Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/"I wish that I could go"

by Sarah Piatt

"I WISH THAT I COULD GO."

They who look backward always look through tears.
 So, very dimly, somewhere, I do see
"A door that opens into lonesome years,
 Furnished with—dust and silence! What can be
Sadder than absence of fair household sights,
Belovéd pictures, warm and pleasant lights,
 In empty rooms where———Does it call to me,
That first child-voice which taught my life to know
What music meant?—
What music meant?—"I wish that I could go."

I turned and kissed her—You had better stay."
 She heard the wood-bells ring among the herds:
"I want to see so many lambs to-day,"
 She answered in her little piteous words,
Sweetly half-said and tenderly half-guessed;
"You said there was one robin with a nest
 Up in the apple-flowers. I love the birds—
Ever so many times—and you could show
Me where they sleep. I wish that I could go."

"It is too far. And here are butterflies;
 Look—one—two—three. Go, catch them if you will."
"I've seen all these too much—they hurt my eyes!
 They 're naughty things—they never can be still!
I would not try to catch another one
Here, in the yard, to save its life! I'd run
 After some pretty new ones on the hill
Away off—almost to the skies! And, oh!
I'd be so sweet. I wish that I could go."

Nor was it only toward the clear white light,
 Led subtly on by many a violet,
She would have followed me. The great fierce Night
 Might lie beside our cottage, black and wet,
And make mad hungry noises. Still, if I
Thought fit to pass it, her appealing cry
 (The same that haunts me, sorrowfully, yet)
Was with me always—most forlorn and slow:
"If it is dark, I wish that I could go."

"If it is dark?"—what was the Dark? She knew.
 Just a brief bridge which others must have passed—
With a slight shiver, it might be—into
 A glitter of lamps: a life whose heart beat fast
Under sweet colours, jewels, music, all
The showers of fairy gifts that, faërily, fall
 On some Strange City, where———Oh! faint and vast,
Time lies behind, yet nearer seems to grow
That eager sound:
That eager sound:I wish that I could go."

It is in my own soul. Myself a child,
 Some ghostly doorway with my grief I fill;
Eager for blossoms beautiful and wild
 Just out of reach: eager to climb some hill,
So far away and almost to the skies,
And (tired of old ones) find new butterflies.
 Some One seems gone whom I would follow still
Across the Dark I see your charméd glow,
Strange City, shine———
Strange City, shine———"I wish that I could go."