The Green Helmet and Other Poems

And though I would have hushed the crowd

That every year I have cried, “At length

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Why, what could she have done being what she is?

Some may have blamed you that you took away

The verses that could move them on the day

When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind

With lightning you went from me, and I could find

Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things

We’ll out, for the world lives as long ago;

And while we’re in our laughing, weeping fit,

Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.

But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,

My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

“Would it were anything but merely voice!”

The No King cried who after that was King,

That balanced with a word is more than noise;

Yet Old Romance being kind, let him prevail

Somewhere or somehow that I have forgot,

Though he’d but cannon—Whereas we that had thought

To have lit upon as clean and sweet a tale

Have been defeated by that pledge you gave

And I that have not your faith, how shall I know

That in the blinding light beyond the grave

We’ll find so good a thing as that we have lost?

The hourly kindness, the day’s common speech,

When neither soul nor body has been crossed.