The End, by Amy Lowell
Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain
I hear your words in mournful cadence toll
Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul
Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain
To batter down resistance, fall again
Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole,
The bitter blows of truth, until the whole
Is hammered into fact made strangely plain.
Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you.
Our worlds are drawn apart, our spirit's suns
Divided, and the light of mine burnt dim.
Now in the haunted twilight I must do
Your will. I grasp the cup which over-runs,
And with my trembling lips I touch the rim.
The Letter, by Amy Lowell
Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor
spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.
The Life of a Bird, by Edith Matilda Thomas
Thou art clothed on with plumes, as with leaves,
Frond-like, and lighter than air ;
Thy pinions are arrows in sheaves,
That carry thee none knoweth where.
Thou fliest, and none gives pursuit,
Thy realm both the earth and the sky ;
Thou hast in thy bosom a flute,
The glance of a soul in thine eye.
Thou obeyest a sovereign power
That sets thee on Summer's track ;
Thou knowest the tide and the hour
When to advance, or turn back.
Into the world thou art flung,
Thou herald of rapture and light.
Thou weavest a home for thy young--
And none but thyself hath the sleight.
Out of the world thou art gone,
And who shall say where is thy rest?
A rapture and light are withdrawn
Into some Heaven-side nest.
For who of my kind hath beheld
Where, stricken, were any of thine?
Hast thou not been, from of old--
A spirit unscathed and divine ?