English

THE YOUTHS

O winter, O white winter, wert thou gone,
No more within the wilds were I alone,
Leaping with bent bow over stock and stone!

No more alone my love the lamp should burn,
Watching the weary spindle twist and turn,
Or o'er the web hold back her tears and yearn:
O winter, O white winter, wert thou gone!

THE MAIDENS

Sweet thoughts fly swiftlier than the drifting snow,
And with the twisting threads sweet longings grow,
And o'er the web sweet pictures come and go,

In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter bise ,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly, —
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,
And heedless of the public jeers,
For these, for these, he hoards his fees, —
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

No dismal stall escapes his eye,
He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled Romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;
Each tract that flutters in the breeze
For him is charged with hopes and fears,

In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: " Do not eat the poor butterfly."
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterflies would fly out of the plates
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world
And perch on the Grandmother's cap.

Now folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers,
And every bloom becomes a bud again,
Shut and sealed up against the golden showers
Of bees that hover in the velvet hours ...
Now a strain
Wild and mournful blown from shadow towers,
Echoed from shadow ships upon the foam,
Proclaims the Queen of Night.
From their bowers
The dark Princesses fluttering, wing their flight
To their old Mother, in her huge old home.

" Didst ever see a hanging?" " No, not one;
Nor ever wish to see such scandal done.
But once I saw a wretch condemned to die:
A lean-faced, bright-eyed youth; who made me sigh
At the recital of a dream he had.
He was not sane — and yet he was not mad;
Fit subject for a mesmerist he seemed;
For when he slept, he saw; and when he dreamed,
His visions were as palpable to him
As facts to us. My memory is dim
Upon his story, but I'll ne'er forget
The dream he told me, for it haunts me yet,

Was it a dream? We sail'd, I thought we sail'd,
Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,
Border'd, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,
On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,
On the red pinings of their forest-floor,
Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines
The mountain-skirts, with all their sylvan change
Of bright-leaf'd chestnuts and moss'd walnut-trees
And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.
Swiss chalets glitter'd on the dewy slopes,
And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came

In the profoundest Ocean
There is a rainbow shell,
It is always there, shining most stilly
Under the greatest storm waves
And under the happy little waves
That the old Greek called " ripples of laughter."
And you listen, the rainbow shell
Sings in the profoundest ocean —
It is always there, singing most silently

Now I am a plant, a weed
Bending and swinging
On a rocky ledge
And now I am long brown grass
Fluttering like flame
I am a reed
An old shell singing
For ever the same
A drift of sedge
A white, white stone
A bone
Until I pass
Into sand again
And spin and blow
To and fro, to and fro
On the edge of the sea
In the fading light.
For the light fades.

But if you were to come you would not say
She is not waiting here for me
She has forgotten. Have we not in play

This, then, is she,
My mother as she looked at seventeen,
When she first met my father. Young incredibly,
Younger than spring, without the faintest trace
Of disappointment, weariness, or teen
Upon the childlike earnestness and grace
Of the waiting face.
These close-wound ropes of pearl
(Or common beads made precious by their use)
Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear;
But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare
And half the glad swell of the breast, for news
That now the woman stirs within the girl.
And yet,

Into the world you sent her, mother,
Fashioned her body of coral and foam,
Combed a wave in her hair's warm smother,
And drove her away from home.

In the dark of the night she crept to the town
And under a doorway she laid her down,
The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown.

And never a sister and never a brother
To hear her call, to answer her cry.
Her face shone out from her hair's warm smother
Like a moonkin up in the sky.

She sold her corals; she sold her foam;