Poems (Tree)/Ah! You, from the Small High-Walled Acre of Your Lives
AH! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,
Your windows only looking upon gardens,
Only perceiving love and death and truth
As facts that come to pass,
That pass and leave you still
Within your safe small prisons,
Older, duller,
To walk and talk among the evergreens.
You have never known
Delight of dying slowly,
Poisoned with raptures
In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death—
The tunes
That dishevel and smooth,
Cajole and melancholize—
The dance
Which is a whirling of leaves
In their last scorn of sorrow
Flung upwards by the wind
Into the haggard face of winter—
Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons
Tossed by impulsive hands;
Nor slid as skaters swiftly
Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,
Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti . . .
Of light love
Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor. . . .
Your windows only looking upon gardens,
Only perceiving love and death and truth
As facts that come to pass,
That pass and leave you still
Within your safe small prisons,
Older, duller,
To walk and talk among the evergreens.
You have never known
Delight of dying slowly,
Poisoned with raptures
In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death—
The tunes
That dishevel and smooth,
Cajole and melancholize—
The dance
Which is a whirling of leaves
In their last scorn of sorrow
Flung upwards by the wind
Into the haggard face of winter—
Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons
Tossed by impulsive hands;
Nor slid as skaters swiftly
Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,
Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti . . .
Of light love
Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor. . . .
1916