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A Prayer in Spring

    OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
    And give us not to think so far away
    As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
    All simply in the springing of the year.
    Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
    Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
    And make us happy in the happy bees,
    The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
    And make us happy in the darting bird
    That suddenly above the bees is heard,
    The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
    And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
    For this is love and nothing else is love,
    The which it is reserved for God above
    To sanctify to what far ends He will,
    But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Flower-gathering

    I LEFT you in the morning,
    And in the morning glow,
    You walked a way beside me
    To make me sad to go.
    Do you know me in the gloaming,
    Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
    Are you dumb because you know me not,
    Or dumb because you know?
    All for me? And not a question
    For the faded flowers gay
    That could take me from beside you
    For the ages of a day?
    They are yours, and be the measure
    Of their worth for you to treasure,
    The measure of the little while
    That I've been long away.

Rose Pogonias

    A SATURATED meadow,
    Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
    A circle scarcely wider
    Than the trees around were tall;
    Where winds were quite excluded,
    And the air was stifling sweet
    With the breath of many flowers,--
    A temple of the heat.
    There we bowed us in the burning,
    As the sun's right worship is,
    To pick where none could miss them
    A thousand orchises;
    For though the grass was scattered,
    Yet every second spear
    Seemed tipped with wings of color,
    That tinged the atmosphere.
    We raised a simple prayer
    Before we left the spot,
    That in the general mowing
    That place might be forgot;
    Or if not all so favoured,
    Obtain such grace of hours,
    That none should mow the grass there
    While so confused with flowers.

Asking for Roses

    A HOUSE that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
    With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
    Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
    It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
    I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
    'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.
    'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
    'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'
    So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
    There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
    And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
    And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
    'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
    'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
    'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
    'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.
    'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
    Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
    A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
    And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'
    We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
    (Not caring so very much what she supposes),
    There when she comes on us mistily shining
    And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

Waiting Afield at Dusk

    WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like,
    Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
    I enter alone upon the stubble field,
    From which the laborers' voices late have died,
    And in the antiphony of afterglow
    And rising full moon, sit me down
    Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
    And lose myself amid so many alike.
    I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
    Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
    I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
    Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
    Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
    And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem
    Dimly to have made out my secret place,
    Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
    And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
    On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
    In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
    That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
    After an interval, his instrument,
    And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;
    And on the worn book of old-golden song
    I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
    And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
    But on the memory of one absent most,
    For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

In a Vale

    WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale
    By a misty fen that rang all night,
    And thus it was the maidens pale
    I knew so well, whose garments trail
    Across the reeds to a window light.
    The fen had every kind of bloom,
    And for every kind there was a face,
    And a voice that has sounded in my room
    Across the sill from the outer gloom.
    Each came singly unto her place,
    But all came every night with the mist;
    And often they brought so much to say
    Of things of moment to which, they wist,
    One so lonely was fain to list,
    That the stars were almost faded away
    Before the last went, heavy with dew,
    Back to the place from which she came--
    Where the bird was before it flew,
    Where the flower was before it grew,
    Where bird and flower were one and the same.
    And thus it is I know so well
    Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.
    You have only to ask me, and I can tell.
    No, not vainly there did I dwell,
    Nor vainly listen all the night long.

A Dream Pang

    I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song
    Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
    And to the forest edge you came one day
    (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
    But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
    You shook your pensive head as who should say,
    'I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray--
    He must seek me would he undo the wrong.
    Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
    Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
    And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
    And tell you that I saw does still abide.
    But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
    For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

In Neglect

    THEY leave us so to the way we took,
    As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
    That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
    With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
    And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

The Vantage Point

    IF tired of trees I seek again mankind,
    Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn,
    To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
    There amid lolling juniper reclined,
    Myself unseen, I see in white defined
    Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
    The graves of men on an opposing hill,
    Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
    And if by moon I have too much of these,
    I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
    The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
    My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
    I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
    I look into the crater of the ant.

Mowing

    THERE was never a sound beside the wood but one,
    And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
    What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
    Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
    Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound--
    And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
    It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
    Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
    Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
    To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
    Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
    (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
    The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
    My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Going for Water

    THE well was dry beside the door,
    And so we went with pail and can
    Across the fields behind the house
    To seek the brook if still it ran;
    Not loth to have excuse to go,
    Because the autumn eve was fair
    (Though chill), because the fields were ours,
    And by the brook our woods were there.
    We ran as if to meet the moon
    That slowly dawned behind the trees,
    The barren boughs without the leaves,
    Without the birds, without the breeze.
    But once within the wood, we paused
    Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
    Ready to run to hiding new
    With laughter when she found us soon.
    Each laid on other a staying hand
    To listen ere we dared to look,
    And in the hush we joined to make
    We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
    A note as from a single place,
    A slender tinkling fall that made
    Now drops that floated on the pool
    Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

Revelation

    WE make ourselves a place apart
    Behind light words that tease and flout,
    But oh, the agitated heart
    Till someone find us really out.
    'Tis pity if the case require
    (Or so we say) that in the end
    We speak the literal to inspire
    The understanding of a friend.
    But so with all, from babes that play
    At hide-and-seek to God afar,
    So all who hide too well away
    Must speak and tell us where they are.

The Trial by Existence

    EVEN the bravest that are slain
    Shall not dissemble their surprise
    On waking to find valor reign,
    Even as on earth, in paradise;
    And where they sought without the sword
    Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
    To find that the utmost reward
    Of daring should be still to dare.
    The light of heaven falls whole and white
    And is not shattered into dyes,
    The light for ever is morning light;
    The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
    The angel hosts with freshness go,
    And seek with laughter what to brave;--
    And binding all is the hushed snow
    Of the far-distant breaking wave.
    And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
    The gathering of the souls for birth,
    The trial by existence named,
    The obscuration upon earth.
    And the slant spirits trooping by
    In streams and cross- and counter-streams
    Can but give ear to that sweet cry
    For its suggestion of what dreams!
    And the more loitering are turned
    To view once more the sacrifice
    Of those who for some good discerned
    Will gladly give up paradise.
    And a white shimmering concourse rolls
    Toward the throne to witness there
    The speeding of devoted souls
    Which God makes his especial care.
    And none are taken but who will,
    Having first heard the life read out
    That opens earthward, good and ill,
    Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
    And very beautifully God limns,
    And tenderly, life's little dream,
    But naught extenuates or dims,
    Setting the thing that is supreme.
    Nor is there wanting in the press
    Some spirit to stand simply forth,
    Heroic in its nakedness,
    Against the uttermost of earth.
    The tale of earth's unhonored things
    Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;
    And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
    And a shout greets the daring one.
    But always God speaks at the end:
    'One thought in agony of strife
    The bravest would have by for friend,
    The memory that he chose the life;
    But the pure fate to which you go
    Admits no memory of choice,
    Or the woe were not earthly woe
    To which you give the assenting voice.'
    And so the choice must be again,
    But the last choice is still the same;
    And the awe passes wonder then,
    And a hush falls for all acclaim.
    And God has taken a flower of gold
    And broken it, and used therefrom
    The mystic link to bind and hold
    Spirit to matter till death come.
    'Tis of the essence of life here,
    Though we choose greatly, still to lack
    The lasting memory at all clear,
    That life has for us on the wrack
    Nothing but what we somehow chose;
    Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
    In the pain that has but one close,
    Bearing it crushed and mystified.

In Equal Sacrifice

    THUS of old the Douglas did:
    He left his land as he was bid
    With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce
    In a golden case with a golden lid,
    To carry the same to the Holy Land;
    By which we see and understand
    That that was the place to carry a heart
    At loyalty and love's command,
    And that was the case to carry it in.
    The Douglas had not far to win
    Before he came to the land of Spain,
    Where long a holy war had been
    Against the too-victorious Moor;
    And there his courage could not endure
    Not to strike a blow for God
    Before he made his errand sure.
    And ever it was intended so,
    That a man for God should strike a blow,
    No matter the heart he has in charge
    For the Holy Land where hearts should go.
    But when in battle the foe were met,
    The Douglas found him sore beset,
    With only strength of the fighting arm
    For one more battle passage yet--
    And that as vain to save the day
    As bring his body safe away--
    Only a signal deed to do
    And a last sounding word to say.
    The heart he wore in a golden chain
    He swung and flung forth into the plain,
    And followed it crying 'Heart or death!'
    And fighting over it perished fain.
    So may another do of right,
    Give a heart to the hopeless fight,
    The more of right the more he loves;
    So may another redouble might
    For a few swift gleams of the angry brand,
    Scorning greatly not to demand
    In equal sacrifice with his
    The heart he bore to the Holy Land.