A Little Song Of Life

Glad that I live am I;
That the sky is blue;
Glad for the country lanes,
And the fall of dew.

After the sun the rain;
After the rain the sun;
This is the way of life,
Till the work be done.

All that we need to do,
Be we low or high,
Is to see that we grow
Nearer the sky.

An apple orchard smells like wine;
A succory flower is blue;
Until Grief touched these eyes of mine,
Such things I never knew.

And now indeed I know so plain
Why one would like to cry
When spouts are full of April rain—
Such lonely folk go by!

So wise, so wise—that my tears fall
Each breaking of the dawn;
That I do long to tell you all—
But you are dead and gone.

A Song For Candlemas

There’s never a rose upon the bush,
And never a bud on any tree;
In wood and field nor hint nor sign
Of one green thing for you or me.
Come in, come in, sweet love of mine,
And let the bitter weather be!

Coated with ice the garden wall;
The river reeds are stark and still;
The wind goes plunging to the sea,
And last week’s flakes the hollows fill.
Come in, come in, sweet love, to me,
And let the year blow as it will!

Along the pastoral ways I go,
To get the healing of the trees,
The ghostly news the hedges know;
To hive me honey like the bees,
Against the time of snow.

The common hawthorn that I see,
Beside the sunken wall astir,
Or any other blossoming tree,
Is each God’s fair white gospeller,
His book upon the knee.

A gust-broken bough; a pilfered nest;
Rumors of orchard or of bin;
The thrifty things of east and west,—
The countryside becomes my Inn,
And I its happy guest.

I am thy grass, O Lord!
I grow up sweet and tall
But for a day; beneath Thy sword
To lie at evenfall.

Yet have I not enough
In that brief day of mine?
The wind, the bees, the wholesome stuff
The sun pours out like wine.

Behold, this is my crown;
Love will not let me be;
Love holds me here; Love cuts me down;
And it is well with me.

Lord, Love, keep it but so;
Thy purpose is full plain;
I die that after I may grow
As tall, as sweet again.

Oh, Gray And Tender Is The Rain

Oh, gray and tender is the rain,
That drips, drips on the pane!
A hundred things come in the door,
The scent of herbs, the thought of yore.

I see the pool out in the grass,
A bit of broken glass;
The red flags running wet and straight,
Down to the little flapping gate.

Lombardy poplars tall and three,
Across the road I see;
There is no loveliness so plain
As a tall poplar in the rain.

But oh, the hundred things and more,
That come in at the door! --
The smack of mint, old joy, old pain,
Caught in the gray and tender rain.

A Flower Of Mullein

I am too near, too clear a thing for you,
A flower of mullein in a crack of wall,
The villagers half see, or not at all;
Part of the weather, like the wind or dew.
You love to pluck the different, and find
Stuff for your joy in cloudy loveliness;
You love to fumble at a door, and guess
At some strange happening that may wait behind.

Yet life is full of tricks, and it is plain,
That men drift back to some worn field or roof,
To grip at comfort in a room, a stair;
To warm themselves at some flower down a lane:
You, too, may long, grown tired of the aloof,
For the sweet surety of the common air.

When I consider Life and its few years --
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street, --
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight,
Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,
Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep:
Homer his sight, David his little lad!

The spicewood burns along the gray, spent sky,
In moist unchimneyed places, in a wind,
That whips it all before, and all behind,
Into one thick, rude flame, now low, now high,
It is the first, the homeliest thing of all--
At sight of it, that lad that by it fares,
Whistles afresh his foolish, town-caught airs--
A thing so honey-colored, and so tall!

It is as though the young Year, ere he pass,
To the white riot of the cherry tree,
Would fain accustom us, or here, or there,
To his new sudden ways with bough and grass,
So starts with what is humble, plain to see,
And all familiar as a cup, a chair.

An English lad, who, reading in a book,
A ponderous, leathern thing set on his knee,
Saw the broad violet of the Egean Sea
Lap at his feet as it were village brook.
Wide was the east; the gusts of morning shook;
Immortal laughter beat along that shore;
Pan, crouching in the reeds, piped as of yore;
The gods came down and thundered from that book.
He lifted his sad eyes; his London street
Swarmed in the sun, and strove to make him heed;
Boys spun their tops, shouting and fair of cheek:
But, still, that violet lapping at his feet,—
An English lad had he sat down to read;
But he rose up and knew himself a Greek.

That Day You Came

Such special sweetness was about
   That day God sent you here,
I knew the lavender was out,
   And it was mid of year.

Their common way the great winds blew,
   The ships sailed out to sea;
Yet ere that day was spent I knew
   Mine own had come to me.

As after song some snatch of tune
   Lurks still in grass or bough,
So, somewhat of the end o' June
   Lurks in each weather now.

The young year sets the buds astir,
   The old year strips the trees;
But ever in my lavender
   I hear the brawling bees.

For me the jasmine buds unfold
   And silver daisies star the lea,
The crocus hoards the sunset gold,
   And the wild rose breathes for me.
I feel the sap through the bough returning,
   I share the skylark's transport fine,
I know the fountain's wayward yearning,
   I love, and the world is mine!

I love, and thoughts that sometime grieved,
   Still well remembered, grieve not me;
From all that darkened and deceived
   Upsoars my spirit free.
For soft the hours repeat one story,
   Sings the sea one strain divine;
My clouds arise all flushed with glory --
   I love, and the world is mine!

Her eyes be like the violets,
Ablow in Sudbury lane;
When she doth smile, her face is sweet
As blossoms after rain;
With grief I think of my gray hairs,
And wish me young again.

In comes she through the dark old door
Upon this Sabbath day;
And she doth bring the tender wind
That sings in bush and tree;
And hints of all the apple boughs
That kissed her by the way.

Our parson stands up straight and tall,
For our dear souls to pray,
And of the place where sinners go
Some grewsome things doth say:
Now, she is highest Heaven to me;
So Hell is far away.

Most stiff and still the good folk sit
To hear the sermon through;
But if our God be such a God,
And if these things be true,
Why did He make her then so fair,
And both her eyes so blue?

A flickering light, the sun creeps in,
And finds her sitting there;
And touches soft her lilac gown,
And soft her yellow hair;
I look across to that old pew,
And have both praise and prayer.

Oh, violets in Sudbury lane,
Amid the grasses green,
This maid who stirs ye with her feet
Is far more fair, I ween!
I wonder how my forty years
Look by her sweet sixteen!

Thomas À Kempis

Brother of mine, good monk with cowlëd head,
Walled from that world which thou hast long since fled,
And pacing thy green close beyond the sea,
I send my heart to thee.

Down gust-sweet walks, bordered by lavender,
While eastward, westward, the mad swallows whir,
All afternoon poring thy missal fair,
Serene thou pacest there.

Mixed with the words and fitting like a tune,
Thou hearest distantly the voice of June,—
The little, gossipping noises in the grass,
The bees that come and pass.

Fades the long day; the pool behind the hedge
Burns like a rose within the windy sedge;
The lilies ghostlier grow in the dim air;
The convent windows flare.

Yet still thou lingerest; from pastures steep,
Past the barred gate the shepherd drives his sheep;
A nightingale breaks forth, and for a space
Makes sweeter the sweet place.

Then the gray monks by hooded twos and threes
Move chapelward beneath the flaming trees;
Closing thy book, back by the alleys fair
Thou followest to prayer.

Born to these brawling days, this work-sick age,
Oft long I for thy simpler heritage;
A thought of thee is like a breath of bloom
Blown through a noisy room.

For thou art quick, not dead. I picture thee
Forever in that close beyond the sea;
And find, despite this weather’s headlong stir,
Peace and a comforter.

Snatch the departing mood;
Make yours its emptying reed, and pipe us still
Faith in the time, faith in our common blood,
Faith in the least of good:
Song cannot fail if these its spirits fill!

What if your heritage be
The huddled trees along the smoky ways;
At a street’s end the stretch of lilac sea;
The vender, swart but free,
Crying his yellow wares across the haze?

Your verse awaits you there;
For Love is Love though Latin swords be rust,
The keen Greek driven from gossipping mall and square;
And Care is still but Care
Though Homer and his seven towns are dust.

Thus Beauty lasts, and, lo!
Now Proserpine is barred from Enna’s hills,
The flower she plucked yet makes an April show,
Sets some town still a-glow,
And yours the Vision of the Daffodils.

The Old-World folk knew not
More surge-like sounds than urban winters bring
Up from the wharves at dusk to every spot;
And no Sicilian plot
More fire than heaps our tulips in the spring.

Strait is the road of Song,
And they that be the last are oft the first;
Fret not for fame; the years are kind though long;
You, in the teasing throng,
May take all time with one shrewd lyric burst.

Be reverend and know
Ill shall not last, or waste the ploughëd land;
Or creeds sting timid souls; and naught at all,
Whatever else befall,
Can keep us from the hollow of God’s hand.

Let trick of words be past;
Strict with the thought, unfearful of the form,
So shall you find the way and hold it fast,
The world hear, at the last,
The horns of morning sound above the storm.