Later Poems

								

Two powers, two promises, two silences
Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves
Articulate.  This sudden hour retrieves

      The purpose of the past,
Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last.



      "Whose is the word?
Is it I that spake?  Is it thou?  Is it I that heard?"
"Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!"
"Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,

      Thou visitant divine."
"O thou my Voice, the word was thine."

   "Was thine."

A POET'S WIFE

I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land

   Within a field's embrace--
The very sea!  Afar it fled the strand

   And gave the seasons chase,
And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,

   Saw sunrise face to face.
O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!

   In inaccessible rest
And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir,

   Scattered through east to west,--
Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her

   Who locks thee to her breast.

VENERATION OF IMAGES

Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,

   Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat

   With love of thine own kind;
Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,

   Unshrined on this high-way,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,

   Thou rood of every day!

AT NIGHT

Home, home from the horizon far and clear,

      Hither the soft wings sweep;
Flocks of the memories of the day draw near

      The dovecote doors of sleep.
O which are they that come through sweetest light

      Of all these homing birds?
Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?

      Your words to me, your words!

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