The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 3

way,
Alive, 'gainst
expectation and desire,
And, being then past twenty, I beheld
The
face of all the faces of the world
Dewily opening on its stem for me.

Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,
Thus hath some
woman blossom of the divine
Flowered in my path, and made a frail
delay
In my true journey--to my home in thee.

October 27, 1911.
II
TO A BIRD AT DAWN
O bird that somewhere yonder sings,
In the dim hour 'twixt dreams
and dawn,
Lone in the hush of sleeping things,
In some sky
sanctuary withdrawn;
Your perfect song is too like pain,
And will
not let me sleep again.
I think you must be more than bird,
A little creature of soft wings,

Not yours this deep and thrilling word--
Some morning planet 'tis that
sings;
Surely from no small feathered throat
Wells that august,
eternal note.
As some old language of the dead,
In one resounding syllable,
Says
Rome and Greece and all is said--
A simple word a child may spell;

So in your liquid note impearled
Sings the long epic of the world.
Unfathomed sweetness of your song,
With ancient anguish at its core,

What womb of elemental wrong,
With shudder unimagined, bore

Peace so divine--what hell hath trod
This voice that softly talks
with God!
All silence in one silver flower
Of speech that speaks not, save as
speaks
The moon in heaven, yet hath power
To tell the soul the
thing it seeks.
And pack, as by some wizard's art,
The whole within
the finite part.
To you, sweet bird, one well might feign--
With such authority you
sing
So clear, yet so profound, a strain
Into the simple ear of
spring--
Some secret understanding given
Of the hid purposes of
Heaven.
And all my life until this day,
And all my life until I die,
All joy and

sorrow of the way,
Seem calling yonder in the sky;
And there is
something the song saith
That makes me unafraid of death.
Now the slow light fills all the trees,
The world, before so still and
strange,
With day's familiar presences,
Back to its common self
must change,
And little gossip shapes of song
The porches of the
morning throng.
Not yours with such as these to vie
That of the day's small business
sing,
Voice of man's heart and of God's sky--
But O you make so
deep a thing
Of joy, I dare not think of pain
Until I hear you sing
again.
ALMA VENUS
Only a breath--hardly a breath! The shore
Is still a huddled alabaster
floor
Of shelving ice and shattered slabs of cold,
Stern wreckage of
the fiercely frozen wave,
Gleaming in mailed wastes of white and
gold;
As though the sea, in an enchanted grave,
Of fearful crystal
locked, no more shall stir
Softly, all lover, to the April moon:

Hardly a breath! yet was I now aware
Of a most delicate balm upon
the air,
Almost a voice that almost whispered "soon"!
Not of the earth it was--no living thing
Moves in the iron landscape
far or near,
Saving, in raucous flight, the winter crow,
Staining the
whiteness with its ebon wing,
Or silver-sailing gull, or 'mid the drear

Rock cedars, like a summer soul astray,
A lone red squirrel makes
believe to play,
Nibbling the frozen snow.
Not of the earth, that hath not scent nor song,
Nor hope of aught, nor
memory, nor dream,
Nor any speech upon its sullen tongue,
Nor
any liberty of running stream;
Not of the earth, that hath forgot to
smile;
But, strangely wafted o'er the frozen sea,
As from some
hidden Cytherean isle,
Veil within veil, the sweetness came to me.

Beyond the heaving glitter of the floe,
The free blue water sparkles to
the sky,
Losing itself in brightness; to and fro
Long bands of mists
trail luminously by,
And, as behind a screen, on the sea's rim
Hid
softnesses of sunshine come and go,
And shadowy coasts in sudden
glory swim--
O land made out of distance and desire!--
With ports
of mystic pearl and crests of fire.
Thence, somewhere in the spaces of the sea,
Travelled this halcyon
breath presaging Spring;
Over the water even now secretly
She
maketh ready in her hands to bring
Blossom and blade and wing;

And soon the wave shall ripple with her feet,
And her wild hair be
blown about the skies,
And with her bosom all the world grow sweet,
And blue with the
sea-blue of her deep eyes
The meadow, like another sea, shall flower,

And all the earth be song and singing shower;
While watching, in
some hollow of the grass
By the sea's edge, I may behold her stand,

With rosy feet, upon the yellow sand,
Pause in a dream, and to the
woodland pass.
"AH! DID YOU EVER HEAR THE SPRING"
Ah! did you ever hear the Spring
Calling you through the snow,
Or
hear the little blackbird sing
Inside its egg--or go
To that green land
where grass begins,
Each tiny seed, to grow?
O have you heard what none has heard,
Or seen what none has seen;

O have you been to that strange land
Where no one else has been!
APRIL
April, half-clad in flowers and showers,
Walks, like a blossom, o'er
the land;
She smiles at May, and laughing takes
The rain and
sunshine hand in hand.

So gay the dancing of her