Poems (Tree)/Black Velvet
BLACK VELVET
THE darkness of the trees at deep midnightAnd sombreness of shadows in the lake;A mountain in the starlight wide awakeDreaming to Heaven with imperial mightOf lifted shoulders, huge against the brightBespattered jewelry of stars—the acheOf silence, and the sobbing tides that breakFrom music. Slumbering cities—candle lightSnuffed in the flooding darkness, and the trainOf Queens that go to scaffold for a sinOr splash of blackness manifest of pain,Hamlet among his court, a HarlequinOf tragedies . . . Mysterious . . . And againVenetian masks against a milky skin.
1917