You lie there.
Too still beneath the waters,
More than a reflection,
Less than a tree:
Your limbs gleam upward,
Your dank leaves are like the hair of a drowned woman.
No longer do you know the touch of spring,
Nor will the birds build their round nurseries
Between your white fingers.
The wood has forgotten you,
The breezes have forgotten.
But the moon mourns.
Slipping a silver shroud about you
Pitifully,
As you lie, still beautiful.
In your unhallowed grave.
Shadow children, thin and small,
Now the day is left behind,
You are dancing on the wall,
On the curtains, on the blind.
On the ceiling, children, too,
Peeping round the nursery door,
Let me come and play with you,
As we always played before.
Let’s pretend that we have wings
And can really truly fly
Over every sort of things
Up and up into the sky,
Where the sweet star children play--
It does seem a dreadful rule,
They must stay inside all day.
I suppose they go to school.
White, white in the milky night
The moon danced over a tree.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to swim in the lake!”
Someone whispered to me.
“Oh, do--do--do!” cooed someone else,
And clasped her hands to her chin.
“I should so love to see the white bodies--
All the white bodies jump in!”
The big dark house hid secretly
Behind the magnolia and the spreading pear-tree,
But there was a sound of music--music rippled and ran
Like a lady laughing behind her fan,
Laughing and mocking and running away ...
“Come into the garden--it’s as light as day!”
“I can’t dance to that Hungarian stuff,
The rhythm in it is not passionate enough,”
The burnished glow of the old-gold moon
Shines brightly over me.
A thousand stars, like a thousand isles
In a dark and placid sea,
Bring memories of a golden night.
Bedecked in Autumn's hue
And fragrant with the lilac's bloom.
That brought me joy — and you.
A sheepdog barks on the mountain,
The night is fallen cold;
The shepherd blinks at his fire,
The sheep are in the fold.
The moon comes white and quiet
Into the winter sky;
And nothing walks the valley
To-night but you and I.
On the top-stone.
A nipping wind blowing.
Winter dusk closing in from the south Ards.
The moon rising, white and fantastic, over the loch and the town below.
I take off my hat, salute her, and descend into the darkness.
My fidil is singing
Into the air;
The wind is stirring,
The moon is fair.
A shadow wanders
Along the road;
It stops to listen,
And drops its load.
Dreams for a space
Upon the moon,
Then passes, humming
My mountain tune.
The dawn whiteness.
A bank of slate-grey cloud lying heavily over it.
The moon, like a hunted thing, dropping into the cloud.
In Cherry Valley the cherries blow:
The valley paths are white as snow.
And in their time with clusters red
The scented boughs are crimsoned.
Even now the moon is looking thro'
The glimmer of the honey dew.
A petal trembles to the grass,
The feet of fairies pass and pass.
By them, I know, all beauty comes
To me, a habitan of slums.
I sing no rune, I say no line:
The gift of second sight is mine!
Blessed the Hand
That set a new moon on the hill for me,
And hung the night with stars —
With white festoons of stars —
Looped from the corners of the world.
The moon climbs and climbs.
Till it is no bigger
Than a moon-penny.
Darkness and the hills lie together
As in a bed.
Sleeping lovers.
The last quarter moon of the dying year,
Pendant behind a naked cottonwood tree
On a frosty, dawning morning
With the back of her silver head
Turned to the waking sun.
Quiet like the waters
Of Galilee
After the Lord had bid them
“Peace, be still.”
O silent beauty, indescribable!
Dead, do they say?
Would God that I shall seem
So beautiful in death.