Make Bright The Arrows
Make bright the arrows
Gather the shields:
Conquest narrows
The peaceful fields.
Stock well the quiver
With arrows bright:
The bowman feared
Need never fight.
Make bright the arrows,
O peaceful and wise!
Gather the shields
Against surprise.
Bluebeard
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
Wild Swans
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more:
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!
We Talk of Taxes...
We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are, -- but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.
If Still Your Orchards Bear
Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell—if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough—
The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.
Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadow of the trees, —
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was,
Nor yet the thing he'd planned,
The chilly apple from the grass
Warmed by your living hand—
I think you will have need of tears;
I think they will not flow;
Supposing in ten thousand years
Men ache, as they do now.
The Blue Flag in the Bog
God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open flung to us, bereft.
Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.
Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!
Weary wings that rise and fall
All day long above the fire !"
Red with heat was every wall,
Rough with heat was every wire
"Fare you well, you little winds
That the flying embers chase!
Fare you well, you shuddering day,
With your hands before your face!
And, ah, blackened by strange blight,
Or to a false sun unfurled,
Now forevermore goodbye,
All the gardens in the world!
On the windless hills of Heaven,
That I have no wish to see,
White, eternal lilies stand,
By a lake of ebony.
But the Earth forevermore
Is a place where nothing grows,
Dawn will come, and no bud break;
Evening, and no blossom close.
Spring will come, and wander slow
Over an indifferent land,
Stand beside an empty creek,
Hold a dead seed in her hand."
God had called us, and we came,
But the blessed road I trod
Was a bitter road to me,
And at heart I questioned God.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the heart would most desire,
Held Earth naught save souls of sinners
Worth the saving from a fire?
Withered grass,the wasted growing!
Aimless ache of laden boughs!"
Little things God had forgotten
Called me, from my burning house.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the eye could ask to see,
All the things I ever knew
Are this blaze in back of me."
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the ear could think to lack,
All the things I ever knew
Are this roaring at my back."
It was God who walked ahead,
Like a shepherd to the fold;
In his footsteps fared the weak,
And the weary and the old,
Glad enough of gladness over,
Ready for the peace to be,
But a thing God had forgotten
Was the growing bones of me.
And I drew a bit apart,
And I lagged a bit behind,
And I thought on Peace Eternal,
Lest He look into my mind;
And I gazed upon the sky,
And I thought of Heavenly Rest,
And I slipped away like water
Through the fingers of the blest!
All their eyes were fixed on Glory,
Not a glance brushed over me;
"Alleluia ! Alleluia !"
Up the road,and I was free.
And my heart rose like a freshet,
And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
Till I felt the earth once more.
All the Earth was charred and black,
Fire had swept from pole to pole;
And the bottom of the sea
Was as brittle as a bowl;
And the timbered mountain-top
Was as naked as a skull,
Nothing left, nothing left,
Of the Earth so beautiful!
"Earth," I said, "how can I leave you?"
"You are all I have," I said;
"What is left to take my mind up,
Living always, and you dead?"
"Speak!" I said, "Oh, tell me something!
Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake! To keep always!
Quick! Before God misses me!"
And I listened for a voice;
But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
Not a tree-toad said a word.
And I waited for a sign;
Coals and cinders, nothing more;
And a little cloud of smoke
Floating on a valley floor.
And I peered into the smoke
Till it rotted, like a fog:
There, encompassed round by fire,
Stood a blue-flag in a bog!
Little flames came wading out,
Straining, straining towards its stem,
But it was so blue and tall
That it scorned to think of them!
Red and thirsty were their tongues,
As the tongues of wolves must be,
But it was so blue and tall
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!
All my heart became a tear,
All my soul became a tower,
Never loved I anything
As I loved that tall blue flower!
It was all the little boats
That had ever sailed the sea,
It was all the little books
That had gone to school with me;
On its roots like iron claws
Rearing up so blue and tall,
It was all the gallant Earth
With its back against a wall!
In a breath, ere I had breathed,
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!
I was kneeling at its side,
And it leaned its head on me!
Crumbling stones and sliding sand
Is the road to Heaven now;
Icy at my straining knees
Drags the awful under-tow;
Soon but stepping-stones of dust
Will the road to Heaven be,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
"Therethere, my blue-flag flower;
Hushhushgo to sleep;
That is only God you hear,
Counting up His folded sheep!
Lullabyelullabye
That is only God that calls,
Missing me, seeking me,
Ere the road to nothing falls!
He will set His mighty feet
Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
I will creep into His hand;
I will tell Him all my grief,
I will tell Him all my sin;
He will give me half His robe
For a cloak to wrap you in.
Lullabyelullabye"
Rocks the burnt-out planet free!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
Ah, the voice of love at last !
Lo, at last the face of light !
And the whole of His white robe
For a cloak against the night!
And upon my heart asleep
All the things I ever knew!
"Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,
For a flower so tall and blue?"
All's well and all's well!
Gay the lights of Heaven show!
In some moist and Heavenly place
We will set it out to grow.
Conscientious Objector
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
To A Poet That Died Young
Minstrel, what have you to do
With this man that, after you,
Sharing not your happy fate,
Sat as England's Laureate?
Vainly, in these iron days,
Strives the poet in your praise,
Minstrel, by whose singing side
Beauty walked, until you died.
Still, though none should hark again,
Drones the blue-fly in the pane,
Thickly crusts the blackest moss,
Blows the rose its musk across,
Floats the boat that is forgot
None the less to Camelot.
Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.
Minstrel, what is this to you:
That a man you never knew,
When your grave was far and green,
Sat and gossipped with a queen?
Thalia knows how rare a thing
Is it, to grow old and sing;
When a brown and tepid tide
Closes in on every side.
Who shall say if Shelley's gold
Had withstood it to grow old?
Chorus
Give away her gowns,
Give away her shoes;
She has no more use
For her fragrant gowns;
Take them all down,
Blue, green, blue,
Lilac, pink, blue,
From their padded hangers;
She will dance no more
In her narrow shoes;
Sweep her narrow shoes
From the closet floor.
I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
