This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight ;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves ;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves.
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park.
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces.
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war.
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers.
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate.
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box.
For I have time for nothing
Silver-green lanterns tossing among windy branches :
So an old man thinks
Of the loves of his youth.
One night
When there was a clear moon,
I sat down
To write a poem
About maple-trees.
But the dazzle of moonlight
In the ink
Blinded me.
And I could only write
What I remembered.
Therefore, on the wrapping of my poem
I have inscribed your name.
And now it is all to be done over again,
And what will come of it only God can know.
What has become of the furrows ploughed by pain,
And the plants set row on row ?
Where are the lines of beautiful bending trees,
The gracious springs, the depths of delicate shade,
The sunny spaces loud with the humming of bees,
And the grassy paths in the garden my life had made?
Lightning and earthquake now have blasted and riven ;
Even the trees that I trusted could not stand:
Now it lies here to the bitter winds of heaven,
A barren and a desolated land.
When a storm comes up at night and the wind is crying,
When the trees are moaning like masts on laboring ships,
I wake in fear and put out my hand to find you
With your name on my lips.
No pain that the heart can hold is like to this one —
To call, forgetting, into aching space,
To reach out confident hands and find beside you
Only an empty place.
This should atone for the hours when I forget you.
Take then my offering, clean and sharp and sweet,
An agony brighter than years of dull remembrance.
I lay it at your feet.
I know you are too dear to stay;
You are so exquisitely sweet:
My lonely house will thrill some day
To echoes of your eager feet.
I hold your words within my heart.
So few, so infinitely dear;
Watching your fluttering hands I start
At the corroding touch of fear.
A faint, unearthly music rings
From you to Heaven — it is not far!
A mist about your beauty clings
Like a thin cloud before a star.
My heart shall keep the child I knew.
When you are really gone from me.
And spend its life remembering you
As shells remember the lost sea.
Over the green and level land
My sad eyes wander without hope ;
Here no rejoicing mountains stand,
No strong and friendly slope.
But ever when I close my eyes
Tall mountains rear their stately forms.
Against the sky I watch them rise,
Serene in calm or storms.
One in the distance rises blue,
Haloed by morning's earliest beams.
This was the peak my childhood knew.
About her clung my dreams.
Over her pallor fell the snow,
The hot sun scorched her fertile breast.
But in the summer lightning's glow
I always loved her best.
I went back to a place I knew
When I was very, very small ;
The same old yellow roses grew
Against the same old wall.
Each thing I knew was in its place;
The well, the white stones by the road,
The box-hedge with its cobweb lace,
And a small spotted toad.
And yet the place seemed changed and still ;
The house itself had shrunk, I know.
And then my eyes began to fill —
For I had always loved it so !
When you had been dead a week
I entered a shining shop,
And there in a neat pink row
Lay little dolls made of soap.
And I thought, "I will take one home.
How she will laugh to see it !
How it will bob in her bath
And slip through her dripping fingers !"
Only a moment I smiled.
Only a moment I dreamed it.
Then my heart stood still with pain
And I went out into the darkness.
I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now--unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
Gold is under these hills;
And the wind piles sand
Through the cracks of deserted cabins.
Gold chinked over the counters,
Gold poured into the glasses,
Gold flickered and flamed
In the spendthrift gleam
Of a woman's hair ...
Gold is under these hills.
Gold in the empty sunlight.
The wind picks up a handful of dust,
And sets it down —
Faint spiral of lives
Lived long ago on the desert.