Death

(In Memoriam)

There it lies broken, as a shard,
What breathed sweet music yesterday;
The source, all mute, has passed away
With its masked meanings still unmarred.
But melody will never cease!
Above the vast cerulean sea
Of heaven, created harmony
Rings and re-echoes its release!
So, this dumb instrument that lies
All powerless, [with spirit flown,
Beyond the veil of the Unknown
To chant its love-hymned litanies, ]
Though it may thrill us here no more
With cadenced strain, in other spheres
Will rise above the vanquished years
And breathe its music as before!

    Reading in Ovid the sorrowful story of Itys,
    Son of the love of Tereus and Procne, slain
    For the guilty passion of Tereus for Philomela,
    The flesh of him served to Tereus by Procne,
    And the wrath of Tereus, the murderess pursuing
    Till the gods made Philomela a nightingale,
    Lute of the rising moon, and Procne a swallow
    Oh livers and artists of Hellas centuries gone,
    Sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom,
    Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant,
    A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul
    How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!
    The thurible opening when I had lived and learned
    How all of us kill the children of love, and all of us,
    Knowing not what we do, devour their flesh;
    And...

At A Bookstore

Anno Domini 1972

A crazy bookcase, placed before
A low-price dealer's open door;
Therein arrayed in broken rows
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose,
The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays
Whose low estate this line betrays
(Set forth the lesser birds to lime)
YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME!

Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake
This scarecrow from the shelf I take;
Three starveling volumes bound in one,
Its covers warping in the sun.
Methinks it hath a musty smell,
I like its flavor none too well,
But Yorick's brain was far from dull,
Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.

Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark, -
Was that the roll of thunder? Hark!
The shop affords a safe retreat,
A chair...

An old man’s thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!

And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships, immortal ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a Public School?

Ah more, infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all, the Church is living, ever living Souls.”)

Who will say the world is dying?
    Who will say our prime is past?
Sparks from Heaven, within us lying,
    Flash, and will flash till the last.
Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;
    Man a tool to buy and sell;
Earth a failure, God-forsaken,
    Anteroom of Hell.

Still the race of Hero-spirits
    Pass the lamp from hand to hand;
Age from age the Words inherits -
    'Wife, and Child, and Fatherland.'
Still the youthful hunter gathers
    Fiery joy from wold and wood;
He will dare as dared his fathers
    Give him cause as good.

While a slave bewails his fetters;
    While an orphan pleads in vain;
While an infant lisps his letters,
    Heir of all the age's gain;
While a lip grows ripe for kissing;
    While a moan from ...

Sweet Mary, I have never breathed
The love it were in vain to name;
Though round my heart a serpent wreathed,
I smiled, or strove to smile, the same.

Once more the pulse of Nature glows
With faster throb and fresher fire,
While music round her pathway flows,
Like echoes from a hidden lyre.

And is there none with me to share
The glories of the earth and sky?
The eagle through the pathless air
Is followed by one burning eye.

Ah no! the cradled flowers may wake,
Again may flow the frozen sea,
From every cloud a star may break, -
There conies no second spring to me.

Go, - ere the painted toys of youth
Are crushed beneath the tread of years;
Ere visions have been chilled to truth,
And hopes are washed away in tears.

I.

My Sister! my sweet Sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same -
A loved regret which I would not resign.[z]
There yet are two things in my destiny, -
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.[84]

II.

The first were nothing - had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,[aa]
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past[ab]
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's[85] fate of yore, -
He had no rest at sea, nor...

Token of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth;
With honest pride the gift I take,
And prize it for the giver's sake.
But not alone because it tells
Of generous hand and heart sincere;
Around that gift of friendship dwells
A memory doubly dear;
Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest thought,
With that memorial frail inwrought!
Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold,
And precious memories round it cling,
Even as the Prophet's rod of old
In beauty blossoming:
And buds of feeling, pure and good,
Spring from its cold unconscious wood.
Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brand
Plucked from its burning! let it be
Dear as a jewel from the hand
Of a lost friend to me!...

A Memory Of A Sister



The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach
And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim
From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

Goddess the laughter-loving, Aphrodite, befriend!
Long have I served thine altars, serve me now at the end,
Let me have peace of thee, truce of thee, golden one, send.

Heart of my heart have I offered thee, pain of my pain,
Yielding my life for the love of thee into thy chain;
Lady and goddess be merciful, loose me again.

All things I had that were fairest, my dearest and best,
Fed the fierce flames on thine altar: ah, surely, my breast
Shrined thee alone among goddesses, spurning the rest.

Blossom of youth thou hast plucked of me, flower of my days;
Stinted I nought in thine honouring, walked in thy ways,
Song of my soul pouring out to thee, all in thy praise.

Fierce was the flame while it lasted, and strong was thy wine,
Meet for immortals that die ...

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll,
World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul.
Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed,
Your plains wind-tossed, and grass enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly,
Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky,
Hemm'd through the purple mists afar
By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line,
Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine,
Sleeping until the zephyrs throng
To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air,
Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where
The angels' songs are less divine
Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the fo...

Whatever I do, and whatever I say,
Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way;
When she was a girl (forty summers ago)
Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.

Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice!
But I like my own way, and I find it so nice
And besides, I forget half the things I am told;
But they all will come back to me - when I am old.

If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt,
He may chance to look in as I chance to look out;
She would never endure an impertinent stare, -
It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there.

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own,
But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone;
So I take a lad's arm, - just for safety, you know, -
But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so.

How wicked w...

How blind is he who prays that God will send
All pain from earth.    Pain has its use and place;
Its ministry of holiness and grace.
The darker tones upon the canvas blend
With light and colour; and their shadows lend
The painting half its dignity.    Efface
The sombre background, and you lose all trace
Of that perfection which is true art's trend.

Life is an artist seeking to reveal
God's majesty and beauty in each soul.
If from the palette mortal man could steal
The precious pigment, pain, why then the scroll
Would glare with colours meaningless and bright,
Or show an empty canvas, blurred with light.

We were now in the midmost Maytime, in the full green flood of the Spring,
When the air is sweet all the daytime with the blossoms and birds that sing;
When the air is rich all the night, and richest of all in its noon;
When the nightingales pant the delight and keen stress of their love to the moon;
When the almond and apple and pear spread wavering wavelets of snow
In the light of the soft warm air far-flushed with a delicate glow;
When the towering chestnuts uphold their masses of spires red or white,
And the pendulous tresses of gold of the slim laburnum burn bright,
And the lilac guardeth the bowers with the gleam of a lifted spear,
And the scent of the hawthorn flowers breathes all the new life of the year,
And the linden's tender pink bud by the green of the leaf is o'errun,
An...

"Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum
habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea." - Ps. cxix.

There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come -
Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing -
Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing:
Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending have come!

Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh,
And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border,
Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order,
Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.

Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood,
She who upheld me and I, in th...

"Blow high, blow low." - SEA SONG.


As Mister B. and Mistress B.
One night were sitting down to tea,
With toast and muffins hot -
They heard a loud and sudden bounce,
That made the very china flounce,
They could not for a time pronounce
If they were safe or shot -
For Memory brought a deed to match
At Deptford done by night -
Before one eye appeared a Patch,
In t'other eye a Blight!

To be belabor'd at of life,
Without some small attempt at strife,
Our nature will not grovel;
One impulse hadd both man and dame,
He seized the tongs - she did the same,
Leaving the ruffian, if he came,
The poker and the shovel.
Suppose the couple standing so,
When rushing footsteps from below
Made pulses fast and fervent;
And first bu...

        OH, here the air is sweet and still,
            And soft's the grass to lie on;
        And far away's the little hill
            They took for Christ to die on.

        And there's a hill across the brook,
            And down the brook's another;
        But, oh, the little hill they took,--
            I think I am its mother!

        The moon that saw Gethsemane,
            I watch it rise and set:
        It has so many things to see,
            They help it to forget.

        But little hills that sit at home
            So many hundred years,
        Remember Greece, remember Rome,
            Remember Mary's tears.

        And far away in Palestine,
            Sadder than any other,
        Grieves still t...

        Why do we pity those who weep? The pain
    That finds a ready outlet in the flow
    Of salt and bitter tears is blessed woe,
        And does not need our sympathies. The rain
        But fits the shorn field for new yield of grain;
    While the red, brazen skies, the sun's fierce glow,
    The dry, hot winds that from the tropics blow
        Do parch and wither the unsheltered plain.
        The anguish that through long, remorseless years
    Looks out upon the world with no relief
        Of sudden tempests or slow-dripping tears -
    The still, unuttered, silent, wordless grief
        That evermore doth ache, and ache, and ache -
        This is the sorrow wherewith hearts do break.