Chapter V: Part II: I Know Where a Dove

I know where a dove sits brooding in the dark
Nested in leaves the quiet boughs among;
And when the midnight falls I lean to mark
Her home where a star is hung.
The star, it does not know the secret dove,
The dove that firefly planet may not see.
What lovelier things the night may fold from me----
The watching eye, the brooding heart, and love.

PROLOCUTOR

O for one of the stars to know me,
To say “That is she” as I say “It is there.”
O for my hills to show me
If they care.
But when I speak to them nothing hears me.
Even the bird on the near bough fears me.
The fire on my hearth does not know that it cheers me.
... Heart that waits by the fire, do you guess
All you must voice in your tenderness?

WONDER

Here are the shadows veiling green with grey
And winning all the wonder from the light;
Here phantom fragrance swells and fails like sound;
The hour distills itself to dark; the day
Dreams in its grave and lo, the dream is night.

Beloved, all the marvel of the May,
The altared dark, the petals’ solemn white,
The moments rich with farewell from the lips
Of dying moments--what are these? We lay
Our love beside them and exceed the night.

A MEETING

I hear a sound like piping and like sails
In silken talk with wind and like the speech
Of someone quiet in the blue of dawn
Upon a quiet beach.

I see a light as when the last star
Flowers faintly in the ashen morning sky
And long wings appear and disappear,
Wheeling by.

I think of moons forgotten with their tides;
I think of all the red of east and west;
I hear the secret stir of nameless dead
Conferring in my breast.

You make me long for colour and for song
And for old words on lips I did not know.
You make me dream of all I learned to dream
How long ago.

HALF THOUGHT

O Day of Wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue--blue.
The slumberous noon your body is,
Your feet are the shadows’ flight.
But the immortal soul of you
Is night.

EPITAPH

He loved to lie where Summer lay,
His roof a cloud, a bough;
There stretched full-length to dream all day.
It is so with him now.

EPITAPH

How fair a bride-groom Death must be.
He took her in his arms,
Her answering kiss now Spring is here
The valley leafage warms.

ALIAS

Between the dawn and the first breath
Of dusk there slips away
Something that partly is like death
And partly is like day.

IN ARVIA’S ROOM

_For Her Cradle_

I cannot tell you what you ask.
But of my life to be
You who are wise and know your speech,
Tell me.

_For Her Mirror_

Look in the deep of me:
What are we going to do?
If I am I, as I am,
Who in the world are you?

_For a Comb of Ivory_

Use me and think of soul and mind and wonder yet to be.
This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me?

_For Her Doll’s House_

Girl doll would be a silken flower and look as real flowers do;
Boy doll would be a telephone and have the world speak through.
The poet doll would like to be the doorbell with a tongue
For other little dolls like bells most sensitively rung.
The paper doll would be a queen, the Dinah doll a star,
And all--how ignominious!--are only what they are.

_For Her Candle-stick_

Taper, winnow the world of its angles and where
Were sharp things lay softness, Night-god of the air!

_For the Chimney-place_

I am the causeway to the upper places
That the fire understands.
I am the link with everything unspoken.
How well I warm your hands.

_For a Flower Pot_

Call sweetness into being.
Let it live in me.
The seed, the soil, the sun and I
Work with authority.

_For the Telephone_

I the absurdity
Proving what cannot be.
Come, when you talk with me
Does it become you well
To doubt a miracle?

_Along Her Book-shelf_

Lay one hand on us; but keep the other free to touch far
things which are not far--tenderly.

_Where Boughs Touch the Glass_

They lap on the indoor shore,
The waves of the leaf mere.
They say: We tell you as well as we can,
We wonder what you hear.

_For Her Window_

I see the stones, I see the stars,
I know not what I see.
Things always say words to themselves
And now and then to me.
But sometimes when I look between
Large stones and little stars
I almost know--but what I know
Flies through the window bars.

NON NOBIS

_Find me little doors of air,
Let me in and in.
I will come and go all day....
None will miss me from my place
In the room, the porch, the lawn_;
And yet I shall have a way
To enter and find quiet.

_Knit me in a garment.
Weave me in a spell.
I shall look the same to them.
They will see me in the street
In the shop, the car, the hall_,
And yet all the time I shall be my own,
In a place where they do not come.

_Will you not, dare you not,
Is it never meet?
I will never let them know---- _
_Sweet, my Spirit, pardon me!
I had forgot that stars are new
And that it is the dawn of earth._
Doors and garments and spells I must make for myself.
Among ten thousand of us I must find silence.

HALF THOUGHT

I saw Fair Yellow in the west,
Fair Yellow in the air,
The sand, the corn, a bird’s breast,
A woman’s hair.
At night
My little room burst into light----
Fair Yellow had come there.

Fair Yellow is a being.
For when I said her name
I found a way of seeing
Her as she came.
O how
Do our dull senses fail us now
And leave us in some elemental shame!

There is so much to see and say
If we could find the way....

UMBRA

The birds of the air are about me
For I am the conjuring one;
How they dip and hover and circle
Through hyaline regions of sun.

One has a wing like a petal,
One wears a feather of flame,
Silk and snow is the breast of another
With a word like a flute for a name.

How they sing ... in the morning,
Tilting soft the light beat of their flight;
How their passionate chorales give cadence
Down the ample arcade of the night.

Yes, the songs of the air are about me
Sweet ... clear ... but they sing
Of the light of another morning
In the deep of another Spring.

WRAITHS

Who hears the answer when I cry?
O quiet hours and empty blue----
You?
But the echoful air beats back no sigh.

Who is glad of the love that I give the green?
O haunted hollow in tide of leaves,
Who weaves
Delight of mine on the flowery screen?

Who harbours that little straying ghost
Of our thought for each other before we knew
Love true?
Warm, warm in my heart and never lost.

HALF THOUGHT

Believe not Sorrow, her who brings
Confession of the folded wings,
But seek you, burning, some frail birth
That sings.
It is her spirit beating through.
Handful of earth,
It may be breath to you!

WIND SONG

Horn of the morning!
And the little night pipings fail.
The day is launched like a hollow ship
With the sun for a sail.
The way is wide and blue and lone
With all the miles inviolate,
Save for the swinging stars they’ve sown
And a thistle of cloud remote and blown.
O I passion for something nearer than these!
How shall I know that this live thing is I
With only the morning for proof and the sky?
I long for a music more dear to its keys,
For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties,
Give me some griefs and some loyalties
And a child’s mouth on my own....

Lullaby,
Babe of the world, swing high,
Swing low.
I am a mother you never may know,
But oh,
And oh, how long the wind will know you,
With lullaby for the dead night through.
Babe of the earth, as I blow....
Swing high,
To touch at the sky,
And at last lie low.
Lullaby....

HALF THOUGHT

When all the leaves of Spring turn gold
And the wind has no song,
To whom then does the changeling green
Belong?
And who on what far waveless shore
Harps as Spring wind shall harp no more
In Winter’s beat and roll?
O You, who such forgotten beauties hold,
Find some faint loveliness unseen
And save it in a soul.

TROTH

To-day an odour lay upon the air
And did not fall from any mortal flower.
Deep they won their way within the hour
Who laid that odour there.

A perfume as of all that cannot give
A perfume--ivory and ore,
Colour and cloud and pearl and marl; and store
Of the wild aroma of cave and hive.

It was an inner perfume filtering
From other level than the great Midgard;
From a far and sphery home full-friendlier starred
Where marvels lift light wing.

By fragrance, fire and music do we prove
The tender contact of a lovelier day,
And these fair guarantors gently outray
From their far home--these three and also love.

BELOVED, IT IS DAYBREAK ON THE HILLS

Beloved, it is daybreak on the hills.
Dark glimmers and goes out in cloudy light.
Faint on the marge of night the watchet dawn
Lifts like a lily from a quiet water.
And that within me which is consonant
Is at its door to meet God’s infinite.

O Love, what banner shall we lift? And what
Timbrel and incense bear? How shall we greet
God’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty?
Voices reply that are no voice but breath:
“Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.”

CREDO

O you not only worshipful but dear
Now have I learned not merely majesty
But gentleness and friendlihood to be
Your way of drawing near.

And late, upon a blue and yellow day,
Wandering alone along a hill of Spring
I caught another tender summoning,
As if you were the comrad of my play.

How strange that I have looked so lone and far
When it is you, Great Love, who lonely are.
How I have sought you in your cosmic leisure
When you are eager in my childish pleasure.

Why there is no dim doctrine to believe!
Only to feel this touching at my sleeve.

WHO IS THIS THAT IS SO NEAR?

Who is this that is so near?
Not a face and not a voice.
But a sense of someone here,
Or of something not ourselves.

At no altar, from no ark----
Is it He? O wonderful
In the day and in the dark
To behold Him by no eyes.

Is it They? Ask us not who.
As trees know when creatures pass,
We may know when Those look through
From another kind of day.

He and They within our sense.
As we hope of bird or root:
“Lo, it has intelligence!”
Hidden ones may hope of us.

INMOST ONE

Brilliant and lone she sat
Upon eternal height
And veiled her face about.
She was in fear of sin,
She was in fear of deadly night,
I saw her eyes peer out.

I saw her eyes peer out
And knew she was divine,
But oh, her stedfast, dreadful gaze
And her importunate doubt.
She did not make me word or sign
Or turn away her face.

She did not make word or sign,
But as she watched me err
Her eyes grew cold like the dark star
And her body ceased to shine.
I could not breathe for the breath of her
Was frost of Winter and fire of war.

Her body ceased to shine.
I dare not let her die.
I opened my heart to the sun
And I breathed her breath for mine.
Behold, that Inmost One was I,
And I was the inmost one.

I opened my heart to the sun.
O colour and line, and birth
Of wonder and word and light!
Through love and her I have won
The earth within the earth
And the sight that is more than sight.

O colour and line and birth,
Birth of an order new,
Of a life that is more than my own ...
Birth that is your birth ...
Birth in me of you
O God, brilliant and lone!

STONE CELL

Let me not see thee, Lord God of my essential life, where thou art not.
Let me not look upon colour and pray to thee believing thee to be colour.
Let me not go in silence or in dream and dream thee to be that silence.
With the failing of the light let me not thrill at the intricate
touch of that spirit
Who films light to shadow, and kneel believing ecstasy to be prayer.
From my dreams, from the siren singing and the imperious call,
From the blinding joy and the august mystery of simple beauty
Wilt not thou, compassionate, O deliver me, faint for beauty.

God! If I were praying to be delivered from thee ...

LIGHT

We do not touch the texture of the light.
But one may see with a secret eye
The things that are.
Then we divine that we need not die
To win our heritage of sight.
As well this earth as any other star.

Waking from dream there trails an alien air,
A residue of other suns than these;
We know that we have walked an inner way,
Have met familiars there
And kept our step in exquisite concord
The while we spoke some unremembered word.
And over all there lay
Light whose vibrations ran to other keys
Than those we woke upon. Light whose long play
Was dappled colour delicately kissed.
Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord.
Light from the sun behind the sun fell where
We went to keep our tryst.

In sleep and in the solitary dusk there come
Fine lines of light upon the lowered lids,
A flush that lets us in the heart of night
And hints dear wonders to be there at home;
As if the universal fabric bids
Its human pattern know that all is light.
In snow
Have we not seen the whiteness smitten through
With sudden rays of glory, vague with veils,
Of some beloved hue that pales
To earthly rose and violet and blue?
Oh you
Who pulse within that light--we know, we know!

Soon
From without transition night
We would come into this, our own.
Then the dim tune
The which we almost hear,
The low-keyed colour and the word
We have not heard,
All these we shall be shown,
And infinitely near
To God, breathe for our breath his light.

HALF THOUGHT

I close my eyes and on the night
A face looks in at me.
It speaks a word like burning light,
I answer joyfully.
It dims away. The word is sped.
I know not what we two have said.

The old dark sparkles like a star.
And when shall we be touched with sight
To find the things that are?

CONTOURS

I am glad of the straight lines of the rain;
Of the free blowing curves of the grain;
Of the perilous swirling and curling of fire;
The sharp upthrust of a spire;
Of the ripples on the river
Where the patterns curl and quiver
And sun thrills;
Of the innumerable undulations of the hills.
But the true line is drawn from my spirit to some
infinite outward place ...
That line I cannot trace.