Identity

So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,
Would that the little Flowers were born to live,
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give;

That to this mountain-daisy's self were known
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown
On the smooth surface of this naked stone!

And what if hence a bold desire should mount
High as the Sun, that he could take account
Of all that issues from his glorious fount!

So might he ken how by his sovereign aid
These delicate companionships are made;
And how he rules the pomp of light and shade;

And were the Sister-power that shines by night
So privileged, what a countenance of delight
Would through the clouds break forth on human sight!

Fond fancies! wheresoe'er shall turn thine eye
On earth, air, oc...

I spread a scanty board too late;
The old-time guests for whom I wait
Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah! who could hear my messages
Across the dim unsounded seas
On which so many have sailed away!

Come, then, old friends, who linger yet,
And let us meet, as we have met,
Once more beneath this low sunshine;
And grateful for the good we’ve known,
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown,
Shake hands upon the border line.

The favor, asked too oft before,
From your indulgent ears, once more
I crave, and, if belated lays
To slower, feebler measures move,
The silent, sympathy of love
To me is dearer now than praise.

And ye, O younger friends, for whom
My hearth and heart keep open room,
Come smiling through the shadows long,<...

(Obiit Nov. 18, 1909)

America grows poorer day by day -
Richer and richer, I have heard some say:
They thought of a poor wealth I do not heed -
For, one by one, the men who dreamed the dream
That was America, and is now no more,
Have gone in flame through that mysterious door,
And scarcely one remains, in all our need.

The dream goes with the dreamer - ah! beware,
Country of facile silver and of gold,
To slight the gentle strength of a pure prayer;
America, all made out of a dream -
A dream of good men in the days of old;
What if the dream should fade and none remain
To tell your children the old dream again!

Therefore, with laurel and with tears and rue,
Stand by his grave this sad November day,
Sadder that he untimely goes away,
W...

O my prow vas plack mit curses,
Ven I dries to write dose verses;
Ven I dries to write dot boem,
Dot de best was effer been.
All in vain my peer I guzzles,
But I gannod solve dot broblem,
“Who’s dot Western Pulleteen?”

Und I swear mit pleets and dvonder,
Und I ferry often wonder,
Would dot paber’s cirgulation
Shusta little pigger been,
If dey toog deir seissor-pinchers,
Shust to cut some leetle inches
From that smarty-smarty writer
Of dot Western Pulleeteen.

“Let dose mountains fall and hide us”
Gry benighded odersiders,
Shame come round and woe betide us,
Und our fellow men deride us
If we effer yet can find oud
“Who’s dot Western Pull-it-in?”

HENRICH HERTZBERG LAWSON

I remain, Yours etc.,
JOE SWALLOW

    My father's grave, I heard her say,
And marked a stealing tear;
Oh, no! I would not go away,
My father's grave is here!

    A thousand thronging sympathies
The lonely spot endear,
And every eve remembrance sighs,
My father's grave is here!

    Some sudden tears unbidden start,
As spring's gay birds I hear,
For all things whisper to my heart,
My father's grave is here!

    Young hope may blend each colour gay,
And fairer views appear;
But, no! I will not go away,
My father's grave is here!

Farewell, farewell! Before our prow
Leaps in white foam the noisy channel,
A tourist's cap is on my brow,
My legs are cased in tourists' flannel:

Around me gasp the invalids -
(The quantity to-night is fearful) -
I take a brace or so of weeds,
And feel (as yet) extremely cheerful.

The night wears on:- my thirst I quench
With one imperial pint of porter;
Then drop upon a casual bench -
(The bench is short, but I am shorter) -

Place 'neath my head the harve-sac
Which I have stowed my little all in,
And sleep, though moist about the back,
Serenely in an old tarpaulin.

* * *

Bed at Ostend at 5 A.M.
Breakfast at 6, and train 6.30.
Tickets to Konigswinter (mem.
The seats objectionably dirty).

And onward th...

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing, "The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh,
O silly lover!"
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and d...

Th' swallows are buildin ther nests, Jenny,
Th' springtime has come with its flowers;
Th' fields in ther greenest are drest, Jenny,
An th' songsters mak music ith' bowers.
Daisies an buttercups smile, Jenny,
Laughingly th' brook flows along; -
An awm havin a smook set oth' stile, Jenny,
But this bacca's uncommonly strong.

Aw wonder if thy heart like mine, Jenny,
Finds its love-burden hard to be borne;
Do thi een wi' breet tears ov joy shine, Jenny,
As they glistened an shone yestermorn?
Ther's noa treasure wi' thee can compare, Jenny,
Aw'd net change thi for wealth or estate; -
But aw'll goa nah some braikfast to share, Jenny,
For aw can't live baght summat to ait.

Like a nightingale if aw could sing, Jenny,
Aw'd pearch near thy winder at neet...

I touched the heart that loved me as a player
    Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
    No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?).
    Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
    My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.

The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
    His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
    As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.

Silver key of the fountain of tears,
Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,
Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers.

"If you only knew
How gladly I've given it
All these years -
The light of mine eyes,
The heat of my lips,
Mine agonies,
My yearning tears,
My blood that drips,
My brain that sears:
If you only knew
How gladly I've given it
All these years -
My hope and my youth,
My manhood, my Art,
My passion, my truth,
My mind and my heart:

"O my brother, you would not say,
    What have you to do with me?
You would not, would not turn away
    Doubtingly and bitterly.

"If you only knew
How little I cared for
These other things -
The delicate speech,
The high demand
Of each from each,
The imaginings
Of Love's Holy Land:
If you only knew
How little I cared for
These other things -
The wide c...

If Death should claim me for her own to-day,
And softly I should falter from your side,
Oh, tell me, loved one, would my memory stay,
And would my image in your heart abide?
Or should I be as some forgotten dream,
That lives its little space, then fades entire?
Should Time send o'er you its relentless stream,
To cool your heart, and quench for aye love's fire?

I would not for the world, love, give you pain,
Or ever compass what would cause you grief;
And, oh, how well I know that tears are vain!
But love is sweet, my dear, and life is brief;
So if some day before you I should go
Beyond the sound and sight of song and sea,
'T would give my spirit stronger wings to know
That you remembered still and wept for me.

    The lamp of day, with ill-presaging glare,
        Dim, cloudy, sunk beneath the western wave;
    Th' inconstant blast howl'd thro' the darkening air,
        And hollow whistled in the rocky cave.

    Lone as I wander'd by each cliff and dell,
        Once the lov'd haunts of Scotia's royal train;[1]
    Or mus'd where limpid streams once hallow'd well,[2]
        Or mould'ring ruins mark the sacred fane.[3]

    Th' increasing blast roared round the beetling rocks,
        The clouds, swift-wing'd, flew o'er the starry sky,
    The groaning trees untimely shed their locks,
        And shooting meteors caught the startled eye.

    The paly moon rose in the livid east,
        And 'mong the cliffs disclos'd a stately for...

Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,
Formless and void the dead earth rolled;
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind
To the great lights which o'er it shined;
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,
A dumb despair, a wandering death.

To that dark, weltering horror came
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,
A breath of life electrical,
Awakening and transforming all,
Till beat and thrilled in every part
The pulses of a living heart.

Then knew their bounds the land and sea;
Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;
From flower to moth, from beast to man,
The quick creative impulse ran;
And earth, with life from thee renewed,
Was in thy holy eyesight good.

As lost and void, as dark and cold
And formless as that earth of old;
A w...

    Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul
    Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone
    And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone
    Could draw the face of God, the titan high
    Whose genius smote like lightning from the sky -
    And shall he mold like dead leaves in the grave?
    Nay he is in us!    Let us dare and dare.
    God help us to be brave.

I had seen our splendid soldiers in their khaki uniforms,
    And their leaders with a Sam Brown belt;
I had seen the fighting Britons and Colonials in swarms,
    I had seen the blue-clad Frenchmen, and I felt
That the mighty martial show
Had no new sight to bestow,
    Till I walked on Piccadilly, and my word!
By the bonnie Highland laddies
In their kilts and their plaidies,
    To a wholly new sensation I was stirred.

They were like some old-time picture, or a scene from out a play,
    They were stalwart, they were young, and debonnair;
Their jaunty little caps they wore in such a fetching way,
    And they showed their handsome legs, and didn't care -
And they seemed to own the town
As they strode on up and down -
    Oh, they surely were a sight fo...

Oh, the truant boy to the woods has gone,
And you ne'er, alas, can find him,
He's strapp'd his empty school bag on,
For his books are left behind him.

He's gone to shake the beechnuts down
From a height - 'twould make you shiver,
And stain his hands a gipsy brown,
With the walnuts by the river.

"Away from school!" said this youth so free,
"Tho' all the world should praise thee,
I'd rather climb this walnut tree,
Because it's such a daisy."
The truant fell, but the stunning shock
Could not bring his proud soul under;
"I'll try again, and here I go
To get those nuts, by thunder!"

So he tightly strapp'd his bag so neat,
This soul of spunk and bravery,
And said, "If I in this get beat,
I will go back to slavery."
But he climb'...

Oh! I feel the growing glory
Of our life upon this sphere,
Of the life that like a river
Runs forever and forever,
From the somewhere to the here,
And still on and onward flowing,
Leads us out to larger knowing,
Through the hidden, to the clear.

And I feel a deep thanksgiving
For the sorrows I have known;
For the worries and the crosses,
And the grieving and the losses,
That along my path were sown.
Now the great eternal meaning
Of each trouble I am gleaning,
And the harvest is my own.

I am opulent with knowledge
Of the Purpose and the Cause.
And I go my way rejoicing,
And in singing seek the voicing
Of love's never-failing laws.
From the now, unto the Yonder,
Full of beauty and of wonder,
Life flows ever without ...