Move on, light hands, so strongly tenderly,

In many an hour since birth,We heard or dreamed we heard them.Sometimes to all their swayWe yield ourselves half fearing,Sometimes with hearts grown greyWe curse ourselves for hearing.We toil and but begin;In vain our spirits fret them,We strive, and cannot win,Nor evermore forget them.A light that will not stand,That comes and goes in flashes,Fair fruits…

Golden, rose-red, full of divine remembrance,Full of foreboding.Soon the maples, soon will the glowing birches,Stripped of all that summer and love had dowered them,Dream, sad-limbed, beholding their pomp and treasureRuthlessly scattered:Yet they quail not: Winter with wind and ironComes and finds them silent and uncomplaining,Finds them tameless, beautiful still and gracious,Gravely enduring.Me too changes, bitter…

A light-strewn path that seemed to leadOutward into eternity.Between the darkness and the gleamAn old-world spell encompassed me:Methought that in a godlike dreamI trod upon the sea.And lo! upon that glimmering road,In shining companies unfurled,The trains of many a primal god,The monsters of the elder world;Strange creatures that, with silver wings,Scarce touched the ocean’s thronging…

The bittersweet hangs from the topsOf the alders and cherriesIts bunches of beautiful berries,Orange and red.And the snowbirds flee,Tossing up on the far brown field,Now flashing and now concealed,Like fringes of sprayThat vanish and gleam on the grayField of the sea.Flickering light,Come the last of the leaves down borne,And patches of pale white cornIn the…

Through the doors of the open churchesThe organs were moaning shrill.Through the doors and the great high windowsI heard the murmur of prayer,And the sound of their solemn singingStreamed out on the sunlit air;A sound of some great burdenThat lay on the world’s dark breast,Of the old, and the sick, and the lonely,And the weary…

April kisses thee good-bye;Thou must haste and follow too;Silent friend that guarded wellWithered things to make us glad,Shyest friend that could not tellHalf the kindly thought he had.Haste thee, speed thee, O kind snow;Down the dripping valleys go,From the fields and gleaming meadows,Where the slaying hours behold thee,From the forests whose slim shadows,Brown and leafless…