Edward Estlin Cummings

“ Nor is there any mournful ghost
To wail until the night is sped.
And while night rustles through the trees,
Dragging the stars along, I know
The moon is rising on the breeze,
Quivering as in a river's flow. ”

“ Art thou not Helen, dowered of the gods
With all that man can covet? Wert thou not
Created the most beautiful of earth,
And is not beauty wisdom, wisdom power?
What hast thou done with their almighty gift? ”

“ Grow lovelier there.
He who adores too much the impending hour,
The budding flower,
Who knows not with what dyes an hour that's dead
Is garmented,
Who walks with glimmering shapes companionless,
He cannot guess
With how great love and thankfulness I praise
The yesterdays. ”

“ A few late friends will turn, with trembling breath,
From the raw mound of earth that hides my face. ...
Yet I shall still find beauty, even in death,
And some lone traveller of the night will hear
An echo of music in that quiet place. ”

“ But will the promise given keep?
Can the heart love still when 'tis dead?
What if the spirit, waked from sleep,
Never recall the words it said?
Dwell in a dreamland, or else be
Lost in life's eternity? ”

“ That swirl and swoop and meet, to break and foam
Like rainbow veils upon a bubble’s dome.
Yours are the songs that burst about my ears,
Or blow away as many-colored spheres.
You are the star that made the skies all bright,
Yet tore itself away in flaming flight;
You are the tree that suddenly awoke;
You are the rose that came to life and spoke. . . . ”

“ Blossom the souls of them that died.
O Dead awake! Arise in bloom
Upon the joyous dawn of doom.
They rise up from the bleeding earth
In gracious legions of re-birth,
Each as a flower or a tree
Of verdant immortality. ”

“ Sweet as a maiden, lissome as this lad,
Full of rich merriment and gentle joy;
That other England lives and laughs in thee,
A peal of morris-music, blithe and glad,
Thou spray of bloom! Thou flower of a boy! ”

“ And on Death's blade like many a flower curled,
In other lands where other songs be sung;
Yet stand They here enraptured, as among
The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
Some silver-fingered fountain steals the world. ”

“ DEEP in a heart, beneath o'er-hanging boughs,
Love built himself a house,
And whoso entered in, Love bade him stay,
Nor ever from that feast to come away
Dissatisfied or weary of the fare
Love set him there. ”

“ Now in the autumn?
See where the swallows fly
South o'er the ocean:
Soon will the winter wind
Sweep the Ægean.
Up from the vineyard comes
Music of laughter;
Far through the valleys they
Gather the harvest. ”

“ His lonely song of love and tears;
He too, sad heart, hath turned to rest,
And sleep is best
Flower of my soul! Let us be true
To youth and love and all delight,
Clean and refreshed and one with you ”

“ A beached king's galley, whose sails are furled,
Who is hung with tapestries rich and old.
Beautiful as a woman is she,
A woman whose autumn of life is here,
Proud and calm at the end of the year
With the grace that now is majesty. ”

“ OUR loves as flowers fall to dust;
The noblest singing hath an end;
No man to his own soul may trust,
Nor to the kind arms of his friend;
Yet have I glimpsed by lonely tree,
Bright baths of immortality. ”

“ BETWEEN rounded hills,
White with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills
The little breeze that makes the birch-leaves quiver,
Beside a rollicking swift river,
Light green in the deeps,—
Like your eyes in sunshine,—
Winds the canal,
Lazy and brown as a water-snake,
Full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps
The water with gossamer garments, that shake
The reeds standing sentinel,
And the marginal line
Of birches and willows. ”

“ Of palaces whose light glowed on our sail;
There we floated wrapped in wild perfume;
Then music burst upon us in a gale;
Grave, deep-toned trumpets and the lyre's long wail,
And farther, the faint sound of singing men. ”

“ THE music beats, up the chasmed street,
Then flares from around the curve;
The cheers break out from the waving crowd:
—Our soldiers march, superb!
Over the track-lined city street
The young men, the grinning men, pass. ”

“ Will wake again my desecrated skies.
Oh, that another dawn might never rise! —
My foolish children!" Through the vast of night
The young stars shivered in a silver horde
Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord. ”

“ For, though I see it flowering there,
Because our speech is not the same
The passionate secret must lie hid
Burdened with unexpressed delight,
Where none of all man's race can bid
It forth, or voice its beauty right. ”

“ While others wrote in steel, accept all praise
Of after ages, and of hungering days
For whom the old glories move, the old trumpets cry;
Who gav'st as one of those immortal men
His life that his fair city might not die. ”

“ Where the frail stars quiver, every one
Like tangled gnats that hum and die.
The moon has tangled the dull night
In her silver skein and set alight
Each dew-damp branch with milky flame.
And huge the moon broods on the night. ”

“ About its summit soaring seagulls fly,
Or rest them in its lofty cypress trees,
And greet the black barge bearing those who die
Upon our earth to everlasting ease
And pleasant lives that know not man's eternities. ”

“ His heart, as mine in time not far away;
If on another's face your sweet hair lay
In such a silence as I know, or such
Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay ”

“ While dim mists earth's outlines blur.
And drip all night from lichen-greened roof-tiles.
In men's hearts the mad gods rise
And fill the streets with revelling,
With torchlight that glances on frozen pools. ”

“ Grotesque, distorted by the gas flare's light —
Into one sacred rhythm for the Devil's spite.
A woman's thin, raucous voice
Carries the tune, bids men rejoice,
Bathe in God's mercy,
Draw near and learn salvation, see
With their own eyes the mystery. ”

“ Aloof awhile, beholding friend and foe
Clashing in conflict, till his soul commands
He, too, prest on whither the bugles blow,
Lifting his eyes sees over wasted lands
Life's dust and shadow drifting to and fro. ”

“ Till sapphire windows palely burn
Amid the undefeated gray.
And yet — sometimes I seem to know
1 shall not 'scape his phantom bow;
More paramount than death or pain,
This ghost will follow where I go. ”

“ In the midst of the hurrying air?
Was it thine, lost bird,
Or the voice of an old despair
Chanting from years long dead,
Inexorable spirit flying
On tempest wings that passed and fled
Through the storm crying? ”

“ Your figure fading in the dusty red
I watched awhile, then turned with casual face
To where a torrent glimmered down a glade,
No human voice troubled the lovely place,
Only the fall a cruel music made. ”

“ It was some trick—the way your eyebrows raise,
Your hands—some vivid trifle. With a start
Then I remembered how I lived alone,
Writing bad poems and eating out my heart
All for your beauty. —How the time has flown! ”

“ For fragrant things afar from earth,
Shines the Madonna, as with a veil overlaid
By incense-smoke and dust age-old,
At whose feet, in time of dearth
Or need, a myriad men have laid
Their sorrows and arisen bold. ”

“ CALM little figure, ivy-crowned,
How long beneath the barren tree
Where this pale, martyred god has found
Surcease from his long agony,
You watch with an untroubled gaze
Life move on its accustomed ways! ”

“ A DULL SUNDAY
(After Debussy)
IT has been a long day,
A long, long day;
And now in floods of twilight,
In long green waves of sunset softly flowing,
Evening.
It is evening over the great towns,
It is evening in our hearts. ”

“ I see the red mouth tarnished, the face grey,
And smileless silent eyes of Magdalen.
The lights have laughed their last; without, the street
Darkling, awaiteth her whose feet have trod
The silly souls of men to golden dust. ”

“ Go, then; and should inevitable fate
Lead us at last beyond the world of men
Where laurel and applause content no more,
Whither the soul takes silence for its mate,
There might we meet, and, smiling, once again
Clasp hands and part upon some windy shore. ”

“ Walked up and softly spake to him:
"Art thou not he that late was dead?"
The drinker raised his cup on high,
And murmured: "Priest of Nazareth,
I am he thou didst raise from death —
Lo, thus I wait again to die!" ”

“ A mile away the trim New England town
Echoed the Bacchanalian din they made.
And still they danced, until the moon sank low,
Blushing a little, and night's diadem
Of stars grew pale before the eastern glow. ... ”

“ We see them not, but if by chance we stray
Down cypress aisles when the wan summer day
Draws to a thin and sickly close, we hear
Murmur of mad speech by some watery weir
Or languid laughter and faint sound of play.
They never see the dawn ”

“ ALWAYS the ships that move in mystery on the dim horizon,
Shadow-filled sails of dreams, sliding over the blue-grey ocean,
Far from the rock-edged shore where willow-green waves are rushing,
And white foam-people leap, to stand erect for the moment. ”

“ Dripping with golden fire, above the haze,
Flashes and veers against the sudden blaze
Of sunlight. There no other wings may gleam
But only yours, companioning my dream
In its strange flight up new and radiant ways. ”

“ More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar.
Love, ah-h! love me, love me!
If you will do this, I can buy
A fringed silk scarf of yellow,
A high comb carved of tortoise;
Then we will dance in the Plaza.
She was alone that night.
He had broken into her courtyard,
Above the gurgling gutters
he heard—
surely—
a door unchained?
The passage was black; but he risked it—
death in the darkness—
or her hot arms— (love—love me ah-h-h!) ”

“ Among them a constant banjo-twanging of frogs,
And shrilling of toads and of insects
Rises and falls in chorus rhythmic and stirring.
Dark, with crumbling railing and planks,
The bridge leads into the sunset. ”

“ And yet it could not rouse her from her sleeping.
With dawn the tide went seaward, bearing her
In its strong arms that clung so tenderly,
And laid her in a strange place far away
Where the tall seaweeds rise and never stir. ... ”

“ Merge and are lost, each in the other's flow.
Time is no lover; it is only he
That is the one unconquerable foe,
He is the sudden tempest none can know,
Winged with swift winds the none may hope to flee. ”

“ Groping with ghostly fingers, half afraid,
Up the great rocks and sobbing back again,
Weary of search, yet still unsatisfied.
It seemed to have the voice of all dead men
And all fair women who had ever died. ”

“ Drawbridge and portcullis screeching,
Bugles braying soon and late;
Who are they that come beseeching,
Calling at my castle gate?
Drive them hence, for they encumber
Days and nights with waking pain ”