English

Rutted by wheels and scarred by hoofs
And by rude footsteps trod,
The old road winds through glimmering woods
Unto the house of God.

How many feet, assembling here
From each diverse abode,
Led by how many different aims,
Have walked this shadowy road!

How many sounds of woe and mirth
Have thrilled these green woods dim—
The funeral's slow and solemn tramp,
The wedding's joyous hymn.

Full oft, amid the gloom and glow
Through which the highway bends,
I watch the meeting streams of life,

When last I heard your nimble fingers play
Upon your lute, nothing so sweet as they
Seemed: all my soul fled ravished to my ear
That sweetly animating sound to hear.
My ravished heart with play kept equal time,
Fell down with you, with you did Ela climb,
Grew sad or lighter, as the tunes you played,
And with your lute a perfect measure made:
If all, so much as I, your music love,
The whole world would at your devotion move;
And at your speaking lute's surpassing charms
Embrace a lasting peace, and fling by arms.

At dawn from the Unseen Speaker Came the glad news to mine ear;
“The time it of Shah Shejáa is! Drink, then, and make good cheer!”

Past, past are the days when the people Of vision withdrew apart,
Mouths full of a thousand sayings And silent the lips for fear.

To the sound of the harp we will utter Those words, for the hiding whereof
The breast, like a boiling cauldron, Was ever in ferment sheer.

The wine, that in secret drunken, For fear of the Censor, was,
We'll quaff to the topers' clamour, In face of the comrades dear.

The sky is hid in a snowy shroud,
And the road in the woods is white,
But the dear God watches above the cloud
In the centre of light.

In the woods is the hush of the snowflakes' fall,
And the creak of a lumberman's sleigh,
But in Heaven the choirs of the Master of all
Make praise alway.

Up there is the throne of the Triune God
And the worshipping multitudes,
And here is the long white winter road
And the silent woods.

The sumachs, noiseless, by the still, hot road
Stand up as guards, with blood-red soldier plumes.
How light the hill-blue, clear of cloudy glooms!
How lone the land, with summer overflowed!
Dry crickets grate; a bee takes larger load
With low, pleased muttering, where the wild-rose blooms;
The bovine breath of sleeping fields perfumes
Warm air, with drifts of wayside spicery sowed.
Good earth, how glad a thing it is to be
Part of this full, yet placid life of thine,
Close to thy heart as humblest creatures press!

A Girl,
Her soul a deep-wave pearl
Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries;
A face flowered for heart's ease,
A brow's grace soft as seas
Seen through faint forest-trees:
A mouth, the lips apart,
Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze
From her tempestuous heart.
Such: and our souls so knit,
I leave a page half-writ—
The work begun
Will be to heaven's conception done,
If she come to it.

not a single leaf—
even the moon does not lodge
in this willow tree

Speaking and speaking again words like silver bubbles,
we walk at dusk through rain.

The sky has grown black with a tinge of red from the street-lamps;
triangular pools form in the square cracks of the pavement,
noisy with rain.

Nights of mine, you good sisters of the imprisoned,
The stillness becomes filled with your trembling sounds
Lying on the hard bench I listen attentively—
I hear your heart-throbs, brothers, you
From here and there … from there and here …
Imprisoned in the jails of all continents,
In Atlanta and in Memphis, in Calumet and Barcelona, in Calcutta—and in Mayland—
You, brothers, we in the struggle and rebellion, in strikes and revolts—
Accept my greeting, you brothers, we.

They wish to forbid you the world and the world is your wishing!

Poor jealous Procris in the Cretan wood,
Slain by the very hand of love at last
This way was best! the cordial bath of blood,
The long love-sickness past.

The brown fauns gather round with piteous cries;
They mourn her beauty, guess not at her woe;
They find no Eos graven on those eyes
Whence tears no longer flow.

Her griefs, her frailties from the flowery turf
Exhaled, are as the dews of yesterday;
The grim ship hurrying through the Phocian surf,
The exile on her way,