(4) NIGHTFALL

 

​(a) We will never walk again

As we used to walk at night,

Watching our shadows lengthen

Under the gold street-light

When the snow was new and white.

​(b) We will never walk again

Slowly, we too,

In spring, when the park is sweet

With midnight and with dew,

And the passers-by are few.

​(c) I sit and think of it all,

Out in the twilight dim, —

A street-piano cries

And stars come out in the skies.

​(5) IT IS NOT A WORD

​(a) It is not a word spoken,

Few words are said;

Not even a look of the eyes,

Nor a bend of the head.

​But only a hush of the heart

That has too much to keep,

Only memories waking

That sleep so light a sleep.

​(6) MY HEART IS HEAVY

​(a) My heart is heavy with many a song

Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,

But I can never give you one —

My songs do not belong to me.

​(b) Yet in the evening, in the dusk

When moths go to and fro,

In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,

Take it, no one will know.

​(7) THE NIGHTS REMEMBER

​(a) The days remember and the nights remember

The kingly hours that once you made so great;

Deep in my heart they lie, hidden in their splendor,

Buried like sovereigns in treasuries of state.

​(b) Let them not wake again, better to lie there,

Wrapped in memories, jewelled and arrayed —

Many a ghostly king has waked from death-sleep

And found his crown stolen and his throne decayed.

​(8) LET IT BE FORGOTTEN

​(a) Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten forever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

​(b) If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long forgotten snow.

​VII. THE DARK CUP

​(1) MAY DAY

​(a) A delicate fabric of bird song

Floats in the air,

The smell of wet wild earth

Is everywhere.

​(b) Red small leaves of the maple

Are clenched like a hand,

Like girls at their first communion

The pear trees stand.

​(c) Oh I must pass nothing by

Without loving much,

The raindrop try with my lips,

The grass with my touch;

​(d) For how can I be sure

I shall see again

The world on the first of May

Shining after the rain?

​(3) A LITTLE WHILE

​(a) A little while when I am gone

My life will live in music after me,

As spun foam lifted and borne on

After the wave is lost in the full sea.

​(b) A while those nights and days will burn

In song with the bright frailty of foam,

Living in light before they turn

Back to the nothingness that is their home.

​(4) THE GARDEN

​(a) My heart is a garden tired with autumn,

Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,

In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,

The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark.

​(b) Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,

And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain —

The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten, soon forgotten —

After the stillness, will spring come again?

​(5) THE WINE

​(a) I cannot die who drank delight

From the cup of the crescent moon,

And loved the scented nights of June

Hungrily as men eat bread.

​(b) The rest may die — but is there not

Some shining strange escape for me,

Who sought in Beauty the bright lure

Of immortality?

​VIII. (1) "THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS" (War time)

​(a) There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

​(b) And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

​(c) Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

​(d) And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

​(e) Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

​(f) And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

​(2) NAHANT

​(a) Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,

So earth is bowed, under the weight of splendor,

Molten sea, richness of leave and the transition

Bronze of sea-grasses.

​(b) Cliffs in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas

And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean

Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,

Jewels of water.

​(c) Joyous thunder of foam waves on the ledges,

Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow —

Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff

Slim in his khaki.

​(3) A BOY

​(a) Out of the noise of tired people working,

Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead,

His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing,

Clean boyish beauty and high-held head.

​(b) Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them,

Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes —

Men die by millions now, because good hunters,

Yet to have made this boy he must be wise.