Second April

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.

And what did I see I had not seen before?

Only a question less or a question more;

Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying

Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:

How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,

More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss

When I too long have looked upon your face,

Wherein for me a brightness unobscured

Save by the mists of brightness has its place,

And terrible beauty not to be endured,

I turn away reluctant from your light,

And stand irresolute, a mind undone,

A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight

From having looked too long upon the sun.

Then is my daily life a narrow room

In which a little while, uncertainly,

Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,

Among familiar things grown strange to me

Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,

Till I become accustomed to the dark.

Once more into my arid days like dew,

Like wind from an oasis, or the sound

Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,

A treacherous messenger, the thought of you

Comes to destroy me; once more I renew

Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found

Long since to be but just one other mound

Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.

And once again, and wiser in no wise,

I chase your colored phantom on the air,

And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise

And stumble pitifully on to where,

Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,

Once more I clasp,—and there is nothing there.

I will permit my memory to recall

The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.

And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.

Yours is a face of which I can forget

The color and the features, every one,

The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;

But in your day this moment is the sun

Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

But your singing days are done;

But the music of your talk

Never shall the chemistry

Of the secret earth restore.

All your lovely words are spoken.

Once the ivory box is broken,

Beats the golden bird no more.

Let them bury your big eyes

In the secret earth securely,

Your thin fingers, and your fair,

Soft, indefinite-colored hair,—

All of these in some way, surely,

From the secret earth shall rise;

Not for these I sit and stare,

Broken and bereft completely;

Your young flesh that sat so neatly

On your little bones will sweetly

Blossom in the air.

But your voice,—never the rushing

Of a river underground,

Not the rising of the wind

In the trees before the rain,

Not the woodcock's watery call,

Not the note the white-throat utters,

Not the feet of children pushing

Yellow leaves along the gutters

In the blue and bitter fall,

Shall content my musing mind

For the beauty of that sound

That in no new way at all

Ever will be heard again.

Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes

My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,

And will be born again,

I should be happy, that am happy

Never at all since I came here.

I am too long away from water.

I have a need of water near.

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,

This is the thing I find to be:

That I am weary of words and people,

Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness

Of the strong wind and shattered spray;

Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound

Of the big surf that breaks all day