No More Learning

Who are you then, Marie?
I am a Queen, I am a Queen!
To your knee, to your knee!

And then she weeps: I was--a child--
Who were you then, Marie?
Know you that I was no man's child,
Poor and in rags--said she.

And then a Princess I became
To whom men bend their knees;
To princes things are not the same
As those a beggar sees.

And those things which have made you great
Came to you, tell me, when?
One night, one night, one night quite late,
Things became different then.

I walked the lane which presently
With strung chords seemed to bend;
Then Marie became Melody
And danced from end to end.

The people watched with startled mien
And passed with frightened glance
For all know that only a Queen
May dance in the lanes: dance! . . .




LAMENT


Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote.
Which house? --I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like a white City that all space commands
At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.




SYMBOLS


From infinite longings finite deeds rise
As fountains spring toward far-off glowing skies,
But rushing swiftly upward weakly bend
And trembling from their lack of power descend--
So through the falling torrent of our fears
Our joyous force leaps like these dancing tears.




NEW POEMS




EARLY APOLLO


As when at times there breaks through branches bare
A morning vibrant with the breath of spring,
About this poet-head a splendour rare
Transforms it almost to a mortal thing.

There is as yet no shadow in his glance,
Too cool his temples for the laurel's glow;
But later o'er those marble brows, perchance,
A rose-garden with bushes tall will grow,

And single petals one by one will fall
O'er the still mouth and break its silent thrall,
--The mouth that trembles with a dawning smile
As though a song were rising there the while.




THE TOMB OF A YOUNG GIRL


We still remember!