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"FIRE AND SLEET AND CANDLELIGHT' For this you've striven Daring, to fail: Your sky is riven Like a tearing veil. For this, you've wasted Wings of your youth; Divined, and tasted Bitter springs of truth. From sand unslaked Twisted strong cords, And wandered naked Among trysted swords. There's a word unspoken, A knot untied. Whatever is broken The earth may hide. The road was jagged Over sharp stones: Your body's too ragged To cover your bones. "Fire and Sleet and Candlelight" 31 The wind scatters Tears upon dust; Your soul's in tatters Where the spears thrust. Your race is ended See, it is run: Nothing is mended Under the sun. Straight as an arrow You fall to a sleep Not too narrow And not too deep. BLOOD FEUD Once, when my husband was a child, there came To his father's table, one who called him kin, In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin. His look was grave and kind; he bore the name Of the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile. Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke; " I've been in the laurel since the winter broke; Four months, I reckon; yes, sir, quite a while." He'd killed a score of foemen in the past, In some blood-feud, a dark and monstrous thing; To him it seemed his duty. At the last His enemies found him by a forest spring, Which, as he died, lay bright beneath his head, A silver shield that slowly turned to red. SEA LULLABY The old moon is tarnished With smoke of the flood, The dead leaves are varnished With color like blood, A treacherous smiler With teeth white as milk, A savage beguiler In sheathings of silk, The sea creeps to pillage, She leaps on her prey; A child of the village Was murdered to-day. She came up to meet him In a smooth...
