Great Poems by American Women (18 page)

I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream
Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.

 

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.

 

The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night

Ye wake to feel your beauty going.

It was a web of frail delight,

Inconstant as an April snowing.

 

In other eyes, in other lands,

In deep fair pools, new beauty lingers,

But like spent water in your hands

It runs from your reluctant fingers.

 

Ye shall not keep the singing lark

That owes to earlier skies its duty.

Weep not to hear along the dark

The sound of your departing beauty.

 

The fine and anguished ear of night

Is tuned to hear the smallest sorrow.

Oh, wait until the morning light!

It may not seem so gone to-morrow!

 

But honey-pale and rosy-red!

Brief lights that made a little shining!

Beautiful looks about us shed—

They leave us to the old repining.

 

Think not the watchful dim despair

Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted!

For oh, the gold in Helen's hair!

And how she cried when that departed!

Perhaps that one that took the most,

The swiftest borrower, wildest spender,

May count, as we would not, the cost—

And grow more true to us and tender.

 

Happy are we if in his eyes

We see no shadow of forgetting.

Nay—if our star sinks in those skies

We shall not wholly see its setting.

 

Then let us laugh as do the brooks

That such immortal youth is ours,

If memory keeps for them our looks

As fresh as are the spring-time flowers.

 

Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night

Ye wake, to feel the cold December!

Rather recall the early light

And in your loved one's arms, remember.

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

 

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like a curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,

Holy thoughts that star the night.

 

Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.

Strephon kissed me in the spring,

Robin in the fall,

But Colin only looked at me

And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,

Robin's lost in play,

But the kiss in Colin's eyes

Haunts me night and day.

I hoped that he would love me,

And he has kissed my mouth,

But I am like a stricken bird

That cannot reach the south.

 

For though I know he loves me,

To-night my heart is sad;

His kiss was not so wonderful

As all the dreams I had.

When I am dead and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,

I shall not care.

 

I shall have peace as leafy trees are peaceful,

When rain bends down the bough,

And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted

Than you are now.

A tall tree talking with the wind

Leans as he leaned to me—

But oh the wind waits where she will,

The wind is free.

 

I am a woman, I am weak,

And custom leads me as one blind,

Only my songs go where they will

Free as the wind.

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

 

“Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion,
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy;
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her—
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy.”

Never think she loves him wholly,
Never believe her love is blind,
All his faults are locked securely
In a closet of her mind;
All his indecisions folded
Like old flags that time has faded,
Limp and streaked with rain,
And his cautiousness like garments
Frayed and thin, with many a stain—
Let them be, oh let them be,
There is treasure to outweigh them,
His proud will that sharply stirred,
Climbs as surely as the tide,
Senses strained too taut to sleep,
Gentleness to beast and bird,
Humor flickering hushed and wide
As the moon on moving water,
And a tenderness too deep
To be gathered in a word.

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,

I have less need now than when I was young

To share myself with every comer

Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

 

It is one to me that they come or go

If I have myself and the drive of my will,

And strength to climb on a summer night

And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

 

Let them think I love them more than I do,

Let them think I care, though I go alone;

If it lifts their pride, what is it to me

Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.

The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah, quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird's wing
Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah, never any more when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
Beyond the lure of light Alcæus' lyre,
Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice.
Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,
Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,
Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
The quiver and the crying of my heart.
Still I remember how I strove to flee
The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head
To hurry faster, but upon the ground
I saw two winged shadows side by side,
And all the world's spring passion stifled me.
Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
In many guises didst thou come to me;
I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,
Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
In Anactoria I knew thy grace,
I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
But never wholly, soul and body mine,
Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.
Now I have found the peace that fled from me;
Close, close, against my heart I hold my world.
Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry,
Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,
I taught the world thy music, now alone
I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.