The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,

She said she'd come at evening's fall,
By yon streamlet gently rolling,
When darkness dim was spread o'er all.
And the vesper bell was tolling;
But long that bell hath ceased its tone,
And the moon has risen above me,
And I have waited long and lone
For the lass who vowed to love me!

The time is long, the hours are slow,
When the loving heart is waiting,
Ye sportive winds that round me blow,
Hie to her lattice grating.
Tell her 'tis past th'appointed hour,
And the bright stars peer above me,

Locate I
love you some-
where in


teeth and
eyes, bite
it but


take care not
to hurt, you
want so


much so
little. Words
say everything.


I
love you
again,


then what
is emptiness
for. To


fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full


of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.

Hail! voyagers, hail!
Whence e'er ye come, where'er ye rove,
No calmer strand,
No sweeter land,
Will e'er ye view, than the Land of Love!

Hail! voyagers, hail!
To these, our shores, soft gales invite:
The palm plumes wave,
The billows lave,
And hither point fix'd stars of light!

Hail! voyagers, hail!
Think not our groves wide brood with gloom;
In this, our isle,
Bright flowers smile:
Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom.

Hail! voyagers, hail!
Be not deceived; renounce vain things;
Ye may not find

I TURN round
Like a dumb beast in a show.
Neither know what I am
Nor where I go,
My language beaten
Into one name;
I am in love
And that is my shame.
What hurts the soul
My soul adores,
No better than a beast
Upon all fours.

I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
   Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
   As of angel fallen from grace?"

II

- "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
   In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.

Lips' language to lips' ears.
Two drinking each other's heart, it seems.
Two roving loves who have left home,
pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each other
meet at last at the body's limits.
Love's writing a song in dainty letters,
layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lips
perhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lips
is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.

The new year coming to us with swift feet
Is the King's gift,
And all that in it lies
Will make our lives more rounded and complete.
It may be laughter,
May be tear-filled eyes;
It may be gain of love,
Or loss of love;
It may be thorns, or bloom and breath of flowers,
The full fruition of these hopes that move-
It may be what will break these hearts of ours,
What matter? 'Tis the great gift of the King-
We do not need to fear what it may bring.

In the dawn of the day, when the sea and the earth
Reflected the sunrise above,
I set forth, with a heart full of courage and mirth,
To seek for the Kingdom of Love.
I asked of a Poet I met on the way,
Which cross-road would lead me aright,
And he said: "Follow me, and ere long you will see
Its glistening turrets of Light."

And soon in the distance a city shone fair;
"Look yonder," he said, "there it gleams!"
But alas! for the hopes that were doomed to despair,
It was only the Kingdom of Dreams.

'The Keeping'



By
Charles L. East






Unto my keeping
wert thou given me,
that I might love thee
with all my soul
to the end of my days…
and adore thee in the autumn of my years.

I have loved thee beyond life's measure,
beyond the treasures of the earth or sea
or the boundless reaches of the deepening sky.

If the sun should quietly rise
upon a dreaded day…
and thy final sleeping mercifully unburden
the hours from me,
my futile weeping shall only cease