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I
BUILDING PLANS
I REMEMBER, as clearly as if it were last night,
The evening my first poem appeared in black and white.
I sat there in my den with the smoke clouds rolling free,
Sat smoking and sat dreaming in blest complacency.
I will build me a cloud castle. Two wings shall shape it forth;
A great one and a small one. It shall shine across the North.
The greater shall shelter a singer immortal;
The smaller to a maiden shall open its portal.
A noble symmetry methought shewed in my double wing;
But afterward there came a sad confusion in the thing.
The castle went crazy, as the master found his wits:
The great wing grew too little, and the small one fell to bits.
II
WHAT is life? a fighting
In heart and in brain with Trolls.
Poetry? that means writing
Doomsday-accounts of our souls.
III
A BIRD-BALLAD
ONE lovely day in springtime
We paced the avenue;
As some dark riddle draws one
The place forbidden drew.
The sky was blue above us;
The wind was in the west;
A bird sat singing in the limes
To young ones in the nest.
I painted poet-pictures
Of bright-hued fantasy;
Two brown eyes laughed and listened
And sparkled back at me.
A twitter and a titter â
Oâerhead we heard it plain:
But we, we bade a sweet good-bye,
And never met again....
And when, alone and lonely,
I pace the avenue,
They leave me no peace nor quiet,
The little feathered crew.
We did not dream Dame Sparrow
Had spied on us, and soon
. She made a song about us
And put it to a tune.
Now every bird has caught it
That has a beak to sing;
The leaves are full of lays about
That shining day in spring.
IV
COMPLICATIONS
AN apple-tree in a garden grew;
A little bee in the garden flew.
The tree was snowing with bloom, and the bee
Fell in love with a blossom upon the tree.
Their peace of mind was lost to them both;
But the bee and the blossom plighted troth.
The bee flew wide on his summer trip;
When he turned, the flower was a greenling-hip.
The bee was sad, and the greenling too;
But there really was nothing that they could do.
Under the tree, in a wall, kept house
A poor but highly respectable mouse.
He sighed in secret: O greenling fine,
My hole were heaven, wert thou but mine!
The bee flew again, still true to his suit;
When home he turned, the hip was a fruit.
The bee was sad, and the apple too;
But there really was nothing that they could do.
Under the wall, in a crevice narrow,
There hung a nest, the home of a sparrow.
He sighed in secret: O apple fine,
My nest were heaven, wert thou but mine!
The bee it sorrowed, the apple sighed,
The mouse it suffered, the sparrow cried;
But nothing happened, and nobody knew;
There was absolutely nothing to do.
So the fruit just fell from the bough, and broke;
And the mouse fell dead âtwixt a sigh and a choke;
And the sparrow, too, was found dead in the eaves,
When they put up the pole with the Christmas sheaves.
When the bee was free, every hedge was bare;
Not a bloom of the summer left anywhere.
So he entered the hive, and there found peace
In the beeswax trade, till his late decease.
Now of all this fuss there had been no need
Had the bee been a mouse when the flower went to seed;
And there might have been quite a nice ending to ât,
Had the mouse been a sparrow when the hip was a fruit.
V
WITH A WATER-LILY
SEE, dear, what thy lover brings;
âTis the flower with the white wings.
Buoyed upon the quiet stream
In the spring it lay a dream.
Homelike to bestow this guest,
Lodge it, dear one, in thy breast;
There its leaves the secret keep
Of a wave both still and deep.
Child, beware the tarn-fed stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though the sprite pretends to sleep,
And above the lilies peep.
Child, thy bosom is the stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though above the lilies peep,
And the sprite pretends to sleep.
Fearfully hiding
Thy songâs hushed spirit,
Didst thou pass gliding,
Nor letâst me hear it.
But, ere we parted,
Once, eyes replied to me,
Lips vowed and lied to me,
And song upstarted;
âTwas one brief quiring
And thy day gone then.
Thou sangâst expiring â
Thou wast a swan, then!
VII
GONE
THE last, late guest
To the gate we follow...
