I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
answers : " Omaha."
I WROTE a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.
I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and
tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last
answers
Go running back to dust and mist.
Ah, I know what happiness is...!
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it ...
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is...!
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem ...
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy ...
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.
Shall I mock you, and tell you that love shall endure.
Knowing you know the quality of things that are secure?
Let love be fierce as lightning, and as brief
As summer-hail, that is a storm's relief.
What fell upon my open umbrella —
A plum-blossom ?
Your footfalls on the drum bridge beside my house
Are like the pattering drops of a passing shower.
So soon are they gone.
He wore a coat
With gold and red maple leaves.
He was girt with the two swords.
He carried a peony lantern.
When I awoke.
There was only the blue shadow of the plum-tree
Upon the shoji.
Fugitive, wistful,
Pausing at edge of her going,
Autumn the maiden turns,
Leans to the earth with ineffable
Gesture. Ah, more than
Spring's skies her skies shine
Tender, and frailer
Bloom than plum-bloom or almond
Lies on her hillsides, her fields
Misted, faint-flushing. Ah, lovelier
Is her refusal than
Yielding, who pauses with grave
Backward smiling, with light
Unforgettable touch of
Fingers withdrawn. . . Pauses, lo
Vanishes . . . fugitive, wistful. . . .
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Seen on a Night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.