Poems

								

For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,

   Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.
Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee

   Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.
Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,

   Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.
Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store
Will be hidden on thy breast.

   Things thou longest for
Will not fear or shun thee more.
Thou shalt intimately lie
In the roots of flowers that thrust
Upwards from thee to the sky,

   With no more distrust,
When they blossom from thy dust.
Silent labours of the rain
Shall be near thee, reconciled;
Little lives of leaves and grain,

    All things shy and wild
Tell thee secrets, quiet child.
Earth, set free from thy fair fancies
And the art thou shalt resign,
Will bring forth her rue and pansies

   Unto more divine
Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.
Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.
There will lie thy mortal burden
Pressed unto the heart of Nature,

   Songless in a garden,
With a long embrace of pardon.
Then the truth all creatures tell,
And His will whom thou entreatest,
Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell

    Silence, the completest
Of thy poems, last, and sweetest.

SONG OF THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER

THE POET SINGS TO HER POET
O poet of the time to be,

   My conqueror, I began for thee.
Enter into thy poet's pain,

   And take the riches of the rain,
And make the perfect year for me.
Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall,
Whene'er thou comest, hear my call.

   O, keep the promise of my lays,

   Take the sweet parable of my days;
I trust thee with the aim of all.
And if thy thoughts unfold from me,
Know that I too have hints of thee,

   Dim hopes that come across my mind

   In the rare days of warmer wind,
And tones of summer in the sea.
And I have set thy paths, I guide
Thy blossoms on the wild hillside.

   And I, thy bygone poet, share

   The flowers that throng thy feet where
I led thy feet before I died.

TO THE BELOVED

Oh, not more subtly silence strays

   Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,

   And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.
My silence, life returns to thee

   In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody

   That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.
Full, full is life in hidden places,

   For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.

   Full is my life.  A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces.
Thou art like silence all unvexed

   Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,

   A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.