The House of the Trees & Other Poems. A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

      OPE your doors and take me in,

      Spirit of the wood;

      Wash me clean of dust and din,

      Clothe me in your mood.

      Take me from the noisy light

      To the sunless peace,

      Where at midday standeth Night,

      Signing Toil’s release.

      All your dusky twilight stores

      To my senses give;

      Take me in and lock the doors,

      Show me how to live.

      Lift your leafy roof for me,

      Part your yielding walls,

      Let me wander lingeringly

      Through your scented halls.

      Ope your doors and take me in,

      Spirit of the wood;

      Take me—make me next of kin

      To your leafy brood.

      THE sun within the leafy woods

      Is like a midday moon,

      So soft upon these solitudes

      Is bent the face of noon.

      Loosed from the outside summer blaze

      A few gold arrows stray;

      A vagrant brilliance droops or plays

      Through all the dusky day.

      The gray trunk feels a touch of light,

      While, where dead leaves are deep,

      A gleam of sunshine golden white

      Lies like a soul asleep.

      And just beyond dank-rooted ferns,

      Where darkening hemlocks sigh

      And leaves are dim, the bare road burns

      Beneath a dazzling sky.

      WHEN I see the ghost of night

      Stealing through my window-pane,

      Silken sleep and silver light

      Struggle for my soul in vain;

      Silken sleep all balmily

      Breathes upon my lids oppressed,

      Till I sudden start to see

      Ghostly fingers on my breast.

      White and skyey visitant,

      Bringing beauty such as stings

      All my inner soul to pant

      After undiscovered things,

      Spare me this consummate pain!

      Silken weavings intercreep

      Round my senses once again,

      I am mortal—let me sleep.

      HERE where the pine tree to the ground

      Lets slip its fragrant load,

      My footsteps fall without a sound

      Upon a velvet road.

      O poet pine, that turns thy gaze

      Alone unto the sky,

      How softly on earth’s common ways

      Thy sweet thoughts fall and lie!

      So sweet, so deep, seared by the sun,

      And smitten by the rain,

      They pierce the heart of every one

      With fragrance keen as pain.

      Or if some pass nor heed their sweet,

      Nor feel their subtle dart,

      Their softness stills the noisy feet,

      And stills the noisy heart.

      O poet pine, thy needles high

      In starry light abode,

      And now for footsore passers-by

      They make a velvet road.

      WITH the sound of an axe on the light wind’s tracks

      For my only company,

      And a speck of sky like a human eye

      Blue, bending over me,

      I lie at rest on the low moss pressed,

      Whose loose leaves downward drip;

      As light they move as a word of love

      Or a finger to the lip.

      ’Neath the canopies of the sunbright trees

      Pierced by an Autumn ray,

      To rich red flakes the old log breaks

      In exquisite decay.

      While in the pines where no sun shines

      Perpetual morning lies.

      What bed more sweet could stay her feet,

      Or hold her dreaming eyes?

      No sound is there in the middle air

      But sudden wings that soar,

      As a strange bird’s cry goes drifting by—

      And then I hear once more

      That sound of an axe till the great tree cracks,

      Then a crash comes as if all

      The winds that through its bright leaves blew

      Were sorrowing in its fall.

      LEAVE me Hope when I am old,

      Strip my joys from me,

      Let November to the cold

      Bare each leafy tree;

      Chill my lover, dull my friend,

      Only, while I grope

      To the dark the silent end,

      Leave me Hope!

      Blight my bloom when I am old,

      Bid my sunlight cease;

      If it need be from my hold

      Take the hand of Peace.

      Leave no springtime memory,

      But upon the slope

      Of the days that are to be,

      Leave me Hope!

      WITH slender arms outstretching in the sun

      The grass lies dead;

      The wind walks tenderly, and stirs not one

      Frail, fallen head.

      Of baby creepings through the April day

      Where streamlets wend,

      Of childlike dancing on the breeze of May,

      This is the end.

      No more these tiny forms