A Dark Month | Page 2

man delights not me,?But only the face that morn and even?My heart leapt only to see.
That my heart made merry within me seeing,?And sang as his laugh kept time:?But song finds now no pleasure in being,?And love no reason in rhyme.
IV
Mild May-blossom and proud sweet bay-flower,?What, for shame, would you have with us here??It is not the month of the May-flower?This, but the fall of the year.
Flowers open only their lips in derision,?Leaves are as fingers that point in scorn?The shows we see are a vision;?Spring is not verily born.
Yet boughs turn supple and buds grow sappy,?As though the sun were indeed the sun:?And all our woods are happy?With all their birds save one.
But spring is over, but summer is over,?But autumn is over, and winter stands?With his feet sunk deep in the clover?And cowslips cold in his hands.
His hoar grim head has a hawthorn bonnet,?His gnarled gaunt hand has a gay green staff?With new-blown rose-blossom on it:?But his laugh is a dead man's laugh.
The laugh of spring that the heart seeks after,?The hand that the whole world yearns to kiss,?It rings not here in his laughter,?The sign of it is not this.
There is not strength in it left to splinter?Tall oaks, nor frost in his breath to sting:?Yet it is but a breath as of winter,?And it is not the hand of spring.
V
Thirty-one pale maidens, clad?All in mourning dresses,?Pass, with lips and eyes more sad?That it seems they should be glad,?Heads discrowned of crowns they had,?Grey for golden tresses.
Grey their girdles too for green,?And their veils dishevelled:?None would say, to see their mien,?That the least of these had been?Born no baser than a queen,?Reared where flower-fays revelled.
Dreams that strive to seem awake,?Ghosts that walk by daytime,?Weary winds the way they take,?Since, for one child's absent sake,?May knows well, whate'er things make?Sport, it is not Maytime.
VI
A hand at the door taps light?As the hand of my heart's delight:?It is but a full-grown hand,?Yet the stroke of it seems to start?Hope like a bird in my heart,?Too feeble to soar or to stand.
To start light hope from her cover?Is to raise but a kite for a plover?If her wings be not fledged to soar.?Desire, but in dreams, cannot ope?The door that was shut upon hope?When love went out at the door.
Well were it if vision could keep?The lids of desire as in sleep?Fast locked, and over his eyes?A dream with the dark soft key?In her hand might hover, and be?Their keeper till morning rise;
The morning that brings after many?Days fled with no light upon any?The small face back which is gone;?When the loved little hands once more?Shall struggle and strain at the door?They beat their summons upon.
VII
If a soul for but seven days were cast out of heaven and its mirth, They would seem to her fears like as seventy years upon earth.
Even and morrow should seem to her sorrow as long?As the passage of numberless ages in slumberless song.
Dawn, roused by the lark, would be surely as dark in her sight As her measureless measure of shadowless pleasure was bright.
Noon, gilt but with glory of gold, would be hoary and grey In her eyes that had gazed on the depths, unamazed with the day.
Night hardly would seem to make darker her dream never done, When it could but withhold what a man may behold of the sun.
For dreams would perplex, were the days that should vex her but seven, The sight of her vision, made dark with division from heaven.
Till the light on my lonely way lighten that only now gleams, I too am divided from heaven and derided of dreams.
VIII
A twilight fire-fly may suggest?How flames the fire that feeds the sun:?"A crooked figure may attest?In little space a million."
But this faint-figured verse, that dresses?With flowers the bones of one bare month,?Of all it would say scarce expresses?In crooked ways a millionth.
A fire-fly tenders to the father?Of fires a tribute something worth:?My verse, a shard-borne beetle rather,?Drones over scarce-illumined earth.
Some inches round me though it brighten?With light of music-making thought,?The dark indeed it may not lighten,?The silence moves not, hearing nought.
Only my heart is eased with hearing,?Only mine eyes are soothed with seeing,?A face brought nigh, a footfall nearing,?Till hopes take form and dreams have being.
IX
As a poor man hungering stands with insatiate eyes and hands
Void of bread?Right in sight of men that feast while his famine with no least
Crumb is fed,
Here across the garden-wall can I hear strange children call,
Watch them play,?From the windowed seat above, whence the goodlier child I love
Is away.
Here the sights we saw together moved his fancy like a feather
To and fro,?Now to wonder, and thereafter to the sunny storm of laughter
Loud and low--
Sights engraven on storied pages where man's tale of seven
swift ages
All was told--?Seen of eyes yet bright from heaven--for the lips that