Eight Harvard Poets/Memory
MEMORY
BETWEEN rounded hills,
White with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills
The little breeze that makes the birch-leaves quiver,
Beside a rollicking swift river,
Light green in the deeps,—
Like your eyes in sunshine,—
Winds the canal,
Lazy and brown as a water-snake,
Full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps
The water with gossamer garments, that shake
The reeds standing sentinel,
And the marginal line
Of birches and willows.
Our little steamer puffs its way
With jingle of bells and panting throb
Of old engines.
In stiff array
The water-reeds wave,
And solemnly sway
To the wash and swell of our passing.
Among the reeds the ripples sob,
And die away,
'Till the canal is still again, save
For a kingfisher's flashing
Across the noon shimmer.
I stood beside you in the bow,
Watched the sunlight lose itself among your hair,
That the breeze tugged at.
Bright as the shattered sun-rays, where the prow
Cut the still water,
The warm light caught and tangled there,
Red gold amid your hair.
You were very slim in your blue serge dress …
We talked of meaningless things, education,
Agreed that unless,
Something were changed disaster would come to the nation.
You smiled when I pointed where
A group of birches shivered in the green wood-shadow,
Up to their knees in water, white and fair
As dryads bathing.
A row
Of flat white houses and a wharf
Glided in sight.
The hoarse whistle shrieked for a landing;
Bells jangled. … You were standing
A slim blue figure amid the wharf's crowd;
The little steamer creaked against the side, loud
Screamed the whistle again …
Monotonously the solemn reeds
Waved to our passing;
Ahead the canal shimmered, blotched green by the water-weeds.
With a grinding swing
And see-saw of sound,
The steamer slunk down the canal.
I never even knew your name …
That night from a dingy hotel room,
I saw the moon, like a golden gong.
Redly loom
Across the lake; like a golden gong
In a temple, which a priest ere long
Will strike into throbbing song,
To wake some silent twinkling city to prayer.
The lake waves were flakes of red gold,
Burnished to copper,
Gold, red as the tangled gleam
Of sunlight in your hair.