No More Learning

The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,--
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.




LOVE-FREE

I AM free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn,
Swift and intent, asking no joy from another,
Glad to forget all of the passion of April
Ere it was love-free.

I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly,
But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply,
I should awake, I should awake and remember
I am my lover's.




SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE

IN the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled my hair. . . .

The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.

To-night what girl
When she goes home,
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year's blossoms, clinging in its coils ?




IN A SUBWAY STATION

AFTER a year I came again to the place;
The tireless lights and the reverberation,
The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground,
The hunted, hurrying people were still the same--
But oh, another man beside me and not you!
Another voice and other eyes in mine!
And suddenly I turned and saw again
The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above--
They were burned deep into my heart before,
The night I watched them to avoid your eyes,
When you were saying, "Oh, look up at me! "
When you were saying, "Will you never love me?
"
And when I answered with a lie. Oh then
You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain.
I would have died to say the truth to you.
After a year I came again to the place--
The hunted hurrying people were still the same. . . .




AFTER LOVE

THERE is no magic when we meet,
We speak as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea--
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But tho' the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.




DOORYARD ROSES

I HAVE come the selfsame path
To the selfsame door,
Years have left the roses there
Burning as before.

While I watch them in the wind
Quick the hot tears start--
Strange so frail a flame outlasts
Fire in the heart.




A PRAYER

UNTIL I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;

Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.






II


INDIAN SUMMER

LYRIC night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence,
Under a moon waning and worn and broken,
Tired with summer.