Sonnets (1923)
VIII8.
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
.
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
.
“What a big book for such a little head!”
.
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
.
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
.
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
.
You will not catch me reading any more:
.
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
.
And some day when you knock and push the door,
.
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
.
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. IX9.
Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
.
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
.
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
.
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
.
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
.
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
.
Its friendly weathers down, far underneath
.
Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.
.
That April should be shattered by a gust,
.
That August should be levelled by a rain,
.
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
.
Of man should settle to the earth again;
.
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
.
Between my ribs forever of hot pain. XVIII18.
I, being born a woman and distressed
.
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
.
Am urged by your propinquity to find
.
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
.
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
.
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
.
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
.
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
.
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
.
I shall remember you with love, or season
.
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
.
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
.
For conversation when we meet again. XIX19.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
.
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
.
Under my head till morning; but the rain
.
Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
.
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
.
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
.
For unremembered lads that not again
.
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
.
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
.
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
.
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
.
I only know that summer sang in me
.
A little while, that in me sings no more.
