MY BIRDS THAT FLY NO LONGER
Have ye forgot, sweet birds,
How near the heavens lie?
Drooping, sick-pinion'd, oh
Have ye forgot the sky?
The air that once I knew
Whispered celestial things;
I weep who hear no more
Upward and rushing wings.
THE WITCH
When I was a girl by Nilus stream
I watched the desert stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
Learned all his dreaming from my eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.
And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mien,
Who judged—The wench knows far too much—
And hanged her on the Salem green?
CRY OF THE NYMPH TO EROS
Hear thou my lamentatïon,
Eros, Aphrodite's son!
My heart is broken and my days are done.
Where the woods are dark and the stream runs clear in the dark,
Eros!
I prayed to thy mother and planted the seeds of her flowers,
And smiled at the planting and wept at the planting. Oh, violets
Ye are dead and your whiteness, your sweetness, availed not. Thy mother
Is cruel. Her flowers lie dead at the steps of her altar,
Eros! Eros!