I WANDERED to a crude coast Like a ghost; Upon the hills I saw fires— Funeral pyres Seemingly—and heard breaking Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking. And so I never once guessed A Love-nest, Bowered and candle-lit, lay In my way, Till I found a hid hollow, Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow. TOLERANCE “IT is a foolish thing,” said I, “To bear with such, and pass it by; Yet so I do, I know not why!” And at each clash I would surmise That if I had acted otherwise I might have saved me many sighs. But now the only happiness In looking back that I possess— Whose lack would leave me comfortless— Is to remember I refrained From masteries I might have gained, And for my tolerance was disdained; For see, a tomb. And if it were I had bent and broke, I should not dare To linger in the shadows there. BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER I LOOKING forward to the spring One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet —Sharper pointed than the first— And these later snows—the worst— Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from sun behind. II Shadows of the October pine Reach into this room of mine: On the pine there stands a bird; He is shadowed with the tree. Mutely perched he bills no word; Blank as I am even is he. For those happy suns are past, Fore-discerned in winter last. When went by their pleasure, then? I, alas, perceived not when. AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER THE ten hours’ light is abating, And a late bird flies across, Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, Give their black heads a toss. Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, Float past like specks in the eye; I set every tree in my June time, And now they obscure the sky. And the children who ramble through here Conceive that there never has been A time when no tall trees grew here, A time when none will be seen. THE YEAR’S AWAKENING HOW do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, And never as yet a tinct of spring Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling; O vespering bird, how do you know, How do you know?