Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.

Evening Song of Senlin

IT is moonlight. Alone in the silence

I ascend my stairs once more,

While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,

Crash on a white sand shore.

It is moonlight. The garden is silent.

I stand in my room alone.

Across my wall, from the far-off moon,

A rain of fire is thrown …

There are houses hanging above the stars,

And stars hung under a sea:

And a wind from the long blue vault of time

Waves my curtains for me …

I wait in the dark once more,

Swung between space and space:

Before my mirror I lift my hands

And face my remembered face.

Is it I who stand in a question here,

Asking to know my name? …

It is I, yet I know not whither I go,

Nor why, nor whence I came.

It is I, who awoke at dawn

And arose and descended the stair,

Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun,—

In a woman’s hands and hair.

It is I whose flesh is grey with the stones

I builded into a wall:

With a mournful melody in my brain

Of a tune I cannot recall …

There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss;

And the sharp-pained shadow of death.

I remember a rain-drop on my cheek,—

A wind like a fragrant breath …

And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven;

And the heavens are dark and steep …

I will forget these things once more

In the silence of sleep.