Table of 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,