Why dost thou, darksome Nightingale,
Sing so distractingly—­and here? 
Dawn’s preludings prick my ear,
Faint light is creeping up the vale,
  While on these dead thy rarer
  Song falls, dark night-farer.

Were it not better thou shouldst sing
Where the drenched lilac droops her plume,
Spreading frail banners of perfume? 
Or where the easeless pines enring
  The river-lulled village
  Whose lads the lilac pillage?

Oh, if aught songful these hid bones
Might reach, like the slow subtle rain,
Surely the dead had risen again
And listened, white by the white stones;
  Back to rich life song-charmed,
  By ghostly joys alarmed.

This may not be.  And yet, oh still
Pour like night dew thy richer speech
Some late-lost youth perchance to reach,
Or unloved girl; and stir and fill
  Their passionless cold bosoms
  Under red wallflower blossoms!

UNDER THE LINDEN BRANCHES

Under the linden branches
They sit and whisper;
Hardly a quiver
Of leaves, hardly a lisp or
Sigh in the air. 
Under the linden branches
They sit, and shiver
At the slow air’s fingers
Drawn through the linden branches
Where the year’s sweet lingers;
And sudden avalanches
Of memories, fears,
Shake from the linden branches
Upon them sitting
With hardly a sigh or a whisper
Or quiver of tears.

STRIFE

The wind fought with the angry trees. 
All morning in immense unease
They wrestled, and ruin strawed the ground,
    And the north sky frowned. 
The oak and aspen arms were held
Defiant, but the death was knelled
Of slender saplings, snappy boughs,
    Twigs brittle as men’s vows. 
How moaned the trees the struggle through! 
Anger almost to madness grew. 
The aspen screamed, and came a roar
Of the great wind locked in anguish sore,
Desolate with defeat ... and then
    Quiet fell again: 
The trees slept quiet as great cows
That lie at noon under broad boughs. 
How pure, how strange the calm; but hist!... 
Was it the trees by the wind kissed? 
Or from afar, where the wind’s hid,
    A throb, a sob?

FOREBODING

O linger late, poor yellow whispering leaves! 
            As yet the eves
Are golden and the simple moon looks through
            The clouds and you. 
O linger yet although the night be blind,
            And in the wind
You wake and lisp and shiver at the stir
            And sigh of her
Whose rimy fingers chill you each and all: 
            And so you fall
As dead as hopes or dreams or whispered vows.... 
            O then the boughs
That bore your busy multitude shall feel