Eight Harvard Poets

Our only music one another's breath

Yours are the songs that burst about my ears,

Or blow away as many-colored spheres.

You are the star that made the skies all bright,

Yet tore itself away in flaming flight;

You are the tree that suddenly awoke;

You are the rose that came to life and spoke....

That if your lips, which I have loved, should touch

Another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch

His heart, as mine in time not far away;

If on another's face your sweet hair lay

In such a silence as I know, or such

Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,

Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

If this should be, I say if this should be—

You of my heart, send me a little word;

That I may go unto him, and take his hands,

Saying, Accept all happiness from me.

ON A STREET CORNER
But all the time you spoke I did not hear

The words you said. I only heard a far

Faint sound of summer waters and a clear

Calling of music from some lonely star.

I thought I heard the lisp of falling dew

In a dark meadow where no breezes stirred....

Then all at once the noisy street, and you

Smiling at me because I had not heard!

OF TOO MUCH SONG
Sedges, have you sung too much,

Sedges gray along the shore?

Can this autumn tempest touch

Answering chords in you no more?

Is the summer all forgot?—

Now the ice is dark and strong

That has bound you to the spot—

Did you die of too much song?

Something in me is a harp

Played by every wanton breeze.

Moaning soft and piping sharp

Are its wondrous melodies.

Is the playing over-fast

Though the answer now is strong?

Like the sedges at the last

Will it die of too much song?

A FAREWELL
Nay: by this desolate sea our troubled ways

Shall separate forever; swift hath sped

The hour of youth, and yet to hang the head,

Lamenting lost things of departed days,

Were only from that shadowland to raise

LOVE DREAM
Strange that on warp and woof of dreams

Fancy should weave the web of truth,

And yet this fairy figment seems

Part of a half-forgotten youth

Stolen from days I thought were sped

Out of the world beyond the dead.

"MY PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU"
He pondered long, and watched the darkening space

Close the red portals whence the hours had run,

As like young wistful angels, one by one,

The stars cast timid flowers about His face.

"Yea, now another scarlet day is done!"

He cried in anguish, and with sudden grace

Stretched forth His arms, as though He would erase

The few, dim embers of the scattered sun.

"The scarlet day is done, and soon the light

Will wake again my desecrated skies.

Oh, that another dawn might never rise!—

My foolish children!" Through the vast of night

The young stars shivered in a silver horde

Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord.

TO A PASSEPIED BY SCARLATTI
Strange little tune so thin and rare

Like scents of roses of long ago,

Quavering lightly upon the strings

Of a violin, and dying there

With a dancing flutter of delicate wings;

Thy courtly joy and thy gentle woe,

Thy gracious gladness and plaintive fears

Are lost in the clamorous age we know,

And pale like a moon in the lurid day;

A phantom of music, strangely fled

From the princely halls of the quiet dead,

Down the long lanes of the vanished years

Echoing frailly and far away.

NIGHT PIECE
A silver web has the moon spun,

A silver web upon all the sky,

Where the frail stars quiver, every one

Like tangled gnats that hum and die.

The moon has tangled the dull night

In her silver skein and set alight

Each dew-damp branch with milky flame.

And huge the moon broods on the night.

My soul is caught in the web of the moon,

Like a shrilling gnat in a spider's web.

Importunate memories shrill in my ears

Like the gnats that die in the spider web.

Lovely as death, in the moon's shroud,

Were town streets, grey houses, dim,

Full of strange peace in the silent night.