Magic
And who shall say—
Whatever disenchantment follows—
That we ever forget magic,
Or that we can ever betray,
On this leaden earth,
The apple-tree, the singing,
And the gold?
- O Lost
We shall not come again.
We never shall come back again.
But over us all, over us all,
Over us all is—something.
Wind pressed the boughs;
The withered leaves were shaking.
It was October, but some leaves were shaking.
A light swings over the hill.
(We shall not come again.)
And over the town a star.
(Over us all, over us all that shall not come again.)
And over the day the dark.
But over the darkness—
What?
We shall not come again.
We never shall come back again.
Over the dawn a lark. (That shall not come again.)
And wind and music far.
O lost! (It shall not come again.)
And over your mouth the earth.
O ghost!
But, over the darkness—
What?
Wind pressed the boughs;
The withered leaves were quaking.
We shall not come again.
We never shall come back again.
It was October,
But we never shall come back again.
When will they come again?
When will they come again?
The laurel, the lizard, and the stone
Will come no more.
The women weeping at the gate have gone,
And will not come again.
And pain and pride and death will pass,
And will not come again.
And light and dawn will pass,
And the star and the cry of a lark will pass,
And will not come again.
And we shall pass,
And will not come again.
What things will come again?
Oh, Spring, the cruellest and fairest of the seasons,
Will come again.
And the strange and buried men
Will come again,
In flower and leaf
The strange and buried men
Will come again,
And death and the dust will never come again,
For death and the dust
Will die.
And Ben will come again,
He will not die again,
In flower and leaf,
In wind and music far,
He will come back again.
O lost,
And by the wind grieved,
Ghost,
Come back again.
- Like the River
Why are you absent in the night, my love?
Where are you when the bells ring in the night?
Now, there are bells again,
How strange to hear the bells
In this vast, sleeping city!
Now, in a million little towns,
Now in the dark and lonely places of this earth,
Small bells are ringing out the time!
O my dark soul,
My child, my darling, my beloved,
Where are you now,
And in what place,
And in what time?
Oh, ring, sweet bells, above him
While he sleeps!
I send my love to you upon those bells.
Strange time, forever lost,
Forever flowing like the river!
Lost time, lost people, and lost love—
Forever lost!
There's nothing you can hold
There in the river!
There's nothing you can keep
There in the river!
It takes your love, it takes your life,
It takes the great ships going out to sea,
And it takes time,
Dark, delicate time,
The little ticking moments of strange time
That count us into death.
Now in the dark
I hear the passing of dark time,
And all the sad and secret flowing of my life.
All of my thoughts are flowing like the river,
All of my life is passing like the river,
I dream and talk and feel just like the river,
As it flows by me,
By me, to the sea.
- Night
The wasting helve of the moon rode into heaven
Over the bulk of the hills.
There was a smell of wet grass and lilac,
And the vast brooding symphony
Of the million-noted little night things,
Rising and falling in a constant ululation,
And inhabiting the heart
With steady unconscious certitude.
The pallid light drowned out the stars,
It lay like silence on the earth,
It dripped through the leafy web
Of the young maples,
Printing the earth with swarming moths
Of elvish light.
- Fountain
On the Square,
The slackened fountain
Dripped a fat spire of freezing water
Into its thickening rim of ice.
In summer, a tall spire
Blown in blue sheets of spray.
When they turned it down,
It wilted—
That was like a fountain, too.
- The Fading Light of Day
And the slant light steepened in the skies,
The old red light of waning day
Made magic fire upon the river,
And the train made on forever its tremendous monotone
That was like silence and forever—
And now there was nothing
But that tremendous monotone of time and silence
And the river, the haunted river,
The enchanted river
That drank forevre its great soundless tides
From out the inland slowly,
And that moved through all men's lives
The magic thread of its huge haunting spell,
And that linked his life to magic kingdoms
And to lotus-land
And to all the vision of the magic earth
That he had dreamed of as a child,
And that bore him on forever
Out of magic
To all the grime and sweat and violence of the city,
And into America.
The great river burned there in his vision
In that light of fading day,
And it was hung there
In that spell of silence and forever,
And it was flowing on forever,
And it was stranger than a legend,
And as dark as time.
- Spring
Autumn was kind to them,
Winter was long to them—
But in April, late April,
All the gold sang.
Spring came that year like magic,
Like music, and like song.
One day its breath was in the air,
A haunting premonition of its spirit
Filled the hearts of men
With its transforming loveliness,
Working its sudden and icredible sorcery
Upon grey streets, grey pavements,
And on grey faceless tides of manswarm ciphers.
It came like music faint and far,
It came with triumph,
And a sound of singing in the air,
With lutings of sweet bird-cries
At the break of day
And the high, swift passing of a wing,
And one day it was there
Upon the city streets
With a strange, sudden cry of green,
Its sharp knife of wordless joy and pain.
Not the whole glory
Of the great plantation of the earth
Could have outdone the glory of the city streets
That Spring.
Neither the cry of great, green fields,
Nor the song of the hills,
Nor the glory of young birch trees
Bursting into life again along the banks of rivers,
Nor the oceans of bloom in the flowering orchards,
The peach trees, the apple trees,
The plum and cherry trees—
Not all of the singing and the gold of Spring,
With April bursting from the earth
In a million shouts of triumph,
And the visible stride,
The flowered feet, of Springtime
As it came on across the earth,
Could have surpassed the wordless and poignant glory
Of a single tree in a city street
That Spring.
- Plum-Tree
The plum-tree, black and brittle,
Rocks stiffly in winter wind.
Her million little twigs are frozen
In spears of ice.
But in the Spring, lithe and heavy,
She will bend under her great load
Of fruit and blossoms.
She will grow young again.
Red plums will ripen,
Will be shaken desperately upon the tiny stems.
They will fall bursted
On the loamy warm wet earth.
When the wind blows in the orchard
The air will be filled with dropping plums;
The night will be filled
With the sound of their dropping.
And a great tree of birds will sing,
Burgeoning, blossoming richly,
Filling the air also
With warm-throated, plum-dropping bird-notes.
| Kipling | Millay | Frost | Chesterton | Nash | Various| Rohan | Nathan |
| Bashô | Hopkins | Chinese | Burns | Slavic | Igor | Sappho | Wolfe |
| Ridges | Walden | Pine | Black Oak | Little Pine | Chestnut | Haw |
| Greenbelt | Emory Valley | Pellissippi | Key Springs | Snapping Turtle Pond |