I walked to-day, but not alone,
Adown a windy, sea-girt lea,
For memory, spendthrift of her charm,
Peopled the silent lands for me.

The faces of old comradeship
In golden youth were round my way,
And in the keening wind I heard
The songs of many an orient day.

And to me called, from out the pines
And woven grasses, voices dear,
As if from elfin lips should fall
The mimicked tones of yesteryear.

Old laughter echoed o'er the leas
And love-lipped dreams the past had kept,
From wayside blooms like honeyed bees

When my blood flows calm as a purling river,
When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway,
It is then that I vow we must part for ever,
That I will forget you, and put you away
Out of my life, as a dream is banished
Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes;
That I know it will be when the spell has vanished,
Better for both of our sakes.

When the court of the mind is ruled by Reason,
I know it wiser for us to part;
But Love is a spy who is plotting treason,
In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart.

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught

What would'st thou have for easement after grief,
When the rude world hath used thee with despite,
And care sits at thine elbow day and night,
Filching thy pleasures like a subtle thief?
To me, when life besets me in such wise,
'Tis sweetest to break forth, to drop the chain,
And grasp the freedom of this pleasant earth,
To roam in idleness and sober mirth,
Through summer airs and summer lands, and drain
The comfort of wide fields unto tired eyes.

By hills and waters, farms and solitudes,

Waking in the night;
the lamp is low,
the oil freezing.



It has rained enough
to turn the stubble on the field
black.




Winter rain
falls on the cow-shed;
a cock crows.




The leeks
newly washed white,-
how cold it is!




The sea darkens;
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.





Ill on a journey;
my dreams wander
over a withered moor.

Mark yon runnel, how ’tis flowing,
Like a sylvan spirit dreaming
Of the spring-blooms near it blowing,
And the sunlight o’er it beaming—
Bright from bank to bank, or growing
Darkly inter-freaked, when streaming
Where some willowy shade hangs bending
O’er it in green mingled masses—
Lights and shades and blossoms glowing,
All for greater beauty blending
In its vision as it passes.
Where that shelving rock is spied,
There, with a smooth warbling slide,
It lapses down into a cool

BENEATH the flat and paper sky
The sun, a demon's eye,
Glowed through the air, that mask of glass;
All wand'ring sounds that pass

Seemed out of tune, as if the light
Were fiddle-strings pulled tight.
The market-square with spire and bell
Clanged out the hour in Hell;

The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parakeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and white

As powder on a mummy's face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

1

Dawn. First light tearing
at the rough tongues of the zinnias,
at the leaves of the just born.

Today it will rain. On the road
black cars are abandoned, but the clouds
ride above, their wisdom intact.

They are predictions. They never matter.
The jet fighters lift above the flat roofs,
black arrowheads trailing their future.

2

When the night comes small fires go out.
Blood runs to the heart and finds it locked.

Morning is exhaustion, tranquilizers, gasoline,

As if chiseled, a fruit-laden branch
Hangs in my garden, asleep - so low...
The trees sleep - and dream? - in moonlight;
And the mystery of their life is near, near...

Even if we cannot grasp it,
The mute language is still intelligible:
They use our beauty to express
How we are one amidst rays and spots of light.

And the tremor of any life's creation
Reveals itself in a lovely form;
And the variance of different things is sweetened
By shared beauty. Multiply it!

And the world will be like this unstirring garden,