Herbs and Apples. Whitney Helen Hay

      I give you this, the bitter and the sweet.

      It holds my heart, can you not hear it beat?

      So poor a gift to put within your hand—

      Apples and Herbs!—but you will understand.

      Neighbor Life, I love you well,

      Have you any goods to sell?

      Let me buy or let me borrow

      Joy, to tide me o'er the morrow;

      I will give you in exchange

      Baskets full of thoughts that range,

      Bright utensils of my brain;

      Coins of feeling you shall gain.

      All I ask in equal measure

      Is your store of joy and pleasure.

      Neighbor Life, I love you well,

      Have you any joy to sell?

      In the wood the dead trees stand,

      Dead and living, hand to hand,

      Being Winter, who can tell

      Which is sick and which is well?

      Standing upright, day by day

      Sullenly their hearts decay

      Till a wise wind lays them low,

      Prostrate, empty, then we know.

      So thro' forests of the street,

      Men stand dead upon their feet,

      Corpses without epitaph;

      God withholds his wind of wrath,

      So we greet them, and they smile,

      Dead and doomed a weary while,

      Only sometimes thro' their eyes

      We can see the worm that plies.

      Up a little road with the morning in my arms,

      Drenched with dew and tipsy with the madness of the May,

      Leafy fingers on my face, I stop not for your charms!

      Love is waiting round the turn, to be my Love to-day.

      Shouting as I ride on the springing ringing sod,

      Ah! my pony knows the goal to which his course is laid,

      Galloping thro' dawn he knows he bears a little god

      Bacchus-mad with happiness who burns to meet his maid.

      I, whose totem was a tree

      In the days when earth was new,

      Joyous leafy ancestry

      Known of twilight and of dew,

      Now within this iron wall

      Slave of tasks that irk the soul,

      To my parents send one call—

      That they give me of their dole.

      Thro' the roar of alien sound

      Grimy noise of work-a-day,

      Secretly a voice, half drowned,

      Whispers thro' the evening's grey,

      "Child, we know the path you tread,

      Ghost and manes, we are true;

      Cedar spirits, long since dead,

      Calm and sweet abide with you."

      Deep as the permanent earth is deep,

      Fierce as its central fire,

      Man is his own conclusion,

      Woman her great desire.

      She was so light, so frail a thing,

      She had no wisdom but her face,

      Which caught men's fancy like the Spring

      Yet held them but a moment's space.

      She is the youngest of the dead,

      And so the great lean round her feet;

      They strive to learn from her fair head

      Why far-forgotten life was sweet.

      For now she knows what Plato knows,

      And lapped in languor she agrees

      With Kant, and as her soft hair blows,

      Smiling, she flouts Demosthenes.

      Others furnish bread and meat,

      Busy hucksters on the street,

      They will give you what you need,

      All the facts your life to feed.

      Mine are not these wares of earth,

      I can give my love but mirth;

      Let, oh let this part be mine,

      I would be your salt and wine.

      What if to-day, when I have made so sure

      That love is utterly and wholly mine,

      What if I found that faith should not endure

      And all my trust in you I should resign;

      That when I send my thoughts like homing birds

      To your dear heart they find no resting place,

      But all misunderstood, far, foreign words,

      They die away like strangers at your face.

      Love, make me certain, make the circuit true,

      And when I wonder, give the faith I seek

      Perfectly trusting, let me end in you

      Heart against heart, and cheek upon your cheek.

      Where is El Dorado?

      Where is bright Cathay?

      These are lands where we should go

      To live and love to-day.

      Miles of glistening beaches

      Over all the sun,

      Tropic, spicy-laden breeze

      To lull when day is done.

      Gypsy lass and lover

      With the tides we'd rove;

      We be natives of no land

      Save the land of love.

      You and you only!—By the Western gate

      That fronts the falling sun I shade my face

      And watch for you. As one who's lost the race

      Tries to demand no further gift from Fate

      Lest he be hurled more low, so I, who wait

      And want you, ask no pity of your grace

      On my defeat, I only long to trace

      My lost heart; come to me, my need is great.

      I