Part 2

I thought that only God could make a star, But I have heard your fingers build the sky, Have watched the yellow dusk of autumn die And night creep up the east immense and far, Then glittering and bright, I’ve seen the Hunter girt with silver light, Orion with his shining hounds sweep by.

I thought that only God could make the sea, But in your music the unbounded deep Is gathered up as in a treasure heap— Calm spaces, rocks where singing tides run free, The cloudy-emerald foam Ships on the world’s dim verge, far, far from home, And pools unrippled where the hushed winds sleep.

TEMPO

My body could play delicate tunes, Music exquisite and thin, But I must keep it in its case Like a violin.

A Scherzo prances in my blood, Mercurial and quick; I pirouette—the box snaps tight With a malicious click.

A Saraband is not for me, It makes the varnish crack. I must play a grave, grave tune Slow and elegiac!

TO SCRIABINE: L’EXTASE

Not with the drums, the throbbing scarlet drums, Not with the voice of a silver flute, Not with the brazen clangour of cymbals, Nor the trumpets slitting the silence; Not with the maelstrom of sound Monstrous, prodigious, Comes ecstasy. But with stillness As when a flame burns unflickering In far, empty places; With the quiet of a leaf falling in the forest; With the hush of the elevation of the Host.

ADAM ASLEEP

Far away I hear the voices of four rivers flowing, Wings in the thicket, and the four winds blowing. Adam sleeps in Eden. In this still place I lie within his circling arm and look upon his face.

God walks in the garden when the day is cool, But the face of Adam is far more beautiful; He is like the splendour of the sun at noon, And the slope of his body like the white young moon.

Of what is he dreaming as he lies at rest? Of God in the Garden? Or Lilith’s breast? Adam sleeps in Eden, but down in the brake I watch the cool glitter of a painted snake.

AN OLD HOUSE

I love an old house, It is like an aged face, The worn lines, The strange, defeated grace.

Sorrow looks through these windows Through the crooked glass. And the sill is hollow Where Death’s feet pass.

But there is yet a beauty, A triumph, a haughty thrust; The meek defiance of ancient loveliness Before the dust is dust.

MOONRISE

Like a white lotus flower the moon unfolds Her luminous petals and the stars grow pale. Vague mists withdraw, grey shadows o’er the water Shadows of twilight tremulous and frail. The flutes of dusk are still; new worlds unveil; God for such moments made the nightingale.

And yet, O Philomel, thou couldst not chant From the cool shadow of a cedar tree, So high a lay as this I hear in rapture, The song his utter silence sings to me. Of the brown earth is thy winged melody. But God is in this wordless ecstasy.

CAGED

I have a caged bird, He beats the bars; Wild and bright his eyes, On his breast, scars.

An oriole whistles; My bird has not a note, Though I can see the song Trembling in his throat.

Other birds fly south To the green pampas floor, But in the blue air Mine spreads his wings no more.

I have a caged bird, He neither flies nor sings, But when the house is still I hear the beat of wings.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Hoofs of Pegasus, by M. Letitia Stockett