Looking Across

IT is dark in the sky,And silence is whereOur laughs rang high;And recall do IThat One is out there.

The dawn is not nigh,And the trees are bare,And the waterways sighThat a year has drawn by,And Two are out there.

The wind drops to dieLike the phantom of CareToo frail for a cry,And heart brings to eyeThat Three are out there.

This Life runs dryThat once ran rareAnd rosy in dye,And fleet the days fly,And Four are out there.

Tired, tired am IOf this earthly air,And my wraith asks: Why,Since these calm lie,Are not Five out there?

(Young Lover’s Reverie)

I WENT and stood outside myself,Spelled the dark skyAnd ship-lights nigh,And grumbling winds that passed thereby.

Then next inside myself I looked,And there, aboveAll, shone my Love,That nothing matched the image of.

Beyond myself again I ranged;And saw the freeLife by the sea,And folk indifferent to me.

O ’twas a charm to draw withinThereafter, whereBut she was; careFor one thing only, her hid there!

But so it chanced, without myselfI had to look,And then I tookMore heed of what I had long forsook:

The boats, the sands, the esplanade,The laughing crowd;Light-hearted, loudGreetings from some not ill-endowed;

The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk,Hailings and halts,The keen sea-salts,The band, the Morgenblätter Waltz.

Still, when at night I drew insideForward she came,Sad, but the sameAs when I first had known her name.

Then rose a time when, as by force,Outwardly wooedBy contacts crude,Her image in abeyance stood . . .

At last I said: This outside lifeShall not endure;I’ll seek the pureThought-world, and bask in her allure.

Myself again I crept within,Scanned with keen careThe temple whereShe’d shone, but could not find her there.

I sought and sought. But O her soulHas not since thrownUpon my ownOne beam! Yea, she is gone, is gone.

From an old note.