Three Songs Of The Enigma
How long I have wished for something I know well,
But what that something is I cannot tell.
So often at sunrise in sad tears I
Shivering with longing for its sake;
So often at noontide when the house is
It sickens me with its unbidden ill;
So often at twilight it does not seem far,
Not further than the first and far-off star;
All, all my life is built towards its
Yet by its near far-offness I am broken.
For I am ever under something's spell,
But what that something is I cannot tell.
IA
NG
The hopeless rain, a sigh, a
Falters and drifts again, again over the meadow,
It wanders lost, drifts hither . . . thither,
It blows, it goes, it knows not whither.
A profound grief, an unknown
Wanders always my strange life thoro',
I know not ever what brings it hither,
Nor whence it comes . . . nor goes it whither.
RN
VE
Now that the evenfall is come,
And the sun fills the flaring
And everything is mad, lit, dumb,
And in the pauses of the breezeA far voice seems to call me
To haven beyond woods and leas.
I feel again how sharply
The spell which binds our troubled
With hint of divine frustrated things,—The Soul's deep doubt and desperate
That She at sunset shall find
To bear her beyond
OW and
ST.
So place your head against my head,
And set your lips upon my
That so I may be comforted,—For Ah ! the world so from me slips,
To the World-Sunset I am
Where Soul and Silence come to
And Love stands sore-astonished.
Robert Nichols
Other author posts
Farewell
For the last time, maybe, upon the knollI stand The eve is golden, languid, sad Day like a tragic actor plays his To the last whispered word and falls gold-clad
O Nightingale My Heart
O Nightingale my How sad thou art How heavy is thy wing, Desperately whirrëd that thy throat may
November
As I walk the misty hill All is languid, fogged, and still; Not a note of any bird Nor any motion's hint is heard, Save from soaking thickets round Trickle or water's rushing sound, And from ghostly trees the drip Of runnel dews or whispering slip...
Seventeen
All the loud winds were in the garden wood, All shadows joyfuller than lissom Doubled in chasing, all exultant That ever flung fierce mist and eddying