Flame and Shadow | Page 4

can make anew,?Fusing with intenser fire,?Something nearer your desire;?If my soul must go alone?Through a cold infinity,?Or even if it vanish, too,?Beauty, I have worshipped you.
Let this single hour atone?For the theft of all of me.
Memories
II
Places
Places I love come back to me like music,?Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;?I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming?In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;?And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley?As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.
I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,?A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,?The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle?Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,?And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust?With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.
Violet now, in veil on veil of evening?The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;?A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol?In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;?The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers?And heaven is lighting star after star.
Places I love come back to me like music --?Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily;?In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence?Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,?And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,?At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.
Old Tunes
As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,?Float in the garden when no wind blows,?Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;
So the old tunes float in my mind,?And go from me leaving no trace behind,?Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.
But in the instant the airs remain?I know the laughter and the pain?Of times that will not come again.
I try to catch at many a tune?Like petals of light fallen from the moon,?Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,
But they float away -- for who can hold?Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?
"Only in Sleep"
Only in sleep I see their faces,?Children I played with when I was a child,?Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,?Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten --?What may have come to them, who can know??Yet we played last night as long ago,?And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,?I met their eyes and found them mild --?Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,?And for them am I too a child?
Redbirds
Redbirds, redbirds,?Long and long ago,?What a honey-call you had?In hills I used to know;
Redbud, buckberry,?Wild plum-tree?And proud river sweeping?Southward to the sea,
Brown and gold in the sun?Sparkling far below,?Trailing stately round her bluffs?Where the poplars grow --
Redbirds, redbirds,?Are you singing still?As you sang one May day?On Saxton's Hill?
Sunset: St. Louis
Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,?When I came home again from far-off places,?How many times I saw my western city?Dream by her river.
Then for an hour the water wore a mantle?Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise?Under the tall and darkened arches bearing?Gray, high-flung bridges.
Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples?Flickered with fire up the slope to westward,?And old warehouses poured their purple shadows?Across the levee.
High over them the black train swept with thunder,?Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it?Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers?Resting in twilight.
The Coin
Into my heart's treasury?I slipped a coin?That time cannot take?Nor a thief purloin, --?Oh better than the minting?Of a gold-crowned king?Is the safe-kept memory?Of a lovely thing.
The Voice
Atoms as old as stars,?Mutation on mutation,?Millions and millions of cells?Dividing yet still the same,?From air and changing earth,?From ancient Eastern rivers,?From turquoise tropic seas,?Unto myself I came.
My spirit like my flesh?Sprang from a thousand sources,?From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,?From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;?The living thoughts in me?Spring from dead men and women,?Forgotten time out of mind?And many as bubbles of foam.
Here for a moment's space?Into the light out of darkness,?I come and they come with me?Finding words with my breath;?From the wisdom of many life-times?I hear them cry: "Forever?Seek for Beauty, she only?Fights with man against Death!"
III
Day and Night
In Warsaw in Poland?Half the world away,?The one I love best of all?Thought of me to-day;
I know, for I went?Winged as a bird,?In the wide flowing wind?His own voice I heard;
His arms were round me?In a ferny place,?I looked in the pool?And there was his face --
But now it is night?And the cold stars say:?"Warsaw in Poland?Is half the world away."
Compensation
I should be glad of loneliness?And hours that go on broken wings,?A thirsty body, a tired heart?And the unchanging ache of things,?If I could make a single song?As lovely and as full of light,?As hushed and brief as a falling star?On a winter night.
I Remembered
There never was a mood of mine,?Gay or heart-broken, luminous or dull,?But you could ease me of its fever?And give it