The Quest Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

I bared my heart to the winds and my cry went after you–
A brown west wind blew past and the east my secret knew,
A red east wind blew far to the lonesome bogland's edge,
And the little pools stirred sighing within their girdling sedge.

The north wind hurled it south–the black north wind of grief–
And the white south wind came crooning through every frozen leaf;
Yet never a woe of mine, blown wide down starlit space,
Hath quickened the pulse of your heart, or shadowed your rose-red face.

I reach my arms to the Dawn and call your name–your name,
O Sweet, whom I seek untiring, are you core of the gold-green flame?
Are you the gate of the sun? Are you life in the opening flower?
Since the garnered beauty of earth God lavished on you for dower.

The moon-gold web of your hair is a mesh that I cannot break,
In the shadowy wells of your eyes I stoop Love's thirst to slake,
And find the water as bitter as Death's unwelcome cup–
Still, slave to your wordless bidding, I quaff the bitter up.

I see you in foam of the waves, and clasp it with passionate hands–
Yet ever it vanishes, soundless, and vague as a dream, in the sands,
Are you, too, a dream, O Heartbreaker?–shall I greet you some day or some night
To know you for Sorrow eternal, or the star of unending Delight?