NOVEMBER NIGHT
Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
TRIAD
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow...the hour
Before the dawn...the mouth of one
Just dead.
ANGUISH
Keep thou
Thy tearless watch
All night but when blue-dawn
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep!
MOON-SHADOWS
Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead.
YOUTH
But me
They cannot touch,
Old Age and death...the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!
WINTER
The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land...alack,
The little people in the hills
Will die!
ARBUTUS
Not Spring's
Thou art, but her's,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter's, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.
"HE'S KILLED THE MAY..."
"He's killed the May and he's laid her by
To bear the red rose company."
Not thou,
White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart's
Shed blood.
SHADOW
A-sway,
On red rose,
A golden butterfly...
And on my heart a butterfly
Night-wing'd.
THE WARNING
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk...as strange, as still...
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?
FATE DEFIED
As it
Were tissue of silver
I'll wear, O fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.
NIAGARA
Seen on a Night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
NOW BARABBAS WAS A ROBBER
No guile?
Nay, but so strangely
He moves among us...Not this
Man but Barabbas! Release to us
Barabbas!
THE SOURCE
Thou hast
Drawn laughter from
A well of secret tears
And thence so elvish it rings,--mocking
And sweet:
RELEASE
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.
SNOW
Look up...
From bleakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind...look up, and scent
The snow!
TRAPPED
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year...and ever days and years...
Well?
SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS
"Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?" "For that
She is beautiful, delicate;
Therefore."
THE GUARDED WOUND
If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!
NIGHT WINDS
The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?
ROMA AETERNA
The sun
Is warm to-day,
O Romulus, and on
Thine olden Palatine the birds
Still sing.
AMAZE
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
MADNESS
Burdock,
Blue aconite,
And thistle and thorn...of these,
Singing, I wreathe my pretty wreath
O' death.
SAYING OF IL HABOUL
Guardian of the Treasure of Solomon
And Keeper of the Prophet's Armour
My tent
A vapour that
The wind dispels and but
As dust before the wind am I
Myself.
LAUREL IN THE BERKSHIRES
Sea-foam
And coral! Oh, I'll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun's
Gold flood.
THE GRAND CANYON
By Zeus!
Shout word of this
To the eldest dead! Titans,
Gods, Heroes, come who have once more
A home!
FOR LUCAS CRANACH'S EVE
Oh me,
Was there a time
When Paradise knew Eve
In this sweet guise, so placid and
So young?
BLUE HYACINTHS
In your
Curled petals what ghosts
Of blue headlands and seas,
What perfumed immortal breath sighing
Of Greece.
