Myriad and golden past the wood,
The spears of morn grew plain;
Empty within the light I stood
And brake my reed in twain.

TELL ME SOME WAY

From 'A Handful of Lavender.' Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, and used here by permission of the author and the publishers.

Oh, you who love me not, tell me some way
Whereby I may forget you for a space;
May clean forget you and your lovely face-
Yet well I know how vain this prayer I pray.

All weathers hold you. Can I make the May
Forbid her boughs blow white in every place?
Or rob June of her Rose that comes apace?
Cheat of their charms the elder months and gray?

Aye, were you dead, you could not be forgot:

So sparse the bloom along the lanes would be;
Such sweetness out the briery hedges fled:
My tears would fall that you had loved me not,
And bitterer tears that you had gone from me;
Living, you break my heart, so would you dead.

AN OLD BELLE

From 'A Quiet Road.'

A Daughter of the Cavaliers

(A phrase a little dulled with years),
But something sweeter than them all,
Serene she sits at evenfall.

Tall tulips crowd the window-sill
Vague ghosts of those that blew at will-
Ere she was old and time so fleet-
In one walled space down Camden street.

And straight she and her lover there
In that town garden take the air;
Tall tulips lift in scarlet tire,
Brimming the April dusk with fire.

Without, the white of harbored ships;
The road that to the water slips;
The tang of salt, the scent of sea;
Within, her only love and she!

Back to the new she comes once more,
To roofs ungabled, ways that roar;
To the sole April left her still,
That potted scarlet on the sill.

Dust are those pleasant garden walls;
Her only love in green Saint Paul's;
Serene she sits at her day's close;
Last of her kin, but still a rose!

A HOLIDAY

From 'A Quiet Road.'

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 gospeler,
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.

TRUST

From 'A Quiet Road.'

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.

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

IN TIME OF GRIEF

From 'A Quiet Road.'

Dark, thinned, beside the wall of stone,
The Box dripped in the air;

Its odor through my house was blown.
Into the chamber there.

Remote and yet distinct the scent,
The sole thing of the kind,

As though one spoke a word half meant
That left a sting behind.

I knew not Grief would go from me,
And naught of it be plain,

Except how keen the Box can be
After a fall of rain.

TO A TOWN POET

From 'A Quiet Road.'

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 spirit fill!

What if your heritage be

The huddle trees along the smoky ways; At a street's end the stretch of lilac sea; The vendor, 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 gossiping 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 aglow,

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 ploughed 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.

AN ENGLISH MISSAL

From 'A Quiet Road.'

Upon these pages clear,

I, Basil, write my name;
My task is ended, and the year
Is gone out like a flame.

Martin and John the good

Are gathered to the blest;
It seems an hour ago they stood
And praised me with the rest.

I missed them when they went;
Then filled this page with palms,
And saw them both-their travail spent-
Harbored in Heavenly calms.

The tulips in this book

Their like our garden knew,

All spring what could I do but look,
And set them here anew?

The Saint that yonder walks
Smiles from our chancel space;

But Mary with the lily-stalks

Has mine own Mother's face.