The day you died, my Share of All My soul was tossed Hither and thither, like a leaf, And lost, lost, lost, From sounds and sight, Beneath the night Of gloom and grief.
But-- (Hush, for the wind may hear) Soon, soon you came in solitude: And we renewed All happiness. Now, who shall guess How close we are, my dear? (Hush, for the wind may hear.)
Yet-- Other women wait Their doors ajar; And listen, listen, listen, For the gate, And murmur, "Soon, the war Will seem a far, Dim agony of sleep."
May I be joyful, too, That day, For love of you May I not turn away Nor--weep.
Thrush, across the twilight Here in the abbey close, Pouring from your lilac-bough Note on pebbled note, Why do you sing so, Making your song so bright. Swelling to a throbbing curve That brave little throat?
Soon, but a season brief, The lice among your feathers, Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed, With song dead you shall fall; Refuse of some clotted ditch, Seeking no more berries; Why with lyric numbers now Do you the twilight call?
Proud in your tawny plumes Mottled in devising, Singing as though never sang Bird in close till now-- Sharp are the javelins Of death that are seeking, Seeking even simple birds On a lilac-bough.
Crushed, forlorn, a frozen thing, For no more nesting, For no more speckled eggs In pattered cup of clay,-- Soon your song shall come to this You who make the twilight yours, And echoes of the abbey, At the end of day.
In the song I hear it, The thud of a poor feathered death, In the swelling throat I see The splintering of song-- What demon then has worked in me To tease my brain to bitterness-- In me who have loved bird and tree So long, so long?
Until I come to charity, Until I find peace again, My curse upon the fiend or god That will not let me hear A bird in song upon the bough But, hovering about the notes, There chimes the maniac beating Of black-winged fear.
What will the years tell? Hush! If it would but speak-- That shadow athwart the stream, In the gloom of a dream;
Could my brain but spell The thought in the brain of that weak Old ghost that hides in the gloom, Over there, of the chestnut bloom.
I sit in the broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and leaf caressed.