The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 8

song?Sweet as the silence?Round about the Rose.?Ah, something goes,?Fails, and is lost in speech?That silence knows.?How should I speak?The hush about my heart?That holds your name?Shrined in a burning core?Of central flame,?Like names of seraphim?Mystically writ on cloud??To speak your name aloud?Were to unhallow?Such a holy thing;?Therefore I bring?To your white feet?And your immortal eyes?Silence forever,?But in such a wise?Am silent as the quiet waters are,?Hiding some holy star?Amid hushed lilies?In a secret lake.?Ah, if a ripple break?The stillness halcyon--?The star is gone!
"AT LAST I GOT A LETTER FROM THE DEAD"
At last I got a letter from the dead,?And out of it there fell a little flower,--?The violet of an unforgotten hour.
IV
SONGS FOR FRAGOLETTA
I
Fragoletta, blessed one,?What think you of the light of the sun??Do you think the dark was best,?Lying snug in mother's breast??Ah! I knew that sweetness, too,?Fragoletta, before you!?But, Fragoletta, now you're born,?You must learn to love the morn,?Love the lovely working light,?Love the miracle of sight,?Love the thousand things to do--?Little girl, I envy you!--?Love the thousand things to see,?Love your mother, and--love me!?And some night, Fragoletta, soon,?I'll take you out to see the moon;?And for the first time, child of ours,?You shall--think of it!--look on flowers,?And smell them, too, if you are good,?And hear the green leaves in the wood?Talking, talking, all together?In the happy windy weather;?And if the journey's not too far?For little limbs so lately made,?Limb upon limb like petals laid,?We'll go and picnic in a star.
II
Blue eyes looking up at me,?I wonder what you really see,?Lying in your cradle there,?Fragrant as a branch of myrrh.?Helpless little hands and feet,?O so helpless! O so sweet!?Tiny tongue that cannot talk,?Tiny feet that cannot walk,?Nothing of you that can do?Aught, except those eyes of blue.?How they open, how they close!?Eyelids of the baby-rose,?Open and shut, so blue, so wise,?Baby-eyelids, baby-eyes.
III
That, Fragoletta, is the rain?Beating upon the window-pane;?But lo! the golden sun appears,?To kiss away the window's tears.?That, Fragoletta, is the wind?That rattles so the window-blind;?And yonder shining thing's a star,?Blue eyes,--you seem ten times as far.?That, Fragoletta, is a bird?That speaks, yet never says a word;?Upon a cherry-tree it sings,?Simple as all mysterious things;?Its little life to peck and pipe?As long as cherries ripe and ripe,?And minister unto the need?Of baby-birds that feed and feed.?This, Fragoletta, is a flower,?Open and fragrant for an hour,?A flower, a transitory thing,?Each petal fleeting as a wing,?All a May morning blows and blows,?And then for everlasting goes.
IV
Blue eyes, against the whiteness pressed?Of little mother's hallowed breast,?The while your trembling lips are fed,?Look up at mother's bended head,?All benediction over you--?blue eyes looking into blue!?Fragoletta is so small,?We wonder that she lives at all--?Tiny alabaster girl,?Hardly bigger than a pearl;?That is why we take such care,?Lest someone runs away with her.
V
A BALLAD OF WOMAN?_(Gratefully Dedicated to Mrs. Pankhurst_)
She bore us in her dreaming womb,?And laughed into the face of Death;?She laughed, in her strange agony,--?To give her little baby breath.
Then, by some holy mystery,?She fed us from her sacred breast,?Soothed us with little birdlike words--?To rest--to rest--to rest--to rest;
Yea, softly fed us with her life--?Her bosom like the world in May:?Can it be true that men, thus fed,?Feed women--as I hear them say?
Long ere we grew to girl and boy,?She sewed the little things we wore,?And smiled unto herself for joy--?Mysterious Portress of the Door.
Shall she who bore the son of God,?And made the rose of Sappho's song,?She who saved France, and beat the drum?Of freedom, brook this vulgar wrong?
I wonder if such men as these?Had once a sister with blue eyes,?Kind as the soothing hand of God,?And as the quiet heaven wise.
I wonder if they ever saw?A soldier lying on a bed?On some lone battle-field, and watched?Some holy woman bind his head.
I wonder if they ever walked,?Lost in a black and weary land,?And suddenly a flower came?And took them softly by the hand.
I wonder if they ever heard?The silver scream, in some grey morn,?High in a lit and listening tower,?Because a man-child then was born.
I wonder if they ever saw?A woman's hair, or in her eye?Read the eternal mystery--?Or ever saw a woman die.
I wonder, when all friends had gone,--?The gay companions, the brave men--?If in some fragile girl they found?Their only stay and comrade then.
She who thus went through flaming hell?To make us, put into our clay?All that there is of heaven, shall she--?Mother and sister, wife and fay,--
Have no part in the world she made--?Serf of the rainbow, vassal flower--?Save knitting in the afternoon,?And rocking cradles, hour by hour!
AN EASTER HYMN
Spake the Lord Christ--"I will arise."?It seemed a saying void and vain--?How shall a dead man rise again!--?Vain as our tears, vain as our cries.?Not one of all the little band?That loved Him this might understand.
"I will arise"--Lord Jesus said.?Hearken, amid the morning dew,?Mary, a voice that calleth