laughter

MERRYMIND, Merrymind, whither art thou roaming?
Merrymind, Merrymind, nay, art thou sleeping yet?
Oh, to us, sweet minstrel dear, wilt thou not be homing?
Or we shall forget.
Vale of toil so waste and drear, hear him now advancing,
Playing on the golden strings, the midnight maiden’s boon;
Breaks the sunshine on the hills, the princess falls to dancing
In a bridal noon!

Oh, the joyfulness and kissing of that fiddle’s flowings,
Giving rest and happiness, and laughter delicate!

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Do the purple daisies grow
On your rugged slopes in spring-time
As they did in years ago,

When I walked with one who loved me,
In the days when love was young;
When our eyes held glinted laughter
And our sighs were songs unsung?

But the laughter fell and faded,
And the wonder-song is still,
And the track goes all untrodden
Past the pool and up the hill.

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Other years your flowers restore,

I lie stretched out upon the window-seat
And doze, and read a page or two, and doze,
And feel the air like water on me close,
Great waves of sunny air that lip and beat
With a small noise, monotonous and sweet,
Against the window -- and the scent of cool,
Frail flowers by some brown and dew-drenched pool
Possesses me from drowsy head to feet.

This is the time of all-sufficing laughter
At idiotic things some one has done,
And there is neither past nor vague hereafter.

Mad March, with the wind in his wings wide-spread,
Leaps from heaven, and the deep dawn's arch
Hails re-risen again from the dead
Mad March.

Soft small flames on rowan and larch
Break forth as laughter on lips that said
Nought till the pulse in them beat love's march.

But the heartbeat now in the lips rose-red
Speaks life to the world, and the winds that parch
Bring April forth as a bride to wed
Mad March.

.


O that 'twere possible
.


After long grief and pain
.


To find the arms of my true love
.


Round me once again!2.


When I was wont to meet her
.


In the silent woody places
.


By the home that gave me birth,
.


We stood tranced in long embraces
.


Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
.


Than anything on earth.2.

Air -- "Lily of the West"

I
Come all you sympathizing friends, wherever you may be,
I pray you pay attention and listen unto me;
For it's of a fair young lady, she died, she went to rest,
She was called handsome Maryette, the lily of the west.
II
Her name was Maryette Myers, and her age I do not know,
Her cheeks were red as roses, her eyes were black as sloes;
She was loved by all surrounding friends, and some that loved her best,
They called her handsome Maryette, the lily of the west.
III

This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to avoid!

276

Many a phrase has the English language—
I have heard but one—
Low as the laughter of the Cricket,
Loud, as the Thunder's Tongue—

Murmuring, like old Caspian Choirs,
When the Tide's a' lull—
Saying itself in new infection—
Like a Whippoorwill—

Breaking in bright Orthography
On my simple sleep—
Thundering its Prospective—
Till I stir, and weep—

Not for the Sorrow, done me—
But the push of Joy—
Say it again, Saxton!
Hush—Only to me!

He comes unknown and heard and stands there
Breathes there hardly and hands grip
Flesh and walking stick. Skips over mounds
To land flat footed in a bowl of roses.

Flicks at the crazy gravestones
Spitting loud desires wood crosses for himself:
Heaves them up with laughter to hang them,
Dangling on the atheist's fig tree.

Handsprings through the open door,
Signs with a swastika on the visitors' book
And goes through the shut iron gate
With a pansy in his buttonhole.

It is yourself you seek
In a long rage,
Scanning through light and darkness
Mirrors, the page,

Where should reflected be
Those eyes and that thick hair,
That passionate look, that laughter.
You should appear

Within the book, or doubled,
Freed, in the silvered glass;
Into all other bodies
Yourself should pass.

The glass does not dissolve;
Like walls the mirrors stand;
The printed page gives back
Words by another hand.

And your infatuate eye