| |
| YOU berries, that are full of the dark dusks | |
| Of mountains and the moisture of chill dews, | |
| Swell on your stems and break your ripened husks | |
| For lips which it would wither you to lose— | |
| If there are lips to what is wandering here | 5 |
| Feeling you underfoot in the rocky night, | |
| Moving about like wind, blowing you clear | |
| Of mists, hanging your leaves with drops of light. | |
| |
| Listen! There is a sound of water falling | |
| Down the dark-shafted night into the trees. | 10 |
| Wild birds that should be quiet now are calling. | |
| How shall I sleep tonight, troubled with these? | |
| The cool wind through the moon’s invisible strings | |
| Blows like a striking of clear silver bars; | |
| The great black peak shudders and leaps and swings, | 15 |
| And I am blinded by the fall of stars. | |
| |
| I cannot rest. I cannot quiet my limbs. | |
| A sense of climbing keeps my body burning, | |
| And the white flame sweeps over me and dims | |
| All that inclines within me toward returning. | 20 |
| Did I see only earth once long ago, | |
| And only flesh in faces turned to me? | |
| Sleep? Rest? With my senses shaken so | |
| And the world’s valleys lost so dizzily? | |
| |
| Why have I come so near the fearful stars | 25 |
| When what is in me is so much a want | |
| Of utter dark too thick for any wars | |
| Of flesh and spirit dazzlingly to haunt? | |
| I do not know. I do not want to know; | |
| Only to make a fire of weariness | 30 |
| And fling myself upon it, and burn, and go | |
| Thinly, like smoke, to wind-walled quietness. | |
| |
