Gladys Cromwell

From “Songs of the Dust”

THIS autumn afternoon

My fancy need invent

No untried sacrament.

Man can still commune

With Beauty as of old:

The tree, the wind’s lyre,

The whirling dust, the fire—

In these my faith is told.

Beauty warms us all;

When horizons crimson burn,

We hold heaven’s cup in turn.

The dry leaves gleaming fall,

Crumbs of mystical bread;

My dole of Beauty I break,

Love to my lips I take,

And fear is quieted.

The symbols of old are made new:

I watch the reeds and the rushes,

The spruce trees dip their brushes

In the mountain’s dusky blue;

The sky is deep like a pool;

A fragrance the wind brings over

Is warm like hidden clover,

Though the wind itself is cool.

Across the air, between

The stems and the grey things,

Sunlight a trellis flings.

In quietude I lean:

I hear the lifting zephyr

Soft and shy and wild;

And I feel earth gentle and mild

Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.

Love scatters and love disperses.

Lightly the orchards dance

In a lovely radiance.

Down sloping terraces

They toss their mellow fruits.

The rhythmic wind is sowing,

Softly the floods are flowing

Between the twisted roots.

What Beauty need I own

When the symbol satisfies?

I follow services

Of tree and cloud and stone.

Color floods the world;

I am swayed by sympathy;

Love is a litany

In leaf and cloud unfurled.

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