Conrad Potter Aiken

I stood for a long while before the shop
Looking at the blue butterflies embroidered on tawny silk
The building was a tower before me,
Time was loud behind me,

It is moonlight
Alone in the silence I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore

The first bell is silver,
And breathing darkness I think only of the long scythe of time
The second bell is crimson,
And I think of a holiday night, with

As I walked through the lamplit gardens,
On the thin white crust of snow,
So intensely was I thinking of my misfortune,
So clearly were my eyes

Gracious and lovable and sweet, She made his jaded pulses beat, And made the glare of streets grow dim And life more soft and hushed for him…
Over her shoulder now she smiled Trustfully to him, like a child, The while her fingers gayly moved ...

‘My towers at last
’— What meant the word from what acknowledged circuit sprung and in the heart and on the tongue at sight of few familiar birds when seaward his last sail unfurled to leeward from the wheel once more bloomed the pale crags o...

How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music
—Darling,
I love you

The music of the morning is red and warm;
Snow lies against the walls;
And on the sloping roof in the yellow
Pigeons huddle against the wind

Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay windannounces autumn, and the equinoxrolls back blue bays to a far afternoon
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,looking for friendship or an old love's sleeveor writing letters to his children, lost,...

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead

This girl gave her heart to me,
And this, and this
This one looked at me as if she loved me,
And silently walked away

How many times have we been
Just as I was about to make up a story for you
One time it was because we suddenly saw a
Lighting his green lantern among the boughs of a fir-tree