Anthology of Massachusetts Poets | Page 9

the Azores ... Oregon ...
It is a pity your roses?Are too late for Omar . . .?It is a pity Keats has gone . . .
Yet there must be something left to say?Of flowers like these!?Adventurers,?They pushed their way?Through dewy tunnels of the June night?Now they confer.....?A little tremulous.....?Dazzled by the yellow sea-beach of morning
If Herrick would tiptoe back . . .?If Blake were to look this way?Ledwidge, even!
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
DANDELION
LITTLE soldier with the golden helmet,?O What are you guarding on my lawn??You with your green gun?And your yellow beard,?Why do you stand so stiff??There is only the grass to fight!
HILDA CONKLING
RED ROOSTER
RED ROOSTER in your gray coop,?O stately creature with tail-feathers red and?blue,?Yellow and black,?You have a comb gay as a parade?On your head:?You have pearl trinkets?On your feet:?The short feathers smooth along your back?Are the dark color of wet rocks,?Or the rippled green of ships?When I look at their sides through water.?I don't know how you happened to be made?So proud, so foolish,?Wearing your coat of many colors,?Shouting all day long your crooked words,?Loud . . . sharp . . . not beautiful!
HILDA CONKLING
VELVETS?(BY A BED OF PANSIES)
THIS pansy has a thinking face?Like the yellow moon.?This one has a face with white blots;?I call him the clown.?Here goes one down the grass?With a pretty look of plumpness;?She is a little girl going to school?With her hands in the pockets of her pinafore.?Her name is Sue.?I like this one, in a bonnet,?Waiting,?Her eyes are so deep!?But these on the other side,?These that wear purple and blue,?They are the Velvets,?The king with his cloak,?The queen with her gown,?The prince with his feather.?These are dark and quiet?And stay alone.?I know you, Velvets,?Color of Dark,?Like the pine-tree on the hill?When stars shine!
HILDA CONKLING
THE MOODS
THE Moods have laid their hands across my hair:?The Moods have drawn their fingers through my heart;?My hair shall never more lie smooth and bright,?But stir like tide-worn sea-weed, and my heart?Shall never more be glad of small sweet things,-?A wild rose, or a crescent moon,-a book?Of little verses, or a dancing child.?My heart turns crying from the rose and book,?My heart turns crying from the thin bright moon,?And weeps with useless sorrow for the child.?The Moods have loosed a wind to vex my hair,?And made my heart too wise, that was a child.
Now I shall blow like smitten candle-flame:?I shall desire all things that may not be:?The years, the stars, the souls of ancient men,?All tears that must, and smiles that may not be,--?Yes, glimmering lights across a windy ford,?And vagrant voices on a darkened plain,?And holy things, and outcast things, and things,?Far too remote, frail-bodied to be plain.
My pity and my joy are grown alike.?I cannot sweep the strangeness from my heart.?The Moods have laid swift hands across my hair:?The Moods have drawn swift fingers through my heart.?FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS
HILL-FANTASY
SITTETH by the red cairn a brown One, a?hoofed One,?High upon the mountain, where the grasses fail.?Where the ash-trees flourish far their blazing?Bunches to the sun,?A brown One, a hoofed One, pipes against the gale.?Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me.
I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering;?No one but the pine trees and the white birch knew.?Over rocks I scrambled, looked up and saw that?Strange Thing,?Peaked ears and sharp horns, pricked against the?blue.
Oh, and, how he piped there! piped upon the high?reeds?Till the blue air crackled like a frost-film on a pool!?Oh, and how he spread himself, like a child whom?no one heeds,?Tumbled chuckling in the brook, all sleek and kind?and cool!
He had berries 'twixt his horns, crimson-red as?cochineal.,?Bobbing, wagging wantonly they tickled him, and oh,?How his deft lips puckered round the reed,?seemed to chase and steal?Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music low!?I said "Good-day, Thou!" He said, "Good-day,?Thou!"?Wiped his reed against the spotted doe-skin on his back,?He said, "Come up here, and I will teach thee piping?now.?While the earth is singing so, for tunes we shall not?Lack."
Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me.?Up scrambled I. So we sat beside the cairn.?Broad into my face laughed that horned Thing so?Naughtily.?Oh, it was a rascal of a woodland Satyr's bairn!
'So blow, and so, Thou! Move thy fingers faster, look!?Move them like the little leaves and whirling midges.?So!?Soon `twill twist like tendrils and out-twinkle like?the lost brook.?Move thy fingers merrily, and blow! Blow! Blow!"
Brown One! Hoofed One! Beat time to keep me?Straight.?Kick it on the red stone, whistle in my ear.?Brush thy crimson berries in my face, then hold?Thy breath, for-wait!?Joy comes bubbling to me lips. I pipe, oh, hear!
Blue sky, art glad of us? Green wood, art glad of?us??Old hard-heart mountain, dost thou hear me, how?I blow??Far away the sea-isles swim in sun-haze luminous.?Each one has a color like the seven-splendor bow.
Wind, wind, wind, dost thou mind me how I pipe,?Now??Chipmunk chatt'ring in the beech, rabbit in the?brake??Furry arm around