Best Famous Recurring Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Recurring poems. This is a select list of the best famous Recurring poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Recurring poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of recurring poems.

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Written by David Berman | Self-Portrait At 28 I know it's a bad title but I'm giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you. I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it. II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image. I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years. III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid. A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here. IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that our advances are irrepressible. Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken the name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables. V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? Let's get an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.

Written by Walt Whitman | A Carol of Harvest for 1867 1 A SONG of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize. 2 For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, Tuning a verse for thee. O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 3 Ever upon this stage, Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass, The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra, The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging, silvery fringes, The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars, The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products. 4 Fecund America! To-day, Thou art all over set in births and joys! Thou groan’st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment! Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions! A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne! As some huge ship, freighted to water’s edge, thou ridest into port! As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee, and risen out of thee! Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty! Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns! Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East, and lookest West! Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles—that giv’st a million farms, and missest nothing! Thou All-Acceptress—thou Hospitable—(thou only art hospitable, as God is hospitable.) 5 When late I sang, sad was my voice; Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict; In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood, Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying. But now I sing not War, Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle. No more the dead and wounded; No more the sad, unnatural shows of War. Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies? Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks—the armies dread that follow’d. 6 (Pass—pass, ye proud brigades! So handsome, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; —How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d! Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing army! O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever! O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) 7 But on these days of brightness, On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, Shall the dead intrude? Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon’s far margin. Nor do I forget you, departed; Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones; But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace—like pleasing phantoms, Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me. 8 I saw the day, the return of the Heroes; (Yet the Heroes never surpass’d, shall never return; Them, that day, I saw not.) I saw the interminable Corps—I saw the processions of armies, I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions, Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans; Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop, Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march, Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field. 9 A pause—the armies wait; A million flush’d, embattled conquerors wait; The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn, They melt—they disappear. Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands! Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields; But here and hence your victory. Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers! Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly arms; Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West, With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars. 10 Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul! The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding; The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me; I see the true arenas of my race—or first, or last, Man’s innocent and strong arenas. I see the Heroes at other toils; I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons. 11 I see where America, Mother of All, Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long, And counts the varied gathering of the products. Busy the far, the sunlit panorama; Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane; Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook, And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes, And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass. 12 Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products! Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All, With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch’d you. Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well! The Mother of All—yet here, as ever, she watches you. Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest, Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters, The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements: Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes, The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines, The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw—the nimble work of the patent pitch-fork; Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser. Beneath thy look, O Maternal, With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest. All gather, and all harvest; (Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security; Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.) 13 Under Thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only; Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every barbed spear, under thee; Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—each ear in its light-green sheath, Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns, Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs; Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas, Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders, Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the vines, Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South, Under the beaming sun, and under Thee.

Written by Walt Whitman | O Me! O Life! O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Written by Maggie Estep | Bad Day At The Beauty Salon I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull. I needed a job, but first, I needed a haircut. So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B. I'm gonna get a hairdo. I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and rake them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul. So I go in the beauty salon. This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra sits me down and starts chopping my hair: "Girlfriend," she says, "what the hell you got growing outta your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you want me to touch that ****, whadya got in there, sandwiches?" I just go: "I'm sorry." She starts snipping my carefully cultivated Johnny Lydon post-Pistols hairdo. My foul little dreadlocks are flying around all over the place but I'm not looking in the mirror cause I just don't want to know. "So what's your name anyway?" My stylist demands then. "Uh, Maggie." "Maggie? Well, that's an okay name, but my name is Suzy." "Yeah, so?" "Yeah so it ain't just Suzy S.U.Z.Y, I spell it S.U.Z.E.E, the extra "e" is for extra Suzee." I nod emphatically. Suzee tells me when she's not busy chopping hair, she works as an exotic dancer at night to support her boyfriend named Rocco. Suzee loves Rocco, she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him: "6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich." Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk head. She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the mirror: "Holy ****, I'm bald." "Holy ****, baby, you're bald." Suzee says, finally opening her eyes and then gasping. All I've got left is little post-nuke clumps of orange fuzz. And I'll never get a receptionist job now. But Suzy waves her manicured finger in my face: "Don't you worry, baby, I'm gonna get you a job at the dancing club." "What?" "Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer." That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists I'm gonna love getting naked for a living. None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm bald so I go home and get my best panties. Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps, paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax me. 8pm that night I take the stage. I'm bald, I'm drunk, and by god, I'm naked. HOLY **** I'M NAKED IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE RECURRING NIGHTMARES WE ALL HAVE ABOUT BEING BUTT NAKED IN PUBLIC, I AM NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS. A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by sticking dollars in my garter belt. My disheveled pubic hairs stand at full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close. Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick 10 bucks in my garter. I saunter over. I'm teetering around unrhythmically, I'm the surliest, unsexiest dancer that ever go-go across this hemisphere. The bald guy looks down into his beer, he'd much rather look at that than at my pubic mound which has now formed into one vicious spike so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my crotch. I stand there weaving through the air. The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn. Madonna's song Borderline is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight: "BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE." And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway? "LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE" What? Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue crazy, horny, naked and blind? What? There's a glitch in the tape and it starts to skip. "Borderl...ooop.....Borderl....ooop...Borderlin.....ooop" I stumble and twist my ankle. My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making me twitch with pain. My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap. So there I am. Butt naked on all fours. But before I have time to regain my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip club manager finger at me and goes: "You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired." I stand up. "Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker, pal." I peel off one of my pumps and throw it in the direction of his fat head then I get the hell out of there. A few days later I run into Suzee on Avenue A. Turns out she got fired for getting me a job there in the first place. But she was completely undaunted, she dragged me up to this wig store on 14th Street, bought me a mouse brown shag wig, then got us both telemarketing jobs on Wall Street. And I never went to a beauty salon again.

Written by Nick Flynn | Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time He reads my latest attempt at a poem and is silent for a long time, until it feels like that night we waited for Apollo, my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking, Haven't they landed yet? At last Dugan throws it on the table and says, This reads like a cheap detective novel and I've got nothing to say about it. It sits, naked and white, with everyone's eyes running over it. The week before he'd said I had a problem with time, that in my poems everything kept happening at once. In 1969, the voice of Mission Control told a man named Buzz that there was a bunch of guys turning blue down here on Earth, and now I can understand it was with anticipation, not sickness. Next, Dugan says, Let's move on. The attempted poem was about butterflies and my recurring desire to return to a place I've never been. It was inspired by reading this in a National Geographic: monarchs stream northward from winter roosts in Mexico, laying their eggs atop milkweed to foster new generations along the way. With the old monarchs gone (I took this line as the title) and all ties to the past ostensibly cut the unimaginable happens--butterflies that have never been to that plateau in Mexico roost there the next winter. . . .I saw this as a metaphor for a childhood I never had, until Dugan pointed out that metaphor has been dead for a hundred years. A woman, new to the workshop, leans behind his back and whispers, I like it, but the silence is seamless, as deep as outer space. That night in 1969 I could turn my head from the television and see the moon filling the one pane over the bed completely as we waited for Neil Armstrong to leave his footprints all over it.

Written by Stanley Kunitz | The Testing-Tree 1 On my way home from school up tribal Providence Hill past the Academy ballpark where I could never hope to play I scuffed in the drainage ditch among the sodden seethe of leaves hunting for perfect stones rolled out of glacial time into my pitcher’s hand; then sprinted lickety- split on my magic Keds from a crouching start, scarcely touching the ground with my flying skin as I poured it on for the prize of the mastery over that stretch of road, with no one no where to deny when I flung myself down that on the given course I was the world’s fastest human. 2 Around the bend that tried to loop me home dawdling came natural across a nettled field riddled with rabbit-life where the bees sank sugar-wells in the trunks of the maples and a stringy old lilac more than two stories tall blazing with mildew remembered a door in the long teeth of the woods. All of it happened slow: brushing the stickseed off, wading through jewelweed strangled by angel’s hair, spotting the print of the deer and the red fox’s scats. Once I owned the key to an umbrageous trail thickened with mosses where flickering presences gave me right of passage as I followed in the steps of straight-backed Massassoit soundlessly heel-and-toe practicing my Indian walk. 3 Past the abandoned quarry where the pale sun bobbed in the sump of the granite, past copperhead ledge, where the ferns gave foothold, I walked, deliberate, on to the clearing, with the stones in my pocket changing to oracles and my coiled ear tuned to the slightest leaf-stir. I had kept my appointment. There I stood int he shadow, at fifty measured paces, of the inexhaustible oak, tyrant and target, Jehovah of acorns, watchtower of the thunders, that locked King Philip’s War in its annulated core under the cut of my name. Father wherever you are I have only three throws bless my good right arm. In the haze of afternoon, while the air flowed saffron, I played my game for keeps-- for love, for poetry, and for eternal life-- after the trials of summer. 4 In the recurring dream my mother stands in her bridal gown under the burning lilac, with Bernard Shaw and Bertie Russell kissing her hands; the house behind her is in ruins; she is wearing an owl’s face and makes barking noises. Her minatory finger points. I pass through the cardboard doorway askew in the field and peer down a well where an albino walrus huffs. He has the gentlest eyes. If the dirt keeps sifting in, staining the water yellow, why should I be blamed? Never try to explain. That single Model A sputtering up the grade unfurled a highway behind where the tanks maneuver, revolving their turrets. In a murderous time the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn. I am looking for the trail. Where is my testing-tree? Give me back my stones!

Written by Carl Sandburg | Just Before April Came THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone. Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear. The gravel of all shallow places shines. A white pigeon reels and somersaults. Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody. Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival. A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs. I might ask: Who are these people?

Written by Amy Lowell | A Fixed Idea What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay | The Plaid Dress Strong sun, that bleach The curtains of my room, can you not render Colourless this dress I wear?— This violent plaid Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done Through indolence high judgments given here in haste; The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste? No more uncoloured than unmade, I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff; Confession does not strip it off, To send me homeward eased and bare; All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean Bright hair, Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen, But it is there.

Written by Conrad Aiken | The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple, Two lovers blow together like music blowing: And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea. Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them, They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree. 'Well, am I late?' Upward they look and laugh, They look at the great clock's golden hands, They laugh and talk, not knowing what they say: Only, their words like music seem to play; And seeming to walk, they tread strange sarabands. 'I brought you this . . . ' the soft words float like stars Down the smooth heaven of her memory. She stands again by a garden wall, The peach tree is in bloom, pink blossoms fall, Water sings from an opened tap, the bees Glisten and murmur among the trees. Someone calls from the house. She does not answer. Backward she leans her head, And dreamily smiles at the peach-tree leaves, wherethrough She sees an infinite May sky spread A vault profoundly blue. The voice from the house fades far away, The glistening leaves more vaguely ripple and sway . . The tap is closed, the water ceases to hiss . . . Silence . . . blue sky . . . and then, 'I brought you this . . . ' She turns again, and smiles . . . He does not know She smiles from long ago . . . She turns to him and smiles . . . Sunlight above him Roars like a vast invisible sea, Gold is beaten before him, shrill bells of silver; He is released of weight, his body is free, He lifts his arms to swim, Dark years like sinister tides coil under him . . . The lazy sea-waves crumble along the beach With a whirring sound like wind in bells, He lies outstretched on the yellow wind-worn sands Reaching his lazy hands Among the golden grains and sea-white shells . . . 'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?' They pause and smile, not caring what they say, If only they may talk. The crowd flows past them like dividing waters. Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk. 'Pink,—to-day!'—Face turns to dream-bright face, Green leaves rise round them, sunshine settles upon them, Water, in drops of silver, falls from the rose. She smiles at a face that smiles through leaves from the mirror. She breathes the fragrance; her dark eyes close . . . Time is dissolved, it blows like a little dust: Time, like a flurry of rain, Patters and passes, starring the window-pane. Once, long ago, one night, She saw the lightning, with long blue quiver of light, Ripping the darkness . . . and as she turned in terror A soft face leaned above her, leaned softly down, Softly around her a breath of roses was blown, She sank in waves of quiet, she seemed to float In a sea of silence . . . and soft steps grew remote . . 'Well, let us walk in the park . . . The sun is warm, We'll sit on a bench and talk . . .' They turn and glide, The crowd of faces wavers and breaks and flows. 'Look how the oak-tops turn to gold in the sunlight! Look how the tower is changed and glows!' Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music, We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass; A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble; We tremble like wind-blown grass. What was this dream we had, a dream of music, Music that rose from the opening earth like magic And shook its beauty upon us and died away? The long cold streets extend once more before us. The red sun drops, the walls grow grey.