The green has come to the leafless tree,
The earth brings forth its grain ;
The rose has come for the honey bee :
You will not come again.
The birds have come to the empty nest,
All winter full of rain ;
Music has come where the silence was :
You will not come again.
Love swift will come for the weak lambs' cry ;
Ah for my heart's dull pain !
Lone in the cycle of change am I :
You will not come again.
Night like purple flakes of snow
Falls with ease
Catching on the roofs of houses
In the tops of trees
Down upon the distant grass
And the distant flower
It will drift into this room
In an hour....
The rain builds a bridge
Between the sky and the sea;
The breeze sings his beggar-song
From the brine to the lea;
A lone tree, solitary pilgrim,
Waits on the shore of the deep
To walk on the steps of waves strewn with rainflowers,
Up to the temple of Eternal Sleep.
What dream-peacock, this moon.
With voice of silence,
Bejeweled with the golden stars,
With its spread fan, the tree —
What dance, this?
What rain-cloud hath it seen
In the sky of night's intangibility?
In the choir the boys are singing the hymn.
The morning light on their lips
Moves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim.
Sudden outside the high window, one crow
Hangs in the air
And lights on a withered oak-tree's top of woe.
One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top
Of the withered tree!--in the grail
Of crystal heaven falls one full black drop.
Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway
In the tender wine
Of our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day.
A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.
" I KNEW a real man once," says Agatha in the splendor
of a shagbark hickory tree.
Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold
her in his arms? Did a man only look at her
and pass by?
Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance,
says, " I knew a real man once."
Sweet timber land
Where soft winds blow
The high green tree
And fan away the fog!
Ah fragrant stream
Where thirsty creatures go
And strong black men
Hew the heavy log!
Oh broken house
Crumbling there alone,
Wanting me!
Oh silent tree
Must I always be
A wild bird
Riding the wind
And screaming bitterly?
I have seen a lovely thing
Stark before a whip of weather:
The tree that was so wistful after spring
Beating barren twigs together.
The birds that came there one by one,
The sensuous leaves that used to sway
And whisper there at night, all are gone,
Each has vanished in its way.
And this whip is on my heart;
There is no sound that it allows,
No little song that I may start
But I hear the beating of dead boughs.
A tree is more than a shadow
Blurred against the sky,
More than ink spilled on the fringe
Of white clouds floating by.
A tree is more than an April design
Or a blighted winter bough
Where love and music used to be.
A tree is something in me,
Very still and lonely now.
My Dear was a mason
And I was his stone.
And quick did he fashion
A house of his own.
As fish in the waters,
As birds in a tree,
So natural and blithe lives
His spirit in me.
There is a little goblin in my tree.
He sits up high and mows at me.
He is so wicked, yet so small,
He makes my garden venturous, and my trees tall.