REJECT me not if I should say to you I do forget the sounding of your voice, I do forget your eyes that searching through The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice. Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide Under the pallid moonlight’s fingering, I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide My eyes […]

I WONDER if with you, as it is with me, If under your slipping words, that easily flow About you as a garment, easily, Your violent heart beats to and fro! Long have I waited, never once confessed, Even to myself, how bitter the separation; Now, being come again, how make the best reparation? If […]

THE shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path, Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky, Draws towards the downward slope; some sorrow hath Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares Along her foot-searched way without knowing why She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs. Some say they see, though […]

THE earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide Slowly into another day; slowly the rover Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide. I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting Me who am issued […]

SHE bade me follow to her garden, where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up, Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery, and shrill “Sin.” So with a downcast […]

I LOOK at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar. I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of […]

MOURNFULLY to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving; What did you say, my dear? The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob– Yes, my love, I hear. One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving, Why not let it ring? […]

SINCE I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near, And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near, The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries, And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear. And I am willing to come […]

THE darkness steals the forms of all the queens, But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red, Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead Hours that were once all glory and all queens. And I remember all the sunny hours Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold, And morning singing […]

WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue? Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is […]

OUT of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping, Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping. Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel. And out of the invisible, […]

After much struggling and loss in love and in the world of man, the protagonist throws in his lot with a woman who is already married. Together they go into another country, she perforce leaving her children behind. The conflict of love and hate goes on between the man and the woman, and between these […]

AND who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent […]

THE stars that open and shut Fall on my shallow breast Like stars on a pool. The soft wind, blowing cool Laps little crest after crest Of ripples across my breast. And dark grass under my feet Seems to dabble in me Like grass in a brook. Oh, and it is sweet To be all […]

IT is Isis the mystery Must be in love with me. Here this round ball of earth Where all the mountains sit Solemn in groups, And the bright rivers flit Round them for girth. Here the trees and troops Darken the shining grass, And many people pass Plundered from heaven, Many bright people pass, Plunder […]

AH God, life, law, so many names you keep, You great, you patient Effort, and you Sleep That does inform this various dream of living, You sleep stretched out for ever, ever giving Us out as dreams, you august Sleep Coursed round by rhythmic movement of all time, The constellations, your great heart, the sun […]

You, you are all unloving, loveless, you; Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods, You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even, Threshing your own passions with no woman for the threshing-floor, Finishing your dreams for your own sake only, Playing your great game around the world, alone, Without playmate, or helpmate, having […]

MY love lies underground With her face upturned to mine, And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss That ended her life and mine. I dance at the Christmas party Under the mistletoe Along with a ripe, slack country lass Jostling to and fro. The big, soft country lass, Like a loose sheaf of […]

THE night was a failure but why not–? In the darkness with the pale dawn seething at the window through the black frame I could not be free, not free myself from the past, those others– and our love was a confusion, there was a horror, you recoiled away from me. Now, in the morning […]

FIRST PART UPON her plodding palfrey With a heavy child at her breast And Joseph holding the bridle They mount to the last hill-crest. Dissatisfied and weary She sees the blade of the sea Dividing earth and heaven In a glitter of ecstasy. Sudden a dark-faced stranger With his back to the sun, holds out […]