Must all of worth be travailled for, and those Life"s brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?
Must years go by in sad uncertainty Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows, Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows All inner meanings will reveal, but we Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes, The agonies of splendid dreams, which day Dims from our vision, but each night brings back; We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray, And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.
Before Dawn
Life! Austere arbiter of each man"s fate, By whom he learns that Nature"s steadfast laws Are as decrees immutable; O pause Your even forward march! Not yet too late Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait Inactive as a ship when no wind draws To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years Have lengthened into decades; now distressed He knows no rule by which to move or stay, And teased with restlessness and desperate fears He dares not watch in silence thy wise way Bringing about results none could have guessed.
The Poet
What instinct forces man to journey on, Urged by a longing blind but dominant!
Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt His never failing eagerness. The sun Setting in splendour every night has won His va.s.salage; those towers flamboyant Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt His daylight wanderings. Forever done With simple joys and quiet happiness He guards the vision of the sunset sky; Though faint with weariness he must possess Some fragment of the sunset"s majesty; He spurns life"s human friendships to profess Life"s loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.
At Night
The wind is singing through the trees to-night, A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences And crashing intervals. No summer breeze Is this, though hot July is at its height, Gone is her gentler music; with delight She listens to this booming like the seas, These elemental, loud necessities Which call to her to answer their swift might.
Above the tossing trees shines down a star, Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind, O Star! is filled with your white light, from far, So suffer me this one night to enjoy The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.
The Fruit Garden Path
The path runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
"T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume.
Over the trees a single bright star glows.
Dear garden of my childhood, here my years Have run away like little grains of sand; The moments of my life, its hopes and fears Have all found utterance here, where now I stand; My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears, You are my home, do you not understand?
Mirage
How is it that, being gone, you fill my days, And all the long nights are made glad by thee?
No loneliness is this, nor misery, But great content that these should be the ways Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays, Makes bright and present what she would would be.
And who shall say if the reality Is not with dreams so pregnant. For delays And hindrances may bar the wished-for end; A thousand misconceptions may prevent Our souls from coming near enough to blend; Let me but think we have the same intent, That each one needs to call the other, "friend!"
It may be vain illusion. I"m content.
To a Friend
I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!
A Fixed Idea
What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.
Dreams
I do not care to talk to you although Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies, And all my being"s silent harmonies Wake trembling into music. When you go It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow Had severed all the strings with savage ease.
No, do not talk; but let us rather seize This intimate gift of silence which we know.
Others may guess your thoughts from what you say, As storms are guessed from clouds where darkness broods.
To me the very essence of the day Reveals its inner purpose and its moods; As poplars feel the rain and then straightway Reverse their leaves and shimmer through the woods.
Frankincense and Myrrh
My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the pa.s.sion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circ.u.mstance, and h.o.a.rds Of torn desires, broken joys; records Of all a bruised life"s maimed imaginings.
Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth"s rim, the sun has set.
Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer. Far Within I kneel before you, speechless yet, And life ablaze with beauty, I am dumb.
From One Who Stays