Dorothy Dudley: November in the Park
“ The lamps hang low in the silent park—
A hundred milk-white moons;
The trees weep gently in the dark
In dim festoons;
The trees reach outward upward
Long dark arms
In tearful dancing and in prayer.
The small pond bares to drifting skies
The furtive charms
Of her silver eyes,
And lies where white paths gleam around
Like something rare:
For Beauty and Romance have drowned
A princess there.”
Caroline Dudley: Chaotic Peace
“I think of nothing—
My mind leaps from mountain to mountain,
The drifts upon calm water.
I hear nothing—
Only the waves and the winds,
Violent and caressing.
I feel nothing—
My blood runs under my skin
Like a forest-fire underground. ”
Louise Driscoll: Old Roofs
“I
I HAVE seen old roofs,
Broken for winds to enter,
All their secrets flown like homing birds.
It seemed to me they were like broken words.
They babbled, inarticulate, of men
Who came and went and will not come again.
They were full of whispers and of shadows,
Provisioned for a dream’s viaticum.
These only had a voice,
All, all the other roofs were dumb!
II
Under an old roof I went one day,
But there was naught to see.
Singing, silken drapery
Went down the hall with me.
I was aware
Of feet upon the stair;
Soft laughter and a little sound of tears,
Muffled by many years.
It was the roof, the broken roof, that sung.
The living roofs were silent,
But the dead roof had a tongue! ”
Dorothy Dow: The Captive
“Beauty that shakes in lights,
Beauty that gleams in mists,
Loveliness of still nights,
Gold of the stars that twists,
Ribbon-like, into the sea …
Beauty is calling me.
Delicate crimson flames,
Jewels with long histories,
Mysterious oft-said names,
Blossoms beneath great trees,
Melodies deep and low,
Call me. I can not go.
Heliotrope, jasmine, rose;
Lovers, at crumbling gates;
Silence, when eyelids close;
Cliffs, where the sea-bird mates:
Beauty holds these for me
Whose eyes are too blind to see.
Beauty, when sunbeams blur,
Calls me again and again.
I can not answer her.
Beauty shall call me in vain,
Sadly, from year to year …
Passion has chained me here. ”
Jeanne d'Orge: Matins
“The crustT of sleep is broken
Abruptly—
I look drowsily
Through the wide crack.
I do not know whether I see
Three minds, bird-shaped,
Flashing upon the bough of morning;
Or three delicately tinted souls
Butterflying in the sun;
Or three brown-fleshed, husky children
Sprawling hilarious
Over my bed
And me.”
Blanche Dismorr: Charlotte Brontë
“O proud! O passionate! what desperate pain
Subdued that haughty soul, that iron will—
Bowed that stiff neck, wore that wild spirit, till
It bit the dust, and, broken, rose again!
What feverish, trembling fingers held the pen
Which traced those delicate characters—the cry
Of one too hungry-hearted, plain and shy,
Baffled and stung by the strange moods of men.
Discarded fragments, eloquent and rare,
Carelessly torn by man without regret;
Roughly sewn up, with some parts missing yet,
How many a woman’s heart lies bleeding there! ”
H.D.: The Wind Sleepers
“Whiter
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.
We no longer sleep,
sleep in the wind.
We awoke and fled
through the Peiraeic gate.
Tear—
tear us an altar.
Tug at the cliff-boulders,
pile them with the rough stones.
We no longer
sleep in the wind.
Propitiate us.
Chant in a wail
that never halts.
Pace a circle and pay tribute
with a song.
When the roar of a dropped wave
breaks into it,
pour meted words
of sea-hawks and gulls
and sea-birds that cry
discords.”
Babette Deutsch: Sea Music
“There is a place of bitter memories
Dreary and wide and lonely as the sea,
Foaming and moaning; there they come to me
Like wild gulls crying sea-taught monodies:
Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread;
Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door;
And shining love that has a withered core;
The eyes of those who fight and starve for bread.
There is doom, and change, and silence, and denying;
Memories of these pluck at the heart of me.
And over the bitter roar of the old dumb sea
The air is filled with the noise of wild gulls crying.”
Margaret deLaughter: Toward Evening
“The poppies just outside my door
Still flaunt their crimson loveliness.
How can they blossom any more,
Now I have lost my happiness?
Not any grief of mine can mar
The beauty of this tranquil weather.
Each evening, with the first pale star,
Comes that same thrush we loved together,
And pours gold notes from every bough
Of his old sacred apple-tree.
But he has lost his magic now—
He cannot sing you back to me.”
Miriam Allen deFord: Faun
“Your eyes are like the wind,—
Grey, clean and shining.
Behind them little lamps are lit eternally,
Making them the altar of your inextinguishable spirit.
I have seen a dream burn them blue,
And tenderness warm them to hazel;
And I have seen them black with thought:—
But when I love them most they are the color of the wind,
Sweeping over the grasses and the sea.”
Antoinette de Coursey Patterson: The Treasure Drawer
“Often in memory to a drawer I turn
Wherein my mother kept such queer, strange things,
For which with a child’s fancy I would yearn:
An ivory fan, emerald and opal rings,
Attar of roses in a bottle tall
With traceries of Arabesque design,
A pair of velvet slippers, dainty, small—
I doubted Cinderella’s were so fine—
Made up the treasures: and a mother-o’-pearl
And lacquer box, tight locked, of which the key
Had long been lost—since she was quite a girl,
She said. Years passed, and then the mystery
Was solved: three little feathers, golden bright,
Lay side by side, labelled in childish hand
As “Piccadilly’s Feathers.” How my sight
Grew dim, for I at last could understand
The loneliness a pet canary filled.
Ah, I could wish at times those memories,
Like Piccadilly’s songs, might all be stilled—
Or locked in some pearl casket from these eyes!”
Mercedes de Acosta: Lumbermen
“I WATCH the lumbermen
Winding up the mountain
Between the autumn branches.
I see
Leaves gold, red, flame and green,
With flashes of faded blue between
Of their overalls.
Straining and pulling,
Horses brown and soiled white
Stagger up the mountain-side
Before them,
Dragging huge and heavy timber.
Down in the valley
I can hear the echo
Of the men’s muffled curses,
And the quick snap
Of long thin whips.”
Anne Deacon: The Traveller
“I follow white roads to the north.
So straight they lie—
Through empty fields to purple hills
Stretched thin against the sky.
Yet, however far they lead,
Sorrow will send
Her messenger, laden to greet me,
At the road’s end.”
Fannie Stearns Davis: Storm Dance
“The water came up with a roar,
The water came up to me.
There was a wave with tusks of a boar,
And he gnashed his tusks on me.
I leaned, I leapt, and was free.
He snarled and struggled and fled.
Foaming and blind he turned to the sea,
And his brothers trampled him dead.
The water came up with a shriek,
The water came up to me.
There was a wave with a woman’s cheek,
And she shuddered and clung to me.
I crouched, I cast her away.
She cursed me and swooned and died.
Her green hair tangled like sea-weed lay
Tossed out on the tearing tide.
Challenge and chase me, Storm!
Harry and hate me, Wave!
Wild as the wind is my heart, but warm,
Sudden and merry and brave.
For the water comes up with a shout,
The water comes up to me.
And oh, but I laugh, laugh out!
And the great gulls laugh, and the sea! ”
Mary Carolyn Davies: Sun Prayer
“Sun,
Lay your hand upon my head.
I shall be kind today.
Sun, make me kind!
And lovely too—
My eyes
And cheeks. And make me wise.
I bow my head
Low, low—
Lay your hand upon it, so.”
Nora Cunningham: Giving
“You think I give myself to you?
Not so, my friend, you do not see
My single purpose and intent—
To make you give myself to me. ”
Gladys Cromwell: The Fugitive
“FOOL, fool,
They can hear thy frighted feet,
And they poke fun at thee,
Or pity thee,
Or pity thee.
They can hear thy steps retreat,
Shuffling timidly.
Thy gait is hobbling and uncouth,
For stubborn is earth’s clay;
There was a day,
There was a day,
When from the doom of its own youth,
Thy spirit stole away.
Do they not know thy spirit’s home?
Thy spirit, glancing, glides
Beneath all tides,
Beneath all tides.
It is a coral under foam;
In the cool deep it hides.
For lo, the yielding element
Of immortality
Is like the sea,
Is like the sea.
Do they not hear, in wonderment,
The tides enfolding thee?”
Alice Corbin: Symbols
“Who was it built the cradle of wrought gold?
A druid, chanting by the waters old.
Who was it kept the sword of vision bright?
A warrior, falling darkly in the fight.
Who was it put the crown upon the dove?
A woman, paling in the arms of love.
Oh, who but these, since Adam ceased to be,
Have kept their ancient guard about the Tree? ”
Julia Cooley: Spring Sorrow
“There comes a time in the early spring of the year,
Before the buds have broken,
When sorrow lays its hush upon the world
In syllables unspoken:
Sorrow deep as the spheres of darkened moons,
The sorrow that blindly knows
The futility of all unfolding, and the fading
Of every flower that grows.
Cool is the earth with the drooping of unspilled rain,
And the imminence of tears.
The buds lie under the stifling bark of the twigs,
Suppressed with haunting fears.
The flowers are too deep beneath the fettered earth,
Too closely bound in coil
To raise the petals of their deluding beauty
Above the loosened soil.
The mighty winds of the winter have gone down—
No breath of motion stirs.
There is no flame of impulse anywhere;
Not even a bird’s wing whirs.
Weary is earth of the empty tumult of winter,
Weary of the new weight
That presses against her heart for large release,
Weary of futile freight.
These buds will blow away in the autumn twilight,
Borne on the wind’s cold breath.
These flowers will add the shining of their petals
To the mould of death.
The vast gray tragedy of life lies bare;
No spring flowers cover it.
No network of blossoms hides it from the eyes,
No light lies over it.
A sadness, a spring sadness, touches the world—
The sorrow that blindly knows
The futility of all unfolding, and the fading
Of every flower that grows.”
Hilda Conkling: Field Mouse
“LITTLE brown field-mouse
Hiding when the plough goes by,
Timid creature that you are,
Wild thing,
Were you once in the forest?—
Did you move to the fields?
In your brown cloak
You gather grain
For your secret meals;
You will build a house of earth
The way you remember.
From a baby up to your full-grown feeling
You have run about the field,
As other field-mice will run about
When another century has come
Like a cloud.
”
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