I came
In the blinding sweep
Of ecstatic pain,
I go
In the throbbing pulse
Of aching space--
In the eons between
I piled upon you
Pain on pain
Ache on ache
And yet as I go
I shall know
That you will grieve
And want me back....
Time was when his half million drew
The breath of six per cent;
But soon the worm of what-was-not
Fed hard on his content;
And something crumbled in his brain
When his half million went.
Time passed, and filled along with his
The place of many more;
Time came, and hardly one of us
Had credence to restore,
From what appeared one day, the man
Whom we had known before.
The broken voice, the withered neck,
The coat worn out with care,
The cleanliness of indigence,
The brilliance of despair,
Strange that I did not know him then,
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign;
But cursed him for the ways he had
To make me see
My envy of the praise he had
For praising me.
I would have rid the earth of him
Once, in my pride! . . .
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.
So rich a treasure in yourself you bring,
That some is spilt and wasted on the way,
As low clouds, halting, on wild seas astray,
Cheat the thick, thirsty blossoms of the spring.
And some I waste. But in our later years
We shall remember how, too prodigal,
We let the precious drops of honey fall,
And pay for them at last with useless tears.
Ah, waste, waste, waste ! However much there is,
There's not too much for bare and mortal days,
That now, receding in youth's golden haze,
Seem dim but ever full eternities.
But there's an end ! Take heed, lest you and I
Have wasted wealth to think on when we die.
I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little
I bought every kind of machine that’s known—
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought—
Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran—
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off—
I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate.
The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
With whistling engines and crunching wheels
And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
And the crash of cars along the boulevard,—
A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty.
I helped to give this heritage
To generations yet unborn, with my vote
In the House of Representatives,
And the lure of the thing was to be at rest
From the never—ending fright of need,
And to give my daughters gentle breeding,
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.
I STRUCK you once, I do remember well.
Hard on the track of passion sorrow sped,
And swift repentance, weeping for the blow ;
I struck you once — and now you're lying dead !
Now you are gone the blow no longer sleeps
In your forgiveness hushed through all the years ;
But like a phantom haunts me through the dark,
To cry, " You gave your own beloved tears."
Stript now of all excuses, stern and stark.
With all your small transgressings dimmed or fled,
The ghost returns the blow upon my heart.
I struck you once — and now you're lying dead.
If I could have put you in my heart,
If but I could have wrapped you in myself,
How glad I should have been!
And now the chart
Of memory unrolls again to me
The course of our journey here, before we had to
part.
And oh, that you had never, never been
Some of your selves, my love, that some
Of your several faces I had never seen!
And still they come before me, and they go,
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.
And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,
And have not any longer any hope
To heal the suffering, or make requite
For all your life of asking and despair,
Did not know she’d take it so,
Or else I’d never dared;
Although the bliss was worth the blow,
I did not know she’d take it so.
She stood beneath the mistletoe
So long I thought she cared;
I did not know she’d take it so,
Or else I’d never dared.