The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 4

feet,
So like a garden her soft breath,
So
sweet the smile upon her face,
She charms the very heart of death.
The young moon in a trance she holds
Captive in clouds of orchard
bloom,
She snaps her fingers at the grave,
And laughs into the face
of doom.
Yet in her gladness lurks a fear,
In all her mirth there breathes a sigh,

So soon her pretty flowers are gone--
And ah! she is too young to
die!
MAY IS BUILDING HER HOUSE
May is building her house. With apple blooms
She is roofing over the
glimmering rooms;
Of the oak and the beech hath she 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