Collected Poems (20 page)

It should be cold when the trees are so bare

    Or the breezes spring-gentled for flight,

Not torturing thus the dogwood that writhes

    Like a desperate immaculate light.

I am afraid of the night and the spring

    And the terrible winds of the night!

Afraid of the rapture that grapples and tears

    Till the cords of my heart are torn,

While the moonlight is crashing down canyons of cloud

    Like blasts from a great silver horn,

And all the impenitent lovers, long dead,

    Are blown past, lip to lip, unforsworn.

These are the seaward cliffs: let us sing and forget.

The daylight dazzles upon us, cloudless and clean,

And there, far down, where the crimson rocks are wet,

Shallows mottle the sapphire sea with green.

                         Come, let us forget,

And, healed of ancient tears and whole of ancient teen,

               Sing with cold hearts of joy and no regret.

Fair from safe hill-tops seem the passing sails,

Fairer perhaps because they always pass,

And that far mountain-land, that quakes and pales

In the noon stillness, fair too and far, alas!

                         No rough sweet hails

Will glitter up our glens, nor will a bruised bright grass

               Betray some parting’s anguish in our vales.

We are accursed. Why should our thoughts yet cling

To them that loved us when they knew us not,

But learning us despised? Come, let us sing

Forgetfully, loving this lovely spot

                         Where the swallows swing

Half down the cliff white-breasted, shrill, and the haze is hot

               Plumbago blue like a witch’s eyes in spring.

Not the wind’s fingers scribbling on the floor

Of ocean write a rune more incomplete

And mad than that fate marked above the door

Of our strange hearts, set open to all feet.

                         Oh, seek no more

Its meaning. Sing, let our songs be ignorantly sweet

               Like upland waters pluming as they pour.

Alas! no music sounds here save our tears

And all things we have won except forgetfulness!

                         Our longing veers

               Back to the native land of our distress —

                         No sights may bless

               Eyes the red needle of endurance sears.

Then let us sing again with heartbreak wise and mad

The terrible songs we sang once ere we came,

And win the round windy ocean that was glad

To be one sorrowing echo of our shame.

               Never, never, never may we unlearn

               The secret with which we burn,

                         Never appease

               Our mortal hurt with these

                         Felicities.

                                        Again

                         Lift we our voices,

               Our music old with bitterness and bane,

For we weave our songs and our songs are woven

                                        Of pain,

And the heart that sings is the heart that is cloven.

Aid my heart in its fidelity!

Though my unfaith were no regret to you

It would betray, O careless heart I love,

Not only you, but love itself, and me.

That I am absent brings no pain to you,

But every hour away is death to me —

Send me some word, though heartless as your love,

And aid my heart in its fidelity.

Give me a breath of air!

There is too much of sweetness here,

Too much of pain, pain blent with loveliness.

I am allured from all that we call living

And sickened of the harsh necessities.

The earth again! the earth where sweat is poured

To rise in bronze ripe undulant fields of grain,

Where here and now is sinewed hardihood

And intertwining effort vain and vast.

What now is Avalon, or purple ships that plow

The dim blue evening full of mists and tears?

Give me a breath of air, a sound of voices,

For I am drugged with dreams

And smothered with the smoke of old disasters.

Of what avail dead lovers laid in Avalon

Or purple ships outbound?

Merlin, Merlin’s gone away

    With a limmer witch for spouse,

He’s gone to spend a sorry year

    In the Queen o’ Fairies’ house.

For gear he’s took the sapphire bird

    Wi’ the bubble in his throat;

His hat was prinked wi’ the wee wet flowers

    That gaud daft April’s coat.

Sunny-cold the bold wind blew

    As he strode off down the hill;

His red cloak bellied out and swirled,

    His eyes burned gray and chill.

For promise of a warm high bed

    And spiced renewing drink

He’s footed it to Fairyland

    Where love’s the only swink.

He’s gone away, and not alone —

    Brightly, oh, he sinned!

His red cloak glimmers on the thorn

    And his laughter on the wind.

A green bird on a golden bush,

    And the leaves chimed out and spake:

“What have you seen, what heard, green bird,

    Since you heard the blue day break?”

“A sea, a sea, a saffron sea,

    And a creamy warm full sail

Floating beneath me as I flew,

    And my shadow stamped the sail

Like a clover leaf, a green clover leaf,

    Blown from an Irish dale.”

“Did lovers pale stand by the sail

    That furrowed the Irish sea?

Did you catch the glimmer of golden mail

    And the glimmer of hair blown free?”

“Golden each scale of his burnished mail

    And her hair was bronze and gold:

From an emerald cup I saw them sup

    That their four hands scarce could hold.”

“Delight and woe, delight and woe,

    Bird of the Irish sea —

These they drank up from the emerald cup

    On the sun-swooned saffron sea.”

“Only delight, only delight,

While the beautiful burning blue daylight

                         Was dappled by me

With the green leaf-shadow shapen in three.

Delight I saw, delight I heard!”

Sang the sunlight-aureoled emerald bird

                         To the golden tree

                                        Deliriously.

From Avernel the hills flow down

    And leave it near the sky,

And it has birds and bells and trees

    And fauns that never die.

When coral-pink azaleas fill

    Its roomy woods with sweet,

And lilac spills of violets wait

    For violet-veined swift feet;

When moths are budded by the oaks’

    Uncrinkling rose and red

And high, high up, green butterflies

    Reveal the poplars’ head;

When shaggy clouds in single bliss

    Blaze up the sea-blue air,

Spilling their shadow-amethyst

    Along the hills’ wide stair;

Then there is singing in the sun

    And whispering in the shade

And dancing till the stars slope down

    Their murmurous arcade.

In love’s half sleep the curly faun’s

    Uncertain if he sees

Orion or first fireflies

    Between the clear dark trees.

When February brings the hopeless days

And there’s no cranny of the silent world

Where grass is green or boughs are fresh

Or birds recall their litanies of love,

And earth seems but a place where graves are dug

And dug too tardily —

Then turn for peace to those forgotten stars

That change not with the changes of the year,

But still pursue their purposed ministries

In the cold night,

Though loveliness lies dead upon the ground.

Then their serene proud ranks receive

From thick-starred equatorial climes

A lone and flaming guest,

The lord and love of all the southern sky.

Above, aye, just above the black horizon

When the first dark is clear,

You see him rise, superb and alien,

The fiery-haired Canopus, surging from the south.

But one vast scornful stare he flings

Across the full curve of the northern night

Wherein Arcturus and Aldebaran

Marshal the bright-helmed sons of heaven;

Then, meeting the blue gaze of Sirius,

Turns, and retreating down the crystal dark

Hides from our eyes his haughty slow return.

The serpentining Amazon

And many a lost lagoon, flamingo-stirred,

Mirror his golden shaggy hair;

The wide-palmed plantain-leaves

Receive in sleep his tread,

And glimmer, dreaming that the moon glows past;

In their rough pastures

Bronze Peruvian shepherds mark his course

And call his name, and vainly call.

For he strides on in his dim godly wrath

Past Ecuador

And the long samite carpet of the Argentine,

Past the incredible drear rooms of stone

The Incas built, by night, to helpless gods,

On precipices of the fearful Andes;

Nor stays his step till he descries, far down,

The ghostly mountainous antipodes,

Mute with blue cold.

There, trembling in his wreath of flames, he halts

And gazes on the glistering nether pole

Where his reflection shakes —

Contemplative

And sunk in his own thought.

But then our land is gay with polished leaves

And birds are nesting in the calm sweet sun.

There’s a blue flower grows in France

    A tattered roadside thing,

Like flowers cut, by little girls,

    Of paper while they sing,

Which when I see so far from home

    I feel tears almost rise,

For it is blue with just the blue

    Of one dear lady’s eyes.

The plowman breaks the smelling earth

    And birds are in his wake;

He scatters seed for harvesting,

    They, song for singing’s sake.

His heedful heart is happy as

    Their hearts that take no heed —

But happiest the furrow’s heart

    Where song is sown with seed.

When I see you I think of Mary, the mother of God,

Before she was a mother. But you are older,

Though young, so young that when I think of Calvary

I do not see you fainting at the cross

But bending over her who faints, your arms

About her, your tears upon her face, your voice

Comforting, were there comfort in the world.

Yet there’s no beauty of the sweet-aired earth

Not reminiscent to my heart of you:

Water, the very pure winds of heaven, and the dew,

Birds at their matins, all limpid-colored flowers,

Not those that blaze in peacock opulence,

But such compassionate and candid blooms

As hurt the throat: branches of half-blushed peach,

Anemones that have a just-born air,

Miraculous, blue, breathless morning-glories,

Crocuses far too cool to be like flames,

And cosmos only of the autumn host.

These certainly I know to be your kin.

Yet this, your outward self, could dull and tarnish

And still your loveliness would be no less

And still men could not fail to see in you

That which they always hope to find in women —

The unnameable gay goodness that they love,

Attained in tears, most evident in smiles,

And more worth dying for than creed or crown.…

No wonder, seeing you, I think of Mary,

The mother of God, before she was a mother.

The lambs are sleeping in the rain

Cuddled two and two together,

One alone might sleep in pain

On the hillside in such weather.

In the spring rain slow and steady,

Just before the leaves are ready,

Walking is contentment’s gain,

That is, walking with another,

Best a lover, then heart’s brother —

All alone might waken pain.

Come then, dear, be wise again,

Ramble with me in the soft spring rain —

Walking is contentment’s gain!

We’ll see weeping willow’s mane

Beaded with the moonstone rain,

Then the oat-field’s emerald stain,

Then a brambled dripping lane

Where johnny-jump-ups, pert and plain,

Are common as the inch-high grain.

If walking’s more than going’s art

Unaided by curt car or cart,

Your eyes a thief, a sleuth your heart,

We’ll find, I have no doubt at all,

Right in the cold wood’s hollow cove

Branches of blurry pink I love —

(The red-bud always has his anguish out

Before the leaves are there to laugh and flout).

We’ll surely see a redbird fall

And hear, if you’ll not breathe at all,

The tentative self-conscious call

Of the young mockingbird who slyly

Practises when he sings not shyly

At windows and from garden borders

When what he sings is what he orders.

(But men have lived and died quite near

And never heard his muted fear,

So exquisite and faint and clear.)

What if I should show to you

A plum tree and a cherry too,

Both white as lilies Mary grew,

And hazed about with rain?

Oh, if we go as I like best,

Haphazardly and with a zest,

You’ll have no need to seek for pleasure

In lands that other daytimes measure,

But every bush will be your treasure!

Come out, come out, be wise again

Before the spring begins to wane —

There’s nothing gladder, I maintain,

Than walking together in the rain!