Volume Ii Part 39 (1/2)
I
I stood at the gate of the cot Where my darling, with side-glance demure, Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, The busy wild things chase and lure.
For these with their ways were her feast; They had surety no enemy lurked.
Their deftest of tricks to their least She gathered in watch as she worked.
II
When berries were red on her ash, The blackbird would rifle them rough, Till the ground underneath looked a gash, And her rogue grew the round of a chough.
The squirrel c.o.c.ked ear o'er his hoop, Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush.
She knew any t.i.t of the troop All as well as the snail-tapping thrush.
III
I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled.
No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread.
But the blackbird hung peeking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the sh.e.l.l hard on a stone.
HYMN TO COLOUR
I
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, And made them on each side a shadow seem.
Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream To fall on daylight; and night puts away Her darker veil for grey.
II
In that grey veil green gra.s.sblades brushed we by; We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky: Around, save for those shapes, with him who led And linked them, desert varied by no sign Of other life than mine.
III
By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide, From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne, Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried, Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn: And those two shapes the splendour interweaved, Hung web-like, sank and heaved.
IV
Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow.
Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one.
Whichever is, the other is: but know, It is thy craving self that thou dost see, Not in them seeing me.
V
Shall man into the mystery of breath, From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy?
Or learn the secret of the shrouded death, By lifting up the lid of a white eye?
Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire Of fire to reach to fire.