Three Songs for a Woman

I

And if the bells should lightly ring

Then lightly slip away

In all the world there is no thing

To keep you for a day.

The waves wash over seven moons

And seven moons again

Suns are as punctual in their noons

As season's snow and rain.

For more than night and morning bring

You cannot beg or pray

And if the bells should lightly ring

Then lightly slip away.

u

Neither the red flower at my feet

Nor the white flower at my head

Needs to remember more of one

Who was alive, who now is dead

Who herself remembers

Life was blood and flower

Blood is quick and runs away

To a quiet hour

Blood was my love, blood my suffering,

Blood the challenge of the vengeful year;

Yet where the red rose spattered

The white rose would appear

I am the root, I am the stem

Of all the world contains

Dying in life, now dead I live:

The blood is gone; the bloom remains.

It

Leave her with the evening rain

Where all young things sleep

When rooms darken, one by one,

Past her they could not keep.

She knew the wish to be

She knew the want to have

She looked into her lover's eyes

And conceived the child of love.

For her there was no birth. Leave her

Where young things sleep. O hurry

From this place where she must stay

At last. Be with her, Mary.