A selection of her quatrains
Song
YOU bound strong sandals on my feet,
You gave me bread and wine,
And sent me under sun and stars,
For all the world was mine.
Oh, take the sandals off my feet,
You know not what you do;
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.
Less than the cloud to the wind
LESS than the cloud to the wind,
Less than the foam to the sea,
Less than the rose to the storm,
Am I to thee.
More than the star to the night,
More than the rain to the tree,
More than heaven to earth
Art thou to me.
To Cleïs
(The daughter of Sappho)
WHEN the dusk was wet with dew,
Cleïs, did the muses nine
Listen in a silent line
While your mother sang to you?
Did they weep or did they smile
When she crooned to still your cries,
She, a muse in human guise
Who forsook her lyre awhile
Did you hear her wild heart beat?
Did the warmth of all the sun
Through your little body run
When she kissed your hands and feet?
Did your fingers, babywise,
Touch her face and touch her hair
Did you think your mother fair,
Could you bear her burning eyes?
Are the songs that soothed your fears
Vanished like a vanished flame,
Save the line where shines your name
Starlike down the graying years? . . .
Cleïs speaks no word to me,
For the land where she has gone
Lies as still at dusk and dawn,
As a windless, tideless sea.
At Night
WE are apart; the city grows quiet between us,
She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes,
The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty,
Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies.
Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover?
Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words.
I send you my thoughts - the air between us is laden,
My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.
Come
COME, when the pale moon like a petal
Floats in the pearly dusk of spring,
Come with outstretched arms to take me,
Come with lips pursed up to cling.
Come, for life is a frail moth flying
Caught in the web of the years that pass,
And soon we two,so warm and eager,
Will be as the gray stones in the grass.
To E.
I HAVE remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.
But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague pelude to the thought of you -
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best,
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you I am at rest.
Tides
LOVE in my heart was a fresh tide flowing
Where the starlike sea gulls soar;
The sun was keen and the foam was blowing
High on the rocky shore.
But now in the dusk the tide is turning,
Lower the sea gulls soar,
And the waves that rose in resistless yearning
Are broken forevermore.
Spring Rain
I THOUGHT I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.
The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.
With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .
I thought I had forgotten,
But it al came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
Wisdom
WHEN I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I have looked Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange--my youth.
To-Night
THE moon is a curving flower of gold,
The sky is still and blue;
The moon was made for the sky to hold,
And I for you;
The moon is a flower without a stem,
The sky is luminous;
Eternity was made for them,
To-night for us.
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