Sophie Jewett

I have read somewhere that the birds of fairyland
are white as snow.—W. B. Yeats Where all the trees bear golden flowers,
And all the birds are white;

The water sings along our keel,
The wind falls to a whispering breath;
I look into your eyes and feel
No fear of life or death;
So near is love, so far away
The losing strife of yesterday.

We watch the swallow skim and dip;
Some magic bids the world be still;

When the last fight is lost, the last sword broken;
The last call sounded, the last order spoken;
When from the field where braver hearts lie sleeping,
Faint, and athirst, and blinded, I come creeping,
With not one waving shred of palm to bring you,
With not one splendid battle-song to sing you,
O Love, in my dishonor and defeat,
Your measureless compassion will be sweet.

A noisome thing that crawls by covert path,
For glad, unfearing feet to lie in wait;
No part in summer’s fellowship it hath,
From mirth and love and music alienate.

Yet once it flashed across the close, brown grass
In the noon sun, and, as it quivered there,
The spell of beauty over it did pass,
Making it kin with earth and light and air.

“I have heard (but not believed) the spirits of the dead
May walk again.”
Winter’s Tale If spirits walk, Love, when the night climbs slow

Mown meadows skirt the standing wheat;
I linger, for the hay is sweet,
New-cut and curing in the sun.
Like furrows, straight, the windrows run,
Fallen, gallant ranks that tossed and bent
When, yesterday, the west wind went
A-rioting through grass and grain.
To-day no least breath stirs the plain;

All night I dreamed of roses,
Wild tangle by the sea,
And shadowy garden closes.
Dream-led I met with thee.

Around thee swayed the roses,
Beyond thee sang the sea;
The shadowy garden closes
Were Paradise to me.

"Such a palmer ne'er was seene,
Lesse Love himselfe had palmer beene."
Never too late. Pilgrim feet, pray whither bound?
Pilgrim eyes, pray whither bent?
Sandal-shod and travel-gowned,
Lo, I seek the way they went

“O Love, thou art winged and swift,
Yet stay with me evermore!”
And I guarded my house with bolt and bar
Lest Love fly forth at the door.

Without, in the world, ’t was cold,
While Love and I together
Laughed and sang by my red hearth-fire,
Nor knew it was winter weather.

The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
Hearken the tale they told:
How in some far-off place and year,
Before the world grew old,

I was a dreaming forest tree,
You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
Because the north wind stirred;

Prone on the northern water,
That laps him about the breast,
Like the Sphinx in the sand, forever
The giant lies in rest.

The sails drive swift before him,
And the surf beats at his lip,
But the gray eyes look out seaward
Noting nor wave nor ship.