Remained the eyes that stared,
  Ears that ached to hear;
Remained the nerve of being, bared,
  Stung with delight and fear. 
Beauty flushed, ran and returned,
  Like a music rose and fell;
Staring and blind and deaf I listened and burned—­
  A wilder music fell.

GRASSES

O cover me, long gentle grasses,
  Cover me with your seeding heads,
  Cover me with your shaking limbs,
  Cover me with your light soft hands,
Cover me as the delicious long wind passes
      Over you and me, green grasses.

’Tis of your blood I would be drinking,
  To your soft shrilling listening now,
  And your thin fingers peering through
  At the deep forests of the sky. 
O satisfy my peevish thought past thinking,
      My sense with your sense linking.

Already are your brown roots creeping
  Around the roots of my mind’s mind,
  Into the darkness hidden within
  The rayed dark of unconsciousness;
And your long stems in a bright wind are leaping
      Over me uneasily sleeping.

O cover me, long gentle grasses,
  As one day over a quiet flesh
  You will shake, shake and dance and sing;
  And body too still and spirit astir
Will hear you in every firm bright wind that passes
      Over you, loved green grasses.

FAIR AND BRIEF

So fair, that all the morning aches
        With such monotony! 
So brief, that sadness breaks
        The brittle spell.

Nothing so fair, nothing so brief: 
        The sun leaps up and falls. 
The wind tosses every leaf: 
        Every leaf dies.

Blossom, a white cloud in the air,
        Is blown like a cloud away. 
Must all be brief, being fair? 
        Nothing remain?

Yes, night and that high regiment
        Of stars that wheel and march,
Ever their bright lines bent
        To a secret thought;

Moving immutable, bright and grave,
        Fair beyond all things fair;
Though all else vanish, save
        Imagination’s dream.

NIGHTFALL

I

      Eve goes slowly
      Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
      Birds their singing
    Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

      Not a bat’s cry
      Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
      Not a moth’s wings
    Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev’n comes creeping.

      Then a light shines
      From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
      Palely golden
    As the late eve’s primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.