If I could catch all the stars in a net
And make them tell me their Christian names,
Or snare the dream of a violet,
Or persuade the squirrels to teach me their games,
Or quite surprise, on a warm June night,
The lilac bushes that laugh for delight
And tremble for fear lest we should hear them,--
If I could tiptoe breathlessly near them
And overhear them
And master so
Secrets that only the lilacs know:
If I could feel what a young bird feels
When first it flutters across the road,
Or learn at last from the creaking wheels
Of a wagon that story they tell their load--
The hillside legend that never grows old:
If I could be told
All the subtle, impalpable, exquisite things
That we just surmise when the country sings,
That week before they begin the hay:
If I could contrive to sing, or to say,
Or to be, what the poets have never invented,
Should I be contented?
Was I to-day?
1915.