I will not kiss you,
For my kisses are a chain without an end;
Nor take you in my arms,
My arms would smother you against my breast;
I will not even touch your shining head—­
But lift your eyes up, flower-face,
And I will fill them as full of love
As they can hold!

IV

Ah no!  If you were here
I would sweep you into my arms and hold you close! 
Though my love is of the spirit
I must feel your little restless body
Pressed for a moment against my heart.

Summer Night

Rain, rain murmuring endless complaints
In mournful whisperings that never cease,
You bring my tired brain a certain peace
Like Latin prayers to absent-minded saints.

And whether silently to earth you fall,
Or dashed and driven in tempestuous flight
Like souls before God’s wrath, the thirsty night,
The soft and fecund earth shall drink you all.

Maura

I

Maura dreams unwakened—­
The warm winds touch the bands
That hold her hair. 
The call of a silver horn floats by,
A lover tosses flowers into her hands.

Maura dreams unwakened—­
She joins the maidens in their dance,
Her limbs follow slow rhythms,
A lover leads her into the shade,
She moves as in a trance.

II

What dim confusion
Troubles her dream,
What passionate caress
Disturbs her spirit’s rapt seclusion?

Earth draws her close.  How warm
Is lover-earth!  Like a sleeping bird
She gives herself, then suddenly
She is a leaf whirled in the storm.

Somewhere in a quiet room, her soul unstirred,
Dead... or sleeping,
Through the blind tumult hears afar
The note of a horn, like a silver thread. 
She has given her soul to an echo’s keeping.

III

Who knows the mountain where the hunter rides
Winding his horn? 
Maura who heard it in her dream
Wakens forlorn,
Too late to catch the tenuous thread
Of silver sound
Which in the troubled, intricate fugue of earth
Is drowned.

IV

Maura cannot follow over the hill,
Her youth is landlocked as a hidden pool
Where thirsty love drinks deep,
A shining pool, where lingers
The colour of an unseen golden sky,
A pool where echoes fall asleep.

But restless fingers
Trouble the waters cool,
Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy
The mirrored dream.  The pool is never still,
And broken echoes die.

V

The silver call has gone, but there is left to her
The gentleness of earth,
The simple mysteries of sleep and death,
Of love and birth. 
There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers
Reaching for dreams.