Fires of Driftwood | Page 2

welcoming,?"Come in, sweet Spring," I cried,?"The winter ash, long dried,?Waits but your breath to rise?On phantom wing."
A brown leaf shivered by,?A soulless thing--?My heart in quick dismay?Forgot to sing--?Twisted and grim it lay,?Kin to the ghost-ash gray,?Dead, dead--strange herald this?Of jocund Spring!
I spurned it from the door.?I longed that Spring?Should come with song and glow?And rush of wing,?Not this, not this!--But O?Dead leaf, a year ago?You were the dear first-born?Of Hope and Spring!
Presence
BY a sense of Presence, keenly dear,?I, who thought her distant,?Knew her near.
By an echo that most sweetly woke,?I, long keyed to silence,?Knew she spoke.
By her nearness and the word she said,?I, who thought her living,?Knew her dead.
In an Autumn Garden
TO-NIGHT the air discloses?Souls of a million roses,?And ghosts of hyacinths that died too soon;?From Pan's safe-hidden altar?Dim wraiths of incense falter?In waving spiral, making sweet the moon!
Aroused from fragrant covers,?The vows of vanished lovers?Take voice in whisperings that rise and pass;?Where the crisped leaves are lying?A tremulous, low sighing?Breathes like a startled spirit o'er the grass.
Ah, Love! in some far garden,?In Arcady or Arden,?We two were lovers! Hush--remember not?The years in which I've missed you--?'Twas yesterday I kissed you?Beneath this haunted moon! Have you forgot?
Rose Dolores
THE moan of Rose Dolores, she made her plaint to me,?"My hair is lifted by the wind that sweeps in from the sea; I taste its salt upon my lips--O jailer, set me free!"
"Content thee, Rose Dolores; content thee, child of care!?There's satin shoon upon thy feet and emeralds in thy hair, And one there is who hungers for thy step upon the stair."
The moan of Rose Dolores, "O jailer, set me free!?These satin shoon and green-lit gems are terrible to me;?I hear a murmur on the wind, the murmur of the sea!"
"Bethink thee, Rose Dolores, bethink thee, ere too late!?Thou wert a fisher's child, alack, born to a fisher's fate; Would'st lay thy beauty 'neath the yoke--would'st be a fisher's mate?"
The moan of Rose Dolores "Kind jailer, let me go!?There's one who is a fisher--ah! my heart beats cold and slow Lest he should doubt I love him--I! who love not heaven so!"
"Alas, sweet Rose Dolores, why beat against the bars??Thy fisher lover drifteth where the sea is full of stars;?Why weep for one who weeps no more?--since grief thy beauty mars!"
The moan of Rose Dolores (she prayed me patiently)?"O jailer, now I know who called from out the calling sea,?I know whose kiss was in the wind--O jailer, set me free!"
A Pilgrim
ACROSS the trodden continent of years?To shrines of long ago,?My heart, a hooded pilgrim, turns with tears--?For could I know?That in the temple of thy constancy?There still may burn a taper lit for me,?'Twould be a star in starless heaven, to show?That Heaven could be.
Bent with the weight of all that I desired?And all that I forswore,?My heart roams, mendicant, forlorn and tired,?From door to door,?Begging of every stern-faced memory?An alms of pity--just to come to thee,?No more thy knight, thy champion no more--?Only thy devotee!
Spring will Come
SPRING will come to help me: she'll be back again,?Back with the soft sun, the sun I knew before.?She will wear her green gown, the emerald gown she wore?When the white-faced windflowers blew along the lane.
Spring will come to help me: When her waking sigh?Drifts across my sore heart all the pain will go.?How shall hearts be aching when larks are flying low,?Low across the fields of camas bluer than the sky?
I've a tryst with Spring here--maybe they'll be few?Now the world grows older--and shall I delay?Just because a Winter has stolen joy away??What cares Spring for old joys, all her joys are new.
Maybe there'll be singing in my sorrow yet--?I have heard of such things--but, if there be not,?Still there'll be the green pool in the pasture lot,?All a-trail with willow fingers, delicate and wet.
Winter is a passing thing and Spring is always gay;?If she, too, be passing she does not weep to know it.?Time she takes to quicken seed but never time to grow it-- Naught she cares for harvest that lies so far away.
Cosmos
THE tiny thing of painted gauze that flutters in the sun?And sinks upon the breast of night with all its living done;
The unconsidered seed that from the garden blows away,?Blooming its little time to bloom in one short summer day;
The leaf the idle wind shakes down in autumn from the tree, The grasshopper who for an hour makes gayest minstrelsy--
These--and this restless soul of mine--are one with flaming spheres And cold, dead moons whose ghostly fires haunt unremembered years.
The Secret
IF I should tell you what I know?Of where the first primroses grow,?Betray the secrets of the lily,?Bring crocus-gold and daffodilly,?Would you tell me if charm there be?To win a maiden, willy-nilly?
I lie upon the fragrant heath,?Kin to the beating heart beneath;?The nesting plover I discover?Nor stir