Here a still field. I move within the green, It lies aloof. Look where I will The steady glory of noon on the hill Lays its divine indifference on the scene. I seem too far. I listen and I lean, Yet never will the burying hours fulfill One hope of nearness to the Far and Still, But wound me with the sweet that they might mean. Is there no keener speech for us than this Old incommunicable urge to know The speech of silence.... Yes--here a still field! What more--what more? For here the Comrade is, The God who waits alone and would have sealed Our compact with glad laughter long ago. RETURN How they come back ... I never see retreat Down the long beach the phalanx of bright foam But faint across the fields that fold them home I hear the rhythmic fall of speeding feet. And they who loved the garden of the sea And died, come back. I never know a land Of cities but there come to me Their dead to touch my hand. Dead, who dare not let your eyes Flower from the dusk and flame into our own, Yet come you as hushed notes in harmonies To ways of life that you have known: Virgil in blowing spray round swift-prowed ships, Dante in every cry of lips for lips. BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT By my side all day another went. We breathed the cold spiced air of the Spring dark Before the dawn; together at the hark Of noon we listened; and we bent To borrow from still grasses the warm scent Of afternoon and dusk. We stood to mark The deathless ark Unveiled before the light was spent. Prodigal of sweetness that old day I passed, nor might See how that one beside me stooped to lay Something aside. Now in the night The gleaner hunts me down Bringing regret. I wear it for a crown. IN J. P. P.’s METRE I Here a vine, there a voice, Then a violin; All the quiet is astir Like a flute within. Here a light, there a leaf, Little boughs that lean; And the people who move by Wonder what they mean. “Look,” they say, “there a star Watching in a well; Line and green and melody----” Then they try to tell. O why ask what they mean? What is there to win? Have we not the light, the leaf And the violin? II All the air is liveried In a kind of white; It is not like the darkness Or the light; It is like the covenant Of a clearer sight. Now a sudden bud is born Burning in the dew; There the fog rose palely lifting All as if it knew The faint flowing speech Of the friendly blue. Oh the little hurrying wing Like a blowing leaf; Oh the shadows gathering in Many a sheaf; There a cloud is carved like some Airy coral reef.