Flame and Shadow | Page 7

more
Let me go down as
waves sweep to the shore
In pride; and let me sing with my last
breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover --
I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.
"The Dreams of My Heart"
The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me
long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;
If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things
whose tunes are played out and forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.
"A Little While"
A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,

As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full
sea.
A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty
of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness
that is their home.
The Garden
My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters
and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden
remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and
clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips,
goblets holding the rain --
The garden will be hushed with snow,
forgotten soon, forgotten -- After the stillness, will spring come again?
The Wine
I cannot die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,

And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die -- but is there not
Some shining strange escape for
me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
Of immortality?
In a Cuban Garden
Hibiscus flowers are cups of fire,
(Love me, my lover, life will not
stay)
The bright poinsettia shakes in the wind,
A scarlet leaf is
blowing away.
A lizard lifts his head and listens --
Kiss me before the noon goes by,

Here in the shade of the ceiba hide me
From the great black vulture
circling the sky.
"If I Must Go"
If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near
me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will
fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be

Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.
VII
In Spring, Santa Barbara
I have been happy two weeks together,
My love is coming home to
me,
Gold and silver is the weather
And smooth as lapis is the sea.

The earth has turned its brown to green
After three nights of
humming rain,
And in the valleys peck and preen
Linnets with a
scarlet stain.
High in the mountains all alone
The wild swans whistle on the lakes,

But I have been as still as stone,
My heart sings only when it
breaks.
White Fog
Heaven-invading hills are drowned
In wide moving waves of mist,

Phlox before my door are wound
In dripping wreaths of amethyst.
Ten feet away the solid earth
Changes into melting cloud,
There is
a hush of pain and mirth,
No bird has heart to speak aloud.
Here in a world without a sky,
Without the ground, without the sea,

The one unchanging thing is I,
Myself remains to comfort me.
Arcturus
Arcturus brings the spring back
As surely now as when
He rose on
eastern islands
For Grecian girls and men;
The twilight is as clear a blue,
The star as shaken and as bright,
And
the same thought he gave to them
He gives to me to-night.
Moonlight
It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver
snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.
The heart asks more than life can give,

When that is learned, then all is learned;
The waves break fold on
jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old.
Morning Song
A diamond of a morning
Waked me an hour too soon;
Dawn had
taken in the stars
And left the faint white moon.
O white moon, you are lonely,
It is the same with me,
But we have
the world to roam over,
Only the lonely are free.
Gray Fog
A fog drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea --
One
by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone
blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in
my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be
done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as
the dead.
Bells
At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,

The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is
dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel --
Why am I suddenly so cold?

Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily
tolled.

Bells in Venice, bells