Staring about her, and the down
Grows sharp in sadness gathering round,
Powdering each darkling rock
And the hunchèd grain in shock
On shock in solemn rows;
And after each a shadow goes
Staring skyward, listening
Into the silence glistening
With watching stars that, sharp and sad,
Ring the solemn staring mad
Moon; and winds in monotone
Brood where shaken grain had grown
In bloomless fields that raise their bare
Breasts against the dying year.
And yet I do not move, for I
Am sad beneath this autumn sky,
For I am sudden blind and chill
Here beneath my frosty hill,
And I cry moonward in stiff pain
Unheeded, for the moon again
Stares blandly, while beneath her eyes
The silent world blazes and dies,
And leaves slip down and cover me
With sorrow and desire to be —
While the world waits, cold and sere —
Like it, dead with the dying year.
THE world stands without move or sound
In this white silence gathered round
It like a hood. It is so still
That earth lies without wish or will
To breathe. My garden, stark and white,
Sits soundless in the falling light
Of lifting bush and sudden hedge
Ice bound and ghostly on the edge
Of my world, curtained by the snow
Drifting, sifting; fast, now slow;
Falling endlessly from skies
Calm and gray, some far god’s eyes.
The soundless quiet flakes slide past
Like teardrops on a sheet of glass,
Ah, there is some god above
Whose tears of pity, pain, and love
Slowly freeze and brimming slow
Upon my chilled and marbled woe;
The pool, sealed now by ice and snow,
Is dreaming quietly below,
Within its jewelled eye keeping
The mirrored skies it knew in spring.
How soft the snow upon my face!
And delicate cold! I can find grace
In its endless quiescence
For my enthrallèd impotence:
Solace from a pitying breast
Bringing quietude and rest
To dull my eyes; and sifting slow
Upon the waiting earth below
Fold veil on veil of peacefulness
Like wings to still and keep and bless.
WHY cannot we always be
Left steeped in this immensity
Of softly stirring peaceful gray
That follows on the dying day?
Here I can drug my prisoned woe
In the night wind’s sigh and flow,
But now we, who would dream at night,
Are awakened by the light
Of paper lanterns, in whose glow
Fantastically to and fro
Pass, in a loud extravagance
And reft of grace, yet called a dance,
Dancers in a blatant crowd
To brass horns horrible and loud.
The blaring beats on gustily
From every side. Must I see
Always this unclean heated thing
Debauching the unarmèd spring
While my back I cannot turn,
Nor may not shut these eyes that burn?
The poplars shake and sway with fright
Uncontrollable, the night
Powerless in ruthless grasp
Lifts hidden hands as though to clasp,
In invocation for surcease,
The flying stars.
Once there was peace
Calm handed where the roses blow,
And hyacinths, straight row on row;
And hushed among the trees. What!
Has my poor marble heart forgot
This surging noise in dreams of peace
That it once thought could never cease
Nor pale? Still the blaring falls
Crashing between my garden walls
Gustily about my ears
And my eyes, uncooled by tears,
Are drawn as my stone heart is drawn,
Until the east bleeds in the dawn
And the clean face of the day
Drives them slinkingly away.
DAYS and nights into years weave
A net to blind and to deceive
Me, yet my full heart yearns
As the world about me turns
For things I know, yet cannot know,
‘Twixt sky above and earth below.
All day I watch the sunlight spill
Inward, driving out the chill
That night has laid here fold on fold
Between these walls, till they would hold
No more. With half closed eyes I see
Peace and quiet liquidly
Steeping the walls and cloaking them
With warmth and silence soaking them;
They do not know, nor care to know,
Why evening waters sigh in flow;
Why about the pole star turn
Stars that flare and freeze and burn;
Nor why the seasons, springward wheeling,
Set the bells of living pealing.
They sorrow not that they are dumb:
For they would not a god become.
… I am sun-steeped, until I
Am all sun, and liquidly
I leave my pedestal and flow
Quietly along each row,
Breathing in their fragrant breath
And that of the earth beneath.
Time may now unheeded pass:
I am the life that warms the grass —
Or does the earth warm me? I know
Not, nor do I care to know.
I am with the flowers one,
Now that is my bondage done;
And in the earth I shall sleep
To never wake, to never weep
For things I know, yet cannot know,
‘Twixt sky above and earth below,
For Pan’s understanding eyes
Quietly bless me from the skies,
Giving me, who knew his sorrow,
The gift of sleep to be my morrow.
Epilogue
May walks in this garden, fair
As a girl veiled in her hair
And decked in tender green and gold;
And yet my marble heart is cold
Within these walls where people pass
Across the close-clipped emerald grass
To stare at me with stupid eyes
Or stand in noisy ecstasies
Before my marble, while the breeze
That whispers in the shivering trees
Sings of quiet hill and plain,
Of vales where softly broods the rain,
Of orchards whose pink flaunted trees,
Gold flecked by myriad humming bees,
Enclose a roof-thatch faded gray,
Like a giant hive. Away
To brilliant pines upon the sea
Where waves linger silkenly
Upon the shelving sand, and sedge
Rustling gray along the edge
Of dunes that rise against the sky
Where painted sea-gulls wheel and fly.
Ah, how all this calls to me
Who marble-bound must ever be
While turn unchangingly the years.
My heart is full, yet sheds no tears
To cool my burning carven eyes
Bent to the unchanging skies:
I would be sad with changing year,
Instead, a sad, bound prisoner,
For though about me seasons go
My heart knows only winter snow.
April, May, June, 1919
The End
