Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/Double Quatrains
DOUBLE QUATRAINS.
I.
"WE WOMEN."
Heart-ache and heart-break—always that or this, Sometimes it rains just when the sun should shine;Sometimes a glove or ribbon goes amiss; Sometimes, in youth, your lover should be mine.
Still madam frets at life, through pearls and lace (A breath can break her pale heart's measured beat),And still demands the maid who paints her face Shall find the world for ever smooth and sweet.
II.
WORD OF COUNSEL.
Others will kiss you while your mouth is red. Beauty is brief. Of all the guests who comeWhile the lamp shines on flowers, and wine, and bread, In time of famine who will spare a crumb?
Therefore, oh, next to God, I pray you keep Yourself as your own friend, the tried, the true.Sit your own watch—others will surely sleep. Weep your own tears. Ask none to die with you.
III.
BROKEN PROMISE.
After strange stars, inscrutable, on high; After strange seas beneath his floating feet;After the glare in many a brooding eye,— I wonder if the cry of "Land" was sweet?
Or did the Atlantic gold, the Atlantic palm, The Atlantic bird and flower, seem poor, at best,To the grey Admiral under sun and calm, After the passionate doubt and faith of quest?
IV.
UTTER DARKNESS.
If I should have void darkness in my eyes While there were violets in the sun to see;If I should fail to hear my child's sweet cries, Or any bird's voice in our threshold tree;
If I should cease to answer love or wit: Blind, deaf, or dumb, how bitter each must be!Blind, deaf, or dumb—I will not think of it! . . . Yet the night comes when I shall be all three.
V.
THE HAPPIER GIFT.
Divinest words that ever singer said Would hardly lend your mouth a sweeter red;Her aureole, even hers whose book you hold, Could give your head no goldener charm of gold.
Ah me! you have the only gift on earth That to a woman can be surely worthBreathing the breath of life for. Keep your place Even she had given her fame to have your face.
VI.
IN DOUBT.
Through dream and dusk a frightened whisper said: "Lay down the world: the one you love is dead."In the near waters, without any cry I sank, therefore—glad, oh so glad, to die!
Far on the shore, with sun, and dove, and dew, And apple-flowers, I suddenly saw you.Then—was it kind or cruel that the sea Held back my hands, and kissed and clung to me?
VII.
A LOOK INTO THE GRAVE.
I look, through tears, into the dust to find What manner of rest man's only rest may be.The darkness rises up and smites me blind. The darkness—is there nothing more to see?
Oh, after flood, and fire, and famine, and The hollow watches we are made to keepIn our forced marches over sea and land— I wish we had a sweeter place to sleep.
VIII.
ETIQUETTE.
In some old Spanish court there chanced to be No one whose office was to save the kingFrom death by fire. The king himself? Not he;— Could royal hands have done so mean a thing?
My boy, through life think how this king of Spain (Whose name none knows—and so you'll not forget!)Caught by his palace hearth-flames, not in vain To ashes burned—for sake of Etiquette!
IX.
SEPTEMBER.
Send back these lonesome lights to Fairyland,[1] Whose wingéd glimmer of gold lured childish feet,Borrowed (with bud and bird), you understand, To keep while moons were warm and dews were sweet.
Hush,—we may have them for a little yet Before the weird leaf-gathering frost creeps on.Ah, loveliest time!—wherein we may regret The fair things going, not the sweet things gone.
X.
FOR ANOTHER'S SAKE.
Sweet, sweet? My child, some sweeter word than sweet, Some lovelier word than love, I want for you.'Who says the world is bitter, while your feet Are left among the lilies and the dew?
. . . Ah? So some other has, this night, to fold Such hands as his, and drop some precious headFrom off her breast as full of baby-gold? I, for her grief, will not be comforted.
- ↑ Fireflies.