No More Learning

To E.

"Recois la flamme ou l'ombre
De tous mes jours. "





Contents



I

Blue Squills
Stars
"What Do I Care? "
Meadowlarks
Driftwood
"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"
August Moonrise



Memories


II

Places
Old Tunes
"Only in Sleep"
Redbirds
Sunset: St. Louis
The Coin
The Voice


III

Day and Night
Compensation
I Remembered
"Oh You Are Coming"
The Return
Gray Eyes
The Net
The Mystery



In a Hospital

IV

Open Windows
The New Moon
Eight O'Clock
Lost Things
Pain
The Broken Field
The Unseen
A Prayer


V

Spring Torrents
"I Know the Stars"
Understanding
Nightfall
"It Is Not a Word"
"My Heart Is Heavy"
The Nights Remember
"Let It Be Forgotten"



The Dark Cup

VI

May Day
"Since There Is No Escape"
"The Dreams of My Heart"
"A Little While"
The Garden
The Wine
In a Cuban Garden
"If I Must Go"


VII

In Spring, Santa Barbara
White Fog
Arcturus
Moonlight
Morning Song
Gray Fog
Bells
Lovely Chance


VIII

"There Will Come Soft Rains"
In a Garden
Nahant
Winter Stars
A Boy
Winter Dusk



By the Sea

IX

The Unchanging
June Night
"Like Barley Bending"
"Oh Day of Fire and Sun"
"I Thought of You"
On the Dunes
Spray
If Death Is Kind


X

Thoughts
Faces
Evening: New York
Snowfall
The Silent Battle
The Sanctuary
At Sea
Dust
The Long Hill


XI

Summer Storm
In the End
"It Will Not Change"
Change
Water Lilies
"Did You Never Know? "
The Treasure
The Storm



Songs For Myself

XII

The Tree
At Midnight
Song Making
Alone
Red Maples
Debtor
The Wind in the Hemlock




Flame and Shadow




I


Blue Squills


How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!

And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.

Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you.




Stars



Alone in the night
On a dark hill
With pines around me
Spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars
Over my head,
White and topaz
And misty red;

Myriads with beating
Hearts of fire
That aeons
Cannot vex or tire;

Up the dome of heaven
Like a great hill,
I watch them marching
Stately and still,

And I know that I
Am honored to be
Witness
Of so much majesty.




"What Do I Care? "



What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.




Meadowlarks



In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.




Driftwood



My forefathers gave me
My spirit's shaken flame,
The shape of hands, the beat of heart,
The letters of my name.

But it was my lovers,
And not my sleeping sires,
Who gave the flame its changeful
And iridescent fires;

As the driftwood burning
Learned its jewelled blaze
From the sea's blue splendor
Of colored nights and days.




"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"



I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply--
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.




August Moonrise



The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.
I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.

Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.






Memories
II






Places



Places I love come back to me like music,
Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;
I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming
In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;
And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley
As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.

I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,
A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,
The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle
Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,
And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust
With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.

Violet now, in veil on veil of evening
The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;
A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol
In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;
The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers
And heaven is lighting star after star.

Places I love come back to me like music--
Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily;
In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence
Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,
And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,
At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.




Old Tunes



As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;

So the old tunes float in my mind,
And go from me leaving no trace behind,
Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.