Rivers to the Sea | Page 6

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 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