Aline Murray Kilmer

IF I had loved you, soon, ah, soon I had lost you.
Had I been kind you had kissed me and gone your faithless way.
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The thing that I am seeking
I know I shall not find;
A wistful voice is crying
This sorrow in my mind.
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MY garden walks were smooth and green
And edged with box trees left and right,
An old grey sun-dial stood between
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IF I had loved you more God would have had pity;
He would never have left me here in this desolate place,
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I know you are too dear to stay;
You are so exquisitely sweet:
My lonely house will thrill some day
To echoes of your eager feet.
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HE has taken away the things that I loved best
Love and youth and the harp that knew my hand.
Laughter alone is left of all the rest.
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I'M glad I have but a little heart–
For my heart is very small–
It makes it free to come and go
And no one cares at all.
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WHEN a storm comes up at night and the wind is crying,
When the trees are moaning like masts on laboring ships,
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SOMETIMES when I am at tea with you
I catch my breath
At a thought that is old as the world is old
And more bitter than death.
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SMILINGLY, out of my pain,
I have woven a little song;
You may take it away with you.
I shall not sing it again,
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AND now it is all to be done over again,
And what will come of it only God can know.
What has become of the furrows ploughed by pain,
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A wind rose in the night,
(She had always feared it so!)
Sorrow plucked at my heart
And I could not help but go.
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Kenton and Deborah, Michael and Rose,
These are fine children as all the world knows,
But into my arms in my dreams every night
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I CAN never remake the thing I have destroyed;
I brushed the golden dust from the moth's bright wing,
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SOME learn it in their youth,
Some after bitter years:
There is no escape from the truth
Though we drown in our tears.
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THERE is no Rachel any more
And so it does not really matter.
Leah alone is left, and she
Goes her own way inscrutably.
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ALL my life I have loved where I was not loved,
And always those whom I did not love loved me;
Only the God who made my wild heart knows
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WHY don't you go back to the sea, my dear?
I am not one who would hold you;
The sea is the woman you really love,
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THE barberry bright, the barberry bright!
It stood on the mantelpiece because of the height.
Its stems were slender and thorny and tall
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I HAVE a harp of many strings
But two are enough for me:
One is for love and one for death;
And what would the third one be?
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