A Dark Month | Page 2

the touch of laughter, how swift it twittered
The shrillest music on
earth;
How the lithe limbs laughed and the whole child glittered With
radiant riot of mirth!
Our Shakespeare now, as a man dumb-stricken,
Stands silent there on
the shelf:
And my thoughts, that had song in the heart of them, sicken,
And relish not Shakespeare's self.
And my mood grows moodier than Hamlet's even,
And 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