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A reminiscent tone
On minor keys...

Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass...
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.

Is it music from the graves
Of all things fair
Trembling on the staves
Of spacious air--
Fluted by the winds
Songs with no words--
Sonatas from the throats
Of master birds?

One peering through the husk
Of darkness thrown
May hear it in the dusk--
That ancient tone,
Silvery as the light
Of long dead stars
Yet falling through the night
In trembling bars.

A WORN ROSE

Where to-day would a dainty buyer
Imbibe your scented juice,
Pale ruin with a heart of fire;
Drain your succulence with her lips,
Grown sapless from much use...
Make minister of her desire
A chalice cup where no bee sips--
Where no wasp wanders in?

Close to her white flesh housed an hour,
One held you... her spent form
Drew on yours for its wasted dower--
What favour could she do you more?
Yet, of all who drink therein,
None know it is the warm
Odorous heart of a ravished flower
Tingles so in her mouth's red core...

IRON WINE

The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine,
It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies,
And purple, like the blood of elderberries.
Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron.
I am drunk of its fumes.
I feel its fiery flux
Diffusing, permeating,
Working some strange alchemy...
So that I turn aside from the goodly board,
So that I look askance upon the common cup,
And from the mouths of crucibles
Suck forth the acrid sap.

DISPOSSESSED

Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines--
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass...

The naked soul in the sunlight...
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.

Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees...

Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone...

Bathe in the pools of light
On the hillside shimmering--
Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling li