Pale this twilight-face,
Shade-ridden the horizon-light;
The forest, a green-gold vision of grace
In its frame of lavender mist.
No rose-leaf washed in moonlight;
No vine on vermilion walls;
Pale sunlight fading into night,
Dark tunes, the music of the hour.
No death, nor life is ours, here;
But the vast vague sea of black
Sounded by star-mariners
Seeking the Infinite's track.
Violet hills,
Rosy mist,
Limpid pool,
Golden notes from sunset's lute
For shadows
Draped in green
With purple feet
To dance and swim
Through irridescent undulatings.
Dusk descends;
Mauve cloudlets--
Dying butterflies--
Flit and fly and die
In the opalescent ocean of mist
That grows dark and still,
Kisses away the last gold
As the breeze falls asleep,
The brush of sunset
Draws the rosy cloud-scape
On the canvas of the sky;
The blue hills in repose
Listen to the pearl lullaby of the mist.
A song of dimming light, this,
And dance of shadows with silver feet,
For the joy of one shy star-maid
Seeking hiding from the moon
Behind the emerald screen of the sea.
The mountain peaks, a halted army,
Helmeted with gold and green;
The sea before them a veil of pink
That the moon casts away,
To wear the gold-violet robe of mist
Before entering the Shrine of night.
The houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night's slow care.
The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
That citadel of delight.
Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
Their ghastly glow.
Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered
snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills' white verge.
I cannot see her, since the mist's white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she's waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.
Why does she come so promptly, when she must
know
That she's only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow--
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to
tell?
The sheets of night mist travel a long valley.
I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist.
What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all ?
How many times can death come and pay back what we saw?
In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore,
In the oath of night mist, nothing and all,
A riddle is here no man tells, no woman.
Somewhere you and I remember we came.
Stairways from the sea and our heads dripping.
Ladders of dust and mud and our hair snarled.
Rags of drenching mist and our hands clawing, climbing.
You and I that snickered in the crotches and corners,
in the gab of our first talking.
Red dabs of dawn summer mornings and the rain
sliding off our shoulders summer afternoons.
Was it you and I yelled songs and songs in the nights
of big yellow moons ?
Dust of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.
Now. . .
. . Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman.
Two cabaret dancers.
Stars and mist again.
No more feet or wheels.
No more dust and wagons.
Voices of dollars
And drops of blood
Voices of broken hearts,
. . Voices singing, singing,
. . Silver voices, singing,
I WROTE a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.
I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and
tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last
answers
Go running back to dust and mist.
Under the plum-blossoms are nightingales ;
But the sea is hidden in an egg-white mist,
And they are silent.
Through the Spring-thickened branches
I see it floating.
An ivory dome
Headed to gold by the dim sun.
It hangs against a white-misted sky.
And the swollen branches
Open or cover it,
As they blow in the wet wind.