Rivers to the Sea | Page 7

enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.
ALCHEMY
I LIFT my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.
FEBRUARY
THEY spoke of him I love
With cruel words and gay;
My lips kept silent guard
On all I could not say.
I heard, and down the street
The lonely trees in the square
Stood in the winter wind
Patient and bare.
I heard . . . oh voiceless trees
Under the wind, I knew
The eager terrible spring
Hidden in you.

MORNING
I WENT out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining
meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of
cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
MAY NIGHT
THE spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.
Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing--
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring.
DUSK IN JUNE
EVENING, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.
The air is blue and sweet,

The few first stars are white,--
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
LOVE-FREE
I AM free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn,
Swift and
intent, asking no joy from another,
Glad to forget all of the passion of
April
Ere it was love-free.
I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly,
But if he returned, if he
should look at me deeply,
I should awake, I should awake and
remember
I am my lover's.
SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE
IN the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we
two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her
lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along
the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And
down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us
While
your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous
again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
When she goes home,
Dreamily before her
mirror shakes from her hair
This year's blossoms, clinging in its
coils ?
IN A SUBWAY STATION

AFTER a year I came again to the place;
The tireless lights and the
reverberation,
The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground,

The hunted, hurrying people were still the same--
But oh, another
man beside me and not you!
Another voice and other eyes in mine!

And suddenly I turned and saw again
The gleaming curve of tracks,
the bridge above--
They were burned deep into my heart before,

The night I watched them to avoid your eyes,
When you were saying,
"Oh, look up at me!"
When you were saying, "Will you never love
me?"
And when I answered with a lie. Oh then
You dropped your
eyes. I felt your utter pain.
I would have died to say the truth to you.

After a year I came again to the place--
The hunted hurrying people
were still the same....
AFTER LOVE
THERE is no magic when we meet,
We speak as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
You were the wind and I the sea--
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.
But tho' the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the
sea,
For all its peace.
DOORYARD ROSES
I HAVE come the selfsame path

To the selfsame door,
Years have left the roses there
Burning as before.
While I watch them in the wind
Quick the hot tears start--
Strange so frail a flame outlasts
Fire in the heart.
A PRAYER
UNTIL I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.
II
INDIAN SUMMER
LYRIC night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that
are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless
chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples
The wheel of
a locust leisurely grinding the silence,
Under a moon waning and
worn and broken,

Tired with summer.
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the