Kitabı oku: «The House of the Trees & Other Poems», sayfa 6

Frost

 
WHEN the sun is growing weaker,
And his look is meek and meeker,
Comes the frost—the pale betrayer—
Light of foot, a stealthy slayer.
 
 
In the night abroad he stealeth,
For each trembling leaf he feeleth;
Something softened by its pleading,
Kills it not but leaves it bleeding.
 

The Chipmunk

 
TO-day the green hill was at strife
With me; it robbed my feet of life.
The wind that loudly speaks his mind,
Said in my presence nothing kind.
The sky’s clear face was from me turned,
Behind a cloud his great fire burned.
 
 
An exile in his native cot,
Who finds his very name forgot,
Was I this afternoon, until
At the wood’s edge behind the hill,
A chipmunk flashed, and leapt a limb,
And took my heart away with him.
 

Give Me the Poorest Weed

 
GIVE me the poorest weed
To satisfy my spirit’s need.
The brownest blade of grass
Will know and greet me when I pass.
 
 
Of their own feeling wrought,
They live like simple, vital thought;
The mind could not invent
A better thing than Nature meant.
 

The Weeks that Walk in Green

 
THE weeks that walk in green
Came to my willow lane,
And wrapt me in their leafy screen
Against the sun and rain.
 
 
Then far and far we went
By stream and wood and steep,
Until, all love-worn and joy-spent,
I yielded me to sleep.
 
 
And they—they died unseen;
Their ghosts are haunting me—
The gentle ghosts that walk in green
Through vales of memory.
 

Noonday of the Year

 
THE streams that chattered in the cold
Are sleeping in the sun;
The winds of March were overbold
Until their race was run.
 
 
O mad with haste the morning went,
But now love-warm and deep,
The fields, their first ambition spent,
Lie in their noonday sleep.
 

The Wind World

 
ALONE within the wind I lie,
And reck not how the seasons go;
The winter struggling through its snow,
The light-winged summer flitting by.
 
 
I am not of the cloud nor mold,
I move between the stars and flowers,
I know the tingling touch of hours
When all the storms of night unfold.
 
 
Within the wind world drifting free
I hear naught of earth’s murmurings,
Naught but the sound of songs and wings
Among the tree-tops comes to me.
 
 
At night earth stars flash out below,
And heaven stars shine out above;
I look down on the lights of love,
And feel the higher love-lights glow.
 

At the Window

 
HOW thick about the window of my life
Buzz insect-like the tribe of petty frets:
Small cares, small thoughts, small trials, and small strife,
Small loves and hates, small hopes and small regrets.
 
 
If ’mid this swarm of smallnesses remain
A single undimmed spot, with wondering eye
I note before my freckled window-pane
The outstretched splendor of the earth and sky.
 

Come Back Again

 
CHILD-thoughts, child-thoughts, come back again!
Faint, fitful, as you used to be;
The dusty chambers of my brain
Have need of your fair company,
As when my child-head reached the height
Of the wild rose-bush at the door,
And all of heaven and its delight
Bloomed in the flow’rs the old bush bore.
 
 
Come back, sweet long-departed year,
When, sitting in a hollow oak,
I heard the sheep bells far and clear,
I heard a voice that silent spoke,
And felt in both a vague appeal,
And both were mingled in my dreams
With leaves that viewless breezes feel,
And skies clear mirrored in the streams.
 
 
Child-heart, child-thoughts, come back again!
Bring back the tall grass at my cheek,
The grief more swift than summer rain,
The joy that knew no words to speak.
 
 
The buttercup’s uplifted gold
That strives to reach my hands in vain,
The love that never could grow cold—
Child-heart, child-thoughts, come back again!
 

A Rainy Morning

 
THE low sky, and the warm, wet wind,
And the tender light on the eyes;
A day like a soul that has never sinned,
New dropped from Paradise.
 
 
And ’tis oh, for a long walk in the rain,
By the side of the warm, wet breeze,
With the thoughts washed clean of dust and stain
As the leaves on the shining trees.
 

June Apples

 
GREEN apple branches full of green apples
All around me unfurled,
Here where the shade and the sunlight dapples
A grass-green, apple-green world.
 
 
Little green children stirred with the heaving
Of the warm breast of the air,
When your old nurse, the wind, is grieving
Comfortlessly you fare.
 
 
But now an old-time song she is crooning,
Nestle your heads again,
While I dream on through the golden nooning,
Or look for the first red stain
 
 
On some round cheek that the sunshine dapples,
Near me where I lie curled
Under green trees athrong with green apples,
In a grass-green, apple-green world.
 

Beginning and End

 
ONCE it was in my life’s beginning,
Roses were tall in their summer beds,
Dandelions within my fingers
Thrust their confident golden heads;
Wading waist-deep ’mid the daisies,
Feeling the grasses about me climb—
Thus it was in my life’s beginning;
What have you done to me, Father Time?
 
 
So shall it be when life has ended:
Roses shall bloom above my head,
Dandelions will know I am lying
Hidden in grass from foot to head.
Hidden in grass and hidden in daisies,
Over my breast I shall feel them climb,
Thus it will be when life has ended;
This will you do to me, Father Time.
 

Not at Home

 
THE Weariness of Idleness,
She waited all the day
In the parlor of her neighbor,
The Weariness of Labor—
A visit she had long meant to pay.
 
 
But not until the evening
Did her hostess come in sight;
Then the Weariness of Labor
Explained unto her neighbor
That she lived but a brief hour at night.
 

The Wind of Memory

 
RED curtains shut the storm from sight,
The inner rooms are live with light;
The fireside faces all aglow
See not the pale ghost in the snow,
The pale ghost at the window pressed,
With the wind moaning in her breast.
 
 
She sees the face she hurt with scorn,
The other face where joy, new born,
Died out at her cheap mockery;
The eyes she filled, how bitterly!
The head that drooped beneath her jest—
The wind is moaning in her breast.
 
 
Invisible, unfelt, unknown,
She lingers trembling. She alone
Notes tenderly her vacant place,
And sees in it her vanished face;
She only—of this happy nest!
The wind is moaning in her breast.
 
 
Star-like the happy windows glow,
Framed in with mile on mile of snow;
And from their light a thing of death,
Of grief and memory vanisheth,
Her sin not deep but unredressed,
And the wind moaning in her breast.