisoned ache;
If he can never melt again
His very heart will break.
Spring
Once when my life was young,
I, too, with Spring's bright face
By mine, walked softly along,
Pace to his pace.
Then burned his crimson may,
Like a clear flame outspread,
Arching our happy way:
Then would he shed
Strangely from his wild face
Wonderful light on me--
Like hounds that keen in chase
Their quarry see.
Oh, sorrow now to know
What shafts, what keenness cold
His are to pierce me through,
Now that I'm old.
Lines from "The Soul's Destroyer"
We went together side by side to school,
Together had our holidays in fields
Made golden by June's buttercups ; in woods,
Where under ferns fresh pulled I buried her,
And called her forth like Lazarus from the grave;
She'd laughing come, to shake her curls until
Methought to hear full half a hundred bells.
A grown-up world took playful notice soon.
Made me feel shame that grew a greater love;
She was more chary of her laughter then,
And more subdued her voice, as soft and sweet
As Autumn's, blowing through his golden reeds.
In her sweet sympathies she was a woman
When scarcely she was more than child in years ;
And yet one angry moment parted us.
And days of longing never joined us more.
A Song
I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
Though I have many words,
What woman's satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought 'twould burn my body
Laid on the death-bed.
The Living Beauty
I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content--
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent--
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
The Wild Swans at Coole
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
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