Poems in many lands :: :: University of Virginia Library

The autumn wind goes sighing
Through the quivering aspen tree,
The swallows will be flying
Toward their summer sea;
The grapes begin to sweeten
On the trellised vine above,
And on my brows have beaten
The little wings of love.
Oh wind if you should meet her
You will whisper all I sing!
Oh swallow fly to greet her,
And bring me word in spring!

II.

I see your white arms gliding,
In music o'er the keys,
Long drooping lashes hiding
A blue like summer seas:

The sweet lips wide asunder,
That tremble as you sing,
I could not choose but wonder,
You seemed so fair a thing.

For all these long years after
The dream has never died,
I still can hear your laughter,
Still see you at my side;
One lily hiding under
The waves of golden hair;
I could not choose but wonder,
You were so strangely fair.

I keep the flower you braided
Among those waves of gold,
The leaves are sere and faded,
And like our love grown old.
Our lives have lain asunder,
The years are long, and yet,
I could not choose but wonder.
I cannot quite forget.

III.

All through the golden weather
Until the autumn fell,
Our lives went by together
So wildly and so well.—

But autumn's wind uncloses
The heart of all your flowers,
I think as with the roses,
So hath it been with ours.

Like some divided river
Your ways and mine will be,
—To drift apart for ever,
For ever till the sea.

And yet for one word spoken,
One whisper of regret,
The dream had not been broken
And love were with us yet.

IV.

I remember low on the water
They hung from the dripping moss,
In the broken shrine of some streamgod's daughter
Where the north and south roads cross;
And I plucked some sprays for my love to wear,
Some tangled sprays of maidenhair.

So you went north with the swallow
Away from this southern shore,
And the summers pass, and the winters follow,
And the years, but you come no more,
You have roses now in your breast to wear,
And you have forgotten the maidenhair.

And the sound of the echoing laughter,
The songs that we used to sing,
To remember these in the years long after
May seem but a foolish thing,—
Yet I know to me they are always fair
My withered sprays of maidenhair.

V.

The wide seas lay before us
The moon was late to rise,
The skies were starry o'er us
And Love was in our eyes;
And “like those stars, abiding,”
You whispered “Love shall be,”
Then one great star went gliding
Right down into the sea.

Since then beyond recalling
How many moons have set!
And still the stars keep falling,
But the sky is starry yet:
And I look up and wonder
If they can hear and know,
For still we walk asunder,
And that was years ago.