A bed of radishes.

She kneeled upon the ground

And gathered them,

With flowers around,

Blue, gold, pink, and green.

She dressed in red and gold brocade

And in the grass an offering made

Of radishes and flowers.

She said, “My dear,

Upon your altars,

I have placed

The marguerite and coquelicot,

And roses

Frail as April snow;

But here,” she said,

“Where none can see,

I make an offering, in the grass,

Of radishes and flowers.”

And then she wept

For fear the Lord would not accept.

The good Lord in His garden sought

New leaf and shadowy tinct,

And they were all His thought.

He heard her low accord,

Half prayer and half ditty,

And He felt a subtle quiver,

That was not heavenly love,

Or pity.

This is not writ

In any book.

Tea

When the elephant’s-ear in the park

Shrivelled in frost,

And the leaves on the paths

Ran like rats,

Your lamp-light fell

On shining pillows,

Of sea-shades and sky-shades,

Like umbrellas in Java.

Sunday Morning

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.

No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave

Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.

He moved among us, as a muttering king,

Magnificent, would move among his hinds,

Until our blood, commingling, virginal,

With heaven, brought such requital to desire

The very hinds discerned it, in a star.

Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be

The blood of paradise? And shall the earth

Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

The sky will be much friendlier then than now,

A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV