Poems (Tree)/Like Flocks of Tired Birds When Autumn Comes
LIKE flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,
My spirit flags across the darkening fields
And melts into the drabness of the sky
And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.
But many wizened faces brown and sad
Peer from the bushes as I wander past,—
They tell me all those things that old men say
As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.
"When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,
When you have bowed before all other gods,
And found them false, then shall you come at last
To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless
Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,
And call you slave and lover." . . .
Shall not a child take Pain for company
And share her loneliness with him?
Does not a youth know tears
In the first bitterness of broken love?
Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come
To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? . . .
He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,
He sits a jester at the feet of kings
And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.
He rides the wooden horses at a fair,
And dances with the jiggers on the stage.
Led by the violins of discontent
That whine their music to my listening soul,
I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,
We dance together to the tunes of rain
Played on one note upon the only string.
My spirit flags across the darkening fields
And melts into the drabness of the sky
And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.
But many wizened faces brown and sad
Peer from the bushes as I wander past,—
They tell me all those things that old men say
As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.
"When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,
When you have bowed before all other gods,
And found them false, then shall you come at last
To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless
Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,
And call you slave and lover." . . .
Shall not a child take Pain for company
And share her loneliness with him?
Does not a youth know tears
In the first bitterness of broken love?
Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come
To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? . . .
He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,
He sits a jester at the feet of kings
And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.
He rides the wooden horses at a fair,
And dances with the jiggers on the stage.
Led by the violins of discontent
That whine their music to my listening soul,
I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,
We dance together to the tunes of rain
Played on one note upon the only string.
1913