Be near enough to the periphery
to discern the wing-settle-sounds
small birds make in thickets,
their halls —
Near enough for red to insist
that you regard it as haw,
rose-leavings
Know, bird-panic sounds
differently to wing-settle’s
soft-rest after the flurry of
flight,
they say —
It held —
Maybe there was no yarn
and you hung the bird-bell
from a delicate thread
As Ann came in one summer's day,
She felt that she must creep,
So silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;
Fast--fast asleep; her two hands laid
Loose-folded on her knee,
So that her small unconscious face
Looked half unreal to be:
So calmly lit with sleep's pale light
Each feature was; so fair
Her forehead--every trouble was
Smooth'd out beneath her hair.
Shadow and light both strove to be
The eight bell-ringers' company,
As with his gliding rope in hand,
Counting his changes, each did stand;
While rang and trembled every stone,
To music by the bell-mouths blown,
Till the bright clouds that towered on high
Seemed to re-echo cry with cry.
Still swang the clappers to and fro,
When, in the far-spread fields below,
I saw a ploughman with his team
Lift to the bells and fix on them
His distant eyes, as if he would
Drink in the utmost sound he could;
While near him sat his children three,
And in the green grass placidly
Oh to be free of myself,
With nothing left to remember,
To have my heart as bare
As a tree in December;
Resting, as a tree rests
After its leaves are gone,
Waiting no more for a rain at night
Nor for the red at dawn;
But still, oh so still
While the winds come and go,
With no more fear of the hard frost
Or the bright burden of snow;
And heedless, heedless
If anyone pass and see
On the white page of the sky
Its thin black tracery.
There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.
I listened, there was not a sound to hear
In the great rain of moonlight pouring down,
The eucalyptus trees were carved in silver,
And a light mist of silver lulled the town.
I saw far off the grey Pacific bearing
A broad white disk of flame,
And on the garden-walk a snail beside me
Tracing in crystal the slow way he came.
You were in the room, yet your body
Was stone cut in drooping lines
And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns.
Even your hair seemed an elfin wig
Carelessly thrown upon your stone head.
And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows.
When you spoke your body did not change:
It was as though a flock of sleepy birds
Had issued from your stone mouth.
Vague words tapered off to pale weariness,
And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep.
Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion:
Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound.
When twilight fell upon us,
Like night striving to forget his dream,
We had long since passed out of the room.
Oh, the blue blue bloom
On the velvet cheek
Of the little pansy’s face
That hides away so still and cool
In some soft garden place!
The tiger lily’s orange fires,
The red lights from the rose
Aren’t like the gloom on that blue cheek
Of the softest flower that grows!
Powder
Of diamond
Upon a silver birch;
Old stone wall
Buried deep.
And you ...
A scarlet bird
Whose wild wings flutter here
Against my soul. How still
The world!
Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind,
Straight sides, carven knees,
Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm
Or remonstrances.
Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine
In a pattern of angles.
The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky
Their brusque tangles.
The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl,
The golden quails,
The pheasants closed up in their arrowy wings.
Dragging their sharp tails.
The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent.
What is forsaken will rest.
But her heel is lifted, — she would flee, — the whistle of the birds
Fails on her breast.
The earth is motionless
And poised in space...
A great bird resting in its flight
Between the alleys of the stars.
It is the wind's hour off....
The wind has nestled down among the corn....
The two speak privately together,
Awaiting the whirr of wings.
In the profoundest ocean
There is a rainbow shell,
It is always there, shining most stilly
Under the greatest storm waves
And under the happy little waves
That the old Greek called ‘ripples of laughter.’
And you listen, the rainbow shell
Sings--in the profoundest ocean.
It is always there, singing most silently!