The sky is clear,
The sun is bright;
The cows are red,
The sheep are white;
Trees in the meadows
Make happy shadows.
Birds in the hedge
Are perched and sing;
Swallows and larks
Are on the wing:
Two merry cuckoos
Are making echoes.
Bird and the beast
Have the dew yet;
My road shines dry,
Theirs bright and wet:
Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I'd a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
Being out of heart with government
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring;
And he, with that low whinnying sound
That is like laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree at a bound.
Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
No government appointed him.
I AM wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!
I sang my songs for the rest,
For you I am still;
The tree of my song is bare
On its shining hill.
For you came like a lordly wind,
And the leaves were whirled
Far as forgotten things
Past the rim of the world.
The tree of my song stands bare
Against the blue--
I gave my songs to the rest,
Myself to you.
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.
My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one--
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.
When the wind is in the tree.
It makes a noise just like the sea,
As if there were not noise enough
To bother one, without that stuff.
See the leaves upon the tree !
That is where they ought to be :
Whether they be foul or fair.
Papa did not put them there.
A solemn and impressive band,
With decorations in their hats
Like admirals and diplomats ;
And yet, their job is filling men
As dumb as they, with oxygen —
For all the splendid pomp they wear.
They do but pump the world with air.
Proving, that trees, beneath their hats,
Are admirals and diplomats.
Like a drowsy, rain-browned saint,
You squat, and sometimes your voice
In which the wind takes no part,
Is like mists of music wedding each other.
A drunken, odor-laced peddler is the morning wind.
He brings you golden-scarfed cities
Whose voices are swirls of bells burdened with summer;
And maidens whose hearts are galloping princes.
And you raise your branches to the sky,
With a whisper that holds the smile you cannot shape.
(Unready)
Close-folded fern ...
So stiff; so coldly self-sustained:
But summer passes.
(Motherhood)
Puss watches the world,
Troubled: but knows she is linked
To a miracle.
(Home)
Empty room; fire dies;
Moon shines in; chairs and tables converse;
Books croon songs.
(Awakening)
Gray old tree
Has breasted winter storms; but is vaguely
Worried by March.