The Listeners | Page 4

gaze on me.?No stars surround her; yet the moon seems hid?Afar somewhere, beneath that narrow lid.?She darkens against the darkness; and her face?Only by adding thought to thought I trace,?Limned shadowily: O dream, return once more?To gloomy Hades and the whispering shore!
BE ANGRY NOW NO MORE
Be angry now no more!?If I have grieved thee--if?Thy kindness, mine before,?No hope may now restore:?Only forgive, forgive!
If still resentment burns?In thy cold breast, oh if?No more to pity turns,?No more, once tender, yearns?Thy love; oh yet forgive!...
Ask of the winter rain?June's withered rose again:?Ask grace of the salt sea:?She will not answer thee.?God would ten times have shriven?A heart so riven;?In her cold care thou'dst be?Still unforgiven.
SPRING
Once when my life was young,?I, too, with Spring's bright face?By mine, walked softly along,?Pace to his pace.
Then burned his crimson may,?Like a clear flame outspread,?Arching our happy way:?Then would he shed
Strangely from his wild face?Wonderful light on me--?Like hounds that keen in chase?Their quarry see.
Oh, sorrow now to know?What shafts, what keenness cold?His are to pierce me through,?Now that I'm old.
EXILE
Had the gods loved me I had lain?Where darnel is, and thorn,?And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain?Trembles in boughs forlorn.
Nay, but they loved me not; and I?Must needs a stranger be,?Whose every exiled day gone by?Aches with their memory.
WHERE?
Where is my love--?In silence and shadow she lies,?Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies;
And a bird above,?In the darkness tender and clear,?Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here!
Not that she's dead;?Only her soul is flown?Out of its last pure earthly mansion;
And cries instead?In the darkness, tender and clear,?Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here.
MUSIC UNHEARD
Sweet sounds, begone--?Whose music on my ear?Stirs foolish discontent?Of lingering here;?When, if I crossed?The crystal verge of death,?Him I should see?Who these sounds murmureth.
Sweet sounds, begone--?Ask not my heart to break?Its bond of bravery for?Sweet quiet's sake;?Lure not my feet?To leave the path they must?Tread on, unfaltering,?Till I sleep in dust.
Sweet sounds, begone:?Though silence brings apace?Deadly disquiet?Of this homeless place;?And all I love?In beauty cries to me,?'We but vain shadows?And reflections be.'
ALL THAT'S PAST
Very old are the woods;?And the buds that break?Out of the briar's boughs,?When March winds wake,?So old with their beauty are--?Oh, no man knows?Through what wild centuries?Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;?And the rills that rise?Where snow sleeps cold beneath?The azure skies?Sing such a history?Of come and gone,?Their every drop is as wise?As Solomon.
Very old are we men;?Our dreams are tales?Told in dim Eden?By Eve's nightingales;?We wake and whisper awhile,?But, the day gone by,?Silence and sleep like fields?Of amaranth lie.
WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED
When the rose is faded,?Memory may still dwell on?Her beauty shadowed,?And the sweet smell gone.
That vanishing loveliness,?That burdening breath?No bond of life hath then?Nor grief of death.
'Tis the immortal thought?Whose passion still?Makes of the changing?The unchangeable.
Oh, thus thy beauty,?Loveliest on earth to me,?Dark with no sorrow, shines?And burns, with Thee.
SLEEP
Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,?When the dark of night is deep,?From the moving wonder of their lives?Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut?The narrow gates of sense;?Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn?Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth?Their spirits no more see:?Within a silent gloom withdrawn,?They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have--a globe forgot?Wheeling from dark to light;?And all the enchanted realm of dream?That burgeons out of night.
THE STRANGER
Half-hidden in a graveyard,?In the blackness of a yew,?Where never living creature stirs,?Nor sunbeam pierces through,
Is a tombstone green and crooked,?Its faded legend gone,?And but one rain-worn cherub's head?To sing of the unknown.
There, when the dusk is falling,?Silence broods so deep?It seems that every wind that breathes?Blows from the fields of sleep?
Day breaks in heedless beauty,?Kindling each drop of dew,?But unforsaking shadow dwells?Beneath this lonely yew.
And, all else lost and faded,?Only this listening head?Keeps with a strange unanswering smile?Its secret with the dead.
NEVER MORE, SAILOR
Never more, Sailor,?Shalt thou be?Tossed on the wind-ridden,?Restless sea.?Its tides may labour;?All the world?Shake 'neath that weight?Of waters hurled:?But its whole shock?Can only stir?Thy dust to a quiet?Even quieter.?Thou mock'd'st at land?Who now art come?To such a small?And shallow home;?Yet bore the sea?Full many a care?For bones that once?A sailor's were.?And though the grave's?Deep soundlessness?Thy once sea-deafened?Ear distress,?No robin ever?On the deep?Hopped with his song?To haunt thy sleep.
THE WITCH
Weary went the old Witch,?Weary of her pack,?She sat her down by the churchyard wall,?And jerked it off her back.
The cord brake, yes, the cord brake,?Just where the dead did lie,?And Charms and Spells and Sorceries?Spilled out beneath the sky.
Weary was the old Witch;?She rested her old eyes?From the lantern-fruited yew trees,?And the scarlet of the skies;
And out the dead came stumbling,?From every rift and crack,?Silent as moss, and plundered?The gaping pack.
They wish them, three times over,?Away they skip full soon:?Bat and Mole and Leveret,?Under the rising moon;
Owl and Newt and Nightjar:?They take