The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 6

green earth and the lustral air,?The sacred spaces of the sea,?Day in, day out, companion me.?Pure-faced, pure-thoughted, folk are mine?With whom to sit and laugh and dine;?In every sunlit room is heard?Love singing, like an April bird,?And everywhere the moonlit eyes?Of beauty guard our paradise;?While, at the ending of the day,?To the kind country gods we pray,?And dues of our fair living pay.
Thus, when, reluctant, to the town?I go, with country sunshine brown,?So small and strange all seems to me--?the boonfellow of the sea--?That these town-people say and be:?Their insect lives, their insect talk,?Their busy little insect walk,?Their busy little insect stings--?And all the while the sea-weed swings?Against the rock, and the wide roar?Rises foam-lipped along the shore.?Ah! then how good my life I know,?How good it is each day to go?Where the great voices call, and where?The eternal rhythms flow and flow.?In that august companionship,?The subtle poisoned words that drip,?With guileless guile, from friendly lip,?The lie that flits from ear to ear,?Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear;?Nor shall you fear your heart to say,?Lest he who listens shall betray.
The man who hearkens all day long?To the sea's cosmic-thoughted song?Comes with purged ears to lesser speech,?And something of the skyey reach?Greatens the gaze that feeds on space;?The starlight writes upon his face?That bathes in starlight, and the morn?Chrisms with dew, when day is born,?The eyes that drink the holy light?Welling from the deep springs of night.
And so--how good to catch the train?Back to the country gods again.
III
TO ONE ON A JOURNEY
Why did you go away without one word,?Wave of the hand, or token of good-bye,?Nor leave some message for me with flower or bird,?Some sign to find you by;
Some stray of blossom on the winter road,?To know your feet had gone that very way,?Told me the star that points to your abode,?And tossed me one faint ray
To climb from out the night where now I
dwell--?Or, seemed it best for you to go alone?To heaven, as alone I go to hell?Upon the four winds blown.
HER PORTRAIT IMMORTAL
Must I believe this beauty wholly gone?That in her picture here so deathless seems,?And must I henceforth speak of her as one?Tells of some face of legend or of dreams,?Still here and there remembered--scarce believed,?Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.
So beautiful she--was; ah! "was," say I,?Yet doubt her dead--I did not see her die.?Only by others borne across the sea?Came the incredible wild blasphemy?They called her death--as though it could be true?Of such an immortality as you!
True of these eyes that from her picture gaze,?Serene, star-steadfast, as the heaven's own eyes;?Of that deep bosom, white as hawthorn sprays,?Where my world-weary head forever lies;?True of these quiet hands, so marble-cool,?Still on her lap as lilies on a pool.
Must I believe her dead--that this sweet clay,?That even from her picture breathes perfume,?Was carried on a fiery wind away,?Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb;?This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust?'Mid all her dainty treasure--is this dust!
Once such a dewy marvel of a girl,?Warm as the sun, and ivory as the moon;?All gone of her, all lost--except this curl?Saved from her head one summer afternoon,?Tied with a little ribbon from her breast--?This only mine, and Death's now all the rest.
Must I believe it true! Bid me not go?Where on her grave the English violets blow;?Nay, leave me--if a dream, indeed, it be--?Still in my dream that she is somewhere she,?Silent, as was her wont. It is a lie--?She is not dead--I did not see her die.
SPRING'S PROMISES
When the spring comes again, will you be there??Three springs I watched and waited for your face,?And listened for your voice upon the air;?I sought for you in many a hidden place,?Saying, "She must be there."
"Surely some magic slumber holds her fast,?She whose blue eyes were morning's earliest flowers,"?I sighed: and, one by one, before me passed?The rainbowed daughters of the vernal showers,?Saying, "She comes at last."
Ah! broken promise of the world! how fair?You speak young hearts! In many a wanton word?Of lyric April, each succeeding year,?By risen flower, and the returning bird,?You vowed to bring back her.
And now the flutes are in the trees once more,?The violets breathe up through the melting snow,?Old Earth throws open wide her grassy door--?As if there were no violets long ago,?Or any birds before.
"APRIL IS IN THE WORLD AGAIN"
April is in the world again,?And all the world is filled with flowers--?Flowers for others, not for me!?For my one flower I cannot see,?Lost in the April showers.
I cannot wake her, though I sing,?And all the birds, for her dear sake,?Fill with their songs the wintry brake;?Ah! could they make her rise again,?What resurrection would be mine!?Is she too tired to help the sun?And all the little stars to shine?
"SINGING GO I"
Singing go I, seeking for ever a song?Sung long ago; I ask no