The Magic House and Other Poems 2

The Magic House and Other Poems 2

THE HILL PATH

 

TO H.D.S.

 

 

Are the little breezes blind,

They that push me as they pass?

Do they search the tangled grass

For some path they want to find?

Take my fingers, little wind;

You are all alone, and I

Am alone too. I will guide,

You will follow; let us go

By a pathway that I know,

Leading down the steep hillside,

Past the little sharp-lipped pools,

Shrunken with the summer sun,

Where the sparrows come to drink;

And we’ll scare the little birds,

Coming on them unawares;

And the daisies every one

We will startle on the brink

Of a doze.

(Gently, gently, little wind),

Very soon a wood we’ll see,

There my lover waits for me.

(Go more gently, little wind,

You should follow soft, behind.)

You will hear my lover say

How he loves me night and day,

But his words you must not tell

To the other little winds,

For they all might come to hear,

And might rustle through the wood,

And disturb the solitude.

(Blow more softly, little wind,

You are tossing all my hair,

Go more gently, have a care;

If you lead you can’t be blind,

So,--good-bye:)

There he goes: I see his feet

On the grass;

Now the little pools are blurred

As they pass;

And he must be very fleet,

For I see the bushes stirred

Near the wood. I hope he’ll tell,

If he isn’t out of breath,

That he met me on the hill.

But I hope he will not say

That he kissed me for good-bye

Just before he flew away.

 

 

 

 

THE VOICE AND THE DUSK

 

 

The slender moon and one pale star,

A rose-leaf and a silver bee

From some god’s garden blown afar,

Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

 

Within the south there rolls and grows

A mighty town with tower and spire,

From a cloud bastion masked with rose

The lightning flashes diamond fire.

 

The purple-martin darts about

The purlieus of the iris fen;

The king-bird rushes up and out,

He screams and whirls and screams again.

 

A thrush is hidden in a maze

Of cedar buds and tamarac bloom,

He throws his rapid flexile phrase,

A flash of emeralds in the gloom.

 

A voice is singing from the hill

A happy love of long ago;

Ah! tender voice, be still, be still,

‘’Tis sometimes better not to know.’

 

The rapture from the amber height

Floats tremblingly along the plain,

Where in the reeds with fairy light

The lingering fireflies gleam again.

 

Buried in dingles more remote,

Or drifted from some ferny rise,

The swooning of the golden throat

Drops in the mellow dusk and dies.

 

A soft wind passes lightly drawn,

A wave leaps silverly and stirs

The rustling sedge, and then is gone

Down the black cavern in the firs.

 

 

 

 

FOR REMEMBRANCE

 

 

It would be sweet to think when we are old

Of all the pleasant days that came to pass,

That here we took the berries from the grass,

There charmed the bees with pans, and smoke unrolled,

And spread the melon nets when nights were cold,

Or pulled the blood-root in the underbrush,

And marked the ringing of the tawny thrush,

While all the west was broken burning gold.

 

And so I bind with rhymes these memories;

As girls press pansies in the poet’s leaves

And find them afterwards with sweet surprise;

Or treasure petals mingled with perfume,

Loosing them in the days when April grieves,--

A subtle summer in the rainy room.

 

 

 

 

THE MESSAGE

 

 

Wind of the gentle summer night,

Dwell in the lilac tree,

Sway the blossoms clustered light,

Then blow over to me.

 

Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,

You frighten the ships at sea,

Now come floating your delicate freight

Out of the lilac tree.

 

Wind, you must waver a gossamer sail

To ferry a scent so light,

Will you carry my love a message as frail

Through the hawk-haunted night?

 

For my heart is sometimes strange and wild,

Bitter and bold and free,

I scare the beautiful timid child,

As you frighten the ships at sea;

 

But now when the hawks are piercing the air,

With the golden stars above,

The only thing my heart can bear

Is a lilac message of love.

 

Gentle wind, will you carry this

Up to her window white;

Give her a gentle tender kiss,

Bid her good-night--good-night.

 

 

 

 

THE SILENCE OF LOVE

 

 

My heart would need the earth,

My voice would need the sea,

To only tell the one half

How dear you are to me.

 

And if I had the winds,

The stars and the planets as well,

I might tell the other half,

Or perhaps I would try to tell.