Later Poems

								

But in the stony fields, where clear
Through the thin trees the skies appear;
In delicate spare soil and fen,
And slender landscape and austere.

THE FOLD

      Behold,
The time is now!  Bring back, bring back
Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.
Oh lead them from the mountain-track--

      Thy frolic thoughts untold.
Oh bring them in--the fields grow dim--

      And let me be the fold.



      Behold,
The time is now!  Call in, O call
Thy posturing kisses gone astray
For scattered sweets.  Gather them all

      To shelter from the cold.
Throng them together, close and gay,

      And let me be the fold!

CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT

The child not yet is lulled to rest.

   Too young a nurse, the slender Night
So laxly holds him to her breast

   That throbs with flight.
He plays with her and will not sleep.

   For other playfellows she sighs;
An unmaternal fondness keep

   Her alien eyes.

THE ROARING FROST

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth

   With a resounding call!
Where will they close their wings and cease their cries--
Between what warming seas and conquering skies--

   And fold, and fall?

PARENTAGE

   "When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of

   Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people."



   Ah no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not they who gave
So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.



   But those who slay
Are fathers.  Theirs are armies.  Death is theirs,
The death of innocences and despairs;
The dying of the golden and the grey.
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.

THE MODERN MOTHER

   Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!

   To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest
Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.



   Unhoped, unsought!
A little tenderness, this mother thought

   The utmost of her meed
She looked for gratitude; content indeed
With thus much that her nine years' love had bought.



   Nay, even with less.
This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,

   Desired ah! not so much
Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch
Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.



   Oh filial light
Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright

   Intelligible stars!  Their rays
Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze,
Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.

WEST WIND IN WINTER

Another day awakes.  And who--

   Changing the world--is this?
He comes at whiles, the Winter through,

   West Wind!  I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new

   Surprises of his kiss.
Vigilant, I make haste to close

   With him who comes my way.