Margaret Steele Anderson

Ah, love, why love you tears?
What beauty in the rue?
Do you not know the years
Shall bring their griefs to you,
To dew your nightly pillow ere you sleep?
Perchance, hut let me weep!

No sorrow do you mourn,
No cloud in heaven for you.
No graves have you, forlorn.
With salt tears to bestrew.
Nor any field of tares that you must reap.
Ah no! Yet I would weep!

One day, shall not your ships
Come sailing o'er the blue.
With fruit and spice for lips.
And robes of many a hue.
And gems and gold for your white hands to keep?
Yet, on the shore, I weep!

Then I my harp will bring,
And sing your tears and ruth;
More sweet than songs of spring
Sweet bitterness of youth!
I will forget, one hour, that grief ...

A wild spring upland all this charmed page,
Where, in the early dawn, the maenads rage,
Mad, chaste, and lovely! This, a darker spot
Where lone Antigone bewails her lot.
Death for her spouse, her bridal-bed the tomb.
And this, again, is some rich palace-room.
Where Phsedra pines: "0 woodlands! 0, the sea!"
Or some sweet walk of Sappho, beauteously
Built o'er with rose, with bloom of purple grapes!
They are all here, the ancient Attic shapes
Of passion, beauty, terror, love, and shame;
Proud shadows, you do summon them by name:
Achaean princes, Helen, the young god.
Fair Dionysus, CEdipus, who trod
Such ways of doom! Aye, these and more than these
You call across the ages and the seas!
And each one, answering, doth dream he lists
To the great voices of old...

(For a friend who mourns its passing.)

He took the earth as earth had been his throne;
And beauty as the red rose for his eye;
"Give me the moon," he said, "for mine alone;
Or I will reach and pluck it from the sky!"

And thou, Life, dost mourn him, for the day
Has darkened since the gallant youngling went;
And smaller seems thy dwelling-place of clay
Since he has left that valley tenement.

But oh, perchance, beyond some utmost gate.
While at the gate thy stranger feet do stand.
He shall approach thee, beautiful, elate.
Crowned with his moon, the red rose in his hand!

The wind makes moan, the water runneth chill;
I hear the nymphs go crying through the brake;
And roaming mournfully from hill to hill
The maenads all are silent for his sake!

He loved thy pipe, O wreathed and piping Pan!
So play'st thou sadly, lone within thine hollow;
He was thy blood, if ever mortal man,
Therefore thou weepest - even thou, Apollo!

But O, the grieving of the Little Things,
Above the pipe and lyre, throughout the woods!
The beating of a thousand airy wings,
The cry of all the fragile multitudes!

The moth flits desolate, the tree-toad calls,
Telling the sorrow of the elf and fay;
The cricket, little harper of the walls,
Puts up his harp - hath quite forgot to play!

And risen on these winter paths anew,
The wilding b...

Dawn, midnight, noonday? What are times to thee
Man's Grief art thou, that moanest with the light,
And starest dumb at evening, and at night
Dost wake and dream and slumber fitfully!
Thou art Distress, that cannot cry aloud.
That cannot weep, that cannot stoop to tear
One fold of all her garment, but with air
Supremely brooding waits the final shroud!

Dust, long ago, the princes of this place;
Forgot the civic losses which in thee
Great Angelo lamented; but thy face
Proclaims the master's immortality!
So sit thee, marble Grief! this very day
How burns the art when long the hand is clay!

Shall I not give this world my heart, and well?
If for naught else, for many a miracle
Of the impassioned spring, the rose, the snow?
Nay, by the spring that still must come and go
When thou art dust, by roses that shall blow
Across thy grave, and snows it shall not miss.
Not this world, oh, not this!

Shall I not give this world my heart, who find
Within this world the glories of the mind
That wondrous mind that mounts from earth to God?
Nay, hy the little footways it hath trod,
And smiUs to see, when thou art under sod.
And by its very gaze across the ahyss.
Not this world, oh, not this!

Shall I not give this world my heart, who hold
One figure here above myself, my gold.
My life and hope, my joy and my intent?
Nay, by that form whose strengt...

Fades the great pyramid, the blank walls fade!
And thou, immortal boy, dost walk with me
Along that grove from out whose deeper shade
The nightingale sings living ecstasy.

And where thy burial-stone so long is set
With plaintive lines that tell a day's despair,
Lo, now that urn with happy figures fret
Which cannot fail, but go eternal fair!

Yet, suddenly, the wind of death is blown
On all earth 's beauty, even at its prime;
The red rose drops, the hand of Joy is flown,
And thou, oh, thou art dust this long, long time!

Oh no, not this! This is a Roman face,
Superb, composed, with such a matron grace
As that of great Cornelia, never thee.
Young princess of an ancient poetry!

Nor do I wish thy beauty from its grave;
Rather, one bird across the purple wave,
Or the mere sight of that Aegean sea.
Shall tell thy mortal loveliness to me!

Or I will find some slender, broken plinth.
And mark it thine with wild blue hyacinth,
While some far fruit, upon triumphant bough.
Shall say how unattainable wert thou!

You eat the heart of life like some great beast,
You blacken the sweet sky, that God made blue!

You are the death's-head set amid the feast,
The desert breath, that drinks up every dew!

And no man lives that doth not fear you, Pain!

And no man lives that learns to love your rod;
The white lip smiles, but ever and again

God's image cries your horror unto God!

And yet, 0, Terrible! men grant you this:
You work a mystery; when you are done,

Lo! common living changes into bliss,

Lo! the mere light is as the noonday sun!

The bride, she wears a white, white rose, the plucking, it was mine;
The poet wears a laurel wreath, and I the laurel twine;
And oh, the child, your little child, that's clinging close to you,
It laughs to wear my violets, they are so sweet and blue!

And I, I have a wreath to wear, ah, never rue nor thorn!
I sometimes think that bitter wreath could be more sweetly worn!
For mine is made of ghostly bloom, of what I can't forget
The fallen leaves of other crowns, rose, laurel, violet!

I am a virgin, whom no man hath known,
And all desire to know. The figure I
Of mortal dream and mortal prophecy.
Thou desert Sphinx, with thy gray lips of stone,
Keep thy poor secret, I have kept mine own!

The night would sadden us with wind and rain
Let's to sweet Comedy and scorn the night!
Let's read together: how, by silver light,
The fairies went, a most enchanting train.
Amid those clowns and lovers; how the twain,
Celia and Rosalind, as shepherds dight.
Frolicked through Arden; or of that rare sprite,
That Ariel, who could trick the mortal brain
To strange beliefs. What! wilt have nothing glad?
Wilt read, while winds are moaning out regret.
The fate of Desdemona, Juliet?
Lovest the rain to come and make thee sad?
Ah, well!, I know!, How sweet the tragic part!
I am grown old, but once, was what thou art I

"0, was it on that awful road,
The way of death, you came?"
"It was a little road," he said,
"I never knew its name."

"Is it not rough along that road?"
"I cannot tell," said he,
"Up to your gate, in her two arms.
My mother carried me."

"And will you show me Christ?" he said,
"And must we seek Him far?"
"That is our Lord, with children round.
Where little blue-bells are."

"Why, so my mother sits at night,
When all the lights are dim!
0, would He mind, would it be right
If I should sit by Him?"

(The Lord God speaks to a youth.)

Bend now thy body to the common weight!
(But oh, that vine-clad head, those limbs of morn!
Those proud young shoulders I myself made straight!
How shall ye wear the yoke that must be worn?)

Look thou, my son, what wisdom comes to thee!
(But oh, that singing mouth, those radiant eyes!
Those dancing feet, that I myself made free!
How shall I sadden them to make them wise?)

Nay then, thou shalt! Resist not, have a care!
(Yea, I must work my plans who sovereign sit!
Yet do not tremble so! I cannot bear
Though I am God! to see thee so submit!)

Still, still thy garden hath its fruits and spices,
        My Lord, my Lord!
Still hath its wells and pools of thy devices,
        My Lord!
White, in a stranger soil, thy lily stands, the close
        Breathes with thy rose!

Wild feet, mad feet, thy lovely paths have beaten,
        My Lord, my Lord!
And sinful lips thy holy fruits have eaten,
        My Lord!
Strange hands have tended me and tended ill, yet thou
        Lovest me, now!

So to thy feet I offer my waste places.
        My Lord, my Lord!
walk them till they spring in verdant graces,
        My Lord!
With new trees plant, and from the fruits divine
        Tread out thy wine!

("I believe ... in the resurrection of the body.")

How young you are, for such lone majesty

Of silence and repose!
That lip was vowed to laughter and that eye,

That white cheek to the rose!

What age your spirit hath, who thinks to say?

If young, or young no more;
But all for merriment, oh, all for play.

That new, sweet shape it wore!

So, in His time, to whom all time is now.

From flower and wind and steep.
Shall He not summon you to keep your vow,

Since He hath made you sleep?

Demeter? 'Tis a name! For in thy face
A myriad women find their mourning-place!
Thou, sitting lonely on the wayside stone,
O pagan mother, thou art not alone!

Though Hellas now, thy grief so calmly worn!
Yet art thou Egypt, reft of thy first-born;
And now lamenting Rama, that fair head
With ashes strewn, and all uncomforted!

And Mary thou, and many women more!
This very day I see thee at my door;
Thine was the voice, an hour ago, that cried
From the next house, wherein a child has died!

O friendly, that I never knew for friend,
O flame, that never warmed me from the cold,
O light, that never beckoned to an end,
Give me but once thy beauty to behold!

Thou, Faith! Who never held before mine eyes
Or wreath of bay or life's diviner rose,
Lift up thy face against my sombre skies
And let me see thee ere mine eyelids close!

Come, lighten mine as thou dost other ways.
Come, conquer me if only for an hour!
O beckon with that shadowy wreath of bays!
O lift to me that unimagined flow'r!