Chant in a wail that never halts, pace a circle and pay tribute with a song.

When the roar of a dropped wave breaks into it, pour meted words of sea-hawks and gulls and sea-birds that cry discords.

THE GIFT

Instead of pearls--a wrought clasp-- a bracelet--will you accept this?

You know the script-- you will start, wonder: what is left, what phrase after last night? This:

The world is yet unspoiled for you, you wait, expectant-- you are like the children who haunt your own steps for chance bits--a comb that may have slipped, a gold ta.s.sel, unravelled, plucked from your scarf, twirled by your slight fingers into the street-- a flower dropped.

Do not think me unaware, I who have s.n.a.t.c.hed at you as the street-child clutched at the seed-pearls you spilt that hot day when your necklace snapped.

Do not dream that I speak as one defrauded of delight, sick, shaken by each heart-beat or paralyzed, stretched at length, who gasps: these ripe pears are bitter to the taste, this spiced wine, poison, corrupt.

I cannot walk-- who would walk?

Life is a scavenger's pit--I escape-- I only, rejecting it, lying here on this couch.

Your garden sloped to the beach, myrtle overran the paths, honey and amber flecked each leaf, the citron-lily head-- one among many-- weighed there, over-sweet.

The myrrh-hyacinth spread across low slopes, violets streaked black ridges through the gra.s.s.

The house, too, was like this, over painted, over lovely-- the world is like this.

Sleepless nights, I remember the initiates, their gesture, their calm glance.

I have heard how in rapt thought, in vision, they speak with another race, more beautiful, more intense than this.

I could laugh-- more beautiful, more intense?

Perhaps that other life is contrast always to this.

I reason: I have lived as they in their inmost rites-- they endure the tense nerves through the moment of ritual.

I endure from moment to moment-- days pa.s.s all alike, tortured, intense.

This I forgot last night: you must not be blamed, it is not your fault; as a child, a flower--any flower tore my breast-- meadow-chicory, a common gra.s.s-tip, a leaf shadow, a flower tint unexpected on a winter-branch.

I reason: another life holds what this lacks, a sea, unmoving, quiet-- not forcing our strength to rise to it, beat on beat-- stretch of sand, no garden beyond, strangling with its myrrh-lilies-- a hill, not set with black violets but stones, stones, bare rocks, dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty to distract--to crowd madness upon madness.

Only a still place and perhaps some outer horror some hideousness to stamp beauty, a mark--no changing it now-- on our hearts.

I send no string of pearls, no bracelet--accept this.

EVENING

The light pa.s.ses from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower-- the hypaticas, wide-spread under the light grow faint-- the petals reach inward, the blue tips bend toward the bluer heart and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white, but shadows dart from the cornel-roots-- black creeps from root to root, each leaf cuts another leaf on the gra.s.s, shadow seeks shadow, then both leaf and leaf-shadow are lost.

SHELTERED GARDEN

I have had enough.

I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest-- then you retrace your steps, or find the same slope on the other side, precipitate.

I have had enough-- border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch-- there is no scent of resin in this place, no taste of bark, of coa.r.s.e weeds, aromatic, astringent-- only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover that wanted light-- pears wadded in cloth, protected from the frost, melons, almost ripe, smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling to the empty branch?

All your coaxing will only make a bitter fruit-- let them cling, ripen of themselves, test their own worth, nipped, shrivelled by the frost, to fall at last but fair with a russet coat.

Or the melon-- let it bleach yellow in the winter light, even tart to the taste-- it is better to taste of frost-- the exquisite frost-- than of wadding and of dead gra.s.s.

For this beauty, beauty without strength, chokes out life.

I want wind to break, scatter these pink-stalks, snap off their spiced heads, fling them about with dead leaves-- spread the paths with twigs, limbs broken off, trail great pine branches, hurled from some far wood right across the melon-patch, break pear and quince-- leave half-trees, torn, twisted but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible wind-tortured place.

SEA POPPIES

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain,

treasure spilled near the shrub-pines to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea and grated sh.e.l.ls and split conch-sh.e.l.ls.

Beautiful, wide-spread, fire upon leaf, what meadow yields so fragrant a leaf as your bright leaf?

LOSS