Songs for Myself

XII

The Tree
  At Midnight
  Song Making
  Alone
  Red Maples
  Debtor
  The Wind in the Hemlock

I

Blue Squills

How many million Aprils came
   Before I ever knew
  How white a cherry bough could be,
   A bed of squills, how blue!

And many a dancing April
   When life is done with me,
  Will lift the blue flame of the flower
   And the white flame of the tree.

Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
   Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
  Lest in the end death try to take
   Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
   O sunlit white and blue,
  Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
   May bear the scar of you.