These wet rocks where the tide has been,Barnacled white and weeded brownAnd slimed beneath to a beautiful green,These wet rocks where the tide went downWill show again when the tide is highFaint and perilous, far from shore,No place to dream, but a place to die,–The bottom of the sea once more.There was a child that […]

I I had forgotten how the frogs must soundAfter a year of silence, else I thinkI should not so have ventured forth aloneAt dusk upon this unfrequented road. II I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walkBetween me and the crying of the frogs?Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,That am a timid woman, on […]

If it were only still!–With far away the shrillCrying of a cock;Or the shaken bellFrom a cow’s throatMoving through the bushes;Or the soft shockOf wizened apples fallingFrom an old treeIn a forgotten orchardUpon the hilly rock! Oh, grey hill,Where the grazing herdLicks the purple blossom,Crops the spiky weed!Oh, stony pasture,Where the tall mulleinStands up so […]

OH, here the air is sweet and still,And soft’s the grass to lie on;And far away’s the little hillThey took for Christ to die on. And there’s a hill across the brook,And down the brook’s another;But, oh, the little hill they took,–I think I am its mother! The moon that saw Gethsemane,I watch it rise […]

Butterflies are white and blueIn this field we wander through.Suffer me to take your hand.Death comes in a day or two. All the things we ever knewWill be ashes in that hour,Mark the transient butterfly,How he hangs upon the flower. Suffer me to take your hand.Suffer me to cherish youTill the dawn is in the […]

Mine is a body that should die at sea!And have for a grave, instead of a graveSix feet deep and the length of me,All the water that is under the wave! And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,Such as a living man might fear,And eat me while I am firm and fresh,–Not wait till I’ve […]

OH, come again to Astolat!I will not ask you to be kind.And you may go when you will go,And I will stay behind. I will not say how dear you are,Or ask you if you hold me dear,Or trouble you with things for youThe way I did last year. So still the orchard, Lancelot,So very […]

I know what my heart is likeSince your love died:It is like a hollow ledgeHolding a little poolLeft there by the tide,A little tepid pool,Drying inward from the edge.

Minstrel, what have you to doWith this man that, after you,Sharing not your happy fate,Sat as England’s Laureate?Vainly, in these iron days,Strives the poet in your praise,Minstrel, by whose singing sideBeauty walked, until you died. Still, though none should hark again,Drones the blue-fly in the pane,Thickly crusts the blackest moss,Blows the rose its musk across,Floats […]

People that build their houses inland,People that buy a plot of groundShaped like a house, and build a house there,Far from the sea-board, far from the sound Of water sucking the hollow ledges,Tons of water striking the shore,–What do they long for, as I long forOne salt smell of the sea once more? People the […]

Be to her, Persephone,All the things I might not be;Take her head upon your knee.She that was so proud and wild,Flippant, arrogant and free,She that had no need of me,Is a little lonely childLost in Hell,–Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, “My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.” CHORUS Give away […]

[VASSAR COLLEGE, 1918] Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats,Where now no more the music is,With hands that wrote you little notesI write you little elegies!

Aye, but she?Your other sister and my other soulGrave Silence, lovelierThan the three loveliest maidens, what of her?Clio, not you,Not you, Calliope,Nor all your wanton line,Not Beauty’s perfect self shall comfort meFor Silence once departed,For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,Whom evermore I follow wistfully,Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;Thalia, […]

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,This is the thing I find to be:That I am weary of words and people,Sick of the city, wanting the sea; Wanting the sticky, salty sweetnessOf the strong wind and shattered spray;Wanting the loud sound and the soft soundOf the big surf that breaks all day. Always before about […]

Doubt no more that Oberon–Never doubt that PanLived, and played a reed, and ranAfter nymphs in a dark forest,In the merry, credulous days,–Lived, and led a fairy bandOver the indulgent land!Ah, for in this dourest, sorestAge man’s eye has looked upon,Death to fauns and death to fays,Still the dog-wood dares to raise–Healthy tree, with trunk […]

No rose that in a garden ever grew,In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine,Though buried under centuries of fineDead dust of roses, shut from sun and dewForever, and forever lost from view,But must again in fragrance rich as wineThe grey aisles of the air incarnadineWhen the old summers surge into a new.Thus when I […]

Once more into my arid days like dew,Like wind from an oasis, or the soundOf cold sweet water bubbling underground,A treacherous messenger, the thought of youComes to destroy me; once more I renewFirm faith in your abundance, whom I foundLong since to be but just one other moundOf sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.And […]

Only until this cigarette is ended,A little moment at the end of all,While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,And in the firelight to a lance extended,Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,The broken shadow dances on the wall,I will permit my memory to recallThe vision of you, by all my dreams attended.And then adieu,–farewell!–the dream […]

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughterWe drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient afterThe launching of the colored moths of Love.Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zoneWe bound about our irreligious brows,And fettered him with garlands of our own,And spread a banquet in his frugal house.Not yet the […]

Into the golden vessel of great songLet us pour all our passion; breast to breastLet other lovers lie, in love and rest;Not we,–articulate, so, but with the tongueOf all the world: the churning blood, the longShuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressedSharply together upon the escaping guest,The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.Longing alone is […]