Shifting Colors

I

Beauty walks alone and is sad;

For she is a light apart, an element.

I have seen her walking in utter vividness on the rim of

the sea;

I have found her laying fingers of flame on a low grey

cloud; .

I have heard her singing of sorrow in a voice that quivered

with sweetness.

I have felt her-oh, I have felt her brushing 'my soul with

her garments.

Beauty walks alone and is sad.

In the darkness of doubt she has drawn her hood.

Oh, the loneliness of Beauty!

u

Along the beach

The Wind strode by with up-flung head,

And laughed,

And showed his strong white teeth;

Then whirled about

To stamp upon the sea with restless feet.

He caught the sea-gulls in his flying hair,

And up the beach we ran together

Over the shells and seaweed.

But he strode away to the west-

And all I could see in the dusk

Was footprints of foam

Where the Wind had stepped.

m

The sky is like a bubble of lead

That will not burst.

O trees,

Stretch high

And prick it with your needle branches!

Iv

Night-

A shadowed greatness

Lit with dream;

A nothing-something dropped upon the sun

By hands invisible;

A shawl of brooding thought.

v

Thoughts,

In a silence of understanding,

Are like the swift wet cut

Of rain at night,

Or the dropping of stones

In still water.

vI

My mood is stronger than bronze in the sunlight,

Stronger than eagles that soar with wind-stung eyes to

cliffs of darkness.

In bronze have I sculptured a figure of Triumph

And thrust it in spaces of light

Forever.

vit

Moonlight, slipping through the fingers of the trees,

Drops into the forest;

Or leaps in shivering lines of silver up a twig.

How smothering and black the shadows seem!

vil

Heart, you are quivering like a drop of water

Hung in the wind.

Soul, why did you leave me

When the leaping wave of sound

Swept up?

You left me

Even as the sand is drained from the shore

Into the depth beyond,

Leaving the beach whitely dry-

Strewn with broken shells.