Chapter VIII: Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart Till someone really find us out.

A pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play At hide-and-seek to God afar, So all who hide too well away Must speak and tell us where they are.

STORM-FEAR

When the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lower chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast, "Come out! Come out!"—- It costs no inward struggle not to go, Ah, do! I count our strength, Two and a child, Those of us not asleep subdued to mark How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—- How drifts are piled, Dooryard and road ungraded, Till even the comforting barn grows far away, And my heart owns a doubt Whether 'tis in us to arise with day And save ourselves unaided.

BOND AND FREE

Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about—- Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Thought has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turf, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the world's embrace. And such is Love and glad to be. But thought has shaken his ankles free.

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom And sits in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are. Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star.

FLOWER-GATHERING

I left you in the morning, And in the morning glow, You walked a way beside me To make me sad to go. Do you know me in the gloaming, Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming? Are you dumb because you know me not, Or dumb because you know?

All for me? And not a question For the faded flowers gay That could take me from beside you For the ages of a day? They are yours, and be the measure Of their worth for you to treasure, The measure of the little while That I've been long away.

RELUCTANCE

Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save those that the oak is keeping To ravel them one by one And let them go scraping and creeping Out over the crusted snow, When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, No longer blown hither and thither; The last lone aster is gone; The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; The heart is still aching to seek, But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?

INTO MY OWN

One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—- Only more sure of all I thought was true.