O poet pine, that turns thy gaze Alone unto the sky, How softly on earth’s common ways Thy sweet thoughts fall and lie!
So sweet, so deep, seared by the sun, And smitten by the rain, They pierce the heart of every one With fragrance keen as pain.
Or if some pass nor heed their sweet, Nor feel their subtle dart, Their softness stills the noisy feet, And stills the noisy heart.
O poet pine, thy needles high In starry light abode, And now for footsore passers-by They make a velvet road.
With the sound of an axe on the light wind’s tracks For my only company, And a speck of sky like a human eye Blue, bending over me,
I lie at rest on the low moss pressed, Whose loose leaves downward drip; As light they move as a word of love Or a finger to the lip.
’Neath the canopies of the sunbright trees Pierced by an Autumn ray, To rich red flakes the old log breaks In exquisite decay.
While in the pines where no sun shines Perpetual morning lies. What bed more sweet could stay her feet, Or hold her dreaming eyes?
No sound is there in the middle air But sudden wings that soar, As a strange bird’s cry goes drifting by-- And then I hear once more
That sound of an axe till the great tree cracks, Then a crash comes as if all The winds that through its bright leaves blew Were sorrowing in its fall.
Leave me Hope when I am old, Strip my joys from me, Let November to the cold Bare each leafy tree; Chill my lover, dull my friend, Only, while I grope To the dark the silent end, Leave me Hope!
Blight my bloom when I am old, Bid my sunlight cease; If it need be from my hold Take the hand of Peace. Leave no springtime memory, But upon the slope Of the days that are to be, Leave me Hope!
With slender arms outstretching in the sun The grass lies dead; The wind walks tenderly, and stirs not one Frail, fallen head.
Of baby creepings through the April day Where streamlets wend, Of childlike dancing on the breeze of May, This is the end.
No more these tiny forms are bathed in dew, No more they reach, To hold with leaves that shade them from the blue A whispered speech.
No more they part their arms, and wreathe them close Again to shield Some love-full little nest--a dainty house Hid in a field. For them no more the splendor of the storm, The fair delights Of moon and star-shine, glimmering faint and warm On summer nights.