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One ought not
to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when
the birds come round the house
To seem to say
good-bye;
Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we
are as much
Too glad for the one thing
As we
are too sad for the other here-
With birds that
fill their breasts
But with each other and themselves
And their built or driven nests.
House Fear
Always-I tell you this they learned-
Always at
night when they returned
To the lonely house from far
away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They
learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever
might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in
flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they
had lit the lamp inside.
The Smile
(Her
Word)
I didn't like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he
smiled-did you see him?-I was sure!
Perhaps because
we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that
that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give
instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very
young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old
and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he's got.
He's watching from the woods as like as not.
The
Oft-Repeated Dream
She had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the
window-latch
Of the room where they slept.
The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every
futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!
It never had been
inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was
afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree
might do.
The Impulse
It was too lonely
for her there,
And too wild,
And since there
were but two of them,
And no child,
And work
was little in the house,
She was free,
And
followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.
And
once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he
called her-
And didn't answer-didn't speak-
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
He never found her, though he
looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's
house
Was she there.
Sudden and swift and
light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of
finalities
Besides the grave.
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