What flower, my love?

No matter, I am so happy, I feel like a firm, rich, healthy root, Rejoicing in what is to come.

How I depend on you utterly My little one, my big one!

How everything that will be, will not be of me, Nor of either of us, But of both of us.

V

AND think, there will something come forth from us.

We two, folded so small together, There will something come forth from us.

Children, acts, utterance Perhaps only happiness.

Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us.

Old sorrow, and new happiness.

Only that one newness.

But that is all I want.

And I am sure of that.

We are sure of that.

VI

AND yet all the while you are you, you are not me.

And I am I, I am never you.

How awfully distinct and far off from each other's being we are!

Yet I am glad.

I am so glad there is always you beyond my scope, Something that stands over, Something I shall never be, That I shall always wonder over, and wait for, Look for like the breath of life as long as I live, Still waiting for you, however old you are, and I am, I shall always wonder over you, and look for you.

And you will always be with me.

I shall never cease to be filled with newness, Having you near me.

_HISTORY_

THE listless beauty of the hour When snow fell on the apple trees And the wood-ash gathered in the fire And we faced our first miseries.

Then the sweeping sunshine of noon When the mountains like chariot cars Were ranked to blue battle--and you and I Counted our scars.

And then in a strange, grey hour We lay mouth to mouth, with your face Under mine like a star on the lake, And I covered the earth, and all s.p.a.ce.

The silent, drifting hours Of morn after morn And night drifting up to the night Yet no pathway worn.

Your life, and mine, my love Pa.s.sing on and on, the hate Fusing closer and closer with love Till at length they mate.

THE CEARNE

_SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS COME THROUGH_

NOT I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted; If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge Driven by invisible blows, The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul, I would be a good fountain, a good well-head, Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

_ONE WOMAN TO ALL WOMEN_

I DON'T care whether I am beautiful to you You other women.

Nothing of me that you see is my own; A man balances, bone unto bone Balances, everything thrown In the scale, you other women.

You may look and say to yourselves, I do Not show like the rest.

My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet if you knew How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings true Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke falls due, You other women:

You would draw your mirror towards you, you would wish To be different.

There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and him Balanced in glorious equilibrium, The swinging beauty of equilibrium, You other women.

There's this other beauty, the way of the stars You straggling women.

If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi- poise With the man, if you knew how my flesh enjoys The swinging bliss no shattering ever destroys You other women:

You would envy me, you would think me wonder- ful Beyond compare; You would weep to be lapsing on such harmony As carries me, you would wonder aloud that he Who is so strange should correspond with me Everywhere.

You see he is different, he is dangerous, Without pity or love.

And yet how his separate being liberates me And gives me peace! You cannot see How the stars are moving in surety Exquisite, high above.

We move without knowing, we sleep, and we travel on, You other women.

And this is beauty to me, to be lifted and gone In a motion human inhuman, two and one Encompa.s.sed, and many reduced to none, You other women.

KENSINGTON

_PEOPLE_

THE great gold apples of night Hang from the street's long bough Dripping their light On the faces that drift below, On the faces that drift and blow Down the night-time, out of sight In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night Distilling over me Makes sickening the white Ghost-flux of faces that hie Them endlessly, endlessly by Without meaning or reason why They ever should be.

_STREET LAMPS_