THE ANSWER

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

"Be still, I am content,

Take back your poor compassion!

Joy was a flame in me

Too steady to destroy.

Lithe as a bending reed

Loving the storm that sways her

I found more joy in sorrow

Than you could find in joy."

BLUE SQUILLS

How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew

How white a cherry bough could be,

A bed of squills how blue

And many a dancing April,

When life is done with me,

Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree.

Oh, burn me with your beauty thenOh, hurt me, tree and flower,

Lest in the end death try to take

Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,

Wound me, that I through endless sleep

May bear the scar of you!

"WHAT DO I CARE?"

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?

For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire;
I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care-for love will be over so soon

Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, For my mind is proud, and strong enough to be silentIt is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

ON THE DUNES

If there is any life when death is over,

These tawny beaches will know much of me; I shall come back, as constant and as changeful As the unchanging many-colored sea.

If life was small, if it has made me scornful,

Forgive me I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death, and if you want me
Stand on the seaward dunes and call my name.

"THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS"

War Time

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white.

Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

MY HEART IS HEAVY

My heart is heavy with many a song,
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree;

And I can never give you one

My songs do not belong to me.

Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,

In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it no one will know.

IT IS NOT A WORD

It is not a word spoken-
Few words are said,

Nor even a look of the eyes,

Nor a bend of the head;

But only a hush of the heart

That has too much to keep,

Only memories waking

That sleep so light a sleep.

"LET IT BE FORGOTTEN "

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold. Let it be forgotten for ever and ever

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago—

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.

STARS

Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me
Spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head,

White and topaz
And misty red-

Myriads with beating

Hearts of fire

That aeons

Cannot vex or tire

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill,

I watch them marching
Stately and still;

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness

Of so much majesty.

Edward Thomas

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE SUN

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies;
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies-
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street or town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's or February's-great days;
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said-

Or, if I could live long enough, should say―
"There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day."
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.

THE WORD

There are so many things I have forgot,
That once were much to me, or that were not—
All lost, as is a childless woman's child

And its child's children, in the undefiled

Abyss of what can never be again.

I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men

That fought and lost or won in the old wars;

Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars. Some things I have forgot that I forget.