Armies clean of love and hate, Marching lines of pitiless sound Climbing hills to the sun and hurling Golden spears to the ground! Up the lines a silver runner Bearing a banner whereon is scored The milk and steel of a bloodless wound Healed at length by the sword! You and I have nothing to do with music. We may not make of music a filigree frame, Within which you and I, Tenderly glad we came, Sit smiling, hand in hand. Come now, be content. I will come back to you, I swear I will; And you will know me still. I shall be only a little taller Than when I went. HYACINTH I am in love with him to whom a hyacinth is dearer Than I shall ever be dear. On nights when the field-mice are abroad he cannot sleep: He hears their narrow teeth at the bulbs of his hyacinths. But the gnawing at my heart he does not hear. TO ONE WHO MIGHT HAVE BORNE A MESSAGE Had I known that you were going I would have given you messages for her, Now two years dead, Whom I shall always love. As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me, You must reply, as well as with most, you fancy; That I love easily, and pass the time. And she will not know how all day long between My life and me her shadow intervenes, A young thin girl, Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair. I used to say to her, “I love you Because your face is such a pretty color, No other reason.” But it was not true. Oh, had I only known that you were going, I could have given you messages for her! SIEGE This I do, being mad: Gather baubles about me, Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time Death beating the door in. _White jade and an orange pitcher,_ _Hindu idol, Chinese god,--_ _Maybe next year, when I’m richer--_ _Carved beads and a lotus pod...._ And all this time Death beating the door in. THE CAIRN When I think of the little children learning In all the schools of the world, Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities, My heart breaks. Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily On the great cairn of Knowledge! (Where lies what Euclid knew, a little gray stone, What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo: Little gray stones, little gray stones on a cairn.) Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain? Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow! Name me the mountains on the moon! But the name of the mountain that you climb all day, Ask not your teacher that. SPRING SONG I know why the yellow forsythia Holds its breath and will not bloom, And the robin thrusts his beak in his wing. Want me to tell you? Think you can bear it? Cover your eyes with your hand and hear it. You know how cold the days are still? And everybody saying how late the Spring is? Well--cover your eyes with your hand--the thing is, There isn’t going to be any Spring.