Recent Poems of Love and Sorrow

THEODORE DREISER

LOVE PLAINT

I have sought to fetter love,—

To bind it.

But love is like the wind

Stirring in the tall grass at night

Under great trees

In the dark.

It may not be seen or fettered

But only felt.

Or,

Again,

Love is like a distant voice

On sea or land,

In fog or storm

That calls and calls

And speaks of need.

A sweet voice that would give.

Or love is like a perfume

That the wind brings

But that one cannot place

Or know,—

A rumour of old things that were

Or yet maybe are,

But that one may not hold.

It dwells where shadow is

And song

And dream,

And sings

Or weeps

Or calls

And oh, the ache

Of that elusive call.

But I,—

I sought to bind love

And it fled.

And now the searing day has come,—

And blare and crash of life,—

The long hot day of want—

And now the grit and dust

Of life's hard, thundering wheels

Are on my lips

And in my eyes

Inflamed and yet made tender

By Love's lips.

LOVE AND WONDER

The little flowers of love and wonder

That grow in the dark places

And between the giant rocks of chance

And the coarse winds of space.

The little flowers of love and wonder

That raise their heads

Beneath the dread rains

And against the chill frosts:

That peep and dream

In flaws of light

And amid the still grey places

And stony ways.

The little flowers of love and wonder

That peep and dream,

And quickly die.

The little flowers of love and wonder.

THE LAST TRYST

Walking by the stream with her, the fairest.

How shall I tell him that I love him not?

This grassy path that rises to the hill.

We shall take this.

Your face is beautiful.

Ah, dare I take the lovedight from his eyes?

These pretty flowers:

I kneel upon the hill,

Kissing your hands.

My heart! my heart!

I have been sorrowful,

But now the years are gone.

The yearning years are dead.

Tomorrow, tomorrow

I will tell him that it may not be.

THE BEAUTIFUL

They think it easy to be a woman,-—

To love and be loved,

But I know better.

Again and again I tell you

I know.

I understand.

Perhaps, of all men,

I alone understand.

I know about her because

She has crossed my path.

I know her struggles

And her defeats.

It is because of her defeats

That she is to me

The lovely one.

For out of her defeats

Has been born

A new quality in woman.

I have no name for that

But, I have a name for her.

I call her

Beautiful.

I have made up the name

Because before it

And before the thing in her

That it represents,

My own vile body

And my weary soul

Bow, and bow reverently.

She is to me

The quality of being strong to be loved,—

Of needing and being capable of

Complete and ceaseless

And insatiable and yet generous

Love.

Of loving fatefully.

And yet not destroying

But healing,—building.

It is the one thing men need

From women,—so many men—

And that

They do not End.