Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Maura

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

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.

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.

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 intricate, troubled fugue of earth

Is drowned.

Maura cannot follow over the hill;

Her youth is land-locked as a hidden pool

Where thirsty love drinks deep—

A shining pool where lingers

The color of an unseen golden sky,

A pool where echoes fall asleep:

Until small restless fingers

Trouble the waters cool,

Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy

The mirrored dream….. The pool is never still

And broken echoes die.

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.

And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night,

And the wide melody of evening sky

Where gleams

A color like the echo of a horn.

There is a far hill where winds die,

And over the hill lies music yet unborn.

Maura lies dead at last;

The body she gave to child and lover

Now feeds flower and tree.

Earth’s arms are wide to her …. what breast

Offers such gentle sleeping?

Her limbs lie peacefully.

From the dark West

Comes down a note like the echoing cry

Of one who rides through the dusk alone

After the hunt sweeps by.

It fades—the night wind is forlorn—

Music is still:

But Maura has followed the silver horn

Over the distant hill,

Over the hill where all winds die.