University of Virginia Library

Cinquains 1911–1913

November Night

Listen..
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

Release

With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

Triad

These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow.. the hour
Before the dawn.. the mouth of one
Just dead.

Snow

Look up...
From bleakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind... look up, and scent
The snow!

Anguish

Keep thou
Thy tearless watch
All night but when blue dawn
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep!

Trapped

Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year.. and ever days and years..
Well?

Moon-shadows

Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead.

Susanna And The Elders

“Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?” “For that
She is beautiful, delicate:
Therefore.”

Youth

But me
They cannot touch,
Old age and death.. the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!

Languor After Pain

Pain ebbs,
And like cool balm,
An opiate weariness
Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed
Pale wrists.

The Guarded Wound

If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!

Winter

The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land.. alack,
The little people in the hills
Will die!

Night Winds

The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?

Arbutus

Not spring's
Thou art, but hers,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter's, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.

Roma Aeterna

The sun
Is warm to-day,
O Romulus, and on
Thine olden Palatine the birds
Still sing.

[Not thou]

Not thou,
White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart's
Shed blood.

Amaze

I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.

Shadow

A-sway,
On red rose,
A golden butterfly..
And on my heart a butterfly
Night-wing'd.

Fate Defied

As it
Were tissue of silver
I'll wear, O Fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.

Madness

Burdock,
Blue aconite,
And thistle and thorn.. of these,
Singing I wreathe my pretty wreath
O'death.

The Warning

Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk.. as strange, as still..
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?

Saying of Il Haboul Guardian Of The Treasure Of Solomon And Keeper Of The Prophet's Armour

My tent
A vapour that
The wind dispels and but
As dust before the wind am I
Myself.

The Death Of Holofernes

Israel!
Wake! Be gay!
Thine enemy is brought low—
Thy foe slain—by the hand, by the hand
Of a woman!

Laurel In the Berkshires

Sea-foam
And coral! Oh, I'll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun's
Gold flood.

Niagara

Seen on a night in November

How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.

The Grand Canyon

By Zeus!
Shout word of this
To the eldest dead! Titans,
Gods, Heroes, come who have once more
A home!

Now Barabbas Was A Robber

No guile?
Nay, but so strangely
He moves among us.. Not this
Man but Barabbas! Release to us
Barabbas!

Refuge In Darkness

With night's
Dim veil and blue
I will cover my eyes,
I will bind close my eyes that are
So weary.