American Lyrics

When June is here--what art have we to sing
The whiteness of the lilies midst the green
Of noon-tranced lawns? Or flash of roses seen
Like redbirds' wings? Or earliest ripening
Prince-Harvest apples, where the cloyed bees cling
Round winey juices oozing down between
The peckings of the robin, while we lean
In under-grasses, lost in marveling.
Or the cool term of morning, and the stir
Of odorous breaths from wood and meadow walks,
The bobwhite's liquid yodel, and the whir
Of sudden flight; and, where the milkmaid talks
Across the bars, on tilted barley-stalks
The dewdrops' glint in webs of gossamer.

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that’s a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women’s ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell, —
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

Come back. Let me give up this climb, these searches
     In trackless time and overwhelming space;
Here are tall ghosts that once were elms and birches,
     And this small field is a deserted place.

The fern you found will never learn to scatter
     Its yield upon the ground that you have left;
The veery's round, high call will turn to chatter;
     Sere are these acres, weary and bereft.

Against the skies earth rears its broken scaffold,
     Where night, so friendly once, is but a black
Stupendous ruin where the mind is baffled;
     And the blind heart cries out its endless lack:
     "Come, mend the world! Come back!"

Come slowly, Eden!
Lips unused to thee,
Bashful, sip thy [jasmines]1,
As the fainting bee,

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars - enters,
And is lost in balms!

i am so glad and very
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