The Second Book of Modern Verse Part 39

What drew me so I know not, But drawing near I said, "Kind sir, and can you tell me Who is it here lies dead?"

Said he, "Your most beloved Died here this very day, That had known twenty Aprils Had she but lived till May."

Astonished I made answer, "Good sir, how say you so!

Here have I no beloved, This house I do not know."

Quoth he, "Who from the world's end Was destined unto thee Here lies, thy true beloved Whom thou shalt never see."

I dreamed I pa.s.sed a doorway Where, for a sign of death, White ribbons one was binding About a flowery wreath.

Cinquains. [Adelaide c.r.a.psey]

Fate Defied

As it Were tissue of silver I'll wear, O fate, thy grey, And go mistily radiant, clad Like the moon.

Night Winds

The old Old winds that blew When chaos was, what do They tell the clattered trees that I Should weep?

The Warning

Just now, Out of the strange Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .

A white moth flew . . . Why am I grown So cold?

The Lonely Death. [Adelaide c.r.a.psey]

In the cold I will rise, I will bathe In waters of ice; myself Will s.h.i.+ver, and shrive myself, Alone in the dawn, and anoint Forehead and feet and hands; I will shutter the windows from light, I will place in their sockets the four Tall candles and set them aflame In the grey of the dawn; and myself Will lay myself straight in my bed, And draw the sheet under my chin.

Exile from G.o.d. [John Hall Wheelock]

I do not fear to lay my body down In death, to share The life of the dark earth and lose my own, If G.o.d is there.

I have so loved all sense of Him, sweet might Of color and sound, -- His tangible loveliness and living light That robes me 'round.

If to His heart in the hushed grave and dim We sink more near, It shall be well -- living we rest in Him.

Only I fear

Lest from my G.o.d in lonely death I lapse, And the dumb clod Lose him; for G.o.d is life, and death perhaps Exile from G.o.d.

Loam. [Carl Sandburg]

In the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pa.s.s And the break of stars.

From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder.

We stand, then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the sun Over and out of the loam A day.

Hills of Home. [Witter Bynner]

Name me no names for my disease, With uninforming breath; I tell you I am none of these, But homesick unto death --

Homesick for hills that I had known, For brooks that I had crossed, Before I met this flesh and bone And followed and was lost. . . .

And though they break my heart at last, Yet name no name of ills.

Say only, "Here is where he pa.s.sed, Seeking again those hills."

The Last Piper. [Edward J. O'Brien]

Dark winds of the mountain, White winds of the sea, Are skirling the pibroch Of Seumas an Righ.