Identity

The moon is a charring ember
Dying into the dark;
Off in the crouching mountains
Coyotes bark.

The stars are heavy in heaven,
Too great for the sky to hold,
What if they fell and shattered
The earth with gold?

No lights are over the mesa,
The wind is hard and wild,
I stand at the darkened window
And cry like a child.

I love too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.

His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.

And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire.

1.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down, -
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, -
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight; -
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

2.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, - ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

Where I can see him all day long
And hear his wild, spontaneous song,
    Before my window in his cage,
    A blithe canary sits and swings,
    And circles round on golden wings;
    And startles all the vicinage
    When from his china tankard
    He takes a dainty drink
    To clear his throat
    For as sweet a note
    As ever yet was caroled
    By lark or bobolink.

Sometimes he drops his pretty head
And seems to be dispirited,
    And then his little mistress says:
    "Poor Dickie misses his chickweed,
    Or else I've fed him musty seed
    As stale as last year's oranges!"
    But all the time I wonder
    If we half comprehend
    In sweet song-words
    The thought of birds,
    Or why so oft their raptures
...

So long as my spirit still
Is glad of breath
And lifts its plumes of pride
In the dark face of death;
While I am curious still
Of love and fame,
Keeping my heart too high
For the years to tame,
How can I quarrel with fate
Since I can see
I am a debtor to life,
Not life to me?

I

The summer takes its hue
From something opulent as fair in her,
And the bright heaven is brighter than it was;
Brighter and lovelier,
Arching its beautiful blue,
Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.

II

The springtime takes its moods
From something in her made of smiles and tears,
And flowery earth is flowerier than before,
And happier, it appears,
Adding new multitudes
To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us evermore.

III

Summer and spring are wed
In her - her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life and joy and love,
Her being seems to shed, -
The magic aura of the heart of her.

A painter, high in worldy fame,
Was sought to reproduce by art
A likeness of the man whose name
Sent darts of anguish through the heart
Of mighty monarchs in his day;
For he by arms subdued the world.
Kingdoms and empires owned his sway
And bowed beneath his flag unfurled.

But Alexander bore a scar,
Deep marked upon his royal brow;
To paint him thus would greatly mar
The monarch's beauty; as a slough
Would mar the beauty of a lawn,
Where queenly feet are wont to tread;
Or like the cloud at early dawn,
Which hides some glory 'neath its spread.

To leave it out would not be true,
For Alexander bore the scar;
The painter this resolved to do,
Which would be true, yet would not mar:
To paint the monarch's head reclined,
With his ...

(For Aline)



From what old ballad, or from what rich frame
    Did you descend to glorify the earth?
Was it from Chaucer's singing book you came?
    Or did Watteau's small brushes give you birth?

Nothing so exquisite as that slight hand
    Could Raphael or Leonardo trace.
Nor could the poets know in Fairyland
    The changing wonder of your lyric face.

I would possess a host of lovely things,
    But I am poor and such joys may not be.
So God who lifts the poor and humbles kings
    Sent loveliness itself to dwell with me.

Among the meadows of Life's sad unease
In labor still renewing her soul's youth
With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace,
Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.

Dawn

On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
And grey flushes scarlet,
And red flashes gold.
And sun-glories cover
The rose shed above her,
Like lover and lover
They flame and unfold.

-    -    -    -    -

Still bloom in the garden
Green grass-plot, fresh lawn,
Though pasture lands harden
And drought fissures yawn.
While leaves not a few fall,
Let rose leaves for you fall,
Leaves pearl-strung with dew-fall,
And gold shot with dawn.

Does the grass-plot remember
The fall of your feet
In autumn’s red ember,
When drought leagues with heat,
When the last of the roses
Despairingly closes
In the lull that reposes
Ere storm winds wax fleet?

Love’s melodies languish
...

I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride,
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less, less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl,
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.

Now Doubt, now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye,
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

I sat in heaven like the sun
Above a storm when winter was:
I took the snowflakes one by one
And turned their fragile shapes to glass:
I washed the rivers blue with rain
And made the meadows green again.

I took the birds and touched their springs,
Until they sang unearthly joys:
They flew about on golden wings
And glittered like an angel's toys:
I filled the fields with flowers' eyes,
As white as stars in Paradise.

And then I looked on man and knew
Him still intent on death - still proud;
Whereat into a rage I flew
And turned my body to a cloud:
In the dark shower of my soul
The star of earth was swallowed whole.

        Lives there a bard for genius famed
        Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
        Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
        She summons up the fiends of night;
        Hatred and malice by her stand,
        And prompt to do what she command.

        As prostrate to the orb of day
        A Persian, invocating, lay:

        "Parent of light, whose rays dispense
        The various gifts of Providence,
        Accept our praise, accept our prayer,
        Smile on our fields, and bless our year."

        A cloud passed by - a voice aloud,
        Like Envy's, issued from that cloud:

        "I can eclipse your gaudy orb,
        And every ray you ask absorb.
        Pray, then, to me - where praise is due -
   ...

How can I be to blame?
Is it my fault I am fair?
I did not fashion my features,
Or brush the gold in my hair;
Because my eyes are so blue and bright,
Must I never look up from the ground,
But put out with my eyelids' snow their light,
Lest some foolish heart they should wound?

How can I be in fault?
I am sure where hearts are so few,
It is difficult to discern
The diamonds of paste from the true;
I thought him like all the rest,
Skilful in playing his part;
As careful at cards or at chess,
As winning a woman's heart.

I am sure it is nothing wrong,
Nothing to think of - and yet
I know I lured him with glance and song,
Into my shining net;
Provokingly cold at first he seemed,
Like crystal to smiles and sighs,
But at last...

I said that I would see
Her once, to curse her fair, deceitful grace,
To curse her for my life-long agony;
But when I saw her face,
I said, "Sweet Christ, forgive both her and me."

High swelled the chanted hymn,
Low on the marble swept the velvet pall,
I bent above, and my eyes grew dim,
My sad heart saw it all -
She loved me, loved me though she wedded him.

And then shot through my soul
A thrill of fierce delight, to think that he
Must yield her form, his all, to Death's control,
The while her love for me
Would live, when sun and stars had ceased to roll.

But no, on the white brow,
Graved in its marble, was deep calm impressed,
Saying that peace had come to her through woe;
Saying, she had found rest
At last, and I, I must not...

Noon's fervid hour perchance six thousand miles
From hence is distant; and the shadowy cone
Almost to level on our earth declines;
When from the midmost of this blue abyss
By turns some star is to our vision lost.
And straightway as the handmaid of the sun
Puts forth her radiant brow, all, light by light,
Fade, and the spangled firmament shuts in,
E'en to the loveliest of the glittering throng.
Thus vanish'd gradually from my sight
The triumph, which plays ever round the point,
That overcame me, seeming (for it did)
Engirt by that it girdeth. Wherefore love,
With loss of other object, forc'd me bend
Mine eyes on Beatrice once again.

If all, that hitherto is told of her,
Were in one praise concluded, 't were too weak
To furnish out this turn. Mine ey...

Down through the woods, along the way
That fords the stream; by rock and tree,
Where in the bramble-bell the bee
Swings; and through twilights green and gray
The red-bird flashes suddenly,
My thoughts went wandering to-day.

I found the fields where, row on row,
The blackberries hang black with fruit;
Where, nesting at the elder's root,
The partridge whistles soft and low;
The fields, that billow to the foot
Of those old hills we used to know.

There lay the pond, still willow-bound,
On whose bright surface, when the hot
Noon burnt above, we chased the knot
Of water-spiders; while around
Our heads, like bits of rainbow, shot
The dragonflies without a sound.

The pond, above which evening bent
To gaze upon her rosy face;
Where...

The sun rode high in a cloudless sky
    Of a perfect summer morn.
She stood and gazed out into the street,
    And wondered why she was born.
On the topmost branch of a maple-tree
    That close by the window grew,
A robin called to his mate enthralled:
    "I love but you, but you, but you."

A soft look came in her hardened face -
    She had not wept for years;
But the robin's trill, as some sounds will,
    Jarred open the door of tears.
She thought of the old home far away;
    She heard the whr-r-r of the mill;
She heard the turtle's wild, sweet call,
    And the wail of the whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.

She saw again that dusty road
    Whence he came riding down;
She smelled once more the flower she wore
   ...