Poems. French Nora May

      LIFE said: “My house is thine with all its store;

      Behold, I open shining ways to thee —

      Of every inner portal make thee free:

      O child, I may not bar the outer door.

      Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more;

      But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me;

      And must I hear thee, faint and woefully,

      Call on me from the darkness and implore?”

      Nay, mother, for I follow at thy will.

      But oftentimes thy voice is sharp to hear,

      Thy trailing fragrance heavy on the breath;

      Always the outer hall is very still,

      And on my face a pleasant wind and clear

      Blows straitly from the narrow gate of Death.

      THE rain was grey before it fell,

      And through a world where light had died

      There ran a mournful little wind

      That shook the trees and cried.

      The rain was brown upon the earth,

      In turbid stream and tiny seas —

      In swift and slender shafts that beat

      The flowers to their knees.

      The rain is mirror to the sky,

      To leaning grass in image clear,

      And drifting in the shining pools

      The clouds are white and near.

      IT was a joy whose stem I did not break —

      A little thing I passed with crowded hands,

      And gave a backward look for beauty’s sake.

      Of all I pulled and wove and flung aside,

      Was any hue preferred above the rest?

      I only know they pleased me well, and died.

      But this – it lives distinct in Memory’s sight,

      A little thing, incurving like a pearl.

      I think its heart had never seen the light.

      AY, pluck a jonquil when the May’s a-wing!

      Or please you with a rose upon the breast,

      A sweeter violet chosen from the rest,

      To match your mood with blue caprice of spring —

      Leave windy vines a tendril less to swing.

      Why, what’s a flower? A day’s delight at best,

      A perfume loved, a faded petal pressed,

      A whimsey for an hour’s remembering.

      But wondrous careful must he draw the rose

      From jealous earth, who seeks to set anew

      Deep root, young leafage, with a gardener’s art —

      To plant her queen of all his garden close,

      And make his varying fancy wind and dew,

      Cloud, rain, and sunshine for one woman’s heart.

      IT is a silver space between two rains;

      The lulling storm has given to the day

      An hour of windless air and riven grey;

      The world is drained of color; light remains.

      Beyond the curving shore a gull complains;

      Unceasing, on the bastions of the bay,

      With gleam of shields and veer of vaporing spray

      The long seas fall, the grey tide wars and wanes.

      It is a silver space between two rains:

      A mood too sweet for tears, for joy too pale —

      What stress has swept or nears us, thou and I?

      This hour a mist of light is on the plains,

      And seaward fares again with litten sail

      Our laden ship of dreams adown the sky.

      SO might it brush my cheek with errant wings,

      So might it speak with thrilling touch and light

      Of answering eyes, of dim, unuttered things —

      A moth from hidden gardens of the night.

      So, in a land of hills, where twilight lay,

      Might come a sudden bird-call to the ear,

      Across the canyons, faint and far away…

      O Heart, how sweet … half heard and wholly dear.

      WHO goes to meet the windy night

      With unseen comrades shouting by,

      Who grips a bough in swift delight

      To let it dip and loose and fly;

      Who runs for rest that running gives,

      Runs till his throbbing muscles speak;

      Who bends to feel how keenly lives

      The joyous grass beneath his cheek —

      With sudden tears his eyes shall fill,

      With quick-drawn breath he sees them plain —

      Those bodies that must lie so still,

      So tired – in the House of Pain.

      OH, Dryad thoughts of lovely yesterday! —

      You melted through a sunny wood like mist,

      With here a wind of laughter, there a stray

      Pleased flower, tipped and kissed.

      To-day among the noises of the street,

      The press of faces, sullen, gay, and wise,

      I hear you calling, calling me; I meet

      Your clear, untroubled eyes.

      FACES that throng and stare and come and go —

      The air a-quiver as the voices meet;

      And loud Humanity in mingled flow

      Passes with jarring tread of many feet.

      But over all the chatter of the crowd

      (The background for its delicate relief)

      Now trembling in a thread, now wild and loud,

      The violin laughs and sings, and cries its grief.

      Then, through it all, and round it all, the sea;

      A