I will make myself new thought;
My own is worn and old.
And old counterpanes will not
Keep out the wind and cold.
From borrowed thought I will choose
Pieces, and, row on row,
Patch a quilt of many hues
Like the quilts of long ago.
It cannot be so fine
As what the years have thinned.
But I dread the smothered whine
Of four grey walls' grey wind.
I will patch me a counterpane.
For mine is worn to scars.
And I fear the iron rain
Of a ceiling's splashing stars.
I see the snow-drops flutter
Their white wings in the gale.
I hear the robin utter
On high his gallant tale.
Look where the rash wind chases
With clouds the climbing sun !
The day makes merry faces —
Gaily her gray steeds run.
The bare brown trees are swinging,
The curled waves roll and rail.
Ho ! — madcap Spring comes singing
On frosty Winter's trail!
Reed,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich--
such great heads as yours
drift upon temple-steps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.
Myrtle-bark
is flecked from you,
scales are dashed
from your stem,
sand cuts your petal,
furrows it with hard edge,
like flint
on a bright stone.
Yet though the whole wind
You crash over the trees,
you crack the live branch--
the branch is white,
the green crushed,
each leaf is rent like split wood.
You burden the trees
with black drops,
you swirl and crash--
you have broken off a weighted leaf
in the wind,
it is hurled out,
whirls up and sinks,
a green stone.
The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank.
The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?
Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light--
You are clear
O rose, cut in rock,
hard as the descent of hail.
I could scrape the colour
from the petals
like spilt dye from a rock.
If I could break you
I could break a tree.
If I could stir
I could break a tree--
I could break you.
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem--
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
When gray clouds break on southern skies
And winds of March begin to blow,
Our fancies run to Summer sighs,
That whisper and delight us so.
For in this stormy month of winds
The first new pulse of life is felt,
When Spring with all her sweets begins
Where Winter's ice and snow have dwelt.
The bluebird carols out his note,
A prelude to the country 'round
Of chimes, a few more days remote,
To which the forest will resound.
The plowman's song, the forest chime.
The upturned sod, the country scene,
Bespeak a resurrection time
In air, sky, and sprouting green.
Only a few hours!
We danced like wind,
Our faces like noon flowers
On one slim stem were lifted, turned aside.
You flew, I followed, matched your stride,
And held your pause, and swung and parted wide.
Only a few hours !
We danced like wind,
Thirsty as blown flowers,
Heavy lidded, fearful eyed.
All essences of sweetness from the white
Warm day go up in vapor, when the dark
Comes down. Ascends the tune of meadow-lark,
Ascends the noon-time smell of grass, when night
Takes sunlight from the world, and gives it ease.
Mysterious wings have brushed the air ; and light
Float all the ghosts of sense and sound and sight ;
The silent hive is echoing the bees.
So stir my thoughts at this slow, solemn time.
Now only is there certainty for me
When all the day's distilled and understood.
Now light meets darkness : now my tendrils climb
In this vast hour, up the living tree,
Where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.
For hills and woods and streams unsung
I pipe above a rippled cove.
And here the weaver autumn hung
Between the hills a wind she wove
From sounds the hills remember yet
Of purple days and violet.
The hills stand up to trip the sky,
Sea-misted, and along the tops
Wing after wing goes summer by,
And many a little roadway stops
And starts, and struggles to the sea,
Cutting them up in filigree.
Twixt wind and silence Faughan flows,
In music broken over rocks,
Like mingled bells the poet knows
Ring in the fields of Eastern flocks.
And in the after silences
Of flower-lit distances I'll be,
And who would find me travels far
In lands unsung of minstrelsy.
Strong winds shall cross my secret way,
And planet mountains hide my goal,
I shall go on from pass to pass,
By monstrous rocks, a lonely soul.