Poems

Excerpt

My heart shall be thy garden.  Come, my own,   Into thy garden; thine be happy hours   Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,From root to crowning petal, thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown   Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.   But ah, the birds, the birds!  Who shall build bowersTo keep these thine?  O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine   To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,       Sing one song only from our alder-trees.

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,   Flit to the silent world and other summers,      With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

We never meet; yet we meet day by day   Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:   The good we love, and sleep—our innocence.O hills of life, high hills!  And higher than they,

Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.   Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,   Above the summits of our souls, far hence,An angel meets an angel on the way.

Beyond all good I ever believed of thee   Or thou of me, these always love and live.And though I fail of thy ideal of me,

My angel falls not short.  They greet each other.   Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

Thou who singest through the earth,   All the earth’s wild creatures fly thee,Everywhere thou marrest mirth.   Dumbly they defy thee.There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature everFor the unfallen Nature sweet.But she shuns thy long endeavour,   Though her flowers and wheatThrong and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,Press thy face to grass and flowers,All these things reserve above thee   Secrets in the bowers,Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.In thy songs must wind and treeBear the fictions of thy sadness,   Thy humanity.For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,Many a hoarded winter-storeWill be hidden on thy breast.   Things thou longest forWill not fear or shun thee more.

Thou shalt intimately lieIn the roots of flowers that thrustUpwards from thee to the sky,   With no more distrust,When they blossom from thy dust.

Silent labours of the rainShall be near thee, reconciled;Little lives of leaves and grain,    All things shy and wildTell thee secrets, quiet child.

Earth, set free from thy fair fanciesAnd the art thou shalt resign,Will bring forth her rue and pansies   Unto more divineThoughts than any thoughts of thine.

Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.There will lie thy mortal burdenPressed unto the heart of Nature,   Songless in a garden,With a long embrace of pardon.

Then the truth all creatures tell,And His will whom thou entreatest,Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell    Silence, the completestOf thy poems, last, and sweetest....