How many million Aprils came

Before I ever knew

How white a cherry bough could be,

A bed of squills, how blue!

And many a dancing April

When life is done with me,

Will lift the blue flame of the flower

And the white flame of the tree.

Oh burn me with your beauty, then,

Oh hurt me, tree and flower,

Lest in the end death try to take

Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,

O sunlit white and blue,

Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,

May bear the scar of you.

Stars

Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head,

White and topaz

And misty red;

Myriads with beating

Hearts of fire

That aeons

Cannot vex or tire;

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill,

I watch them marching

Stately and still,

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness

Of so much majesty.

What Do I Care?

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,

That my songs do not show me at all?

For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,

I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,

Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,

For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,

It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

Meadowlarks

In the silver light after a storm,

Under dripping boughs of bright new green,

I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks

Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.

What have I to fear in life or death

Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,

The white flying joy when a song is born,

And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.

Driftwood

My forefathers gave me

My spirit's shaken flame,

The shape of hands, the beat of heart,

The letters of my name.

But it was my lovers,

And not my sleeping sires,

Who gave the flame its changeful

And iridescent fires;

As the driftwood burning

Learned its jewelled blaze

From the sea's blue splendor

Of colored nights and days.

I Have Loved Hours at Sea"

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,

The fragile secret of a flower,

Music, the making of a poem

That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,

Voices of people kindly and wise,

And the great look of love, long hidden,

Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --

Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,

Leave me the darkness and the stillness,

I shall be tired and glad to go.

August Moonrise

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming

Over the blue Connecticut hills;

The west was rosy, the east was flushed,

And over my head the swallows rushed

This way and that, with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart

Now together and now apart

Like dark petals blown from a tree;

The maples stamped against the west

Were black and stately and full of rest,

And the hazy orange moon grew up

And slowly changed to yellow gold

While the hills were darkened, fold on fold

To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

Down the hill I went, and then

I forgot the ways of men,

For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool

Wakened ecstasy in me

On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup

You have made me drunk and wild

Ever since I was a child,

But when have I been sure as now

That no bitterness can bend

And no sorrow wholly bow

One who loves you to the end?

And though I must give my breath

And my laughter all to death,

And my eyes through which joy came,

And my heart, a wavering flame;

If all must leave me and go back

Along a blind and fearful track

So that you can make anew,

Fusing with intenser fire,

Something nearer your desire;

If my soul must go alone

Through a cold infinity,

Or even if it vanish, too,

Beauty, I have worshipped you.

Let this single hour atone

For the theft of all of me.

Places I love come back to me like music,

Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;

I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming

In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;

And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley

As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.

I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,

A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,

The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle

Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,

And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust

With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.

Violet now, in veil on veil of evening

The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;

A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol

In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;

The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers

And heaven is lighting star after star.

Places I love come back to me like music --

Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily;

In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence

Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,

And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,

At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.

Old Tunes

As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,

Float in the garden when no wind blows,

Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;

So the old tunes float in my mind,

And go from me leaving no trace behind,

Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.

But in the instant the airs remain

I know the laughter and the pain

Of times that will not come again.

I try to catch at many a tune

Like petals of light fallen from the moon,

Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,

But they float away -- for who can hold

Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?

Only In Sleep

Only in sleep I see their faces,

Children I played with when I was a child,

Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,

Annie with ringlets warm and wild.

Only in sleep Time is forgotten --

What may have come to them, who can know?

Yet we played last night as long ago,

And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.

The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,

I met their eyes and found them mild --

Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,

And for them am I too a child?

Redbirds

Redbirds, redbirds,

Long and long ago,

What a honey-call you had

In hills I used to know;

Redbud, buckberry,

Wild plum-tree

And proud river sweeping

Southward to the sea,

Brown and gold in the sun

Sparkling far below,

Trailing stately round her bluffs

Where the poplars grow --

Redbirds, redbirds,

Are you singing still

As you sang one May day

On Saxton's Hill?

Sunset: Saint Louis

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 slope 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.

The Coin

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 Voice

Atoms as old as stars,

Mutation on mutation,

Millions and millions of cells

Dividing yet still the same,

From air and changing earth,

From ancient Eastern rivers,

From turquoise tropic seas,

Unto myself I came.

My spirit like my flesh

Sprang from a thousand sources,

From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,

From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;

The living thoughts in me

Spring from dead men and women,

Forgotten time out of mind

And many as bubbles of foam.

Here for a moment's space

Into the light out of darkness,

I come and they come with me

Finding words with my breath;

From the wisdom of many life-times

I hear them cry: "Forever

Seek for Beauty, she only

Fights with man against Death!"

In Warsaw in Poland

Half the world away,

The one I love best of all

Thought of me to-day;

I know, for I went

Winged as a bird,

In the wide flowing wind

His own voice I heard;

His arms were round me

In a ferny place,

I looked in the pool

And there was his face --

But now it is night

And the cold stars say:

"Warsaw in Poland

Is half the world away."

Compensation

I should be glad of loneliness

And hours that go on broken wings,

A thirsty body, a tired heart

And the unchanging ache of things,

If I could make a single song

As lovely and as full of light,

As hushed and brief as a falling star

On a winter night.

I Remembered

There never was a mood of mine,

Gay or heart-broken, luminous or dull,

But you could ease me of its fever

And give it back to me more beautiful.

In many another soul I broke the bread,

And drank the wine and played the happy guest,

But I was lonely, I remembered you;

The heart belongs to him who knew it best.

Oh You are Coming

Oh you are coming, coming, coming,

How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? --

But why does it anger my heart to long so

For one man out of the world of men?

Oh I would live in myself only

And build my life lightly and still as a dream --

Are not my thoughts clearer than your thoughts

And colored like stones in a running stream?

Now the slow moon brightens in heaven,

The stars are ready, the night is here --

Oh why must I lose myself to love you,

My dear?

The Return

He has come, he is here,

My love has come home,

The minutes are lighter

Than flying foam,

The hours are like dancers

On gold-slippered feet,

The days are young runners

Naked and fleet --

For my love has returned,

He is home, he is here,

In the whole world no other

Is dear as my dear!

Gray Eyes

It was April when you came

The first time to me,

And my first look in your eyes

Was like my first look at the sea.

We have been together

Four Aprils now

Watching for the green

On the swaying willow bough;

Yet whenever I turn

To your gray eyes over me,

It is as though I looked

For the first time at the sea.

The Net

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.

The Mystery

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?

Out of the window a sea of green trees

Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer,

They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!"

But I cannot answer.

I am alone with Weakness and Pain,

Sick abed and June is going,

I cannot keep her, she hurries by

With the silver-green of her garments blowing.

Men and women pass in the street

Glad of the shining sapphire weather,

But we know more of it than they,

Pain and I together.

They are the runners in the sun,

Breathless and blinded by the race,

But we are watchers in the shade

Who speak with Wonder face to face.

The New Moon

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?

Eight O'Clock

Supper comes at five o'clock,

At six, the evening star,

My lover comes at eight o'clock --

But eight o'clock is far.

How could I bear my pain all day

Unless I watched to see

The clock-hands laboring to bring

Eight o'clock to me.

Lost Things

Oh, I could let the world go by,

Its loud new wonders and its wars,

But how will I give up the sky

When winter dusk is set with stars?

And I could let the cities go,

Their changing customs and their creeds, --

But oh, the summer rains that blow

In silver on the jewel-weeds!

Pain

Waves are the sea's white daughters,

And raindrops the children of rain,

But why for my shimmering body

Have I a mother like Pain?

Night is the mother of stars,

And wind the mother of foam --

The world is brimming with beauty,

But I must stay at home.

The Broken Field

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 Unseen

Death went up the hall

Unseen by every one,

Trailing twilight robes

Past the nurse and the nun.

He paused at every door

And listened to the breath

Of those who did not know

How near they were to Death.

Death went up the hall

Unseen by nurse and nun;

He passed by many a door --

But he entered one.

A Prayer

When I am dying, let me know

That I loved the blowing snow

Although it stung like whips;

That I loved all lovely things

And I tried to take their stings

With gay unembittered lips;

That I loved with all my strength,

To my soul's full depth and length,

Careless if my heart must break,

That I sang as children sing

Fitting tunes to everything,

Loving life for its own sake.