It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.
I have no care to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea--
It is enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.
The shining line of motors,
The swaying motor-bus,
The prancing dancing horses
Are passing by for us.
The sunlight on the steeple,
The toys we stop to see,
The smiling passing people
Are all for you and me.
"I love you and I love you!"--
"And oh, I love you, too!"--
"All of the flower girl's lilies
Were only grown for you!"
Fifth Avenue and April
And love and lack of care--
The world is mad with music
Too beautiful to bear.
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.
A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.
Never again the music blown as brightly
Off of my heart as foam blown off a wave;
Never again the melody that lightly
Caressed my grief and healed the wounds it gave.
Never again--I hear my dark thoughts clashing
Sullen and blind as waves that beat a wall--
Age that is coming, summer that is going,
All I have lost or never found at all.
My wife relents to life and does not speak
Each moment with a deft and rapid note.
Sometimes a clumsy weirdness finds in her throat
And ushers in a music that is weak
And bargains with the groping of her heart.
But even then she plays with graver tones
That do not sell themselves to laughs and moans
But seek the counsel of a deeper art.
She drapes her loud emotions in a shroud
Of glistening thought that waves above their dance
And sometimes parts to show their startled eyes.
The depths of mind within her have not bowed
To sleek emotion with its amorous glance.
She slaps its face and laughs at its surprise!
There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush--
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown--
A reminiscent tone
On minor keys...
Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass...
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.
In a little Hungarian cafe
Men and women are drinking
Yellow wine in tall goblets.
Through the milky haze of the smoke,
The fiddler, under-sized, blond,
Leans to his violin
As to the breast of a woman.
Red hair kindles to fire
On the black of his coat-sleeve,
Where his white thin hand
Trembles and dives,
Like a sliver of moonlight,
When wind has broken the water.
That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine
floating like cotton-down,
And the harsh and terrible screaming,
And that strange vibration at the roots of us...
Desire, fierce, like a song...
And we heard
(Do you remember?)
All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue
And bugles in little home towns
And children's harmonicas bleating
America! And after...
(Do you remember?)
The drollery of the wind on our faces,
And horizons reeling,
I HEARD the poplars of Saint John’s
Letting their small notes go,
Like silver dropping through a sieve,
Down to the graves below.
The rector had that moment died;
His house stood there apart,
A look about it as though one
Had struck it to the heart.
The shepherd of a straggling flock.
Quick-spoken, easy, sound.
No truer man had ever lived
In the old country round.
I heard the poplars of Saint John’s
Making such music there,
As it were silver worn to thread
Dropped down a silver air.
When my little girl plays Beethoven Sonatas,
The big, black Steinway flashes all its teeth at her
In a broad, good-natured grin:
And suddenly
I hear a deep, rumbling, beautiful roar of laughter.
The tide makes music
At the foot of the beach;
The waves sing together
Rumble of breakers.
Ships there are swaying,
Into the distance,
Thrum of the cordage,
Slap of the sails.
The tide makes music
At the foot of the beach;
Low notes of an organ
'Gainst the dull clang of bells.
The tide's tense purple
On the untrodden sand:
Its throat is blue,
Its hands are gold.