Rivers to the Sea | Page 6

have heart-fire and singing
to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,

Now at last I can live!
IN A RAILROAD STATION
WE stood in the shrill electric light,
Dumb and sick in the whirling din
We who had all of love to say
And a single second to say it in.
"Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go,
I felt the train's slow heavy start,
You thought to see me cry, but oh
My tears were hidden in my heart.
IN THE TRAIN
FIELDS beneath a quilt of snow
From which the rocks and stubble peep,
And in the west a shy white
star
That shivers as it wakes from sleep.
The restless rumble of the train,
The drowsy people in the car,
Steel blue twilight in the world,
And in my heart a timid star.
TO ONE AWAY
I HEARD a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!

It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so--
I send you back this word,
I know, I know!
SONG
Love me with your whole heart
Or give no love to me,
Half-love is a poor thing,
Neither bond nor free.
You must love me gladly
Soul and body too,
Or else find a new love,
And good-by to you.
DEEP IN THE NIGHT
DEEP in the night the cry of a swallow,
Under the stars he flew,
Keen as pain was his call to follow
Over the world to you.
Love in my heart is a cry forever
Lost as the swallow's flight,
Seeking for you and never, never
Stilled by the stars at night.
THE INDIA WHARF
HERE in the velvet stillness
The wide sown fields fall to the faint

horizon,
Sleeping in starlight. . . .
A year ago we walked in the jangling city
Together . . . . forgetful.

One by one we crossed the avenues,
Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,

And came to the narrow, knotted streets.
Thru the tense crowd

We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,
Unconscious of our
motion.
Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes

Passed us and passed.
Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,
I
forgot them all;
I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,

Sure and elated.
That was the gift you gave me. . . .
The streets grew still more tangled,
And led at last to water black and
glossy,
Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.
There
on a shabby building was a sign
"The India Wharf " . . . and we
turned back.
I always felt we could have taken ship
And crossed the bright green
seas
To dreaming cities set on sacred streams
And palaces
Of
ivory and scarlet.
I SHALL NOT CARE
WHEN I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me
broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and
cold-hearted
Than you are now.

DESERT POOLS
I LOVE too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.
His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with
sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.
And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all
bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire.
LONGING
I AM not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.
I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.
PITY
THEY never saw my lover's face,

They only know our love was brief,
Wearing awhile a windy grace
And passing like an autumn leaf.
They wonder why I do not weep,
They think it strange that I can sing,
They say, "Her love was scarcely
deep
Since it has left so slight a sting."
They never saw my love, nor knew
That in my heart's most secret place
I pity them as angels do
Men who have never seen God's face.
AFTER PARTING
OH I have sown my love so wide
That he will find it everywhere;
It will awake him in the night,
It will enfold him in the air.
I set my shadow in his sight
And I have winged it with desire,
That it may be a cloud by day
And in the night a shaft of fire.
ENOUGH
IT is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.

I have no care to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea--
It is