I lived two years
in mountain mist.
No one came to visit
the abandoned quarry.
I fished every day,
and short summer's
sun seemed brighter
than ever it did
in town.
The shadow of a lonely willow
Swings
Ghastly, ghastly;
The roads are lost
In the hoary-haired mists of eve ;
A strange green light in the distance
Drifts
As a wandering fay ;
I hear a wild cry
In the dark air,
In the stream,
In the stars.
Oh, my own self in the barge
Laden with the memory of mists,
Gliding down by the life-grey stream.
Wind and hail and veering rain,
Driven mist that veils the day,
Soul's distress and body's pain,
I would bear you while I may.
I would love you if I might,
For so soon my life will be
Buried in a lasting night,
Even pain denied to me.
Happier than green-kirtled apple-trees
Waving their soft-rimmed fans of light
And taking the morning mist, in quick breaths,
You sit in the woven meditation and surprise
Of a morning uncovering its wind-wreathed head.
And yet within the light stillness of your soul
Dream-heavy guards sleep uneasily
Over the body of your last slain sorrow.
When I came home from wanderings
In a tall chattering ship,
I thought a hundred happy things,
Of people, places, and such things
As I came sailing home.
The tall ship moved how slowly on
With me and hundreds more,
That thought not then of wanderings,
But of unwhispered, longed-for things,
Familiar things of home.
For not in miles seemed other lands
Far off, but in long years
As we came near to England then;
Even the tall ship heard secret things
As she moved trembling home.
It was at dawn. The chattering ship
Beauty lies so deep
On all the fields,
Nothing for the eyes
But blessing yields.
Tall elms, greedy of light,
Stand tip-toe. See
The last light linger in
Their tracery.
The guns are dumb, are still
All evil noises.
The singing heart in peace
Softly rejoices,
Only unsatisfied
With Beauty’s hunger
And sacramental thirst--
Nothing of anger.
Behind their veils of clinging mist,
Elusive as a dream,
In changing rose and amethyst
The mountains stood supreme.
Consumed as by some inward fire
Of brooding mystery,
They held the heart of his desire —
His love and poetry.
And always, ever, some dear time —
So ran his hidden hopes —
He meant to leave his task and climb
Their beckoning emerald slopes,
To scale their precipices bold,
And watch the rose-wreaths rise,
To see the gates of Heaven unrolled
Before his longing eyes.
These fell miasmic rings of mist, with ghoulish menace bound,
Like noose-horizons tightening my little world around,
They still the soaring will to wing, to dance, to speed away.
And fling the soul insurgent back into its shell of clay:
Beneath incrusted silences, a seething Etna lies.
The fire of whose furnaces may sleep — but never dies!
The mists lie along the iris-purple valleys;
The little wooden bridge,
Where the waterfall rings its silver bells,
Is a bow of darkness;
The dust of the highway is gray as ashes under our feet;
A cloud of night-birds
Dots the orange sky.
All day our paths have led us side by side
Along the steep hot highways.
It is cool evening now,
And the temple bells call you one way
And the silence calls me another.
We come to the white door-posts of your house,
We leave our dusty shoes beside the little pool among the iris leaves.
We sit upon woven mats and you give me tea to drink
From a cup of sea-green jade.
As I came home through Howard's lane,
The trees were bending down with rain.
A still mist went across their tops,
And my coat was powdered gray with drops.
Then I looked in the woods to see
The limbs of the white birch tree.
It made a bright spot in the air,
And I thought the sun was shining there.
The rosy mist stilly polishes the round mirror,
The moon;
Golden her face
Reflecting the cool sweet glory of a
Baby sun
When dangling
His short golden arms in the cradle of the sky
After night
Gave him birth,
And herself died as day dies to see the moon,
This golden
Rose-washed stone
That the unseen hand puts on the crown of night
Beside it puts
Bits of white--
The star-jewels like million fancies, worshipping