Poems by the Way Love Is Enough | Page 8

erst I sought."
LOVE'S GLEANING-TIDE
Draw not away thy hands, my love,
With wind alone the branches
move,
And though the leaves be scant above
The Autumn shall not
shame us.
Say; Let the world wax cold and drear,
What is the worst of all the
year
But life, and what can hurt us, dear,
Or death, and who shall
blame us?
Ah, when the summer comes again
How shall we say, we sowed in
vain?
The root was joy, the stem was pain,
The ear a nameless
blending.
The root is dead and gone, my love,
The stem's a rod our truth to
prove;
The ear is stored for nought to move
Till heaven and earth
have ending.
THE MESSAGE OF THE MARCH WIND
Fair now is the spring-tide, now earth lies beholding
With the eyes of
a lover, the face of the sun;
Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is
enfolding
The green-growing acres with increase begun.
Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
'Mid the birds
and the blossoms and the beasts of the field; Love mingles with love,
and no evil is weighing
On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is
healed.
From township to township, o'er down and by tillage
Fair, far have
we wandered and long was the day;
But now cometh eve at the end of
the village,
Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.
There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us
The straw

from the ox-yard is blowing about;
The moon's rim is rising, a star
glitters o'er us,
And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.
Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over The
brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.
Draw closer, my sweet,
we are lover and lover;
This eve art thou given to gladness and me.
Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken:
Three fields
further on, as they told me down there,
When the young moon has set,
if the March sky should darken, We might see from the hill-top the
great city's glare.
Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! from London it bloweth,
And
telleth of gold, and of hope and unrest;
Of power that helps not; of
wisdom that knoweth,
But teacheth not aught of the worst and the
best.
Of the rich men it telleth, and strange is the story
How they have, and
they hanker, and grip far and wide;
And they live and they die, and
the earth and its glory
Has been but a burden they scarce might abide.
Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling;
Of the life that
they live there, so haggard and grim,
That if we and our love amidst
them had been dwelling
My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown
dim.
This land we have loved in our love and our leisure
For them hangs
in heaven, high out of their reach;
The wide hills o'er the sea-plain for
them have no pleasure, The grey homes of their fathers no story to
teach.
The singers have sung and the builders have builded,
The painters
have fashioned their tales of delight;
For what and for whom hath the
world's book been gilded,
When all is for these but the blackness of
night?

How long, and for what is their patience abiding?
How oft and how
oft shall their story be told,
While the hope that none seeketh in
darkness is hiding,
And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?
Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,
And the
fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet;
For there in a while shall
be rest and desire,
And there shall the morrow's uprising be sweet.
Yet, love, as we wend, the wind bloweth behind us,
And beareth the
last tale it telleth to-night,
How here in the spring-tide the message
shall find us;
For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.
Like the seed of mid-winter, unheeded, unperished,
Like the
autumn-sown wheat 'neath the snow lying green,
Like the love that
overtook us, unawares and uncherished,
Like the babe 'neath thy
girdle that groweth unseen;
So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth,
Rest fadeth
before it, and blindness and fear;
It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it
knoweth;
It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:
For it beareth the message: "Rise up on the morrow
And go on your
ways toward the doubt and the strife;
Join hope to our hope and blend
sorrow with sorrow.
And seek for men's love in the short days of
life."
But lo, the old inn, and the lights, and the fire,
And the fiddler's old
tune and the shuffling of feet;
Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and
desire,
And to-morrow's uprising to deeds shall be sweet.
A DEATH SONG
What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these,
the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are
sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and