The Pleiades
By day you cannot see the sky For it is up so very high. You look and look, but it’s so blue That you can never see right through. But when night comes it
A Fixed Idea
What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight
The Little Garden
A little garden on a bleak hillside Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow Lies far into the spring. The sun’s pale glow Is scarcely able to melt patches wide About the single rose
The Trout
Naughty little speckled trout, Can’t I coax you to come out? Is it such great fun to play In the water every day? Do you pull the Naiads’ hair Hiding in the lilies there?
The Giver of Stars
Hold your soul open for my welcoming. Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me With its clear and rippled coolness, That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, Outstretched upon your peace, as on
New York at Night
A near horizon whose sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of
A Lady
You are beautiful and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord; Or like the sun-flooded silks Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. In your eyes Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes, And
Lead Soldiers
The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful Little explosions And trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature Rockets Peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala Flamed
In Darkness
Must all of worth be travailled for, and those Life’s brightest stars rise from a troubled sea? Must years go by in sad uncertainty Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows, Are we or
Aftermath
I learnt to write to you in happier days, And every letter was a piece I chipped From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays,
Song
Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run; Holding up A scent-brimmed cup, Full of summer’s fragrance to the summer sun. Oh! To be a butterfly
Crepuscule du Matin
All night I wrestled with a memory Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought. The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought Its disillusion; now I only cry For peace, for power to
A Fairy Tale
On winter nights beside the nursery fire We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals Builded its pictures. There before our eyes We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone Uprear itself, the distant
Obligation
Hold your apron wide That I may pour my gifts into it, So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them From falling to the ground. I would pour them upon you And cover
A Winter Ride
Who shall declare the joy of the running! Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight! Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather, Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light. Everything mortal