Short Poems

I always meant to make it up with him;
And might have done so, even yesterday:
But he's escaped me in his artful way;
And trapped me, with the healing word unsaid,
In an unending quarrel with the dead.

It may mean nothing: you're a foolish soul
To let yourself be put about by such:
And all seems calm.
Ay, it looks nothing much,
The little fret of foam that marks the shoal!

In her young wedded daughter's brooding eyes,
Their troubled wonder and their grave surprise,
The mother read the news; and kissed her brow
With loving, tender lips she kissed, though now
Not merely as a child-embracing mother,
But as one woman welcoming another.

The baby laughed; the father laughed; and then the mother
Laughed likewise; and they all lay laughing at each other,
Lay laughing underneath the laughing sky of blue;
But why, or what they laughed at, only the baby knew.

She set the heavy washbasket down by the stile;
And lay down, herself, in the shade, in a fragrant bed
Of wood-sanicle and sweet-woodruff, glad for a while
To be out of the steamy wash-house: when, over her head,
A wren piped out its shrill little roundelay:
And as she, through low green branches, looked at the blue day,
It seemed to her that she was a lassie again,
With a heart that sang in her bosom like that little wren.

The dead man's body lay stark and cold,
And heeded naught of the tale they told;
But the dead man's ghost stood, lank and grim,
And hearkened as they talked of him;
Then murmured — Ay, it may be true . . .
Yet it was only my body they knew;
But what a tale they'd have to tell,
If they had known my soul as well!

A body floated against him, as he waded
Through the roaring darkness of the flooded drift:
He clutched at the close-cropped head; but it evaded
His icy fingers. . . . And, though he was one of the saved,
He never was fit to go on another shift;
For always at nightfall, the father muttered and raved
Of his son who'd perished — I clutched at the hair of his head ,
But the silly dodged me ... and so he was drowned — he said.

To everything there is another side,
He said — and usually you'll find a jest ,
If you peep round the corner so, it's best
Not to take life too solemnly . He died
Last night; and, as he gave up his last breath,
I wondered what he'd find the other side of death.

Let's be jocund while we may;
All things have an ending day:
And when once the Work is done;
Fates revolve no Flax th'ave spun.

O TREE of many branches! One thou hast
Thou barest not, but grafted'st on thee. Now,
Should all men's thunders break on thee, and leave
Thee reft of bough and blossom, that one branch
Shall cling to thee, my Father, Brother, Friend,
Shall cling to thee, until the end of end.