And when at home you read or knit,-- Who'll know it was my hands that blotted The page?--or all your needles knotted? When in your rage you cry a bit: And loud I laugh at it, my love, And loud I laugh at it.
The secrets that you say in prayer Right so I'll hear: and, when you sing, The name you speak; and whispering I'll bend and kiss your mouth and hair, And tell you I am there, my dear, And tell you I am there.
Would it were true what people say!-- Would I _could_ find that elfin seed! Then should I win your love, indeed, By being near you night and day-- There is no other way, my love, There is no other way.
Meantime the truth in this is said: It is my soul that follows you; It needs no fern seed in the shoe,-- While in the heart love pulses red, To win you and to wed, my dear, To win you and to wed.
It will not be to-day and yet I think and dream it will; and let The slow uncertainty devise So many sweet excuses, met With the old doubt in hope's disguise.
The panes were sweated with the dawn; Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn, The aigret of one princess-feather, One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan, I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.
This morning, when my window's chintz I drew, how gray the day was!--Since I saw him, yea, all days are gray!-- I gazed out on my dripping quince, Defruited, gnarled; then turned away
To weep, but did not weep: but felt A colder anguish than did melt About the tearful-visaged year!-- Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt The autumn sorrow: Rotting near
The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached, Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached And morning-glories, seeded o'er With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched One last bloom, frozen to the core.
The podded hollyhocks,--that Fall Had stripped of finery,--by the wall Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped, The fog thick on them: near them, all The tarnished, haglike zinnias tipped.
I felt the death and loved it: yea, To have it nearer, sought the gray, Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep, But wandered in an aimless way, And sighed with weariness for sleep.
Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks; The weak lights on the leafy walks; The shadows shivering with the cold; The breaking heart; the lonely talks; The last, dim, ruined marigold.