The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 5

windows glide--?The East-bound flyer for New York,?Soft as a magic-lantern slide.
New York! on through the sleeping flowers,?Through echoing midnight on to noon;?How strange that yonder is New York,?And here such silence and the moon.
"I MEANT TO DO MY WORK TO-DAY"
I meant to do my work to-day--?But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,?And a butterfly flitted across the field,?And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,?Tossing the grasses to and fro,?And a rainbow held out its shining hand--?So what could I do but laugh and go?
"HOW FAST THE YEAR IS GOING BY"
How fast the year is going by!?Love, it will be September soon;?O let us make the best of June.?Already, love, it is July;?The rose and honeysuckle go,?And all too soon will come the snow.
Dark berries take the place of flowers,?Of summer August still remains,?Then sad September with her rains.?O love, how short a year is ours--?So swiftly does the summer fly,?Scarce time is left to say goodbye.
AUGUST MOONLIGHT
The solemn light behind the barns,?The rising moon, the cricket's call,?The August night, and you and I--?What is the meaning of it all!
Has it a meaning, after all??Or is it one of Nature's lies,?That net of beauty that she casts?Over Life's unsuspecting eyes?
That web of beauty that she weaves?For one strange purpose of her own,--?For this the painted butterfly,?For this the rose--for this alone!
Strange repetition of the rose,?And strange reiterated call?Of bird and insect, man and maid,--?Is that the meaning of it all?
If it means nothing, after all!?And nothing lives, except to die--?It is enough--that solemn light?Behind the barns, and you and I.
TO A ROSE
O rose! forbear to flaunt yourself,?All bloom and dew--?I once, sad-hearted as I am,?Was young as you.
But, one by one, the petals fell?Earthward to rot;?Only a berry testifies?A rose forgot.
INVITATION
Unless you come while still the world is green,?A place of birds and the blue dreaming sea,?In vain has all the singing summer been,?Unless you come, and share it all with me.
Ah! come, ere August flames its heart away,?Ere, like a golden widow, autumn goes?Across the woodlands, sad with thoughts of May,?An aster in her bosom for a rose.
SUMMER GOING
Crickets calling,?Apples falling.
Summer dying,?Life is flying.
So soon over--?Love and lover.
AUTUMN TREASURE
Who will gather with me the fallen year,?This drift of forgotten forsaken leaves,?Ah! who give ear?To the sigh October heaves?At summer's passing by!?Who will come walk with me?On this Persian carpet of purple and gold?The weary autumn weaves,?And be as sad as I??Gather the wealth of the fallen rose,?And watch how the memoried south wind blows?Old dreams and old faces upon the air,?And all things fair.
WINTER
Winter, some call thee fair,?Yea! flatter thy cold face?With vain compare?Of all thy glittering ways?And magic snows?With summer and the rose;?Thy phantom flowers?And fretted traceries?Of crystal breath,?Thy frozen and fantastic art of death,?With April as she showers?The violet on the leas,?And bares her bosom?In the blossoming trees,?And dances on her way?To laugh with May--?Winter that hath no bird?To sing thee, and no bloom?To deck thy brow:?To me thou art an empty haunted room,?Where once the music?Of the summer stirred,?And all the dancers?Fallen on silence now.
THE MYSTIC FRIENDS
I nothing did all yesterday?But listen to the singing rain?On roof and weeping window-pane,?And, 'whiles I'd watch the flying spray?And smoking breakers in the bay:?Nothing but this did I all day--
Save turn anon to trim the fire?With a new log, and mark it roar?And flame with yellow tongues for more?To feed its mystical desire.?No other comrades save these three,?The fire, the rain, and the wild sea,
All day from morn till night had I--?Yea! and the wind, with fitful cry,?Like a hound whining at the door.
Yet seemed it, as to sleep I turned,?Pausing a little while to pray,?That not mis-spent had been the day;?That I had somehow wisdom learned?From those wild waters in the bay,?And from the fire as it burned;?And that the rain, in some strange way,?Had words of high import to say;?And that the wind, with fitful cry,?Did some immortal message try,?Striving to make some meaning clear?Important for my soul to hear.
But what the meaning of the rain,?And what the wisdom of the fire,?And what the warning of the wind,?And what the sea would tell, in vain?My soul doth of itself enquire,--?And yet a meaning too doth find:
For what am I that hears and sees?But a strange brother of all these?That blindly move, and wordless cry,?And I, mysteriously I,?Answer in blood and bone and breath?To what my gnomic kindred saith;?And, as in me they all have part,?Translate their message to my heart--
And know, yet know not, what they say:?Know not, yet know, the fire's tongue?And the rain's elegiac song,?And the white language of the spray,?And all the wind meant yesterday--?Yea! wiser he, when the day ends,?Who shared it with those four strange friends.
THE COUNTRY GODS
I dwell, with all things great and fair:?The