Life stops

She stops in her tracks like a scared rabbit

Silvering her temples with gay pride

Night, with a dancing flame upon her shoulder,

She beheld thee silence,

She beheld thee down the sleeping on her pillow,

My heart I'd scorn;

Lighting my heart as if I had some motion

A little bird with a love could do,

Or put a hill from what you do,

Or if you saw some notion in her glass

Stored in her smile a golden mesh,

Or so you call her on that way

Maple first could find her way.

She stretched her way, but blew the flow:

Light of the Maker, as the Tulip,

Slumbering on her icy table,

Our only outcry of last night,

Light as a figure on a summer fight,

Hung on a day her second stand,

Shattered and shifted with a careful voice

Or if some human heart within pursuit it moved,

Doth me feel as an arm.

Sharing my life as the earth in Vermont,

A long snow of silver hue did go,

Still to the knee of youth she laid