"And babble baby love into my ears —
How it will thrill!"
I waited – Oh, the dread,
The clutching agony, the fears! —
He was so strange and still.
Did I curse God and rave
When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas
A witless child?
No … I … I only gave
One cry … just one … I think … because …
You know … he never smiled.
THE WINDS
The East Wind is a Bedouin,
And Nimbus is his steed;
Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin
Blue scimitar he flies afar,
Whither his rovings lead.
The Dead Sea waves
And Egypt caves
Of mummied silence laugh
When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench
And to wrench
From his clutch the tyrant's staff.
The West Wind is an Indian brave
Who scours the Autumn's crest.
Dashing the forest down as a slave,
He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves
A maelstrom for his breast.
Out of the night
Crying to fright
The earth he swoops to spoil —
There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath,
In his path
There is misery and moil.
The North Wind is a Viking – cold
And cruel, armed with death!
Born in the doomful deep of the old
Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose
From Niflheim's ebon breath.
And with him sail
Snow, Frost, and Hail,
Thanes mighty as their lord,
To plunder the shores of Summer's stores —
And his roar's
Like the sound of Chaos' horde.
The South Wind is a Troubadour;
The Spring 's his serenade.
Over the mountain, over the moor,
He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb
Blossom and leaf and blade.
He ripples the throat
Of the lark with a note
Of lilting love and bliss,
And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon,
Are a-swoon —
When he woos them with his kiss.
TRANSCENDED
I who was learnèd in death's lore
Oft held her to my heart
And spoke of days when we should love no more —
In the long dust, apart.
"Immortal?" No – it could not be,
Spirit with flesh must die.
Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea,
Reason would still outcry.
She died. They wrapped her in the dust —
I heard the dull clod's dole,
And then I knew she lived – that death's dark lust
Could never touch her soul!
LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD
We are not lovers, you and I,
Upon this sunny lane,
But children who have never known
Love's joy or pain.
The trees we pass, the summer brook,
The bird that o'er us darts —
We do not know 'tis they that thrill
Our childish hearts.
The earth-things have no name for us,
The ploughing means no more
Than that they like to walk the fields
Who plough them o'er.
The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills
Are not a World to-day —
But just a place God's made for us