INEVITABLE CHANGE

Young as the Spring seemed life when she
Came from her silent East to me;
Unquiet as Autumn was my breast
When she declined into her West.

Such tender, such untroubling things
She taught me, daughter of all Springs;
Such dusty deathly lore I learned
When her last embers redly burned.

How should it hap (Love, canst thou say?)
Such end should be to so pure day? 
Such shining chastity give place
To this annulling grave’s disgrace?

Such hopes be quenched in this despair,
Grace chilled to granite everywhere? 
How should—­in vain I cry—­how should
That be, alas, which only could!

LONELINESS

How green and strange the light is,
  Creeping through the window. 
    Lying alone in bed,
How strange the night is!

How still and chill the air is. 
  It seems no sound could live
    Here in my room
That now so bare is.

All bright and still the room is,
  But easeless here am I.
    Deep in my heart
Cold lonely gloom is!

I HEARD A VOICE UPON THE WINDOW BEAT

I heard a voice upon the window beat
And then grow dim, grow still. 
Opening I saw the snowy sill
Marked with the robin’s feet. 
  Chill was the air and chill
The thoughts that in my bosom beat.

I thought of all that wide and hopeless snow
Crusting the frozen lands. 
Of small birds that in famished bands
A-chill and silent grow. 
  And how Earth’s myriad hands
Clutched only hills of frosted snow.

And then I thought of Love that beat and cried
Famishing at my breast;
How I, by chilling care distrest,
Denied him, and Love died.... 
  O, with what sore unrest
Love’s ghost woke with the bird that cried!

FIRST LOVE

I

“No, no!  Leave me not in this dark hour,”
She cried.  And I,
“Thou foolish dear, but call not dark this hour;
What night doth lour?”
And nought did she reply,
But in her eye
The clamorous trouble spoke, and then was still.

O that I heard her once more speak,
Or even with troubled eye
Teach me her fear, that I might seek
Poppies for misery. 
The hour was dark, although I knew it not,
But when the livid dawn broke then I knew,
How while I slept the dense night through
Treachery’s worm her fainting fealty slew.

O that I heard her once more speak
As then—­so weak—­
“No, no!  Leave me not in this dark hour.” 
That I might answer her,
“Love, be at rest, for nothing now shall stir
Thy heart, but my heart beating there.”

II