The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 7

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 more to
hear
Her voice that sang--for I should do her wrong,
Had I the
power, to bring her once more near--
Near to the earth, its sorrow or its joy,
To drag her back into the arms
of pain
And Love and all the April flowers again
And all her little
dreams of heaven destroy.
Have I the heart? Ah! had I but the song,
The nightingale would
listen and all things
That talk in waterfalls and trees and strings

Would hush themselves to listen as I sang,
Had I the song.
"WHO WAS IT SWEPT AGAINST MY DOOR"
Who was it swept against my door just now,
With rustling robes like
Autumn's--was it thou?
Ah! would it were thy gown against my
door--
Only thy gown once more.
Sometimes the snow, sometimes the fluttering breath
Of April, as
toward May she wandereth,
Make me a moment think that it is thou--


But yet it is not thou!
"FACE IN THE TOMB THAT LIES SO STILL"
Face in the tomb, that lies so still,
May I draw near,
And watch
your sleep and love you,
Without word or tear.
You smile, your eyelids flicker;
Shall I tell
How the world goes that
lost you?
Shall I tell?
Ah! love, lift not your eyelids;
'Tis the same
Old story that we
laughed at,--
Still the same.
We knew it, you and I,
We knew it all:
Still is the small the great,

The great the small;
Still the cold lie quenches
The flaming truth,
And still embattled
age
Wars against youth.
Yet I believe still in the ever-living God
That fills your grave with
perfume,
Writing your name in violets across the sod,
Shielding
your holy face from hail and snow;
And, though the withered stay,
the lovely go,
No transitory wrong or wrath of things
Shatters the
faith--that each slow minute brings
That meadow nearer to us where your feet
Shall flicker near me like
white butterflies--
That meadow where immortal lovers meet,

Gazing for ever in immortal eyes.
"I KNOW NOT IN WHAT PLACE"
I know not in what place again I'll meet
The face I love--but there is
not a street
In the wide world where you can wander, sweet,

Without my finding you, with those great eyes;
Nor is there any star
in all the skies
Can give you shelter from my pitiless love.

RESURRECTION
Is it your face I see, your voice I hear?
Your face, your voice, again
after these years!
O is your cheek once more against my cheek?

And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?
You have come back,--how strange--out of the grave;
Its dreams are
in your eyes, and still there clings
Dust of the grave on your
vainglorious hair;
And a mysterious rust is on these rings--
The ring we gave each other, that young night
When the moon rose
on our betrothal kiss;
When the sun rose upon our wedding day,

How wonderful it was to give you this!
I dreamed you were a bird or a wild flower,
Some changed lovely
thing that was not you;
Maybe, I said, she is the morning star,
A
radiance unfathomably far--
And now again you are so strangely near!
Your face, your voice,
again after these years!
Is it your face I see, your voice I hear,
And
is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?
"WHEN THE LONG DAY HAS FADED"
When the long day has faded to its end,
The flowers gone, and all the
singing done,
And there is no companion left save Death--
Ah!
there is one,
Though in her grave she lies this many a year,
Will
send a violet made of her blue eyes,
A flowering whisper of her April
breath,
Up through the sleeping grass to comfort me,
And in the
April rain her tears shall fall.
"HER EYES ARE BLUEBELLS NOW"
Her eyes are bluebells now, her voice a bird,
And the long sighing
grass her elegy;
She who a woman was is now a star
In the high
heaven shining down on