Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/202

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
150
POEMS.
One thing alone I hope, desire:
To make my human life come nigher
The life these lead whose silent gaze
Reproaches me and all my ways;
To glide along as they all glide,
Submissive and unterrified,
Without a thought of loss or gain,
Without a jar of haste or pain,
And go, without one quickened breath,
Finding all realms of life, of death,
But summer hours in sunny lands,
To my next house not made with hands.


MY STRAWBERRY.
O MARVEL, fruit of fruits, I pause
To reckon thee. I ask what cause
Set free so much of red from heats
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets
With sour and spice: what was that strength
Which out of darkness, length by length,
Spun all thy shining thread of vine,
Netting the fields in bond as thine.
I see thy tendrils drink by sips
From grass and clover's smiling lips;
I hear thy roots dig down for wells,
Tapping the meadow's hidden cells;
Whole generations of green things,
Descended from long lines of springs,