Poems (Tree)/I Dread the Beauty of Approaching Spring
I DREAD the beauty of approaching springNow the old month is dead and the young moonHas pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.My tired soul is startled out of sleepBy all the urging joy of bud and leaf,And in the barren yard where I have pacedContent with prison and despair's monotony,The trees break into music wild and shrill,And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,Bewildering my loneliness with beauty. . . .For winter with her melancholy faceShone back my miseries as in a glass,And wept and whined in harmony with me;And I could listen by the withering ashesTo the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,And hating, hear the laughter of the windWhose mad hands tear the sky.But now again the promise of the springShall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,To where the lilied altar shines with peace,And the white priestess comesCrowning each candle with a gold desireEngirdling with pallorsThe forehead of a divine ghost.Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindleAnd spring is but a radiant beckoningTo death that follows slowly, silently. . . .
O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,O flash of silver in the wings of dawnThat are spread out and closed. O hush of nightBreathless with love, oh swish of whispering tideThat swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide That grow too soon to weariness and close;O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,And mystery of flower in the bud.O burning galaxy of buttercups,And drone of bees above the pouting rose,—O twilit lovers stilled with reverieAnd footprints of them swerving on the sandAnd darkness of them clasped against the sky!1 see beyond the glory of your daysThe grey days marching one behind the otherTo the bleak tunes of silence.When mists shall smear the radiance of the moonAnd the lean thief shall pass,Snatching the glittering toys away from love,Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,Shall go the way that her long shadow points,Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.
1918