Fires of Driftwood | Page 2

and I follow!
My heart upon the rack;
I follow to
Jerusalem--
The long road stretches back
To Babylon, to Babylon!
And every step I take
Bears farther off
from Babylon
A heart that cannot break.
Last Spring
THIS morning at the door
I heard the Spring.
Quickly I set it wide

And, 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