Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I-- Ah, how poets sing and die! INNOCENCE She tripped and fell against a star, A lady we all have known; Just what the villagers lusted for To claim her one of their own; Fallen but once the lower felt she, So turned her face and died,-- With never a hounding fool to see ’Twas a star-lance in her side! CREED If my garden oak spares one bare ledge For a boughed mistletoe to grow and wedge; And all the wild birds this year should know I cherish their freedom to come and go; If a battered worthless dog, masterless, alone, Slinks to my heels, sure of bed and bone; And the boy just moved in, deigns a glance-assay, Turns his pockets inside out, calls, “Come and play!” If I should surprise in the eyes of my friend That the deed was _my_ favor he’d let me lend; Or hear it repeated from a foe I despise, That I whom he hated was chary of lies; If a pilgrim stranger, fainting and poor, Followed an urge and rapped at my door, And my husband loves me till death puts apart, Less as flesh unto flesh, more as heart unto heart: I may challenge God when we meet That Day, And He dare not be silent or send me away. LINES TO A NASTURTIUM (A lover muses) Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar, Into your flaming heart; Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter As the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming, Looked into your startled depths and fled.... Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see, Set the stricken air waves drumming In his flight. Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty, I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey Voice lure your loving swain, But I know one other to whom you are in beauty Born in vain: Hair like the setting sun, Her eyes a rising star, Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar All your competing; Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet, Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet ... Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating, _As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies_ Beating, beating. AT THE CARNIVAL