Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines--
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass...
The naked soul in the sunlight...
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.
Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees...
Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone...
Bathe in the pools of light
Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by :
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
The fountain blows its breathless spray
From me to you and back to me.
Whipped, tossed, curdled,
Crashing, quivering:
I hurl kisses like blows upon your lips.
The dance of a bee drunken with sunlight:
Irradiant ecstasies, white and gold,
Sigh and relapse.
The fountain tosses pallid spray
Far in the sorrowful, silent sky.
Today you shall have but little song from me,
For I belong to the sunlight.
This I would not barter for any kingdom.
I am a wheeling swallow,
Blue all over is my delight.
I am a drowsy grass-blade
In the greenest shadow.
My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.
I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.
The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,
Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.
The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,
As through the keyhole into a dusty room,
Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.
The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,
Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,
Lest there should be no gold upon the green,
And no light then for a child to dream upon,
And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.
I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,
And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,
I who have spent my hands in futile weaving,
And you who flung yours out before the sun,
For all you held, for all my restless grieving,
What have you, more than I have, really won?
My industry has faltered; through your fingers
Your sunlight sifts like finely running sands;
And Time shall bring us, when the last star lingers,
A cross to hold, made of our humbled hands.
On the paved parapet
you will step carefully
from amber stones to onyx
flecked with violet,
mingled with light,
half showing the sea-grass
and sea-sand underneath,
reflecting your white feet
and the gay strap crimson
as lily-buds of Arion,
and the gold that binds your feet.
You will pass
beneath the island disk
(and myrtle-wood,
the carved support of it)
and the white stretch
Believe me—when I say
That love like yours, at this belated hour,
Overwhelms me,—
Stills the fount of thought!
I move as one new-born—
And strange to swift transitions
As from my prison door
I gaze
Into a blinding sunlight!
I found a torrent falling in a glen
Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split;
The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it
All made a magic symphony; but when
I thought upon the coming of hard men
To cut those patriarchal trees away,
And turn to gold the silver of that spray,
I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then
Did wake me to myself till I was glad
In earnest, and was welcoming the time
For screaming saws to sound above the chime
Of idle waters, and for me to know
The jealous visionings that I had had
Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.
Not, where the stairway turns in the dark
A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!
Not yellow eyes in the room at night,
Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!
And not the flap of a condor wing
When the roar of life in your ears begins
As a sound heard never before!
But on a sunny afternoon,
By a country road,
Where purple rag-weeds bloom along a straggling fence
And the field is gleaned, and the air is still
To see against the sun-light something black
Like a blot with an iris rim—
That is the sign to eyes of second sight. . .
And that I saw!
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.
She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow