The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 4

builded its beams,?And, spinning all day at her secret looms,?With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall?She pictureth over, and peopleth it all?With echoes and dreams,?And singing of streams.
May is building her house of petal and blade;?Of the roots of the oak is the flooring made,?With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover,?Each small miracle over and over,?And tender, travelling green things strayed.
Her windows the morning and evening star,?And her rustling doorways, ever ajar?With the coming and going?Of fair things blowing,?The thresholds of the four winds are.
May is building her house. From the dust of things?She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings;?From October's tossed and trodden gold?She is making the young year out of the old;?Yea! out of winter's flying sleet?She is making all the summer sweet,?And the brown leaves spurned of November's feet?She is changing back again to spring's.
SHADOW
When leaf and flower are newly made,?And bird and butterfly and bee?Are at their summer posts again;?When all is ready, lo! 'tis she,?Suddenly there after soft rain--?The deep-lashed dryad of the shade.
Shadow! the fairest gift of June,?Gone like the rose the winter through,?Save in the ribbed anatomy?Of ebon line the moonlight drew,?Stark on the snow, of tower or tree,?Like letters of a dead man's rune.
Dew-breathing shade! all summer lies?In the cool hollow of thy breast,?Thou moth-winged creature darkly fair;?The very sun steals down to rest?Within thy swaying tendrilled hair,?And forest-flicker of thine eyes.
Made of all shapes that flit and sway,?And mass, and scatter in the breeze,?And meet and part, open and close;?Thou sister of the clouds and trees,?Thou daintier phantom of the rose,?Thou nun of the hot and honeyed day.
Misdeemed art thou of those who hold?Darkness thy soul, thy dwelling place?Night and its stars; nay! all of light?Wert though begot, all flowers thy face,?And, hushed in thee, all colours bright?Hide from the noon their blue and gold.
Thy voice the song of hidden rills,?The sigh deep-bosomed silence heaves?From the full heart of happy things,--?The lap of water-lily leaves,?The noiseless language of the wings?Of evening making strange the hills.
JUNE
We thought that winter, love, would never end,?That the dark year had slain the innocent May,?Nor hoped that your soft hand, this summer day,?Would lie, as now, in mine, beloved friend;?And, like some magic spring, your dream-deep eyes?Hold all the summer skies.
But lo! the world again is mad with flowers,?The long white silence spake, small bird by bird,?Blade after blade, amid the song of showers,?The grass stole back once more, and there was heard?The ancient music of the vernal spheres,?Half laughter and half tears.
Ah! love, and now too swiftly, like some groom,?Raining hot kisses on his bride's young mouth,?The mad young year, delirious with the South,?Squanders his fairy treasure, bloom on bloom;?Too soon the wild rose hastens to be sweet,?Too swift, O June, thy feet.
Tarry a little, summer, crowd not so?All glory and gladness in so brief a day,?Teach all thy dancing flowers a step more slow,?And bid thy wild musicians softlier play,?O hast thou thought, that like a madman spends,?The longest summer ends.
GREEN SILENCE
Silence, whose drowsy eyelids are soft leaves,?And whose half-sleeping eyes are the blue flowers,?On whose still breast the water-lily heaves,?For all her speech the whisper of the showers.
Made of all things that in the water sway,?The quiet reed kissing the arrowhead,?The willows murmuring, all a summer day,?"Silence"--sweet word, and ne'er so softly said
As here along this path of brooding peace,?Where all things dream, and nothing else is done?But all such gentle businesses as these?Of leaves and rippling wind, and setting sun
Turning the stream to a long lane of gold,?Where the young moon shall walk with feet of pearl,?And, framed in sleeping lilies, fold on fold,?Gaze at herself, like any mortal girl.
SUMMER SONGS
I
How thick the grass,?How green the shade--?All for love?And lovers made.
Wood-lilies white?As hidden lace--?Open your bodice,?That's their place.
See how the sun-god?Overpowers?The summer lying?Deep in flowers;
With burning kisses?Of bright gold?Fills her young womb?With joy untold;
And all the world?Is lad and lass,?A blue sky?And a couch of grass.
Summer is here--?let us drain?It all! it may?Not come again.
II
How the leaves thicken?On the boughs,?And the birds make?Their lyric vows.
O the beating, breaking?Heart of things,?The pulse and passion--?How it sings.
How it burns and flames?And showers,?Lusts and laughs, flowers?And deflowers.
III
Summer came,?Rose on rose;?Leaf on leaf,?Summer goes.
Summer came,?Song on song;?O summer had?A golden tongue.
Summer goes,?Sigh on sigh;?Not a rose?Sees him die.
TO A WILD BIRD
Wild bird, I stole you from your nest,?And cannot find your nest again;?To hear you chirp a little while?I wrung your mother's heart with pain.
And here you sit and droop and die,?Nor any love that I can bring?Wins me forgiveness for the wrong,?Nor any kindness makes you sing.
"I CROSSED THE ORCHARD WALKING HOME"
I crossed the orchard, walking home,?The rising moon was at my back,?The apples and the moonlight fell?Together on the railroad track.
Then, speeding through the evening dews,?A dozen lighted