A Boys Will | Page 6

morning,?And in the morning glow,?You walked a way beside me?To make me sad to go.?Do you know me in the gloaming,?Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming??Are you dumb because you know me not,?Or dumb because you know??All for me? And not a question?For the faded flowers gay?That could take me from beside you?For the ages of a day??They are yours, and be the measure?Of their worth for you to treasure,?The measure of the little while?That I've been long away.
Rose Pogonias
A SATURATED meadow,?Sun-shaped and jewel-small,?A circle scarcely wider?Than the trees around were tall;?Where winds were quite excluded,?And the air was stifling sweet?With the breath of many flowers,--?A temple of the heat.?There we bowed us in the burning,?As the sun's right worship is,?To pick where none could miss them?A thousand orchises;?For though the grass was scattered,?Yet every second spear?Seemed tipped with wings of color,?That tinged the atmosphere.?We raised a simple prayer?Before we left the spot,?That in the general mowing?That place might be forgot;?Or if not all so favoured,?Obtain such grace of hours,?That none should mow the grass there?While so confused with flowers.
Asking for Roses
A HOUSE that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,?With doors that none but the wind ever closes,?Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;?It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.?I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;?'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.?'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,?'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'?So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly?There in the hush of the wood that reposes,?And turn and go up to the open door boldly,?And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.?'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'?'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.?'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!?'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.?'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--?Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is?A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,?And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'?We do not loosen our hands' intertwining?(Not caring so very much what she supposes),?There when she comes on us mistily shining?And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.
Waiting?Afield at Dusk
WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like,?Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,?I enter alone upon the stubble field,?From which the laborers' voices late have died,?And in the antiphony of afterglow?And rising full moon, sit me down?Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock?And lose myself amid so many alike.?I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,?Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;?I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,?Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,?Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;?And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem?Dimly to have made out my secret place,?Only to lose it when he pirouettes,?And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;?On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp?In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,?That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,?After an interval, his instrument,?And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;?And on the worn book of old-golden song?I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold?And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;?But on the memory of one absent most,?For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.
In a Vale
WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale?By a misty fen that rang all night,?And thus it was the maidens pale?I knew so well, whose garments trail?Across the reeds to a window light.?The fen had every kind of bloom,?And for every kind there was a face,?And a voice that has sounded in my room?Across the sill from the outer gloom.?Each came singly unto her place,?But all came every night with the mist;?And often they brought so much to say?Of things of moment to which, they wist,?One so lonely was fain to list,?That the stars were almost faded away?Before the last went, heavy with dew,?Back to the place from which she came--?Where the bird was before it flew,?Where the flower was before it grew,?Where bird and flower were one and the same.?And thus it is I know so well?Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.?You have only to ask me, and I can tell.?No, not vainly there did I dwell,?Nor vainly listen all the night long.
A Dream Pang
I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song?Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;?And to the forest edge you came one day?(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,?But did not enter, though the wish was strong:?You shook your pensive head as who should say,?'I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray--?He must seek me would he undo the wrong.?Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all?Behind low boughs the trees let down