The Cricket

The twilight is the morning of his day, While sleep drops seaward from the fading shore,

With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, He cheers the shadowed time with roundelay, Until the dark east softens into gray.

hark!

Now as the noisy hours are coming. His song dies gently—it is growing dark His night, with its one star, is on the way!

Faintly the light breaks over the blowing oats
Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir.
We worship Song, and servants are of her
I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time;
Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes,
And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.

In High Sierras

There at a certain hour of the deep night,
A gray cliff with a demon face comes up,
Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and with
An anxious look peers at the Zodiac.

Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep:
Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light
Flashes a signal fire across the night;
Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep
Their way without a star upon the deep;

And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews,
Come cries of incommunicable news,

While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap

Budgets of dream-dust, merchandise of song,
Wreckage of hope and packs of ancient wrong,

The Wharf of Dreams

Nepenthes gathered from a secret strand, Fardels of heartache, burdens of old sins, Luggage sent down from dim ancestral inns, And bales of fantasy from No-Man's Land.

To Louise Michel

no:

I cannot take your road, Louise Michel,
Priestess of Pity and of Vengeance
Down that amorphous gulf I cannot go-
That gulf of Anarchy whose pit is Hell.
Yet, sister, though my first word is farewell,

Remember that I know your hidden woe;
Have felt the grief that rends you blow on
blow;

Have knelt beside you in the murky cell.

You never followed hate (let this atone)
Nor knew the wrongs of others from

your own:
Wild was the road, but Love has always led,
So I am silent where I cannot praise;
And here now at the parting of the ways,

I lay a still hand lightly on your head.