And buried him in the sea,
Where never a lie nor a bitter word
Will out of his mouth at me.
This I have to hold to my heart,
This to take by the hand :
Sweet we were for a summer month
As the sun on the dry white sand;
Mild we were for a summer month
As the wind from over the weirs.
And blessèd be Death, that hushed with salt
The harsh and slovenly years!
Who builds her a house with love for timber
Builds her a house of foam.
And I’d liefer be bride to a lad gone down
Than widow to one safe home.
The Betrothal
Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Nor the knocker strike.
Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts,
And wed me if you will.
I’d make a man a good wife,
Sensible and still.
And why should I be cold, my lad,
And why should you repine,
Because I love a dark head
That never will be mine?
I might as well be easing you
As lie alone in bed
And waste the night in wanting
A cruel dark head.
You might as well be calling yours
What never will be his,
And one of us be happy.
There’s few enough as is.
Humoresque
“Heaven bless the babe!” they said.
“What queer books she must have read!”
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child.)
“Little does she guess to-day
What the world may be!” they say.
(Snow, drift deep and cover
Till the spring my murdered lover.)
The Pond
In this pond of placid water,
Half a hundred years ago,
So they say, a farmer’s daughter,
Jilted by her farmer beau,
Waded out among the rushes,
Scattering the blue dragon-flies;
That dried stick the ripple washes
Marks the spot, I should surmise.
Think, so near the public highway,
Well frequented even then!
Can you not conceive the sly way.—
Hearing wheels or seeing men
Passing on the road above,—
With a gesture feigned and silly,
Ere she drowned herself for love,
She would reach to pluck a lily?
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver
“Son,” said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
“You’ve need of clothes to cover you,
And not a rag have I.
“There’s nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with,
Nor thread to take stitches.
“There’s nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman’s head
Nobody will buy,”
And she began to cry.
That was in the early fall.
When came the late fall,
“Son,” she said, “the sight of you
Makes your mother’s blood crawl,—
“Little skinny shoulder-blades
Sticking through your clothes!
And where you’ll get a jacket from
God above knows.
“It’s lucky for me, lad,
Your daddy’s in the ground,
And can’t see the way I let
His son go around!”
And she made a queer sound.
That was in the late fall.
When the winter came,
I’d not a pair of breeches
Nor a shirt to my name.
I couldn’t go to school,
Or out of doors to play.
And all the other little boys
Passed our way.
“Son,” said my mother,
“Come, climb into my lap,
And I’ll chafe your little bones
While you take a nap.”
And, oh, but we were silly
For half an hour or more,
Me with my long legs
Dragging on the floor,
A-rock-rock-rocking
To a mother-goose rhyme!
Oh, but we were happy
For half an hour’s time!
But there was I, a great boy,
And what would folks say
To hear my mother singing me
To sleep all day,
In such a daft way?
Men say the winter
Was bad that year;
Fuel was scarce,
And food was dear.
A wind with a wolf’s head
Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
And sat upon the floor.
All that was left us
Was a chair we couldn’t break,
And the harp with a woman’s head
Nobody would take,
For song or pity’s sake.
The night before Christmas
I cried with the cold,
I cried myself to sleep
Like a two-year-old.
And in the deep night
I felt my mother rise,
And stare down upon me
With love in her eyes.
I saw my mother sitting
On the one good chair,
A light falling on her
From I couldn’t tell where,
Looking nineteen,
And not a day older,
And the harp with a woman’s head
Leaned against her shoulder.
Her thin fingers, moving
In the thin, tall strings,
Were weav-weav-weaving
Wonderful things.
Many bright threads,
From where I couldn’t see,
Were running through the harp-strings
Rapidly,
And gold threads whistling
Through my mother’s hand.
I saw the web grow,
And the pattern expand.
She wove a child’s jacket,
And when it was done
She laid it on the floor
And wove another one.
She wove a red cloak
So regal to see,
“She’s made it for a king’s son,”
I said, “and not for me.”
But I knew it was for me.
She wove a pair of breeches
Quicker than that!
She wove a pair of boots
And a little cocked hat.
She wove a pair of mittens,
She wove a little blouse,
She wove all night
In the still, cold house.
She sang as she worked,
And the harp-strings spoke;
Her voice never faltered,
And the thread never broke.
And when I awoke,—
There sat my mother
With the harp against her shoulder,
Looking nineteen,
And not a day older,
A smile about her lips,
And a light about her head,
And her hands in the harp-strings
Frozen dead.
And piled up beside her
And toppling to the skies,
Were the clothes of a king’s son,
Just my size.
Never May the Fruit Be Plucked
Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.
The Concert
No, I will go alone.
I will come back when it’s over.
Yes, of course I love you.
No, it will not be long.
Why may you not come with me?—
You are too much my lover.
You would Put yourself
Between me and song.
If I go alone,
Quiet and suavely clothed,
My body will die in its chair,
And over my head a flame,
A mind that is twice my own,
Will mark with icy mirth
The wise advance and retreat
Of armies without a country,
Storming a nameless gate,
Hurling terrible javelins down
From the shouting walls of a singing town
Where no women wait!
Armies clean of love and hate,
Marching lines of pitiless sound
Climbing hills to the sun and hurling
Golden spears to the ground!
Up the lines a silver runner
Bearing a banner whereon is scored
The milk and steel of a bloodless wound
Healed at length by the sword!
You and I have nothing to do with music.
We may not make of music a filigree frame,
Within which you and I,
Tenderly glad we came,
Sit smiling, hand in hand.
Come now, be content.
I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I’went.
Hyacinth
I am in love with him to whom a hyacinth is dearer
Than I shall ever be dear.
On nights when the field-mice are abroad he cannot sleep:
He hears their narrow teeth at the bulbs of his hyacinths.
But the gnawing at my heart he does not hear.
To One Who Might Have Borne a Message
Had I known that you were going
I would have given you messages for her,
Now two years dead,
Whom I shall always love.
As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,
You must reply: as well as with most, you fancy;
That I love easily, and pass the time.
And she will not know how all day long between
My life and me her shadow intervenes,
A young thin girl,
Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater
And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair.
I used to say to her, “I love you
Because your face is such a pretty colour,
No other reason.”
But it was not true.
Oh, had I only known that you were going,
I could have given you messages for her!
Siege
This I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.
White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god,—
Maybe next year, when I’m richer—
Carved beads and a lotus pod. . . .
And all this time
Death beating the door in.
The Cairn
When I think of the little children learning
In all the schools of the world,
Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese
That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world
Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities,
My heart breaks.
Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily
On the great cairn of Knowledge!
(Where lies what Euclid knew, a little grey stone,
What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo:
Little grey stones, little grey stones on a cairn.)
Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain?
Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow!
Name me the mountains on the moon!
But the name of the mountain that you climb all day,
Ask not your teacher that.
Spring Song
I know why the yellow forsythia
Holds its breath and will not bloom,
And the robin thrusts his beak in his wing.
Want me to tell you? Think you can bear it?
Cover your eyes with your hand and hear it.
You know how cold the days are still?
And everybody saying how late the Spring is?
Well—cover your eyes with your hand—the thing is,
There isn’t going to be any Spring.
No parking here! No parking here!
They said to Spring: No parking here!
Spring came on as she always does,
Laid her hand on the yellow forsythia,—
Little boys turned in their sleep and smiled,
Dreaming of marbles, dreaming of agates;
Little girls leapt from their beds to see
Spring come by with her painted wagons,
Coloured wagons creaking with wonder—
Laid her hand on the robin’s throat;
When up comes you-know-who, my dear,
You-know-who in a fine blue coat,
And says to Spring: No parking here!
No parking here! No parking here!
Move on! Move on! No parking here!
Come walk with me in the city gardens.
(Better keep an eye out for you-know-who)
Did ever you see such a sickly showing?—
Middle of June, and nothing growing;
The gardeners peer and scratch their heads
And drop their sweat on the tulip-beds,
But not a blade thrusts through.
Come, move on! Don’t you know how to walk?
No parking here! And no back-talk!
Oh, well,—hell, it’s all for the best.
She certainly made a lot of clutter,
Dropping petals under the trees,
Taking your mind off your bread and butter.
Anyhow, it’s nothing to me.
I can remember, and so can you.
(Though we’d better watch out for you-know-who,
When we sit around remembering Spring).
We shall hardly notice in a year or two.
You can get accustomed to anything.
Memory of Cape Cod
The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro .
I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating,
sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .
They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come
along, it’s long after sunset!
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind’s
died down!
They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells, too, and come along,
we’ll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.
Let me listen to wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the
shore.
From The Buck in the Snow
Moriturus
If I could have
Two things in one:
The peace of the grave,
And the light of the sun;
My hands across
My thin breast-bon
e,
But aware of the moss
Invading the stone,
Aware of the flight
Of the golden flicker
With his wing to the light;
To hear him nicker
And drum with his bill
On the rotted willow;
Snug and still
On a grey pillow
Deep in the clay
Where digging is hard,
Out of the way,—
The blue shard
Of a broken platter—
If I might be
Insensate matter
With sensate me
Sitting within,
Harking and prying,
I might begin
To dicker with dying.
For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes
“Alas, ’tis light!”
At set of sun
“Alas, ’tis night,
And nothing done!”
Death, however,
Is a spongy wall,
Is a sticky river,
Is nothing at all.
Summon the weeper,
Wail and sing;
Call him Reaper,
Angel, King;
Call him Evil
Drunk to the lees,
Monster, Devil,—
He is less than these.
Call him Thief,
The Maggot in the Cheese,
The Canker in the Leaf,—
He is less than these.
Dusk without sound,
Where the spirit by pain
Uncoiled, is wound
To spring again;
The mind enmeshed
Laid straight in repose,
And the body refreshed
By feeding the rose,—
These are but visions;
These would be
The grave’s derisions,
Could the grave see.
Here is the wish
Of one that died
Like a beached fish
On the ebb of the tide:
That he might wait
Till the tide came back,
To see if a crate,
Or a bottle, or a black
Boot, or an oar,
Or an orange peel
Be washed ashore. . . .
About his heel
The sand slips;
The last he hears
From the world’s lips
Is the sand in his ears.
What thing is little?—
The aphis hid
In a house of spittle?
The hinge of the lid
Of the spider’s eye
At the spider’s birth?
“Greater am I
By the earth’s girth
Than Mighty Death.!”
All creatures cry
That can summon breath;—
Collected Poems Page 9
