Flame and Shadow | Page 4

blue than a
flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways
of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened
ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild

Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no
bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you
to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all
to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a
wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and
fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,

Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through
a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped
you.
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.
Memories
II
Places
Places I love come back to me like music,
Hush me and heal me
when I am very tired;
I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming
In a
flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;
And I am thirsty for the
spring in the valley
As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.
I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,
A blue and white
dazzling light on everything one sees,
The ice-covered branches of
the hemlocks sparkle
Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin
breeze,
And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust

With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.
Violet now, in veil on veil of evening
The hills across from Cromwell
grow dreamy and far;
A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol
In the
heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;
The primrose has
opened her pale yellow flowers
And heaven is lighting star after star.

Places I love come back to me like music --
Mid-ocean, midnight, the
waves buzz drowsily;
In the ship's deep churning the eerie
phosphorescence
Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,

And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,
At
midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.
Old Tunes
As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when
no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;
So the old tunes float in my mind,
And go from me leaving no trace
behind,
Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.
But in the instant the airs remain
I know the laughter and the pain

Of times that will not come again.
I try to catch at many a tune
Like petals of light fallen from the moon,

Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,
But they float away -- for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the
moon's gold?
"Only in Sleep"
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a
child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with
ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten --
What may have come to them, who
can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house
stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their
eyes and found them mild --
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,

And for them am I too a child?

Redbirds
Redbirds, redbirds,
Long and long ago,
What a honey-call you had

In hills I used to know;
Redbud, buckberry,
Wild plum-tree
And proud river sweeping

Southward to the sea,
Brown and gold in the sun
Sparkling far below,
Trailing stately
round her bluffs
Where the poplars grow --
Redbirds, redbirds,
Are you singing still
As you sang one May day

On Saxton's Hill?
Sunset: St. Louis
Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,
When I came home
again from far-off places,
How many times I saw my western city

Dream by her river.
Then for an hour the water wore a mantle
Of tawny gold and mauve
and misted turquoise
Under the tall and darkened arches bearing

Gray, high-flung bridges.
Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples
Flickered with fire up
the slope to westward,
And old warehouses poured their purple
shadows
Across the levee.
High over them the black train swept with thunder,
Cleaving the city,
leaving far beneath it
Wharf-boats moored beside the old
side-wheelers
Resting in twilight.
The Coin
Into my heart's treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take

Nor a thief purloin, --
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned

king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.
The Voice
Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions
of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,

From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,
Unto
myself I came.
My spirit like my flesh
Sprang from a thousand sources,
From
cave-man, hunter and shepherd,
From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;
The
living thoughts in me
Spring from dead men and women,
Forgotten
time out of mind
And many as bubbles of foam.
Here for a moment's space
Into the light out of darkness,
I come
and they come with me
Finding words with my breath;
From the
wisdom of many life-times
I hear