Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist September waves of forest overflow The hills with crimson, amaranth and gold. Winds warm with the memory of scented hours
Dead Summer gathers in her leafy lap, Rustle the distance with dim murmurings That sink upon the air as soft as shades Dropt from the overleaning clouds to earth;
While golden-rod and sedge and aster hushed In sunny silence and the oblivion Of life drawn from the insentient veins of Time, Await the searing swoon of Autumn's reign.
It is a day when death must seem as birth, And birth as death; and life — till love comes — pain. These are the leafy hills and listless vales Of iridescent Autumn — this the oak
Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked Away the sunny hours of afternoon. Here are the bitter-sweet and elder sprays I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow
Of breezes overhead — and here the word I wrote unwittingly upon the soil. How long ago it was I cannot tell: The loneliness of unrequited love
Lies like a blank eternity between Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart. I only know all days I've ever seen Must seem now of some other life apart!
“Will you let any moment dip its wing Into your heart and find no love of me To tint with deathless Dream” — he said — “and Spring, Its flight to the dim bourne of memory?
Will you have any grief that can forget How grief should find forgetfulness in love? And since your soul in my soul's zone is set Will it sometimes ask other spheres to rove
Where touch and voice of me shall not be met? Ah no! in all the underdeeps of Death Or overheights of Life it still shall be At tryst with mine thro moan or ecstasy.
In all!”... Yet ere a year he'll draw no breath But is another's!— Will God let it be? All day I've bent my heart beneath the yoke Of goading toil, remembering to forget,
To still upon my lips his kiss that woke Me in elysian love one word has broke — One stinging word of severance and regret. All day I've blotted from my eyes his face,
But now at evening tide it comes again, And memories into my darkened soul Rush as the stars into high heaven's space. As the bright stars! But, ah, tomorrow! when
Once more I must forget and see life's goal, That was so green, with sering laurel hung. Tomorrow and tomorrow! till is wrung Peace from the piteous hours I strive among!
I say unto all hearts that cannot rest For want of love, for beating loud and lonely, Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only Love that is passionless within the breast.
Pray that it may not be a haunting fire, A vision that shall steal insatiably All beauteous content, all sweet desire, From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea.
But seek that soul and soul may meet together Knowing they have forever been but one — Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun.
Pray — pray! lost love uptorn shall seem as nether Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion. You say that love then led us — you and me? I say‘ twas hate, that wore love's wanting eyes:
Hate that I could not tear away the lies That wrapped you with their silken sorcery. Hate that for you I could not open skies Where beauty lives of her own loveliness;
That God would give me no omnipotence To purge and mould anew your soul's numb sense. Aye, hate that I could love you not tho love Pent in me ached with passion-born distress —
While thro unfathomable dark the Prize Seemed sinking, as my soul, from heaven above. Love, say you? love? and hate rent us apart? I tell you hate alone so tears the heart.
God who can bind the stars eternally With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought; Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea Unseverably, and count it as sheer naught;
With his All-might could bind not you and me. For tho He pressed us heart to burning heart And set then to the passion that enthralls His sanction, still our souls stood e'er apart,
As aliens beating fierce against the walls Of dark unsympathy that would upstart. Stood aliens, aye! and would tho we should meet, Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births,
Upon some world where Time cannot repeat The feeblest syllable that once was earth's.
Cookies on Poetry Cove