Flame and Shadow | Page 7

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 at sea,?Bells in the valley heavy and slow --?There is no place over the crowded world?Where I can forget that the days go.
Lovely Chance
O lovely chance, what can I do?To give my gratefulness to you??You rise between myself and me?With a wise persistency;?I would have broken body and soul,?But by your grace, still I am whole.?Many a thing you did to save me,?Many a holy gift you gave me,?Music and friends and happy love?More than my dearest dreaming of;?And now in this wide twilight hour?With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower,?In a humble mood I bless?Your wisdom -- and your waywardness.?You brought me even here, where I?Live on a hill against the sky?And look on mountains and the sea?And a thin white moon in the pepper tree.
VIII
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,?And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,?And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire?Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one?Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree?If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,?Would scarcely know that we were gone.
In a Garden
The world is resting without sound or motion,?Behind the apple tree the sun goes down?Painting with fire the spires and the windows?In the elm-shaded town.
Beyond the calm Connecticut the hills lie?Silvered with haze as fruits still fresh with bloom,?The swallows weave in flight across the zenith?On an aerial loom.
Into the garden peace comes back