Classic Poem

They waited not for showers
But made a garden in the dark above him,
—Stayed not for summer, growing things that love him.
Beyond the light, beyond the hours,
Behind the wind, where Nature thinks the flowers,
He entered in his dying wandering.
And daisies infantine were thoughts of his,
And different grasses solved his mysteries.
He lived in flowers a snatch of spring,
And had a dying longing that uncloses
In wild white roses.

Down from the low hills dark with pines
Into the fields at rest, the summer done,
I went by pensive ways of tombs and vines
To where the place I dream of is;
And in a stretch of meditative sun
Cloven by the dark flames of the cypresses
Came to the small grave of my ended poet.
—I had felt the wild things many a dreamy hour
Pushing above him from beyond the sea,
But when I saw it
It chanced there was no flower;
And that was, too, a silent time for me.
O life of blossoms—Proserpine!
O time of flowers where art thou now,
And in what darkness movest thou?
In the lost heart of this quiet poet of mine
So well-contented with his growth of flowers?
Beyond the suns and showers
Stirrest thou in a silence that begets
The exquisite thought, the tuneful rhyme—
The first intention of the violets,
And the beginnings of the warm wild-thyme?
Indeed the poets do know
A place of thoughts where no winds blow,
And not a breath is sighing,
Beyond the light, beyond the hours,
Where all a summer of enchanted flowers
Do mark his place, his dying.
Sweet life, and is it there thy sceptre passes
On long arrays of flowering grasses
And rows of crimson clover?
Are these the shades thou reignest over?

Come ere the year forgets
The summer her long lover.
O Proserpine, November violets!

—Where art thou now?
And in what darkness movest thou
Who art in life the life of melodies?
Within the silent living poet's heart
Where no song is,
Where, every one apart,
Arrays of the morne fancies err
Vaguer than pain in sleep, vaguer than pain,
And no winds stir;—
Over these shadows dost thou reign?

See now, in this still day
All winds are strayed and lost, wandered away,
Everywhere from Soracte to the sea.
All singing things muse in the sun,
And trees of fragrant leaves do happily
Meditate in their sweet scents every one,
The pæans done.
All olives turn and dream in grey at ease,
Left by the silver breeze.
Long smiles have followed the peal of mirth.
—But silence has no place for me,
A silent singer on earth.

Awake!
And thro' the sleeping season break,
With young new shoots for this young poet's sake,
With singing lives for all these dreams of mine,
O darkened Proserpine!
Out of the small grave and the thoughts I love
Stir thou in me and move,
If haply a song of mine may seem a dim
Sweet flower grown over him.
Oh come from underground and be
Flowers for my young dear poet and songs for me.