Poems

ONE time I felt the sun in all my veins,And bloomed on crystal mornings, flower-wise,And mourned as roses sadden in long rains.What pain is this the summer noon denies?One time the hands of wind upon my hairCould heal me like a mother’s touch and kiss.When I could give my airy griefs to airI never knew so sharp a thorn as this.The joy of flower and wind and sighing bough —It comes not back again for tears and rue.A year agone I had not sought as now,And found the sky a vault of empty blue.

II

HE loves no more. Upon the failing streamsThe summer burns – so burns another flame:I see his eyes alight with alien dreams …That long-forgotten country whence he came.Calls to him past my words; beyond my eyesLost waters shine, remembered sunsets die.Ay, in my kiss another mouth replies,And speaks of kisses past, of lips put by.Now this my heart divines, for words of loveHe gives me still (O woeful heart and bruisedTo still complain!)… But surely, when I moveHis eyes will never follow as they used.

III

THE soul that made love exquisite is gone,It is not that the word, the kiss, is changed.I cannot say, “Here was his thought withdrawn;So once was love, so now is love estranged.”But all of love that I could touch and knowI held as one a lamp that makes his day,And touch it still, and see its flame burn low,Its shining figures fade to painted clay.Ah, I would hold the semblance, keep the kiss;But watching in its heart the paling spark,I cry out when the shadows menace this,As children weep for terror of the dark.

IV

THAT all tomorrows have no wound in storeFor shrinking Joy, nor any prick of dread,I know, who closed its eyes forevermore,And keep this night a vigil with my dead.This little space my out-thrown hands have stirredIs happy earth, for once it knew love’s feet;Here once love stood and called the heart that heard,And all the garden, all the world, grew sweet.I lay my joy within this hollowed space(I had not thought so blithe a thing could die!)And heap the happy earth upon the faceThat has no will to smile nor breath to sigh.With dew beneath and hushing night aboveI cannot tell how long my grief has lain —Virgin, I will not plead you for my love,Only the pain, – if you would ease the pain.

V

THE world below was deep in stormy cloud;But high in sun we flew along the ledge,And to the strength I rode I cried aloudAnd spurred it near against the trembling edge.(I rode Ramon along the mountain wall.Today he had no wilder mood than I —No wilder will for lawless wind to callUpon the narrow trail that meets the sky.)The sharp air flowed like water through my hands.Heart, how I skirted death and laughed at pain!Forgotten pain in half-remembered landsBelow me in the valleys with the rain.

VI

WHAT alters with my changing? Not José,Content in little duties that he loves.Not Marta’s dimming eyes that stare awayBeyond the tranquil court, the circling doves.I, too, I float on peace, forget almost,And then as drowning sight may pierce the seaTo find the sun a green and wavering ghost,And shapes of earth distorted monstrously, —I see a mocking earth, a sun distraught,I lose the buoying instant of reliefAnd sink again as wearying soul and thoughtDrown in the sick amazement of my grief.

VII

I TILT my hollowed life and look within:The wine it held has left a purple trace —Behold, a stain where happiness had been.If I should shatter down this empty vase,Through what abysses would my soul be tossedTo meet its judge in undiscovered lands?What sentence meted me, alone and lost,Before him with the fragments in my hands?Better the patient earth that loves me stillShould drip her clearness on this purple stain;Better my life upheld to her should fillWith limpid dew, and gradual gift of rain.

VIII

SOME whim of Marta’s shields me from the night,And fretted that my curtain should be keptClose drawn, and wakeful candles over bright,I welcomed in the quiet moon and slept;Then woke again in fear – the night was old,The witching tide of silver shut away,And Marta’s shaking hand on mine was cold,Her bending face above me strange and grey.“Who sleeps beneath the moon,” she whispered low,“Must pale with her, nor wind nor noon-day skyBe his again whose pulses beat more slow,More faint, till with the waning moon … they die.”THE END

THE GARDEN OF DOLORES

THE garden of Dolores! Here she walkedWhen fretted in the twilight’s pallid spaceThe trees were black and delicate as lace,And palms were etchings, sharp and slender-stalked.Now riots summer in these magic closes,And life is rounded in the frailest spray…Dolores, cold and buried yesterday,Is it thy spirit here among the roses?For restless murmurs through the garden seek;To shadowy caress the flowers unclose;A blossom in the dark magnolia glows —Or leaning pallor of an oval cheek?Upon the dusk is borne a strange long cry,And one quick sob of wind the air has moved.Ah, perfect garden that Dolores loved,Her soul has called to thee … a far goodbye.

INDIFFERENCE

THERE is a thread from you to me?I know, I feel it drawing still,A cobweb on my careless thought —Old habit-likeness – what you will.Because it once was strong as FateTo bind a life to your desire, —Because its knots about my heartCould burn me like a witch’s wire,You will not think it loosed. And I(Ah, woman soul that prayed “Destroy!”)Free from the fretting of my pain,Have killed the fitful strength of joy.

AFTER-KNOWLEDGE

YOU found my soul an untried instrument.I closed it fast and bade you take the key,Serene in my unquestioning contentThat you alone could wake the harmony.I gave the key, indifferent though it costFamiliar lightness of unskilful touch,The music to the master. If I lost,He lets the little go who profits much.Ah, then the keen, reluctant knowledge grewThat though the chords were helpless at your willYou had nor wit nor power to sound them true:Discordant they, or else forever still.

TWO SPENDTHRIFT KINGS

These tawny sheaves, this fragrant land,Two spendthrift kings have found and seized,And Vagabondia may demandIts pockets lined, its troubles eased.We hold or deed as fancy wills.We own the world by right and law —The hidden gold in all the hills,The sweetness in a yellow straw.

GROWTH

I TWINE you, little trellis, close and fond,And swing in wistful threads above, beyond,For air and space to blossom. Be it so.Ah me! I love you, but the plant must grow.I quiver with the call of summer heat,With all the wild sap stirring at my feet.My quiet trellis, impotent to knowThe earth and sun command me: I must grow.You cannot share my ardent life apart,Nor feel the upward straining of my heart.In every vein the urging currents flow,Leaf after leaf unfolds: the plant must grow.

CHANGE

BELOVED, have I turned indeed so cold?My eyes are faithful, grieving with your grief;And if the year itself could grow not old,Could stand at waking sap and budding leaf,An April heart might keep its first unrest,An April love the petals of its spring.When all the birds are silent in my breast,How can I answer when you bid me sing?The autumn hills are brown: you will not see.The saddened woodland speaks, and finds you strange.Ah, dear one, all my world is kin to me,And with the swerving days I change, I change.

WISTARIA

THE blue wistaria hangs with bloomThe Place of Memories far away.My heart has ached with it today —The blue wistaria is in bloom.And one may pass so near, so near,With half-remembering eyes and cold,Where quickening with the budding yearIt clusters perfect as of old;And one at sight of wizened sprays,Reluctant in an alien spring,Must feel the sharp, unblunted sting,The pang of unforgotten days.

MY NOOK 6

OH, half way up the hill it was, where one might sit leaf-hidden,And stare across the canyoned depths to distant miles of blue;Upon the little path to it no foot might step unbidden.It was my nook, and mine alone, and not another knew.And when my doll was sawdust, or my little hopes were fated,Or all my world was shaken by a little idol’s fall,Up to my dear retreat I’d climb, with grief or anger weighted,And, hands behind fern-pillowed head, straightway forget it all.With tears yet damp upon my cheeks I’d fall to castle-building(The careless linnets fluttered near a little maid so still),And all the gorgeous tints I knew, and all the wealth of gilding,Were lavished on the future that I summoned there at will.“When one is small the troubles come, and then the tears must follow;When one is small one finds it good to run and cry alone,But I shall laugh to think that once I found my world so hollow —I shall not need this little nook,” I thought, “when I am grown.”Now heart whose voice I drown by day to hear in hours of waking,Now eyes whose tears must burn the more because they may not flow,From sight of face or sound of speech if I could bear your aching,And bury it deep-hidden in the ferns of long ago!But oh! the pensive little ghost among her visions sittingWould view her weeping Future with so piteous surprise!No, I must leave her in her nook to dream her dreams unwitting —I could not take my trouble there, I could not meet her eyes.

WHEN PLAINTIVELY AND NEAR THE CRICKET SINGS

NOW evening comes. Now stirs my discontent…Oh, ache of smallest, unforgotten things!How sharp you are when day and dark are blent,When beetles hurry by with vibrant wings,And plaintively and near the cricket sings.The sighing garden calls me from the door;Above the hills a little crescent swings —Above the path where you will come no moreWhen beetles hurry by on vibrant wings,And plaintively and near the cricket sings.

THE LITTLE MEMORIES

MY thoughts of you … although I strain and sighAt stubborn roots, at boughs that tear my face,No plants in all my garden grow so high,Nor fill with sturdier life a wider place.It pleases me, and wakes an old delight,To go with wordy shears in idle timesAnd trim them as a patient gardener might,Clipping the thorny boughs to curves and rhymes.If these were all, opposing strength with strengthTo make my hurt an easier thing to bear;If these alone usurped my garden’s length,It would not be so hard – I should not care.But close against the ground, oh, small and weak!The trodden flowers, the little memories, grow.Uprooting fingers press them to my cheek…Dear heart, I love you, and I miss you so.

PASS BY

MIND said, “Pass by.The garden withers, for the spring is dry.For words of thine, for tears, it will not flow.The long road calls a wanderer: rise and go.”Heart said, “Pass by.The flowers were pale and scentless; let them die,And down the road Forget your pathway takeTo find beneath the Song my fine, small ache,And gather flowers blue and flowers redTo hear my whisper of the white ones dead.”

IN EMPTY COURTS

HIS love is warm and constant as the sun,Like sunlight in the outer spaces spent,In empty courts where tumbling fountains run,And flowers bloom, and he is well content.To you my heart must turn for all its light —Alas, the grudging taper that you give!So small to make the inner temple bright,So dim to give the glow by which I live.He is the sun, for all the world to mark,So warm and fair he shines! nor understandsThat I must still be crouching in the dark,Shielding a little flame with loving hands.

DOWN THE TRAIL

BREAK camp, the dawn is here!A sea has swept beneath us in the night —Poured outward in a wrinkled floor of white,And left our eyrie clear.There in the deeps the little trail is curled —We plunge like divers to the under-world.The manzanita stirs!Look, in that little thicket just ahead!Down, down, the covey whirrs,Mocking us, careful, led,Slow-slipping beads along a slender thread.Here the stream flows;Here we tread yellow leaves.(Sun in the sycamores,Sun on the granite walls.)All is so still,Never wind blows,Only the singing streamShouts little waterfalls.We round the mighty shoulder of a hill —Oh, sweet airs damp with ferns!The day is old, the lengthening shadows chill —The wanderer returns.Traffic, and wakeful eyes of little lights;The black crowd passing near; and far awayA fading rose of sunset hanging lowAbove the roofs of indigo and grey.

“BELLS FROM OVER THE HILLS SOUND SWEET.” —Russian Proverb

OH, when the afternoon is long and hazy,So still the valley lies, so still, so still,With sweeping smoky spirals blue and lazy,With yellow light aglow from hill to hill.Sometimes the echoes startle with my singing;Sometimes a bird the heavy silence fills,And always I can hear them ringing, ringing,My mocking bells, my Bells from over the Hills.Sweetly, faintly ring they, cruel ring they:“Captive in your prison hear us call!”Message from a life of action bring they,Life beyond these hills more sweet than all.Would that I could heed their call and follow,Waking while this drowsy valley sleeps,Follow Fortune over hill and hollow,Wrest from her the treasures that she keeps!My freedom gained, what fate would be for telling?Still hills and hills beyond would stretch for aye.Peace in this little valley has its dwelling,And that the chase would profit who shall say?For hopes and dear delights, ah, who can near them?Something ungained, the heart with longing fills,And follow though I might I still should hear them,The mocking bells, the Bells from over the Hills.

IN TOWN

THE long street where the people go —It is not like the paths I know,Yet can I find the morning there,All crystal light and early air.Sharp-angled roofs in slanting sunGrow dimmer as they slope and blend,Until they crowd no more, and oneMay see his mountains at the end.Then, when the day has had her will,I lean upon my window-sill,And watch them floating, clean and high —My sunset ships across the sky.

MOODS

ISWEET grasses, tasseled, bent and tall;And sweet last light across the meadow —The wind has tangled, left them allIn webs of green, in silver shadow.And to your speech my heart replies,Still silvering to each word that passes,Until a tangled joy it lies,A shining web of wind-blown grasses.IIA MEMORY of tears that day,Of small and piteous lives misused:The fallen bird we could not save,The butterfly we helped – and bruised.And last, to fill repentant eyes,Most bright and frail of winged things —A moment’s faith, an hour’s love,Grieving the dust with broken wings.

A MISTY MORNING

LOW-arched above me as I moved the hollowed air was clear;Beyond was whiteness dim and strange, and spectral shapes drew near.Upon the little shore of brown that touched the misty sea,Upon the shadowy borderland, one paused and looked at me;Then hurried on with greeting smile and sudden vivid face:A friend had started into life within my magic space!Into the world of ghosts again I watched him fade away —First black he was, then dim he was, then merged in formless grey.

TWO SONGS

YOU love the chant of green,The low-voiced trees, the meadow’s monotone.O friend of mine, it is for these you pray.This alien land must call unheard, unseen,While one beloved note your heart has known,To hunger for it, half a world away.Come with me to my height,And stand at sunset when the winds are still,Watching the hollow valleys brim with light,The red and brown and yellow hills – they shout,And on the shoulders of the marching hostThe bayonets are gleaming points of white.Pressing beyond to deep and gradual blues,Their lessening voices die in distance pale —Ineffably dissolved in opal hues;Against the sky the last sweet echoes failWhile all the West is quivering, fold on foldTo one great voice – one vibrant peal of gold.

NOON

THE brook flowed through a bending arch of leaves —Flowed through an arch of leaves into the sun;But all was shadow where it left my feet —A shade with netted ripples overrun,A brook that flowed in coolness to the sun.Beyond the arch of shadow color lay —Vivid to narrowed eyelids, fiercely bright,And bright the happy water slipped awayIn gleaming pools and broken lines of light.

YOUR BEAUTIFUL PASSING

ACROSS my thought has trailed your beautiful passing,As a wild bird ruffles the motionless brink of the water,Moving in gradual path on its mirror of shadow,After him streaking and trembling long ripples of silver.

BY MOONLIGHT

IS this the world I knew? Beneath the dayIt glowed with golden heat, with vivid hues —Mountains and sky that merged in melting bluesAnd hazy air that shimmered far away.This world is white beneath a silver sky —White with pale brightness, luminously chill.The moon reigns queen, but faintly shining stillThe dim stars glimmer on the hilltops high.Here, where long grasses touch across the streamThat threads with babbling laugh its narrow way,My face turned upward to pale gleams that strayThrough whispering willow boughs … I dream and dream.

ONE DAY

THE levels where the trail beganWere sown with silver-grey.We bruised the leaves with hurrying feetTo wafts of strong and tarry sweet,A moment’s pleasure as we ran,Forgotten on our way.Above, along the farthest crest,In every brief and breathless restThe spice of sage was ours,Crushed from the dull and slender leaves —The tiny yellow flowers,When day was doneNo more remembered than the wind and sun.

THE MISSION GRAVES

BY man forgotten,Nature remembers, with her fitful tears.The wooden slabs lose name and date with years,And crumble, rotten.The Padre there,On Saint’s day, from an evening rite returning,Set for each unknown soul a candle burning,With muttered prayer.Glow-worms, they shone —Strange, spectral-gleaming through the lonely dark.Whose nameless dust did each faint glimmer mark —Skull, crumbling bone?Ah, the Dead knew!The grateful Dead, far-called from voids of space,Each by the tiny spark that gave him grace,Watched, the night through.

ALONG THE TRACK

THE track has led me out beyond the townTo follow day across the waning fields,The crisping weeds and wastes of tender brown.On either side the feathered tops are high,A tracery of broken arabesquesUpon the sullen crimson of the sky.Into the west the narrowing rails are sped.They cut the crayon softness of the duskWith thin converging gleams of bloody red.

A PLACE OF DREAMS

HERE will we drink content, comrade of mine —Here, where the little stream, to meet the sun,Flows down a yellow rock like yellow wine.Here will we launch a leaf to distant shores,And in it shut a word for Wonderland —The blue Unknown beyond the sycamores.

THINK NOT, O LILIAS 7

Think not, O Lilias, that the love of this night will endure in the sun. Hast thou beheld fungi, white, evil, rosy-lined, poisonous, shrivel in the eyes of day?

In this wilderness of strange hearts it is not thine alone that concerns me. Many brave hearts of men are more to me than thine. The hearts of men breathe deeply. As for thy heart, it runs from me, it is quicksilver, it does not concern me greatly.

“TO ROSY BUDS…”

TO rosy buds in orchards of the spring,To melting clouds in endless deeps of air,My love shall lift a swelling throat and sing,Akin to all things fugitive and fair.They shut love from his heaven and he sings?But captive eyes are pitiful to see!Oh, flashing sun on upward-beating wings —Oh, tumbling notes of joy – my bird is free!Dear love, forever strange, beloved most!Dear fleeting buds, bear not your fruit and die!Be this a path forever found and lost,A drift of bloom upon an April sky.

YESTERDAY 8

NOW all my thoughts were crisped and thinnedTo elfin threads, to gleaming browns.Like tawny grasses lean with windThey drew your heart across the downs.Your will of all the winds that blewThey drew across the world to me,To thread my whimsey thoughts of youAlong the downs, above the sea.Beneath a pool beyond the dune —So green it was and amber-walledA face would glimmer like a moonSeen whitely through an emerald —And there my mermaid fancy layAnd dreamed the light and you were one,And flickered in her sea-weed’s swayA broken largesse of the sun.Above the world as evening fellI made my heart into a sky,And through a twilight like a shellI saw the shining sea-gulls fly.I found between the sea and landAnd lost again, unwrit, unheard,A song that fluttered in my handAnd vanished like a silver bird.

THE MOURNER

BECAUSE my love has wave and foam for speech,And never words, and yearns as water grieves,With white arms curving on a listless beach,And murmurs inarticulate as leaves —I am become beloved of the night —Her huge sea-lands ineffable and farHold crouched and splendid Sorrow, eyed with light,And Pain who beads his forehead with a star.

AVE ATQUE VALE

IT gathers where the moody sky is bending;It stirs the air along familiar ways —A sigh for strange things dear forever ending,For beauty shrinking in these alien days.Now nothing is the same, old visions move me:I wander silent through the waning land,And find for youth and little leaves to love meThe old, old lichen crumbling in my hand.What shifting films of distance fold you, blind you,This windy eve of dreams, I cannot tell.I know they grope through some strange mist to find you,My hands that give you Greeting and Farewell.

1

This poem, so distinctly prophetic, was written a year and four months before her death.

2

“The Rose” was written for Mr. Porter Garnett on the occasion of his marriage.

3

These lines were in response to a long telegram dispatched at night by a distant friend.

4

Of this poem, “Just a Dog,” a letter says: “My cousin, who used often to play on the piano, died; and after his death his dog, when anyone touched the instrument, used to come from wherever he might be to see if the player were not his master. Then he would slink away again. The dog died after a few grieving months. I loved him, and made these verses.”

5

“Mirage” is an endeavor to portray the alien attitude of one who had long vainly sought love.

6

“My Nook” was written at the age of sixteen.

7

“Think Not, O Lilias.” These prose lines were recalled out of a dream. They are included here because of their singular beauty.

8

“Yesterday,” and “The Mourner” which follows it, are the last poems. “Ave atque Vale” was written some two years before.