Canto 22A Thing Seen
Book 2. Part Two - Baroda Circa 1898 – 1902
Short Poems
O sweet grave Siren of the night,
Astarte’s eremite,
Thou feedest every leaf with solemn glee.
5Lo, the night-winds sigh happier, being chid by thee.
Euphrosyne
Child of the infant years, Euphrosyne,
Bird of my boyhood, youth’s blithe deity!
If I have hymned thee not with lyric phrase,
10Preferring Eros or Aglaia’s praise,
Frown not, thou lovely spirit, leave me not.
Man worships the ungrasped. His vagrant thought
Still busy with the illimitable void
Lives all the time by little things upbuoyed
15Which he contemns; the wife unsung remains
Sharing his pleasures, taking half his pains
While to dream faces mounts the poet’s song.
Yet she makes not their lyric right her wrong,
Knowing her homely eyes his sorrow’s star
20Smiles at the eclipsing brow untouched by care.
Content with human love lightly she yields
The immortal fancy its Elysian fields.
A Thing Seen
She in her garden, near the high grey wall,
25Sleeping; a silver-bodied birch-tree tall
That held its garments o’er her wide and green,
Building a parapet of shade between,
Forbade the amorous sun to look on her.
No fold of gracious raiment was astir.
30The wind walked softly; silent moved a cloud
Listening; of all the tree no leaf was loud
But guarded a divine expectant hush
Thrilled by the silence of a hidden thrush.