When I am not with you
I am alone,
For there is no one else
And there is nothing
That comforts me but you.
When you are gone
Suddenly I am sick,
Blackness is round me,
There is nothing left.
I have tried many things,
Music and cities,
Stars in their constellations
And the sea,
But there is nothing
That comforts me but you;
And my poor pride bows down
Like grass in a rain-storm
Drenched with my longing.
The night is unbearable,
Oh let me go to you
For there is no one,
There is nothing
To comfort me but you.
American writer and poet (1884–1933)
I Have Loved Hours at Sea
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply — Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.
In The Wood
I heard the water-fall rejoice
Singing like a choir,
I saw the sun flash out of it
Azure and amber fire.
The earth was like an open flower
Enamelled and arrayed,
The path I took to find its heart
Fluttered with sun and shade.
And while earth lured me, gently, gently,
Happy and all alone,
Suddenly a heavy snake
Reared black upon a stone.
A Boy
Out of the noise of tired people working,
Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead,
His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing,
Clean boyish beauty and high-held head.
Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them,
Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes — Men die by millions now, because God blunders,
Yet to have made this boy he must be wise.
If Death Is Kind
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
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The Long Hill
I must have passed the crest a while ago
And now I am going down — Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always grabbing at the hem of my gown.
All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me — But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.
It was nearly level along the beaten track
And the brambles caught in my gown — But it's no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.
Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten — What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild — Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?
"Sea Longing"
A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall
Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,
The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land
With the old murmur, long and musical;
The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,
And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow, — Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know,
For I was born the sea's eternal thrall.
I would that I were there and over me
The cold insistence of the tide would roll,
Quenching this burning thing men call the soul, — Then with the ebbing I should drift and be
Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,
Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.