Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 3

their bright hair? who puts?A wind-shell to each cheek,?Whispering betwixt its breathing silences,
"Seek! seek!"?
Who is it watching in the gathering twilight?When the curfew bird hath flown?On eager wings, from song to silence,?To its darkened nest alone??Who takes for brightening eyes the stars,?For locks the still moonbeam,?Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully
Falling, "Dream!"?
THULE
If thou art sweet as they are sad?Who on the shores of Time's salt sea?Watch on the dim horizon fade?Ships bearing love to night and thee;
If past all beacons Hope hath lit?In the dark wanderings of the deep?They who unwilling traverse it?Dream not till dawn unseal their sleep;
Ah, cease not in thy winds to mock?Us, who yet wake, but cannot see?Thy distant shores; who at each shock?Of the waves' onset faint for thee!
THE BIRTHNIGHT: TO F.
Dearest, it was a night?That in its darkness rocked Orion's stars;?A sighing wind ran faintly white?Along the willows, and the cedar boughs?Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across?The starry silence of their antique moss:?No sound save rushing air?Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,?And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there,
Thou, lovely thing.
THE DEATH-DREAM
Who, now, put dreams into thy slumbering mind??Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand?Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned,?Spake so thy spirit speech should understand,?And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal?Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways?Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal,?Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days,?To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice?Out of the inscrutable future whispered so??Or but the horror of a little noise?Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know?When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even?In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse??Or, haply, was it I who out of dream?Stole but a little where shadows course,?Called back to thee across the eternal stream?
"WHERE IS THY VICTORY?"
None, none can tell where I shall be?When the unclean earth covers me;?Only in surety if thou cry?Where my perplexed ashes lie,?Know, 'tis but death's necessity?That keeps my tongue from answering thee.
Even if no more my shadow may?Lean for a moment in thy day;?No more the whole earth lighten, as if,?Thou near, it had nought else to give:?Surely 'tis but Heaven's strategy?To prove death immortality.
Yet should I sleep--and no more dream,?Sad would the last awakening seem,?If my cold heart, with love once hot,?Had thee in sleep remembered not:?How could I wake to find that I?Had slept alone, yet easefully?
Or should in sleep glad visions come:?Sick, in an alien land, for home?Would be my eyes in their bright beam;?Awake, we know 'tis not a dream;?Asleep, some devil in the mind?Might truest thoughts with false enwind.
Life is a mockery if death?Have the least power men say it hath.?As to a hound that mewing waits,?Death opens, and shuts to, his gates;?Else even dry bones might rise and say,--?"'Tis ye are dead and laid away."
Innocent children out of nought?Build up a universe of thought,?And out of silence fashion Heaven:?So, dear, is this poor dying even,?Seeing thou shall be touched, heard, seen,?Better than when dust stood between.
FOREBODING
Thou canst not see him standing by--?Time--with a poppied hand?Stealing thy youth's simplicity,?Even as falls unceasingly
His waning sand.
He will pluck thy childish roses, as
Summer from her bush?Strips all the loveliness that was;?Even to the silence evening has
Thy laughter hush.
Thy locks too faint for earthly gold,
The meekness of thine eyes,?He will darken and dim, and to his fold?Drive, 'gainst the night, thy stainless, old
Innocencies;
Thy simple words confuse and mar,
Thy tenderest thoughts delude,?Draw a long cloud athwart thy star,?Still with loud timbrels heaven's far
Faint interlude.
Thou canst not see; I see, dearest;
O, then, yet patient be,?Though love refuse thy heart all rest,?Though even love wax angry, lest
Love should lose thee?
VAIN FINDING
Ever before my face there went?Betwixt earth's buds and me?A beauty beyond earth's content,?A hope--half memory:?Till in the woods one evening--?Ah! eyes as dark as they,?Fastened on mine unwontedly,?Grey, and dear heart, how grey!
NAPOLEON
"What is the world, O soldiers??It is I:?I, this incessant snow,?This northern sky;?Soldiers, this solitude?Through which we go
Is I."
ENGLAND
No lovelier hills than thine have laid?My tired thoughts to rest:?No peace of lovelier valleys made?Like peace within my breast.
Thine are the woods whereto my soul,?Out of the noontide beam,?Flees for a refuge green and cool?And tranquil as a dream.
Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal;?Thy clouds--how oft have I?Watched their bright towers of silence steal?Into infinity!
My heart within me faults to roam?In thought even far from thee:?Thine be the grave whereto I come,?And thine my darkness be.
TRUCE
Far inland here Death's pinions mocked the roar
Of English seas;?We sleep to wake no more,
Hushed, and at ease;?Till sound a trump, shore on to echoing shore,?Rouse from a peace, unwonted then to war,
Us and our enemies.
EVENING
When twilight darkens, and one by one,?The sweet birds to their nests have gone;?When to green banks the glow-worms bring?Pale lamps to brighten evening;?Then stirs in his thick