Flame and Shadow

Excerpt

Memories

II

  Places
  Old Tunes
  "Only in Sleep"
  Redbirds
  Sunset: St. Louis
  The Coin
  The Voice

III

  Day and Night
  Compensation
  I Remembered
  "Oh You Are Coming"
  The Return
  Gray Eyes
  The Net
  The Mystery

In a Hospital

IV

  Open Windows
  The New Moon
  Eight O'Clock
  Lost Things
  Pain
  The Broken Field
  The Unseen
  A Prayer

V

  Spring Torrents
  "I Know the Stars"
  Understanding
  Nightfall
  "It Is Not a Word"
  "My Heart Is Heavy"
  The Nights Remember
  "Let It Be Forgotten"

The Dark Cup

VI

  May Day
  "Since There Is No Escape"
  "The Dreams of My Heart"
  "A Little While"
  The Garden
  The Wine
  In a Cuban Garden
  "If I Must Go"

VII

  In Spring, Santa Barbara
  White Fog
  Arcturus
  Moonlight
  Morning Song
  Gray Fog
  Bells
  Lovely Chance

VIII

  "There Will Come Soft Rains"
  In a Garden
  Nahant
  Winter Stars
  A Boy
  Winter Dusk

By the Sea

IX

  The Unchanging
  June Night
  "Like Barley Bending"
  "Oh Day of Fire and Sun"
  "I Thought of You"
  On the Dunes
  Spray
  If Death Is Kind

X

  Thoughts
  Faces
  Evening: New York
  Snowfall
  The Silent Battle
  The Sanctuary
  At Sea
  Dust
  The Long Hill

XI

  Summer Storm
  In the End
  "It Will Not Change"
  Change
  Water Lilies
  "Did You Never Know?"
  The Treasure
  The Storm

Songs For Myself

XII

  The Tree
  At Midnight
  Song Making
  Alone
  Red Maples
  Debtor
  The Wind in the Hemlock

Flame and Shadow

I

Blue Squills

  How many million Aprils came
   Before I ever knew
  How white a cherry bough could be,
   A bed of squills, how blue!

  And many a dancing April
   When life is done with me,
  Will lift the blue flame of the flower
   And the white flame of the tree.

  Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
   Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
  Lest in the end death try to take
   Even this glistening hour.

  O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
   O sunlit white and blue,
  Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
   May bear the scar of you.

Stars

  Alone in the night
   On a dark hill
  With pines around me
   Spicy and still,

  And a heaven full of stars
   Over my head,
  White and topaz
   And misty red;

  Myriads with beating
   Hearts of fire
  That aeons
   Cannot vex or tire;

  Up the dome of heaven
   Like a great hill,
  I watch them marching
   Stately and still,

  And I know that I
   Am honored to be
  Witness
   Of so much majesty.

"What Do I Care?"

  What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
   That my songs do not show me at all?
  For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
   I am an answer, they are only a call.

  But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
   Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
  For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
   It is my heart that makes my songs, not I....