Classic Poem

For Sara Teasdale

What wakes the tender grasses where I lie?
What small soft presence stirs and startles by?
Swallow, O swallow,
Why have you left the tree-tops and the sky?

The grass is faded by the sun and rain,
The Summer passes, Autumn comes again,
Swallow, O swallow,
And, bitter-sweet, love trembles into pain.

The heart of earth grows weary, and her eyes
Are closed; her lips are tuned to languid sighs,
Swallow, O swallow,
And in my heart the singing sobs and dies.
Night-long, by blown seas, musical with wind,
I flutter like a lost child, weak and blind,
Swallow, O swallow,
After the mother whom she cannot find. ...

Through apple-boughs the murmurous breezes sing,
As waters from a cool deep-shaded spring,
Swallow, O swallow,
And slumber streams from leaves left quivering.

Have you grown weary of the heaven's height,
The hidden stars, the vivid depths of light,
Swallow, O swallow,
As love grows weary of the long swift flight?

You do not answer but your wings are spread,
And past the topmost apple, sweet and red,
Swallow, O swallow,
In flight and song you vanish overhead!

I, too, will give my heart unto the heaven;
Phaon shall find me through the dusk of ev'n,
Swallow, O swallow,
Shaken with kisses ere they have been given!

As from the swarming hive in nuptial flight
The queen ascends, all golden fire and light,
Swallow, O swallow,
On wings of ecstasy I rise to-night!

But to the earth my flight shall not return,
For when the sun-like flame has ceased to burn,
Swallow, O swallow, —
The Lesbian Sea shall be my funeral urn.