I Woke:—
Gently the dawn held out to me
CRICKETS AT DAWN
All night the crickets chirp,
Like little stars of twinkling sound
In the dark silence.
They sparkle through the summer stillness
With a crisp rhythm:
They lift the shadows on their tiny voices.
But at the shining note of birds that wake,
Flashing from tree to tree till all the wood is lit—
O golden coloratura of dawn!—
The cricket-stars fade slowly,
One by one.
GARDEN UNDER LIGHTNING
(Ghost-Story)
Out of the storm that muffles shining night
My specter-garden beckons to me,
SQUALL
The squall sweeps gray-winged across the obliterated hills,
Thunder crumples the sky,
And now the rain!
And a silver sifting of light,
ENIGMA
It would be easy to forgive,
If I could but remember;
If I could hear, lost love of mine,
The music of your cruelties,
Shaking to sound the silent skies,
Could voice with them their song divine,
Red with pain’s leaping ember:
It would be easy to forgive,
If I could but remember.
It would be easy to forget,
If I could find lost Sorrow;
If I could kiss her plaintive face,
And break with her her bitter bread,
Could share again her woeful bed,
And know with tears her pale embrace.
Make yesterday, to-morrow:
It would be easy to forget,
If I could find lost Sorrow.
SWALLOWS
They dip their wings in the sunset,
They hover and lean toward the meadow
Today’s LittleNip:
THE CONFIDANT
The wood is talking in its sleep.—
Have a care, trees!
You are heard by the brook and the breeze
And the listening lake;
And some of the birds are awake,
I know—
Green, garrulous wood; I trusted you so!
__________________
Leonora Speyer was born in Washington, D.C., in 1872. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for her poetry collection, Fiddler’s Farewell (Knopf, 1926). Speyer died in 1956. For more about her, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Speyer/.
—Medusa
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