Chipmunk

  Little chipmunk, do you know
  All you mean to me?—­
  She and I and Long Ago,
  And you there in the tree;
  With that nut between your paws,
  Half-way to your twittering jaws,
  Jaunty with your striped coat,
  Puffing out your furry throat,
  Eyes like some big polished seed,
  Plumed tail curved like half a lyre . . .

  We pretended not to heed—­
  You, as though you would inquire
  “Can I trust them?” . . . then a jerk,
  And you’d skipped three branches higher,
  Jaws again at work;
  Like a little clock-work elf,
  With all the forest to itself.

  She was very fair to see,
  She was all the world to me,
  She has gone whole worlds away;
  Yet it seems as though to-day,
  Chipmunk, I can hear her say;
  “Get that chipmunk, dear, for me——­”
  Chipmunk, you can never know
  All she was to me. 
  That’s all—­it was long ago.

  Ballade of the dead face that never dies

  The peril of fair faces all his days
    No man shall ’scape:  be it for joy or woe,
  Each is the thrall of some predestined face
    Divinely doomed to work his overthrow,
    Transiently fair, as flowers in gardens blow,
  Then fade, and charm no more our listless eyes;
    But some fair faces ever fairer grow—­
  Beware of the dead face that never dies.

  No snare young beauty for thy manhood lays,
    No honeyed kiss the girls of Paphos know,
  Shall hold thee as the silent smiling ways
    Of her that went—­yet only seemed to go—­
    With April blossoms and with last year’s snow;
  Each year she comes again in subtler guise,
    And beckons us to her green bed below—­
  Beware of the dead face that never dies.

  The living fade before her lunar gaze,
    Her phantom youth their ruddy veins out-glow,
  She lays cold fingers on the lips that praise
    Aught save her lovely face of long ago;
    Oblivious poppies all in vain we sow
  Before the opening gates of Paradise;
    There shalt thou find her pacing to and fro—­
  Beware of the dead face that never dies.

  Envoi

  Prince, take thy fill of love, for even so
    Sad men grow happy and no other wise;
  But love the quick—­and as thy mortal foe
    Beware of the dead face that never dies.

  The end of laughter

  O never laugh again! 
  Laughter is dead,
  Deep hiding in her grave,
  A sacred thing. 
  O never laugh again,
  Never take hands and run
  Through the wild streets,
  Or sing,
  Glad in the sun: 
  For she, the immortal sweetness of all sweets,
  Took laughter with her
  When she went away
  With sleep.

  O never laugh again! 
  Ours but to weep,
  Ours but to pray.

  The song that lasts

  Songs I sang of lordly matters,
    Life and death, and stars and sea;
  Nothing of them now remains
    But the song I sang for thee.