("The air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers…. The old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt's inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china … and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything."
-"David Copperfield," Chapter XIII.)
HOW many are the scenes he limned,
With artist strokes, clear-cut and free—
Our Dickens; time shall not efface
Their charm, and they will ever grace
The halls of memory.
Oft and again we turn to them,
To contemplate in pleased review;
And like some picture on the screen
Comes now to mind a favorite scene
His master-pencil drew:—
Upon a sofa, stretched in sleep,
I see a small lad, spent and worn,
And by the window, stern and grim,
A silent figure watching him,
So dusty, ragged, torn.
Ah, now she rises from behind
The round green fan beside her chair;
"Poor fellow!" croons-and pity lends
Her voice new softness-and she bends
And brushes back his hair.
Then in his sleep he softly stirs.
Was that a dream, these murmured words?
He wakes! There by the casement sat
Miss Trotwood still; close by, her cat
And her canary birds.
The peaceful calm of that quaint room,
Its marks of comfort everywhere—
Old china and mahogany
And blowing in, fresh from the sea,
The perfume-laden air.
Poor little pilgrim so bereft,
So weary at his journey's end!
What joy must then have filled his soul
To reach at last such happy goal—
To find—oh, such a friend!…
And then night came, and from his bed
He saw the sea, moonlit and bright,
And dreamed there came, to bless her son,
His mother, with her little one,
Adown that path of light.
Ah, greater blessing I'd not crave,
When my life's pilgrimage is o'er,
Than such repose, content, and love;
Some shining path that leads above
To dear ones gone before!
LOUELLA C. POOLE
WITH WAVES AND WINGS
WAVES and Wings and Growing Things!
As through the gladden sight ye flow
And flit and glow,
Ye win me so
In soul to go,
I too am waves, I too am wings,
And kindred motion in me springs.
With thee I pass, glad growing grass!—
I climb the air with lissome mien;
Unsheathing keen
The vivid sheen
Of springing green,
I thrill the crude, exalt the crass
Fine-flex'd and fluent from Earth's mass.
And impulse craves with thee, Sea Waves!—
To make all mutable the floor
Of Earth's firm shore,
With flashing pour
Whose brimming o'er
Impassion'd motion loves and laves
And livens sombre slumbering caves.
Then soaring where the wild birds fare,
My song would sweep the windy lyre
Of Heaven's choir,
Pulsing desire
For starry fire,
Abashing chilling vagues of air
With throbbing of warm breasts that dare!
CHARLOTTE PORTER
BLUEBERRIES
UPON the hills of Garlingtown
Beneath the summer sky,
In many pleasant pastures
On sunny slopes and high,
Their skins abloom with dusty blue,
Asleep, the berries lie.
And all the lads of Garlingtown,
And all the lasses too,
Still climb the tranquil hillsides,
A merry, barefoot crew;
Still homeward plod with unfilled pails
And mouths of berry blue.
And all the birds of Garlingtown,
When flocking back to nest,
Remember well the patches
Where berries are the best;
They pick the ripest ones at dawn
And leave the lads the rest.
Upon the hills of Garlingtown
When berry-time was o'er,
I looked into the sunset,
And saw an open door,
And from the hills of Garlingtown
I went, and came no more.
FRANK PRENTICE RAND
NOCTURNE
NIGHT of infinite power and infinite silence and space,
From you may mortals infer, if ever, the scope divine!
The jealous sun conceals all but his arrogant face,
You bid the Milky Way and a million suns to shine.
Each star to numberless planets gives light and motion and heat,
But you enmantle them all, the nearest and most remote;
And the lustres of all the suns are but spangles under your feet,—
Mere bubbles and beads of noon, they circle and shine and float.
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
ENVOI
I WALKED with poets in my youth,
Because the world they drew
Was beautiful and glorious
Beyond the world I knew.
The poets are my comrades still,
But dearer than in youth,
For now I know that they alone
Picture the world of truth.
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
THERE WHERE THE SEA
THERE where the sea enwrapt
A strip of land and wind-swept dune,
Where nature was quiescent in the glimmering
Noonday sun of early June,—
The Placid sea lay shimmering
In a mist of blue,
From which the sky now drew
Its wealth of hue and colour;
One heard but the deep breathing of the ocean,
As it breathed along the shore in even motion.
Among the pines and listless of the scene,
Atthis and Alcaeus lay,
Within the heart of each a hunger
For the unknown gift of life.
Here from day to day
They met and dreamed away
The soft unfloding days of spring,—
Now turning to the summer.
Aleaeus:
I am faint with all the fire
In my blood,
And I would plunge into the quiet blue
And lose all sense of time and you.
Atthis:
I, too, would plunge
And swim with you!
Doffing her robe, the maid stood in her beauty,
Calm and sure and unafraid,
The sinuous splendour of her limbs,
A silent symphony of curving line,
Which reached its final note
In breast and rounded throat.
He had not known that flesh could be so fair;
Each movement which she made
Wove o'er his sense a deeper spell,
Her beauty swept him like a flame
And caught him unaware.
She looked into his eyes, then dropping hers
Before that burning gaze,
Softly turned and crept with sunlit shoulders
Down among the boulders,
To the sea.
Secure within its covering depth
She called to him to follow.
She led him out along the tide,
With swift unerring stroke,
Nor paused till he was at her side.
With conquering arm
He seized her and from her brow
Tossed back the dripping locks, and sought her lips—
Her eyes closed,—
As all her body yielded to his kiss.
Then home he bore her to the shore,
Within his heart a song of triumph;
In hers, a new-born joy of womanhood.
So spring for them passed on to summer.
MARIE TUDOR
MARRIAGE
YOU, who have given me your name,
And with your laws have made me wife,
To share your failures and your fame,
Whose word has made me yours for life.
What proof have you that you hold me?
That in reality I'm one
With you, through all eternity?
What proof when all is said and done?
In spite of all the laws you've made,
I'm free. I am no part of you.
But wait-the last word is not said;
You're mine, for I'm myself and you.
All through my veins there flows your blood,
In you there is no part of me.
By virtue of my motherhood
Through me you live eternally.
MARIE TUDOR
PITY
Oh do not Pity me because I gave
My heart when lovely April with a gust,
Swept down the singing lanes with a cool wave;
And do not pity me because I thrust
Aside your love that once burned as a flame.
I was as thirsty as a windy flower
That bares its bosom to the summer shower
And to the unremembered winds that came.
Pity me most for moments yet to be,
In the far years, when some day I shall turn
Toward this strong path up to our little door
And find it barred to all my ecstasy.
No sound of your warm voice the winds have borne—
Only the crying sea upon the shore.
HAROLD VINAL
A ROSE TO THE LIVING
A ROSE to the living is more
Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead;
In filling love's infinite store,
A rose to the living is more,
If graciously given before
The hungering spirit is fled,—
A rose to the living is more
Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.
NIXON WATERMAN
THE STORM
SHE reached for sunset fires,
And lived with stars and the sea,
The mountains for her temple,
The storm for priest had she.
Together a libation
They poured to the God she knew,
Such wine as ageless heavens
And lonely wisdom brew.
Now she has done with worship,
For her all rites are the same;
Yet the storm keeps green forever
The moss upon her name.
G. O. WARREN
WHERE THEY SLEEP
THE fog inrolling, dark and still
Lies deep upon the crowded dead
As flooding sea upon the sands,
And quenches starlight overhead.
Long have they slept. Their separate dust
Has mingled with a nameless mould.
Only the slower-crumbling stones
Still tell so much as may be told.
And now in shoreless fog adrift
Like some lone mariner gliding by,
I lean above the drowning graves
And wonder when I too shall lie
Where evermore the tides of night
And earth will hide my lonely rest;
And Time will bid my love forget
To read the stone upon my breast.
G. O. WARREN
BEAUTY
NOT flesh alone am I, when I can be
So swiftly caught in Beauty's shimmering thread
Whose slender fibres, woven, held by me,
With their frail strength my following heart have led.
Yea, not all mortal, not all death my mind,
When, watching by lone twilight waters' brim
I tremblingly decipher, as they wind,
Her deathless hieroglyphs, though strange and dim.
So for this faith, when Thou my dust shalt bring
To dust, remember well, Great Alchemist,
Yearly to change my wintry earth to spring,
That I with Beauty still may keep my tryst.
G. O. WARREN
COMRADES
WHERE are the friends that I knew in my
Maying,
In the days of my youth, in the first of my
roaming?
We were dear; we were leal; O, far we went
straying;
Now never a heart to my heart comes homing!—
Where is he now, the dark boy slender
Who taught me bare-back, stirrup and reins?
I love him; he loved me; my beautiful, tender
Tamer of horses on grass-grown plains.
Where is he now whose eyes swam brighter,
Softer than love, in his turbulent charms;
Who taught me to strike, and to fall, dear fighter,
And gather me up in his boyhood arms;
Taught me the rifle, and with me went riding,
Suppled my limbs to the horseman's war;
Where is he now, for whom my heart's biding,
Biding, biding—but he rides far!
O love that passes the love of woman!
Who that hath felt it shall ever forget
When the breath of life with a throb turns human,
And a lad's heart is to a lad's heart set?
Ever, forever, lover and rover—
They shall cling, nor each from other shall part
Till the reign of the stars in the heavens be 'over,
And life is dust in each faithful heart.
They are dead, the American grasses under;
There is no one now who presses my side;
By the African chotts I am riding asunder,
And with great joy ride I the last great ride.
I am fey; I am fein of sudden dying;
Thousands of miles there is no one near;
And my heart—all the night it is crying, crying
In the bosoms of dead lads darling-dear.
Hearts of my music—them dark earth covers;
Comrades to die, and to die for, were they;
In the width of the world there were no such rovers—
Back to back, breast to breast, it was ours to stay;
And the highest on earth was the vow that we cherished,
To spur forth from the crowd and come back never more,
And to ride in the track of great souls perished
Till the nests of the lark shall roof us o'er.
Yet lingers a horseman on Altai highlands,
Who hath joy of me, riding the Tartar glissade,
And one, far faring o'er orient islands
Whose blood yet glints with my blade's accolade;
North, west, east, I fling you my last hallooing,
Last love to the breasts where my own has bled;
Through the reach of the desert my soul leaps pursuing
My star where it rises a Star of the Dead.
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
THE FLIGHT
I
O WILD HEART, track the land's perfume,
Beach-roses and moor-heather!
All fragrances of herb and bloom
Fail, out at sea, together.
O follow where aloft find room
Lark-song and eagle-feather!
All ecstasies of throat and plume
Melt, high on yon blue weather.
O leave on sky and ocean lost
The flight creation dareth;
Take wings of love, that mounts the most:
Find fame, that furthest fareth!
Thy flight, albeit amid her host
Thee, too, night star-like beareth,
Flying, thy breast on heaven's coast,
The infinite outweareth.
II
"Dead o'er us roll celestial fires;
Mute stand Earth's ancient beaches;
Old thoughts, old instincts, old desires,
The passing hour outreaches;
The soul creative never tires—
Evokes, adores, beseeches;
And that heart most the god inspires
Whom most its wildness teaches.
"For I will course through falling years
And stars and cities burning;
And I will march through dying cheers
Past empires unreturning;
Ever the world flame reappears
Where mankind power is earning,
The nations' hopes, the people's tears,
One with the wild heart yearning.
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
*****
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