Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
Interminable palaces front on the green parterres,
And ghosts of ladies lovely and immoral
Glide down the gilded stairs,
The high cold corridors are clicking with the heel taps
That long ago were theirs.
But in the sunshine, in the vague autumn sunshine,
The geometric gardens are desolately gay;
The crimson and scarlet and rose-red dahlias
Are painted like the ladies who used to pass this way
With a ringletted monarch, a Henry or a Louis
On a lost October day.
The aisles of the garden lead into the forest,
The aisles lead into autumn, a damp wind grieves,
Ghostly kings are hunting, the boar breaks cover,
But the sounds of horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves,
She must be rich who can forego
An hour so jewelled with delight,
She must have treasuries of joy
That she can draw on day and night,
She must be very sure of heaven--
Or is it only that she feels
How much more safe it is to lack
A thing that time so often steals.
In the fine land of Nowhere,
On the far side of There,
We shall be very happy,
We shall have no care ;
You will be the blossom;
I shall be the bough;
In the great time coming
After Now.
While you are crying.
Listen to my song;
My own heart is breaking.
But I shall be strong:
I shall be strong for thinking
Of the fine days and fair,
When we are done with being
Anywhere.
If pleasures be mine
As aeons and aeons roll by,
Why should I repine
That under some future sky
I may live as butterfly ?
O trees, to whom the darkness is a child
Scampering in and out of your long, green beards;
O trees, to whom sunlight is a tattered pilgrim
Counting his dreams within your hermitage
And slipping down the road, in twilight robes;
O trees, whose leaves make an incense of sound
Reeling with the beat of your caught feet,
Do not mingle your tips in startled hatred,
When little men come to fell you.
These men will saw you into strips
Of pointed brooding, blind with paint,
But underneath you men will chase
The grey staccato of their lives
Down a glaring maze of walls
Much harder than your own.
And when, at last, the deep brown gaze
Be a liquid threshold for the dawn
And let night touch you with his back.
The earth-bowl prisoning you, and cold night winds
Are only pause and rhythm
Within an endless fantasy,
But you, like they, can be
A dream from the loins of a dream,
And build a golden stairway of escape.
O coolly unperturbed pool,
Slap your ripples in laughter at men,
Who splash you with their lordly hands.
Time is but a phantom dagger
That motion lifts to slay itself.
Fast the new trails lead
From wilderness to city!
Years pass ... Canada!
Baby Babbles--only one,
Now to sit up has begun.
Little Babbles quite turned two
Walks as well as I and you.
And Miss Babbles one, two, three
Has a teaspoon at her tea.
But her Highness at four
Learns to open the front door.
And her Majesty--now six,
Can her shoestring neatly fix.
Babbles, Babbles, have a care,
You will soon put up your hair!
Juniper ring on the granite rock,
Deep and green and perfectly planned;
Living with you I understand
Circle-magic of old.
You had a sister in mystery--
Was it only an April ago
That a crocus cup on a bed of snow
Promised eternal things?
It will be longer, Juniper,
Till earth declares you ready to break,
And you fade of the havoc her brown hands make
That are covered with mystic rings.
I lit my tallow
An hour ago,
And now it is burning
Dark and low.
The glimmer lengthens
And turns about,
Sinks in the sconce--
Then flickers out!
Now the long-bearded chilly-fingered winter
Over the green fields sweeps his cloak and leaves
Its whiteness there. It caught on the wild trees,
Shook whiteness on the hedges and left bare
South-sloping corners and south-fronting smooth
Barks of tall beeches swaying 'neath their whiteness
So gently that the whiteness does not fall.
The ash copse shows all white between gray poles,
The oaks spread arms to catch the wandering snow.
But the yews--I wondered to see their dark all white,
To see the soft flakes fallen on those grave deeps,
Lying there, not burnt up by the yews' slow fire.
Could Time so whiten all the trembling senses,
The youth, the fairness, the all-challenging strength,