Poems. French Nora May

      THE tortured river-banks, the toiling piers —

      I walked thereby as older grew the day,

      And sick with sorry clamor in mine ears,

      Heart-weary turned my steps and went my way.

      “O place full-voiced of wretchedness!” I cried.

      (The sun had set, the dusk was closing in)

      “O place where laboring Life goes heavy-eyed,

      Compound of grime and discord, strife and sin!”

      I turned me back, and lo, a miracle!

      For misty violet lay along the land.

      The shining river in mysterious spell

      (Divinely touched by some transmuting hand).

      A path of wonder was, and on it stirred,

      (Black-shaped, and jeweled with a crimson spark)

      A ship that slowly moved; and, faintly heard,

      A cheery song rose blithely to the dark.

      AS down I bent with eager lips

      Above the stones and cresses cool —

      The yellow tent, the little moon,

      I found within my twilight pool.

      The fringing trees, the floating moon,

      The bubble tent – I passed them by,

      And sipped a tiny, shattered star,

      Deep drinking from that mirrored sky.

      MY tent is shadowed day and night

      With leaves that shift in moon and sun;

      Across its walls of lucent white

      The lovely varied tracings run;

      And black and slender, quickly sped,

      I watch the little feet at dawn —

      A sudden oriole overhead,

      A darting linnet come and gone.

      FROM forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,

      And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire

      Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.

      Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves

      New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days

      And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,

      “Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead

      Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,

      A bird fast holden with a silken thread:

      “To fall from trial of flight with strength swift spent,

      To sing of mating and the brooding grass,

      To turn thy being earthward to content.”

      Within me sudden wrath and terror strove,

      And, casting forth his gift I cried aloud:

      “I pray thee for a soul in truth, great Jove!”

      Then smiled he slowly, lifting to my look

      A fabric where the rippled lustre played

      And shifted like the humor of a brook —

      All prism-hued, as upward eyes may see

      The sun through dazzled lashes. Straight I cried:

      “I know not this!” “Thy soul,” he answered me.

      But when my joy had seized it, “Nay,” he said,

      And cast it gleaming to the scattering wind —

      Hues green and golden, blue and fervent red.

      Within his hand the brightest shred of all —

      The very heart and secret of the web —

      That held he fast and loosed he not at all;

      But to me said: “O thou who scorned the dole

      That gave thee peace of days and long content,

      Do now my will. Go forth and find thy soul.”

      To earth we went, nor knew I from that hour

      My sister’s joy or pain; but on great morns

      When low light slept above a world in flower,

      Through drowsing noons where heat and color lie

      In ever wavering tides of airy seas,

      Winged by the darting ships of dragon-flies —

      Through these and twilight peace I went, and rid

      My steps of comrades. Lonely must I find

      The silent places where my soul was hid.

      In sheltered ways with summer showers sweet

      I wandered on a day, and singing found

      The very green I sought beneath my feet.

      In leafing forests when the year was new,

      And heaven ribboned in the crossing boughs,

      I gathered marvelous strip on strip of blue.

      When on a lonely stream the moon was bright,

      A Naiad from her treasure plucked me forth

      Such gold as bound my web with threads of light.

      And red. Ah, love! thou knowest how I came

      Unto thy fluting in the breathless eve,

      And burned my heart’s pale flower to scarlet flame!..

      One morn I found within a drop of dew

      My very soul: a crystal world it was

      Wherein the varied earth and heaven’s blue

      And myself gazing glassed in perfect sphere —

      But long above it was my wonder bent,

      And lo! it dried more swiftly than a tear.

      Now is this truth, O Jove, that I have won

      And woven all the shreds thou gav’st the wind?

      But how, I pray thee, can my task be done

      Unless thou ope thine hand, unless thou loose

      The very heart and secret of the web

      Where every thread may end and know its use?

      Joy hast thou not withheld, nor love denied,

      Nor any beauty dimmed on earth or sky,

      Yet by thy will I roam unsatisfied.

      But couldst thou hear again that earliest plea,

      Again my choice would flout the