The House of the Trees & Other Poems 9

The House of the Trees & Other Poems 9

A Rainy Morning

 

 

The low sky, and the warm, wet wind,

And the tender light on the eyes;

A day like a soul that has never sinned,

New dropped from Paradise.

 

And ’tis oh, for a long walk in the rain,

By the side of the warm, wet breeze,

With the thoughts washed clean of dust and stain

As the leaves on the shining trees.

 

 

 

 

June Apples

 

 

Green apple branches full of green apples

All around me unfurled,

Here where the shade and the sunlight dapples

A grass-green, apple-green world.

 

Little green children stirred with the heaving

Of the warm breast of the air,

When your old nurse, the wind, is grieving

Comfortlessly you fare.

 

But now an old-time song she is crooning,

Nestle your heads again,

While I dream on through the golden nooning,

Or look for the first red stain

 

On some round cheek that the sunshine dapples,

Near me where I lie curled

Under green trees athrong with green apples,

In a grass-green, apple-green world.

 

 

 

 

Beginning and End

 

 

Once it was in my life’s beginning,

Roses were tall in their summer beds,

Dandelions within my fingers

Thrust their confident golden heads;

Wading waist-deep ’mid the daisies,

Feeling the grasses about me climb--

Thus it was in my life’s beginning;

What have you done to me, Father Time?

 

So shall it be when life has ended:

Roses shall bloom above my head,

Dandelions will know I am lying

Hidden in grass from foot to head.

Hidden in grass and hidden in daisies,

Over my breast I shall feel them climb,

Thus it will be when life has ended;

This will you do to me, Father Time.

 

 

 

 

Not at Home

 

 

The Weariness of Idleness,

She waited all the day

In the parlor of her neighbor,

The Weariness of Labor--

A visit she had long meant to pay.

 

But not until the evening

Did her hostess come in sight;

Then the Weariness of Labor

Explained unto her neighbor

That she lived but a brief hour at night.

 

 

 

 

The Wind of Memory

 

 

Red curtains shut the storm from sight,

The inner rooms are live with light;

The fireside faces all aglow

See not the pale ghost in the snow,

The pale ghost at the window pressed,

With the wind moaning in her breast.

 

She sees the face she hurt with scorn,

The other face where joy, new born,

Died out at her cheap mockery;

The eyes she filled, how bitterly!

The head that drooped beneath her jest--

The wind is moaning in her breast.

 

Invisible, unfelt, unknown,

She lingers trembling. She alone

Notes tenderly her vacant place,

And sees in it her vanished face;

She only--of this happy nest!

The wind is moaning in her breast.

 

Star-like the happy windows glow,

Framed in with mile on mile of snow;

And from their light a thing of death,

Of grief and memory vanisheth,

Her sin not deep but unredressed,

And the wind moaning in her breast.

 

 

 

 

Philippa

 

 

A generous gentleness that flowed,

Stream-like, beside a dusty road;

Gave laborers shade, and prisoners sun,

And easeful joy to every one;

With liquid melodies for such

As worked or wearied overmuch,

And ministrations cool and sweet

For fevered hands and aching feet.

 

So delicately fair she moved--

That stream-like girl, of all beloved.

Along her path no grief nor care

But lulled and lightened unaware.

She bore the sky within her breast,

And child-like winds her soul caressed,

Until her spring of life was dried,

And with a smile Philippa died.

 

 

 

 

The Student

 

 

The student sits within his room,

So small and worn and white;

His lamp flames out remote and strange

Through all the hours of night.

 

And all day long within his face,

So small and worn and white,

His eyes flame out--those lamp-like eyes,

So weirdly, strangely bright.

 

 

 

 

Unspoken

 

 

My lover comes down the long leafy street

Through tenderly falling rain;

His footsteps near our portal veer,

Go past--then turn again.

 

O can it be he is knocking below,

Or here at my door above?

So gentle and small it sounds in the hall,

So loud in the ear of love.

 

But never a word of love has he said,

And never a word crave I,

For why should one long for the daylight strong

When the dawn is in the sky?

 

O a dewy rose-garden is the house,

A garden shut from the sun;

The breath of it sweet floats up, as my feet

Float down to my waiting one.

 

But if ever a word of love thinks he,

It falls from his heart still-born;

Who bends to the rose does not haste to close

His hand around bud and thorn.