Margaret Widdemer

If you should tire of loving me
   Some one of our far days,
Oh, never start to hide your heart
   Or cover thought with praise.
...

Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me,
The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free,
Far too clever a lover not to be having still
A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill --
...

I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
   My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
   Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.
...

THE people up and down the world that talk and laugh and cry,
They're pleasant when you're young and gay, and life is all to try,
...

WHETHER you live by hut or throne
Whether your feet tread stone or grass
Comes the one lad you shall never own
Or the one lass;
...

What if this year has given
Grief that some year must bring,
What if it hurt your joyous youth,
Crippled your laughter's wing?
...

THE Poor Old Soul plods down the street,
Contented, and forgetting
How Youth was wild, and Spring was wild
And how her life is setting;
...

IF I could lift
My heart but high enough
My heart could fill with love:
...

I was living very merrily on Middle Earth
As merry as a maid may be
Till the Gray Magician came down along the road
...

SHE sits and makes pink roses with her thread
And wonders what to do, her heart astir,
What road to take, where roads branch close ahead,
...

I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
...

WHEN I was a young girl, all in a green arbor,
When I was a young girl in Springtimes gone by
...

The War-god wakened drowsily;
There were gold chains about his hands.
He said: 'And who shall reap my lands
And bear the tithes to Death for me?
...

Ours is a dark Easter-tide,
And a scarlet Spring,
But high up at Heaven-Gate
All the saints sing,
...

CROSSING through Heaven's doors,
If Heaven may be for me,
I shall not seek gold floors
Nor jasper wall nor sea;
...

But I was planting out my garden-close
With wands of lily and with slips of rose,
...

My mind is very swift and gay;
She flutters to and fro,
She knows a thousand things to play,
A thousand roads to go;
...

HE will be cold tonight–
Always he felt it so.
(Strange not to lift the light,
Strange not to go,
...

IT was not when I plead with her,
And on a tragic day
Clung sobbing to her skirts of rose,
That Youth went away;
...

THERE were many flowers in my mother's garden,
Sword-leaved gladiolus, taller far than I,
Sticky-leaved petunias, pink and purple-flaring,
...