Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,
Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face.
And suddenly some secret spring’s released,
And unawares a riddle is revealed,
And I can read like large, black-lettered print,
What seemed before a thing forever sealed.
I know the magic word, the graceful thought,
The song that fills me in my lucid hours,
The spirit’s wine that thrills my body through,
And makes me music-drunk, are yours, all yours.
I cannot praise, for you have passed from praise,
I have no tinted thoughts to paint you true;
But I can feel and I can write the word;
The best of me is but the least of you.
Last night I heard your voice, mother,
The words you sang to me
When I, a little barefoot boy,
Knelt down against your knee.
And tears gushed from my heart, mother,
And passed beyond its wall,
But though the fountain reached my throat
The drops refused to fall.
’Tis ten years since you died, mother,
Just ten dark years of pain,
And oh, I only wish that I
Could weep just once again.
Lovely dainty Spanish needle
With your yellow flower and white,
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping,
Do you think of me to-night?
Shadowed by the spreading mango,
Nodding o’er the rippling stream,
Tell me, dear plant of my childhood,
Do you of the exile dream?
Do you see me by the brook’s side
Catching crayfish ’neath the stone,
As you did the day you whispered:
Leave the harmless dears alone?
Do you see me in the meadow
Coming from the woodland spring
With a bamboo on my shoulder
And a pail slung from a string?
It was the silver, heart-enveloping view
Of the mysterious sea-line far away,
Seen only on a gleaming gold-white day,
That made it dear and beautiful to you.
And Laura loved it for the little hill,
Where the quartz sparkled fire, barren and dun,
Whence in the shadow of the dying sun,
She contemplated Hallow’s wooden mill.
While Danny liked the sheltering high grass,
In which he lay upon a clear dry night,
To hear and see, screened skilfully from sight,
The happy lovers of the valley pass.
But oh! I loved it for the big round moon
That swung out of the clouds and swooned aloft,
Burning with passion, gloriously soft,
Lighting the purple flowers of fragrant June.
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
Do you remember the two old people we passed on the road to Kérity,
Resting their sack on the stones, by the drenched wayside,
Looking at us with their lightless eyes through the driving rain,
and then out again
To the rocks, and the long white line of the tide:
Frozen ghosts that were children once, husband and wife, father,
and mother,
Looking at us with those frozen eyes; have you ever seen anything
quite so chilled or so old?
But we--with our arms about each
other,
We did not feel the cold!
Nothing else in this song — only your face.
Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes.
The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel.
I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings.
It is not your eyes, your face, I remember.
It is not your dancing, race-horse feet.
It is something else I remember you for on the pier mornings.
Your hands are sweeter than nut-brown bread when you touch me.
Your shoulder brushes my arm — a south-west wind crosses the pier.
I forget your hands and your shoulder and I say again :
Nothing else in this song — only your face.
Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes.
The high horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.
Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
And the evening began.
The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
For a wild night like this.
The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.
Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.
I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
These are the tawny days : your face comes back.
The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden
early on the trellis.
The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes
of sunrise.
Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome.
Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny
pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange.
Tawny days: and your face again.
Count these reminiscences like money.
The Greeks had their picnics under another name.
The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors,
"What of it?"
The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too
Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to
their noses
And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs
broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who
killed men with spears and short swords.
Count these reminiscences like money.
Drift, and drift on, white ships.
Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and
sailing,
Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they
sang before me.
A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.
" I KNEW a real man once," says Agatha in the splendor
of a shagbark hickory tree.
Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold
her in his arms? Did a man only look at her
and pass by?
Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance,
says, " I knew a real man once."