I wait for you
ready to leap at you
from every corner
at every turn
gathered to spring at you
from the shadow
of every tree
this is an ambush
but I am not the assassin
I wait, not with a knife,
but love, heavy, dripping in my hands.

I travelled among unknown men
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.

And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
That the great, gray clouds would vanish,

I swear to you, Love, by your arrows,
And by your powerful holy flame,
I care not if by one I’m maimed,
My heart burned, wasted by the other:
However far through times past or coming,
There never was nor will be woman
Whomever of them you wish to name,
Could know such sharpness, such devouring:

For there’s a virtue born from suffering,
That dims and conquers the sense of pain,
So that it’s barely felt, seems scarcely hurting.
No! This, that torments soul and body again,
This is the real fear presaging my dying:

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

I sleep with double pillows since you're gone.
Is one of them for you-or is it you?
My bed is heaped with books of poetry.
I fall asleep on yellow legal pads.

Oh the orgies in stationery stores!
The love of printer's ink & think new pads!
A poet has to fall in love to write.
Her bed is heaped with papers, or with men.

I keep your pillow pressed down with my books.
They leave an indentation like your head.
If I can't have you here, I'll take cold type-
& words: the warmest things there are-
but you.

I sit at my desk alone
as I did on many Sunday
afternoons when you came
back to me,
your arms aching for me,
though they smelled
of other women
and your sweet head bowed
for me to rub
and your heart bursting
with things to tell me,
and your hair
and your eyes
wild.

We would embrace
on the carpet
and leave
the imprint of our bodies
on the floor.
My back is still sore
where you pressed me
into the rug,
a sweet soreness I would never
lose.

I think of you always

I shall not forget you. The years may be tender,
But vain are their efforts to soften my smart;
And the strong hands of Time are too feeble and slender
To garland the grave that is made in my heart.

Your image is ever about me, before me,
Your voice floats abroad on the voice of the wind;
And the spell of your presence, in absence, is o'er me,
And the dead of the past, in the present I find.

I cannot forget you. The one boon ungiven,
The boon of your love, is the cross that I bear.
In the midnight of sorrow I vainly have striven

I never shall love the snow again
Since Maurice died:
With corniced drift it blocked the lane,
And sheeted in a desolate plain
The country side.

The trees with silvery rime bedight
Their branches bare.
By day no sun appeared; by night
The hidden moon shed thievish light
In the misty air.

We fed the birds that flew around
In flocks to be fed:
No shelter in holly or brake they found,
The speckled thrush on the frozen ground
Lay frozen and dead.


We skated on stream and pond; we cut
The crinching snow

I shall be loved as quiet things
Are loved--white pigeons in the sun,
Curled yellow leaves that whisper down
One after one;

The silver reticence of smoke
That tells no secret of its birth
Among the fiery agonies
That turn the earth;

Cloud-islands; reaching arms of trees;
The frayed and eager little moon
That strays unheeded through a high
Blue afternoon.

The thunder of my heart must go
Under the muffling of the dust--
As my gray dress has guarded it
The grasses must;

For it has hammered loud enough,