We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated hear
Till someone really find us out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hid-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Saave only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.
The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago--
It seems forever--
Since first I saw thee glance,
WIth all thy dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a linp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.
When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.
Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.
And there were other things:
They leave us so to the way we took,
As two in whom them were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken.
Birches |
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right | |
Across the line of straighter darker trees, | |
I like to think some boy's been swinging them. | |
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. | |
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them | 5 |
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning | |
After a rain. They click upon themselves | |
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored | |
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. | |
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells | 10 |
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— | |
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away | |
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. | |
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, | |
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed | 15 |
So low for long, they never right themselves: | |
You may see their trunks arching in the woods | |
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground | |
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair | |
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. | 20 |
But I was going to say when Truth broke in | |
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm | |
(Now am I free to be poetical?) | |
I should prefer to have some boy bend them | |
As he went out and in to fetch the cows— | 25 |
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, | |
Whose only play was what he found himself, | |
Summer or winter, and could play alone. | |
One by one he subdued his father's trees | |
By riding them down over and over again | 30 |
Until he took the stiffness out of them, | |
And not one but hung limp, not one was left | |
For him to conquer. He learned all there was | |
To learn about not launching out too soon | |
And so not carrying the tree away | 35 |
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise | |
To the top branches, climbing carefully | |
With the same pains you use to fill a cup | |
Up to the brim, and even above the brim. | |
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, | 40 |
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. | |
So was I once myself a swinger of birches; | |
And so I dream of going back to be. | |
It's when I'm weary of considerations, | |
And life is too much like a pathless wood | 45 |
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs | |
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping | |
From a twig's having lashed across it open. | |
I'd like to get away from earth awhile | |
And then come back to it and begin over. | 50 |
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me | |
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away | |
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: | |
I don't know where it's likely to go better. | |
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, | 55 |
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk | |
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, | |
But dipped its top and set me down again. | |
That would be good both going and coming back. | |
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. | 60 |