Death, I say, my heart is bowedUnto thine,—O mother!This red gown will make a shroudGood as any other!
(I, that would not wait to wearMy own bridal things,In a dress dark as my hairMade my answerings.
I, to-night, that till he cameCould not, could not wait,In a gown as bright as flameHeld for them the gate.)
Death, I say, my heart is bowedUnto thine,—O mother!This red gown will make a shroudGood as any other!
Love, if I weep it will not matter,And if you laugh I shall not care;Foolish am I to think about it,But it is good to feel you there.
Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,—White and awful the moonlight reachedOver the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,There was a shutter loose,—it screeched!
Swung in the wind,—and no wind blowing!—I was afraid, and turned to you,Put out my hand to you for comfort,—And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,
Under my hand the moonlight lay!Love, if you laugh I shall not care,But if I weep it will not matter,—Ah, it is good to feel you there!
I said,—for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,—"I'll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in bed;But I'll never leave my pillow, though there be someAs would let him in—and take him in with tears!" I said.I lay,—for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,—I lay and listened for his step and could not get to sleep;And he found me at my window with my big cloak on,All sorry with the tears some folks might weep!
She is neither pink nor pale,And she never will be all mine;She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;In the sun 'tis a woe to me!And her voice is a string of colored beads,Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,And her ways to my ways resign;But she was not made for any man,And she never will be all mine.
Hard seeds of hate I plantedThat should by now be grown,—Rough stalks, and from thick stamensA poisonous pollen blown,And odors rank, unbreathable,From dark corollas thrown!
At dawn from my damp gardenI shook the chilly dew;The thin boughs locked behind meThat sprang to let me through;The blossoms slept,—I sought a placeWhere nothing lovely grew.
And there, when day was breaking,I knelt and looked around:The light was near, the silenceWas palpitant with sound;I drew my hate from out my breastAnd thrust it in the ground.
Oh, ye so fiercely tended,Ye little seeds of hate!I bent above your growingEarly and noon and late,Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,—I cannot rear ye straight!
The sun seeks out my garden,No nook is left in shade,No mist nor mold nor mildewEndures on any blade,Sweet rain slants under every bough:Ye falter, and ye fade.
I cannot but rememberWhen the year grows old—October—November—How she disliked the cold!
She used to watch the swallowsGo down across the sky,And turn from the windowWith a little sharp sigh.
And often when the brown leavesWere brittle on the ground,And the wind in the chimneyMade a melancholy sound,
She had a look about herThat I wish I could forget—The look of a scared thingSitting in a net!
Oh, beautiful at nightfallThe soft spitting snow!And beautiful the bare boughsRubbing to and fro!
But the roaring of the fire,And the warmth of fur,And the boiling of the kettleWere beautiful to her!
I cannot but rememberWhen the year grows old—October—November—How she disliked the cold!
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fairThan small white single poppies,—I can bearThy beauty; though I bend before thee, thoughFrom left to right, not knowing where to go,I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor thereFind any refuge from thee, yet I swearSo has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.
Like him who day by day unto his draughtOf delicate poison adds him one drop moreTill he may drink unharmed the death of ten,Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffedEach hour more deeply than the hour before,I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.
Time does not bring relief; you all have liedWho told me time would ease me of my pain!I miss him in the weeping of the rain;I want him at the shrinking of the tide;The old snows melt from every mountain-side,And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;But last year's bitter loving must remainHeaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fearTo go,—so with his memory they brim!And entering with relief some quiet placeWhere never fell his foot or shone his faceI say, "There is no memory of him here!"And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slowRising of the round moon, all throats that singThe summer through, and each departing wing,And all the nests that the bared branches show,And all winds that in any weather blow,And all the storms that the four seasons bring.
You go no more on your exultant feetUp paths that only mist and morning knew,Or watch the wind, or listen to the beatOf a bird's wings too high in air to view,—But you were something more than young and sweetAnd fair,—and the long year remembers you.
Not in this chamber only at my birth—When the long hours of that mysterious nightWere over, and the morning was in sight—I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firthI have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;And never shall one room contain me quiteWho in so many rooms first saw the light,Child of all mothers, native of the earth.
So is no warmth for me at any fireTo-day, when the world's fire has burned so low;I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,And straighten back in weariness, and longTo gather up my little gods and go.
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,That you were gone, not to return again—Read from the back-page of a paper, say,Held by a neighbor in a subway train,How at the corner of this avenueAnd such a street (so are the papers filled)A hurrying man—who happened to be you—At noon to-day had happened to be killed,I should not cry aloud—I could not cryAloud, or wring my hands in such a place—I should but watch the station lights rush byWith a more careful interest on my face,Or raise my eyes and read with greater careWhere to store furs and how to treat the hair.
This door you might not open, and you did;So enter now, and see for what slight thingYou are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid,No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroringThe sought-for truth, no heads of women slainFor greed like yours, no writhings of distress,But only what you see.... Look yet again—An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.Yet this alone out of my life I keptUnto myself, lest any know me quite;And you did so profane me when you creptUnto the threshold of this room to-nightThat I must never more behold your face.This now is yours. I seek another place.