1 Lake Seen Through Pine Branches

Yielding beneath their cones
The branches bend to the lake.
They almost touch the face
Of the water weighted with dreams.
Austere the embrace
Of the circling boughs of the pine-trees
About some swans and an island,
About an image that seems
Set on a screen of silk.

2 The Words

Marked on the broad white page
The patterned signs remain,
The still memorial
Of life's rash flood.

The sweaty strivings of the heart,
The ripe fruit yielding to the tongue,
The weight of water pouring down
From panic's over-toppling wave

Through time are falling,
Far, far away
Down depths of being lost to me.

Here is the marble of the mind,
The freed, the consummated voice
That echoes strangely that far flight.

3 The Magnolia Tree

Forth from earth's opened side
The slow, slow fountain plays,
Its twisted streams of wood
Flowing to the measure of a giant time
To statelier music than our lives may know.

And on their currents' crest
Green leaves, white petals foam
Through whose fragility
The rapid pulse of spring
Beats with a fairer and more fatal stroke
Than, in our veins, its keenest rage achieved.