Grief shall not be my friend! She shall not be
Companion of my table, path or bed.
She shall not share my salt nor break my bread,
Nor walk nor weep nor dream nor wake with me:
I will not trust her mournful company.
Nor listen to her whisperings of the dead,
Why should I heed her somber eyelid's red?
Tears are but chains and I, I would be free!
For grief would make a laggard of my will,
And me, a puny thing of anguished need,
A memory! And I would die at length,
Close to the thought of you — and loving still:
So will I choose a friend of stouter creed,
The wingless, tearless thing the heart calls strength.
The Sea called--I lay on the rocks and said:
“I am come.”
She mocked and showed her teeth,
Stretching out her long green arms.
“Go away!” she thundered.
“Then tell me what I am to do,” I begged.
“If I leave you, you will not be silent,
But cry my name in the cities
And wistfully entreat me in the plains and forests;
All else I forsake to come to you--what must I do?”
“Never have I uttered your name,” snarled the Sea.
“There is no more of me in your body
Than the little salt tears you are frightened of shedding.
What can you know of my love on your brown rock pillow....
Come closer.”
A gulf of silence separates us from each other.
I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other.
I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there.
Often I call you by your childish name
And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice.
How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch.
Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears.
Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.
I did not say, "Yes, we had better part
Since love is over or must be suppressed."
I did not say, "I'll hold you in my heart
Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,
And pray for you and wish you happiness
In a better love than mine."
I was another man to another woman,
Tears falling or burnt dry were nothing then.
I struck your heart, I struck your mind; inhuman,
Future and past I stabbed and stabbed again,
Cursing the very thought of your happiness
In another love than mine:
--Then left you sick to death, and I like death.
It was a broken body bore me away--
A broken mind--poisoned by my own breath,
And love self-poisoned.... Was it but yesterday?
Hair--
silver-gray,
like streams of stars,
Brows--
recurved canoes
quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
Her eyes--mist
of tears
condensing on the flesh below
And her channeled muscles
are cluster grapes of sorrow
purple in the evening sun
nearly ripe for worms.
She knew but one desire, one single aim
Consumed her days and robbed her nights of rest —
To reconcile the two whom she loved best,
Who, long estranged, yet of one household came;
And while for this she strove, her gentle frame
And tender heart were often sore distressed,
For all her longing love and pain repressed
Seemed but as fuel added to the flame.
But on that day of silence when she passed
By unseen pathways to the distant spheres,
What life had failed to do, death wrought at last,
For they who through the long, embittered years
Had spoken not, now stood with hands locked fast,
And looked into each other's face with tears.
Some things are very dear to me--
Such things as flowers bathed by rain
Or patterns traced upon the sea
Or crocuses where snow has lain ...
The iridescence of a gem,
The moon’s cool opalescent light,
Azaleas and the scent of them,
And honeysuckles in the night.
And many sounds are also dear--
Like winds that sing among the trees
Or crickets calling from the weir
Or Negroes humming melodies.
But dearer far than all surmise
Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes.
A whisper at twilight, a sigh through the night,
A strain of soft music, a perfume so light,
Will sweep as a feather the bulwark of years,
To surges of rapture, or rivers of tears.
A woman with a burning flame
Deep covered through the years
With ashes. Ah! she hid it deep,
And smothered it with tears.
Sometimes a baleful light would rise
From out the dusky bed,
And then the woman hushed it quick
To slumber on, as dead.
At last the weary war was done
The tapers were alight,
And with a sigh of victory
She breathed a soft — good-night!
My joy leaps with your ecstasy,
In sympathy divine;
The smiles that wreathe upon your lips.
Find sentinels on mine:
Your lightest sigh I'm echoing,
I tremble with your pain,
And all your tears are falling
In my heart like bitter rain.
There are tears sweet, refreshing like dewdrops
that rise,
There are tears far too deep for the lakes of the
eyes.
There are kisses like thistledown, fitfully sped,
There are kisses that live in the hearts of the
dead.
The rain is falling steadily
Upon the thirsty earth,
While dry-eyed, I remain, and calm
Amid my own heart's dearth.
Break! break! ! ye flood-gates of my tears
All pent in agony,
Rain, rain! upon my scorching soul
And flood it as the sea! !