204

PIERRETTE IN MEMORY

With the fixed forces when a tired man dies;
That death is only answerings and replies,
The chiming of a bell which no one hears,
The casual slanting of a half-spent sun,
The soft recessional of noise and coil,

The coveted something time nor age can spoil; I know it is a fabric finely spun

Between the stars and dark; to seize and keep,
Such glad romances as we read in sleep.

Mahlon Leonard Fisher

PIERRETTE IN MEMORY

PIERRETTE has gone, but it was not
Exactly that she died,
So much as vanished and forgot
To tell where she would hide.

To keep a sudden rendezvous,

It came into her mind

That she was late. What could she do
But leave distress behind?

Afraid of being in disgrace,
And hurrying to dress,

She heard there was another place
In need of loveliness.

She went so softly and so soon,

She hardly made a stir;

But going took the stars and moon

And sun away with her.

William Griffith

THE UNKNOWN BELOVED

THE THREE SISTERS

GONE are the three, those sisters rare
With wonder-lips and eyes ashine.
One was wise and one was fair,
And one was mine.

Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair
Of only two, your ivy vine.

For one was wise and one was fair,

But one was mine.

Arthur Davison Ficke

SONG

I MAKE my shroud, but no one knows
So shimmering fine it is and fair,
With stitches set in even rows,

I make my shroud, but no one knows.

In door-way where the lilac blows,
Humming a little wandering air,
I make my shroud and no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair.

Adelaide Crapsey

THE UNKNOWN BELOVED

I DREAMED I passed a doorway

Where, for a sign of death,
White ribbons one was binding
About a flowery wreath.

205

206

CINQUAINS

What drew me so I know not,
But drawing near I said,

"Kind sir, and can you tell me
Who is it here lies dead?"

Said he, "Your most beloved
Died here this very day,

That had known twenty Aprils
Had she but lived till May."

Astonished I made answer,

"Good sir, how say you so!

Here have I no beloved,

This house I do not know."

Quoth he, "Who from the world's end

Was destined unto thee
Here lies, thy true beloved

Whom thou shalt never see."

THE LONELY DEATH

207

And go mistily radiant, clad

Like the moon.

NIGHT WINDS

THE old

Old winds that blew

When chaos was, what do

They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?

Just now,

THE WARNING

Out of the strange

Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .

...

A white moth flew... Why am I grown

So cold?

Adelaide Crapsey

THE LONELY DEATH

IN the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself

Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;

I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them aflame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.

Adelaide Crapsey

208

LOAM

EXILE FROM GOD

I Do not fear to lay my body down

In death, to share

The life of the dark earth and lose my own,
If God is there.

I have so loved all sense of Him, sweet might
Of color and sound,

His tangible loveliness and living light
That robes me 'round.

If to His heart in the hushed grave and dim
We sink more near,

It shall be well— living we rest in Him.
Only I fear

Lest from my God in lonely death I lapse,
And the dumb clod

Lose him; for God is life, and death perhaps