In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled in my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils?

The panther wind
Leaps out of the night,
The snake of lightning
Is twisting and white,
The lion of thunder
Roars—and we
Sit still and content
Under a tree —
We have met fate together
And love and pain,
Why should we fear
The wrath of the rain!

Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,
When I came home again from far-off places,
How many times I saw my western city
Dream by her river.

Then for an hour the water wore a mantle
Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise
Under the tall and darkened arches bearing
Gray, high-flung bridges.

Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples
Flickered with fire up the ***** to westward,
And old warehouses poured their purple shadows
Across the levee.

High over them the black train swept with thunder,
Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it
Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers
Resting in twilight.

I love my hour of wind and light,
   I love men’s faces and their eyes,
I love my spirit’s veering flight
   Like swallows under evening skies.

Night is over the park, and a few brave stars
Look on the lights that link it with chains of gold,
The lake bears up their reflection in broken bars
That seem too heavy for tremulous water to hold.

We watch the swans that sleep in a shadowy place,
And now and again one wakes and uplifts its head;
How still you are— your gaze is on my face—
We watch the swans and never a word is said.

I said, “I will take my life
   And throw it away;
I who was fire and song
   Will turn to clay.”

“I will lie no more in the night
   With shaken breath,
I will toss my heart in the air
   To be caught by Death.”

But out of the night I heard,
   Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
   Of all humanity.

Then I said, “Oh who am I
   To scorn God to his face?
I will bow my head and stay
   And suffer with my race.”

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

“Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion,
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy;
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her—
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy.”

The birds are all a-building,
They say the world’s a-flower,
And still I linger lonely
Within a barren bower.

I weave a web of fancies
Of tears and darkness spun.
How shall I sing of sunlight
Who never saw the sun?

I hear the pipes a-blowing,
But yet I may not dance,
I know that Love is passing,
I cannot catch his glance.

And if his voice should call me
And I with groping dim
Should reach his place of calling
And stretch my arms to him,

The wind would blow between my hands
For Joy that I shall miss,
The rain would fall upon my mouth
That his will never kiss.

My soul is a dark ploughed field
In the cold rain;
My soul is a broken field
Ploughed by pain.

Where grass and bending flowers
Were growing,
The field lies broken now
For another sowing.

Great Sower when you tread
My field again,
Scatter the furrows there
With better grain.

The summer dawn came over-soon,
The earth was like hot iron at noon
         In Nazareth;
There fell no rain to ease the heat,
And dusk drew on with tired feet
         And stifled breath.

The shop was low and hot and square,
And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air,
         While all day long
The saw went tearing thru the oak
That moaned as tho’ the tree’s heart broke
         Beneath its wrong.

The narrow street was full of cries,
Of bickering and snarling lies
         In many keys—
The tongues of Egypt and of Rome
And lands beyond the shifting foam
         Of windy seas.

Sometimes a ruler riding fast
Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,
         And drove them close
In doorways, drawing broken breath
Lest they be trampled to their death
         Where the dust rose.

There in the gathering night and noise
A group of Galilean boys
         Crowding to see
Gray Joseph toiling with his son,
Saw Jesus, when the task was done,
         Turn wearily.

He passed them by with hurried tread
Silently, nor raised his head,
         He who looked up
Drinking all beauty from his birth
Out of the heaven and the earth
         As from a cup.

And Mary, who was growing old,
Knew that the pottage would be cold
         When he returned;
He hungered only for the night,
And westward, bending sharp and bright,
         The thin moon burned.

He reached the open western gate
Where whining halt and ***** wait,
         And came at last
To the blue desert, where the deep
Great seas of twilight lay asleep,
         Windless and vast.

With shining eyes the stars awoke,
The dew lay heavy on his cloak,
         The world was dim;
And in the stillness he could hear
His secret thoughts draw very near
         And call to him.

Faint voices lifted shrill with pain
And multitudinous as rain;
         From all the lands
And all the villages thereof
Men crying for the gift of love
         With outstretched hands.

Voices that called with ceaseless crying,
The broken and the blind, the dying,
         And those grown dumb
Beneath oppression, and he heard
Upon their lips a single word,
         “Come!”

Their cries engulfed him like the night,
The moon put out her placid light
         And black and low
Nearer the heavy thunder drew,
Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew
         That he would go.

A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,
And for a flash the day returns—
         He only hears
Joseph, an old man bent and white
Toiling alone from morn till night
         Thru all the years.

Swift clouds make all the heavens blind,
A storm is running on the wind—
         He only sees
How Mary will stretch out her hands
Sobbing, who never understands
         Voices like these.

I am a cloud in the heaven’s height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea—
But why do the pines on the mountain’s crest
Call to me always, “Rest, rest”?

I throw my mantle over the moon
And I blind the sun on his throne at noon,
Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,
I am a child of the heartless wind—
But oh the pines on the mountain’s crest
Whispering always, “Rest, rest.”

Into my heart’s treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin, —
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.

The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;

If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.

The faery forest glimmered
Beneath an ivory moon,
The silver grasses shimmered
Against a faery tune.

Beneath the silken silence
The crystal branches slept,
And dreaming thro’ the dew-fall
The cold white blossoms wept.

Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain—
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?

Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home;
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door—
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?

Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone.
The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred—
Only the great white moon
In the empty heaven heard.
The fountain sang and sang
And on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
Their dreams were strange and dim.
Bright dew was on the grass,
And on the ilex dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
Were all a-glisten too.
The fountain sang and sang
The things one cannot tell,
The dreaming peacocks stirred
And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain —
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten —
After the stillness, will spring come again?

I went back to the clanging city,
I went back where my old loves stayed,
But my heart was full of my new love’s glory,
My eyes were laughing and unafraid.

I met one who had loved me madly
And told his love for all to hear—
But we talked of a thousand things together,
The past was buried too deep to fear.

I met the other, whose love was given
With never a kiss and scarcely a word—
Oh, it was then the terror took me
Of words unuttered that breathed and stirred.

Oh, love that lives its life with laughter
Or love that lives its life with tears
Can die—but love that is never spoken
Goes like a ghost through the winding years. . . .

I went back to the clanging city,
I went back where my old loves stayed,
My heart was full of my new love’s glory,—
But my eyes were suddenly afraid.

You bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
And sent me under sun and stars,
For all the world was mine.

Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.

Here in the velvet stillness
The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,
Sleeping in starlight. . . .


A year ago we walked in the jangling city
Together . . . . forgetful.
One by one we crossed the avenues,
Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,
And came to the narrow, knotted streets.
Thru the tense crowd
We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,
Unconscious of our motion.
Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes
Passed us and passed.
Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,
I forgot them all;
I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,
Sure and elated.

That was the gift you gave me. . . .

The streets grew still more tangled,
And led at last to water black and glossy,
Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.
There on a shabby building was a sign
“The India Wharf ” . . . and we turned back.

I always felt we could have taken ship
And crossed the bright green seas
To dreaming cities set on sacred streams
And palaces
Of ivory and scarlet.

I came to the crowded Inn of Earth,
   And called for a cup of wine,
But the Host went by with averted eye
   From a thirst as keen as mine.

Then I sat down with weariness
   And asked a bit of bread,
But the Host went by with averted eye
   And never a word he said.

While always from the outer night
   The waiting souls came in
With stifled cries of sharp surprise
   At all the light and din.

“Then give me a bed to sleep,” I said,
   “For midnight comes apace”—
But the Host went by with averted eye
And I never saw his face.

“Since there is neither food nor rest,
   I go where I fared before”—
But the Host went by with averted eye
   And barred the outer door.

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For tho’ I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For tho’ I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,
I shall not fear the everlasting shadows,
    Nor cry in terror.

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
    A lamp in darkness.

The lightning spun your garment for the night
   Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,
   A broidery of lamps that lit for you
The steadfast splendor of enduring light.
The moon drifts dimly in the heaven’s height,
   Watching with wonder how the earth she knew
   That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,
Should wear upon her breast a star so white.
The festivals of Babylon were dark
   With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down;
The Saturnalia were a wild boy’s lark
   With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town—
But you have found a god and filched from him
A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.

I must have passed the crest a while ago
And now I am going down —
Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.

All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me —
But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.

It was nearly level along the beaten track
And the brambles caught in my gown —
But it’s no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

We walked together in the dusk
To watch the tower grow dimly white,
And saw it lift against the sky
Its flower of amber light.

You talked of half a hundred things,
I kept each little word you said;
And when at last the hour was full,
I saw the light turn red.

You did not know the time had come,
You did not see the sudden flower,
Nor know that in my heart Love’s birth
Was reckoned from that hour.

She is too kind, I think, for mortal things,
Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth;
God gave to her a shy and silver mirth,
And made her soul as clear
And softly singing as an orchard spring’s
In sheltered hollows all the sunny year—
A spring that thru the leaning grass looks up
And holds all heaven in its clarid cup,
Mirror to holy meadows high and blue
With stars like drops of dew.

I love to think that never tears at night
Have made her eyes less bright;
That all her girlhood thru
Never a cry of love made over-tense
Her voice’s innocence;
That in her hands have lain,
Flowers beaten by the rain,
And little birds before they learned to sing
Drowned in the sudden ecstasy of spring.

I love to think that with a wistful wonder
She held her baby warm against her breast;
That never any fear awoke whereunder
She shuddered at her gift, or trembled lest
Thru the great doors of birth
Here to a windy earth
She lured from heaven a half-unwilling guest.

She caught and kept his first vague flickering smile,
The faint upleaping of his spirit’s fire;
And for a long sweet while
In her was all he asked of earth or heaven—
But in the end how far,
Past every shaken star,
Should leap at last that arrow-like desire,
His full-grown manhood’s keen
Ardor toward the unseen
Dark mystery beyond the Pleiads seven.
And in her heart she heard
His first dim-spoken word—
She only of them all could understand,
Flushing to feel at last
The silence over-past,
Thrilling as tho’ her hand had touched God’s hand.
But in the end how many words
Winged on a flight she could not follow,
Farther than skyward lark or swallow,
His lips should free to lands she never knew;
Braver than white sea-faring birds
With a fearless melody,
Flying over a shining sea,
A star-white song between the blue and blue.

Oh I have seen a lake as clear and fair
As it were molten air,
Lifting a lily upward to the sun.
How should the water know the glowing heart
That ever to the heaven lifts its fire,
A golden and unchangeable desire?
The water only knows
The faint and rosy glows
Of under-petals, opening apart.
Yet in the soul of earth,
Deep in the primal ground,
Its searching roots are wound,
And centuries have struggled toward its birth.
So, in the man who sings,
All of the voiceless horde
From the cold dawn of things
Have their reward;
All in whose pulses ran
Blood that is his at last,
From the first stooping man
Far in the winnowed past.
Out of the tumult of their love and mating
Each one created, seeing life was good—
Dumb, till at last the song that they were waiting
Breaks like brave April thru a wintry wood.

Your eyes drink of me,
Love makes them shine,
Your eyes that lean
So close to mine.

We have long been lovers,
We know the range
Of each other’s moods
And how they change;

But when we look
At each other so
Then we feel
How little we know;

The spirit eludes us,
Timid and free —
Can I ever know you
Or you know me?

I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are —
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.

Day, you have bruised and beaten me,
As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,
Beaten my body, bruised my soul,
Left me nothing lovely or whole —
Yet I have wrested a gift from you,
Day that dies in dusky blue:

For suddenly over the factories
I saw a moon in the cloudy seas —
A wisp of beauty all alone
In a world as hard and gray as stone —
Oh who could be bitter and want to die
When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

The days remember and the nights remember
The kingly hours that once you made so great,
Deep in my heart they lie, hidden in their splendor,
Buried like sovereigns in their robes of state.

Let them not wake again, better to lie there,
Wrapped in memories, jewelled and arrayed —
Many a ghostly king has waked from death-sleep
And found his crown stolen and his throne decayed.

I saw her in a Broadway car,
   The woman I might grow to be;
I felt my lover look at her
   And then turn suddenly to me.

Her hair was dull and drew no light
   And yet its color was as mine;
Her eyes were strangely like my eyes
   Tho’ love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin,
   Hungry for love that never came;
Her soul was frozen in the dark
   Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.

I felt my lover look at her
   And then turn suddenly to me,—
His eyes were magic to defy
   The woman I shall never be.

Hope went by and Peace went by
   And would not enter in;
Youth went by and Health went by
   And Love that is their kin.

Those within the house shed tears
   On their bitter bread;
Some were old and some were mad,
   And some were sick a-bed.

Gray Death saw the wretched house
   And even he passed by—
“They have never lived,” he said,
   “They can wait to die.”

My answered prayer came up to me,
And in the silence thus spake he:
“O you who prayed for me to come,
Your greeting is but cold and dumb.”

My heart made answer:  “You are fair,
But I have prayed too long to care.
Why came you not when all was new,
And I had died for joy of you.”

I

The Princess sings:

I am the princess up in the tower
And I dream the whole day thro’
Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear
And a waving plume of blue.

I am the princess up in the tower,
And I dream my dreams by day,
But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,
When the dusk is deep and gray.

For the peasant lovers go by beneath,
I hear them laugh and kiss,
And I forget my day-dream knight,
And long for a love like this.

  II

The Minstrel sings:

I lie beside the princess’ tower,
So close she cannot see my face,
And watch her dreaming all day long,
And bending with a lily’s grace.

Her cheeks are paler than the moon
That sails along a sunny sky,
And yet her silent mouth is red
Where tender words and kisses lie.

I am a minstrel with a harp,
For love of her my songs are sweet,
And yet I dare not lift the voice
That lies so far beneath her feet.

  III

The Knight sings:

O princess cease your dreams awhile
And look adown your tower’s gray side—
The princess gazes far away,
Nor hears nor heeds the words I cried.

Perchance my heart was overbold,
God made her dreams too pure to break,
She sees the angels in the air
Fly to and fro for Mary’s sake.

Farewell, I mount and go my way,
—But oh her hair the sun sifts thro’—
The tilts and tourneys wait my spear,
I am the Knight of the Plume of Blue.

I turned the key and opened wide the door
To enter my deserted room again,
Where thro’ the long hot months the dust had lain.
Was it not lonely when across the floor
No step was heard, no sudden song that bore
My whole heart upward with a joyous pain?
Were not the pictures and the volumes fain
To have me with them always as before?
But Giorgione’s Venus did not deign
To lift her lids, nor did the subtle smile
Of Mona Lisa deepen.  Madeleine
Still wept against the glory of her hair,
Nor did the lovers part their lips the while,
But kissed unheeding that I watched them there.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

I came from the sunny valleys
   And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
   My peace would come to me.

I came at last to the ocean
   And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
   “Be kind and take me back!”

But the thirsty tide ran inland,
   And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
   Am bitter as the sea.

Beneath my chamber window
Pierrot was singing, singing;
I heard his lute the whole night thru
      Until the east was red.
Alas, alas Pierrot,
I had no rose for flinging
Save one that drank my tears for dew
      Before its leaves were dead.
I found it in the darkness,
I kissed it once and threw it,
The petals scattered over him,
      His song was turned to joy;
And he will never know—
Alas, the one who knew it!
The rose was plucked when dusk was dim
      Beside a laughing boy.

If I were a bee and you were a rose,
Would you let me in when the gray wind blows?
Would you hold your petals wide apart,
Would you let me in to find your heart,
    If you were a rose?

“If I were a rose and you were a bee,
You should never go when you came to me,
I should hold my love on my heart at last,
I should close my leaves and keep you fast,
    If you were a bee.”

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

I am a pool in a peaceful place,
I greet the great sky face to face,
I know the stars and the stately moon
And the wind that runs with rippling shoon—
But why does it always bring to me
The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea?

The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green,
But the wind comes whispering in between,
In the dead of night when the sky is deep
The wind comes waking me out of sleep—
Why does it always bring to me
The far-off, terrible call of the sea?

There is no lord within my heart,
Left silent as an empty shrine
Where rose and myrtle intertwine,
Within a place apart.

No god is there of carven stone
To watch with still approving eyes
My thoughts like steady incense rise;
I dream and weep alone.

But if I keep my altar fair,
Some morning I shall lift my head
From roses deftly garlanded
To find the god is there.

(In Memory of J. W. T. Jr.)

He was a soldier in that fight
Where there is neither flag nor drum,
And without sound of musketry
The stealthy foemen come.

Year in, year out, by day and night
They forced him to a slow retreat,
And for his gallant fight alone
No fife was blown, and no drum beat.

In winter fog, in gathering mist
The gray grim battle had its end—
And at the very last we knew
His enemy had turned his friend.

I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.

Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, “She sings for me,”
But Colin slept a careless sleep
Beneath an apple tree.

I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.

I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.

For while I sang—ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.

A white star born in the evening glow
Looked to the round green world below,
And saw a pool in a wooded place
That held like a jewel her mirrored face.
She said to the pool: “Oh, wondrous deep,
I love you, I give you my light to keep.
Oh, more profound than the moving sea
That never has shown myself to me!
Oh, fathomless as the sky is far,
Hold forever your tremulous star!”

But out of the woods as night grew cool
A brown pig came to the little pool;
It grunted and splashed and waded in
And the deepest place but reached its chin.
The water gurgled with tender glee
And the mud churned up in it turbidly.

The star grew pale and hid her face
In a bit of floating cloud like lace.

I thought of you when I was wakened
By a wind that made me glad and afraid
Of the rushing, pouring sound of the sea
That the great trees made.

One thought in my mind went over and over
While the darkness shook and the leaves were thinned —
I thought it was you who had come to find me,
You were the wind.