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Title: Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

Editor: William Stanley Braithwaite

Release date: August 1, 2000 [eBook #2294]

Most recently updated: March 25, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Susan L. Farley

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS ***

Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

by

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

Contents

HOME BOUND—JOSEPH AUSLANDER

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL—KATHERINE LEE BATES

YELLOW CLOVER—KATHERINE LEE BATES

THE RETURNING—SYLVESTER BAXTER

TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL—ERNEST BENSHIMOL

A BANQUET—ERNEST BENSHIMOL

SONG—GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE WORLDS—MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

THE RIOT—GAMALIEL BRADFORD

HUNGER—GAMALIEL BRADFORD

EXIT GOD—GAMALIEL BRADFORD

ROUSSEAU—GAMALIEL BRADFORD

JOHN MASEFIELD—AMY BRIDGMAN

1620-1920—LE BARON RUSSEL BRIGGS

THE CROSS-CURRENT—ABBIE FARWELL BROWN

CANDLEMAS—ALICE BROWN

SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN—ALICE BROWN

BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE—ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT

FOUR FOUNTAINS. AFTER RESPIGHI—JESSICA CARR

IN THE TROLLEY CAR—RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY

IN IRISH RAIN—MARTHA HASKELL CLARK

CRETONNE TROPICS—GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

TO HILDA OF HER ROSES—GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

DANDELION—HILDA CONKLING

RED ROOSTER—HILDA CONKLING

VELVETS—HILDA CONKLING

THE MOODS—FANNY STEARNS DAVIS

HILL-FANTASY—FANNY STEARNS DAVIS

THE MIRAGE—NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN—MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.

THE LILAC—WALTER PRICHARD EATON

GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE—CHARLES GIBSON

TO MUSIC—MAUDE GORDON-ROBY

THE VOICE IN THE SONG—MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON

HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE—CAROLINE HAZARD

REUBEN ROY—HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS

COUNTRY ROAD—MARIE LOUISE HERSEY

WREATHS—CAROLYN HILLMAN

MEMPHIS—GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN

SAINT COLUMBKILLE—E.J.V. HUIGINN

MISS DOANE—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

FALLEN FENCES—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

CROSS-CURRENTS—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

THE FAREWELL—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

SONG—OLIVER JENKINS

LOVE AUTUMNAL—OLIVER JENKINS

ECHOES—RUTH LAMBERT JONES

WAR PICTURES—RUTH LAMBERT JONES

AN OLD SONG—ARTHUR KETCHUM

ROADSIDE REST—ARTHUR KETCHUM

OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP—AGNES LEE

MOTHERHOOD—AGNES LEE

ESSEX—GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE SONG OF THE WAVE—GEORGE CABOT LODGE

FRIMAIRE—AMY LOWELL

PATTERNS—AMY LOWELL

A BATHER—AMY LOWELL

LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS—DENNIS A. MCCARTHY

L’ENVOI—DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN

TO IMAGINATION—DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN

DRAGON—JEANETTE MARKS

GREEN GOLDEN DOOR—JEANETTE MARKS

SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD—JOHN CLAIR MINOT

THE SWORD OF ARTHUR—JOHN CLAIR MINOT

THE DIVINE FOREST—CHARLES R. MURPHY

MAGIC—EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

MICHAEL PAT—EDWARD J. O’BRIAN

SONG—EDWARD J. O’BRIAN

IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE—NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONNOR

EVENSONG—NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONNOR

THE PROPHET—JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

HARVEST-MOON: 1914—JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM—LILLA CABOT PERRY

THREE QUATRAINS—LILLA CABOT PERRY

A VALENTINE UNSENT—MARGARET PERRY

SHIPBUILDERS—ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER

UNFADING PICTURES—LOUELLA C. POOLE

WITH WAVES AND WINGS—CHARLOTTE PORTER

BLUEBERRIES—FRANK PRENTICE RAND

NOCTURNE—WILLIAM ROSCOIE THAYER

ENVOI—WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER

THERE WHERE THE SEA—MARIE TUDOR

MARRIAGE—MARIE TUDOR

PITY—HAROLD VINAL

A ROSE TO THE LIVING—NIXON WATERMAN

THE STORM—G.O. WARREN

WHERE THEY SLEEP—G.O. WARREN

BEAUTY—G.O. WARREN

COMRADES—GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

THE FLIGHT—GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

HOME-BOUND

The moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips,

The water makes a quietness of sound;

Night is an anchoring of many ships

Home-bound.

There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs

Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin

The silence into nets, and tenanters

Move softly in.

I step on shadows riding through the grass,

And feel the night lean cool against my face;

And challenged by the sentinel of space,

I pass.

JOSEPH AUSLANDER

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,

Those stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America!

God mend thine every flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

America! America!

May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness,

And every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

KATHERINE LEE BATES

YELLOW CLOVER

Must I, who walk alone,

come on it still,

This Puck of plants

The wise would do away with,

The sunshine slants

To play with,

Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,

Which once in Parting for a time

That then seemed long,

Ere time for you was over,

We sealed our own?

Do you remember yet,

O Soul beyond the stars,

Beyond the uttermost dim bars

Of space,

Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,

Remember by love’s grace,

In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,

How suddenly we halted in our climb,

Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,

Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,

And gave them as a token

Each to Each,

In lieu of speech,

In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,

Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet

With a strange dew of tears?

So it began,

This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,

To be our tenderest language. All the years

It lent a new zest to the summer hours,

As each of us went scheming to surprise

The other with our homely, laureate flowers.

Sonnets and odes

Fringing our daily roads.

Can amaranth and asphodel

Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?

Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,

Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,

Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,

Simplicities of mirth,

Must follow them above

With touches of vague homesickness that pass

Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.

Beneath some foreign arch of sky,

How many a time the rover

You or I,

For life oft sundered look from look,

And voice from voice, the transient dearth

Schooling my soul to brook

This distance that no messages may span,

Would chance

Upon our wilding by a lonely well,

Or drowsy watermill,

Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,

Or where the nightingales of old romance

With tragical contraltos fill

Dim solitudes of infinite desire;

And once I joyed to meet

Our peasant gadabout

A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,

Twinkling a saucy eye

As potentates paced by.

Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame

From friendship’s altar fire!

How proudly we would pluck and tame

The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!

How swiftly they were sent

Far, far away

On journeys wide,

By sea and continent,

Green miles and blue leagues over,

From each of us to each,

That so our hearts might reach,

And touch within the yellow clover,

Love’s letter to be glad about

Like sunshine when it came!

My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;

Let love then make me brave

To bear the keen hurts of

This careless summertide,

Ay, of our own poor flower,

Changed with our fatal hour,

For all its sunshine vanished when you died;

Only white clover blossoms on your grave.

KATHERINE LEE BATES

THE RETURNING

We long for her, we yearn for her—

Yes, ardently we yearn

For her return.

Recalling those beloved days

(Days intimate with ways

Of friends so near to us

And life so dear to us),

We yearn unspeakably for her return.

And come she must… Yet while we trust

We soon may see the passing of this agony

Which makes intrusive years still seem

A fearsome dream,

We know that when she comes

She really comes not back again.

She’ll come in other guise

And under fairer skies—

And yet to bitter pain!

That day she went away

Our homes with laughing youth were filled.

Where then was happiness

Is now distress,

The laughter stilled;

For when she left

Youth followed her—

We stay bereft.

So all our golden joy

For what she brings

Must carry gray alloy:

The sorrow that she can not lay,

The mysery that she can not stay—

While all the gladsome songs she sings

Must bear for undertones

Old sighs and echoed moans.

As they who go away

In flush of youth

May come quite worn and gray

And bringing naught but ruth—

So, when the strife shall cease,

And when she comes at last,

When all the armies vast

Shall at her feet

Kneel down to greet

Thrice welcome Peace,

This world will be so changed

(So many dear ones dead,

So many friends estranged,

So many blessings fled,

So many wonted ways forever barred,

So many coming days forever marred)

That then

She truly comes not back again—

She, the Peace we knew.

Yet how we long for her!

How ardently we yearn

For her return!

SYLVESTER BAXTER

TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL

I.

YOUTH

I love to watch the world from here, for all

The numberless living portraits that are drawn

Upon the mind. Far over is the sea,

Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes,

A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green,

With brackish gullies wandering in between,

All this from the hill.

And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars,

Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun

A field of daises wandering in the wind

As though a hidden serpent glided through,

A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then

The dusty road and the abodes of men

Surrounding the hill.

How small the enclosure is wherein there lives

Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail

Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea,

From that far place to where in state the turf

Raises a throne for me upon the hill,

Each little love and lust of a living thing

Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring

And seen from the hill.

II.

AGE

Why did I build my cottage on a hill

Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope

Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope,

Surging and sweeping,

laughing and leaping,

Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore,

Rustling the sands that know my step no more,

I should have found a valley, deep and still,

To shelter me.

There flows the river, and it seems asleep

So far away,

Yet I remember whip of wave and roar

Of wind that rose and smote against the oar,

Smote and retreated,

Proud but defeated,

While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine,

Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line

The great cod quivering from the deep

As counterplay.

What is the solace of these hills and vales

That rise and fall?

What is there glorious in the greenwood glen,

Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren?

Give me the gusty,

Raucous and rusty

Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky,

The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die,

Give me the life that follows the bending sails,

Or none at all!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

A BANQUET

ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES

After the song the love, and after the love the play,

Flute girl and pretty boy blowing

Bubbles of sparkling

Wine into darkling

Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but fast growing

Foolish, with less of a stately

Reserve that held them sedately.

Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it,

The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.

After the feast the night, and after the night the day,

Fool and philosopher stirring

With the day dawning,

Stretching and yawning,

While in each wine-throbbing, desolate brain is the wheeling and whirring

Of thousands of bats, that the slaking

Of throats will not hinder from aching,

No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting,

But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

SONG

Out of one heart the birds and I together,

Earth hushed in twilight,

Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver,

Gemmed with the sky-light,

Under the great wet star

Shaking with light, we jar

Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.

While under the margined world the slow sun lingers,

Flaming earth’s portal,

Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers—

Earth is immortal!

While the frail beauty dies.

Dream in the dreamer’s eyes,

All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.

Hark, ’tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it;

Northern, gigantic,—

Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam

Down the Atlantic;

Leaves from the autumn’s store

Shrill at my desert door,

They and I out of one heart that is grieving.

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE WORLDS

I saw an idler on a summer day

Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;

And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,

And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams,

His rainbow rising from his radiant task,

To throw its magic prism beams

O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world

Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,

His skyward pinions ever closer furled

Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be

Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;

I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea

Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child—

I saw a saint among his fellow men—

Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled

And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly

In their ethereal remoteness swung,

Than these near human orbits wherein we

Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

“Love seek through all—less there be one

Least soul unlit within the night—

And over all, the selfsame sun

Give each creation light!”

MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

THE RIOT

You may think my life is quiet.

I find it full of change,

An ever-varied diet,

As piquant as ’tis strange.

Wild thoughts are always flying,

Like sparks across my brain,

Now flashing out, now dying,

To kindle soon again.

Fine fancies set me thrilling,

And subtle monsters creep

Before my sight unwilling:

They even haunt my sleep.

One broad, perpetual riot

Enfolds me night and day.

You think my life is quiet?

You don’t know what you say.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

HUNGER

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint,

Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint,

And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins,

A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.

I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell,

Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell,

Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks,

Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.

I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn

With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn.

There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod.

I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

EXIT GOD

Of old our father’s God was real,

Something they almost saw,

Which kept them to a stern ideal

And scourged them into awe.

They walked the narrow path of right

Most vigilantly well,

Because they feared eternal night

And boiling depths of Hell.

Now Hell has wholly boiled away

And God become a shade.

There is no place for him to stay

In all the world He made.

The followers of William James

Still let the Lord exist,

And call Him by imposing names,

A venerable list.

But nerve and muscle only count,

Gray matter of the brain,

And an astonishing amount

Of inconvenient pain.

I sometimes wish that God were back

In this dark world and wide;

For though some virtues He might lack,

He had his pleasant side.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

ROUSSEAU

That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau,

Declared himself unique.

How men persist in doing so,

Puzzles me more than Greek.

The sins that tarnish whore and thief

Beset me every day.

My most ethereal belief

Inhabits common clay.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

JOHN MASEFIELD

I

MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)

God said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay:

“Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make

This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take

A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh

A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may

Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake,

I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake

The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.

A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear;

Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find

Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind;

His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon;

When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear:

“Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!”

II

HIS PORTRAIT

A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes,

I trow, the Master looked across the lake,—

Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make

Of Him the world’s historic sacrifice;

Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise;

Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake

And wander yet; all, weary men who brake

Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise:

Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew;

Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all,

In Masefield’s eyes you lodge; and to the wall

I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make

Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too.

Wherein the sad world’s sadder for your sake.

III

HIS “DAUBER”

O Masefield’s “Dauber!” You, who being dead,

Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul,

Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll

Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed,

Serenely rest, assured that who has read

What you would fain have pictured of the Pole

Would gladly match your part against the whole

Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred.

And more than this: if you, indeed, are his,

Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours;

For, marked and credited by what endures,

Were it the only thing, which bears his name,

(O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!)

“The Dauber” has brought Masefield to his fame.

IV

HIS “GALLIPOLI”

“Small wonder,” speaks my pensive self, “that he

Whose passion ’tis to sing of men who fail,—

(Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail)

Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli

His fervent text, for could there be

A costlier failure in Earth’s shuddering tale?

Think of heroic Sulva’s bloody swale;

Of Anzac’s tortured thirst and agony!”

But as I read, protesting voices cry: “Not we,

Not we, who fell among the daffodils,

Who conquered Death among those blistered hills,

And found our glory after mortal pain;

Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli;

The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!”

V

HIS MEAD

So, Masefield, have your royal words once more

Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due;

Your great elegiac, tragically true,

Must leave all Britain prouder than before;

And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore,

And all that anguished consciences must rue,

One arrowed gladness surely pierces through

From London’s centre to Canadian shore:

When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli,

When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke

And all the splendid Youth her error took

As hostage from the fields of daffodils,

Let this a present, living solace be:

You are not sleeping in those cruel hills!

AMY BRIDGEMAN

1620-1920

Before him rolls the dark, relentless ocean;

Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands;

Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion

The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands;

“God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us

Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and sword;

Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us

To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord;

“God, who hast send Thy truth to shine before us,

A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea;

God, who hast spread thy wings of mercy o’er us;

God, who hast set our children’s children free,

“Freedom Thy new-born nation here shall cherish;

Grant us Thy covenant, changing, sure:

Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish;

Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure.”

Face to the Indian arrows.

Face to the Prussian guns,

From then till now the Pilgrim’s vow

Has held the Pilgrim’s sons.

He braved the red man’s ambush,

He loosed the black man’s chain;

His spirit broke King George’s yoke

And the battleships of Spain.

He crossed the seething ocean;

He dared the death-strewn track;

He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel

And hurled the tyrant back.

For the voice of the lonely Pilgrim

Who knelt upon the strand

A people hears three hundred years

In the conscience of the land.

Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage,

Conscience, all hail!

Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrims,

Thou shalt prevail.

Look how the empires rise and fall!

Athens robed in her learning and beauty,

Rome in her royal lust for power—

Each has flourished for her little hour,

Risen and fallen and ceased to be.

What of her by the Western Sea,

Born and bred as the child of Duty,

Sternest of them all?

She it is and she alone

Who built on faith as her corner stone;

Of all the nations none but she

Knew that the truth shall make us free.

Daughter of Courage, mother of heros,

Freedom divine.

Light of New England, Star of the Pilgrim,

Still shalt thou shine.

Yet even as we in our pride rejoice,

Hark to the prophet’s warning voice:

“The Pilgrim’s thrift is vanished

And the Pilgrim’s faith is dead,

And the Pilgrim’s God is banished,

And Mammon reigns in his stead;

And work is damned as an evil,

And men and women cry,

In their restless haste, ‘Let us spend and waste,

And live; for to-morrow we die.’

“And law is trampled under;

And the nations stand aghast,

As they hear the distant thunder

Of the storm that marches fast;

And we,—whose ocean borders

Shut off the sound and the sight,

We will wait for marching orders;

The world has seen us fight;

We have earned our days of revel;

‘On with the dance’! we cry.

It is pain to think; we will eat and drink!

And live; for to-morrow we die.”

“We have laughed in the eyes of danger;

We have given our bravest and best;

We have succored the starving stranger;

Others shall heed the rest.’

And the revel never ceases;

And the nations hold their breath;

And our laughter peals, and the mad world reels,

To a carnival of death.

“Slaves of sloth and the senses,

Clippers of Freedom’s wings,

Come back to the Pilgrim’s Army

And fight for the King of Kings;

Come back to the Pilgrim’s conscience;

Be born in the nation’s birth;

And strive again as simple men

For the freedom of the earth.

Freedom a free-born nation still shall cherish,

Be this our covenant, unchanging, sure:

Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish;

Freedom and Truth immortal shall endure.”

Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages,

When the wide earth is racked with war and crime,

Founded forever on the Rock of Ages,

Beaten in vain by surging seas of time,

Even as the shallop on the breakers riding,

Even as the Pilgrim kneeling on the shore,

Firm in thy faith and fortitude abiding,

Hold thou thy children free forever more.

And when we sail as Pilgrims’ sons and daughters

The spirit’s Mayflower into seas unknown,

Driving across the waste of wintry waters

The voyage every soul shall make alone,

The Pilgrim’s faith, the Pilgrim’s courage grant us;

Still shines the truth that for the Pilgrim shone.

We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us.

The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on!

LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS

THE CROSS-CURRENT

Through twelve stout generations

New England blood I boast;

The stubborn pastures bred them,

The grim, uncordial coast,

Sedate and proud old cities,—

Loved well enough by me,

Then how should I be yearning

To scour the earth and sea.

Each of my Yankee forbears

Wed a New England mate:

They dwelt and did and died here,

Nor glimpsed a rosier fate.

My clan endured their kindred;

But foreigners they loathed,

And wandering folk, and minstrels,

And gypsies motley-clothed.

Then why do patches please me,

Fantastic, wild array?

Why have I vagrant fancies

For lads from far away.

My folk were godly Churchmen,—

Or paced in Elders’ weeds;

But all were grave and pious

And hated heathen creeds.

Then why are Thor and Wotan

To dread forces still?

Why does my heart go questing

For Pan beyond the hill?

My people clutched at freedom.—

Though others’ wills they chained,—

But made the Law and kept it,—

And Beauty, they restrained.

Then why am I a rebel

To laws of rule and square?

Why would I dream and dally,

Or, reckless, do and dare?

O righteous, solemn Grandsires,

O dames, correct and mild,

Who bred me of your virtues!

Whence comes this changing child?—

The thirteenth generation,—

Unlucky number this!—

My grandma loved a Pirate,

And all my faults are his!

A gallant, ruffled rover,

With beauty-loving eye,

He swept Colonial waters

Of coarser, bloodier fry.

He waved his hat to danger,

At Law he shook his fist.

Ah, merrily he plundered,

He sang and fought and kissed!

Though none have found his treasure,

And none his part would take,—

I bless that thirteenth lady

Who chose him for my sake!

ABBIE FARWELL BROWN

CANDLEMAS

O hearken, all ye little weeds

That lie beneath the snow,

(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)

The sun hath risen for royal deeds,

A valiant wind the vanguard leads;

Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds

Before ye rise and blow.

O furry living things, adream

On winter’s drowsy breast,

(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)

Arise and follow where a gleam

Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,

And all the woodland windings seem

With sweet expectance blest.

My birds, come back! the hollow sky

Is weary for your note.

(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)

Ere May’s soft minions hereward fly,

Shame on ye, Laggards, to deny

The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,

The tawny, shining coat!

ALICE BROWN

SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN

O swift forerunners, rosy with the race!

Spirits of dawn, divinely manifest

Behind your blushing banners in the sky,

Daring invaders of Night’s tenting-ground,

How do ye strain on forward-bending foot,

Each to be first in heralding of joy!

With silence sandalled, so they weave their way,

And so they stand, with silence panoplied,

Chanting, through mystic symbollings of flame,

Their solemn invocation to the light.

O changeless guardians! O ye wizard first!

What strenuous philter feeds your potency.

That thus ye rest, in sweet wood-hardiness,

Ready to learn of all and utter naught?

What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite

To odorous hot lendings of the heart?

What wind-but all the winds are yet afar,

And e’en the little tricksy zephyr sprites,

That fleet before them, like their elfin locks,

Have lagged in sleep, nor stir nor waken yet

To pluck the robe of patient majesty.

Too still for dreaming, too divine for sleep,

So range the firs, the constant, fearless ones.

Warders of mountain secrets, there they wait,

Each with his cloak about him, breathless, calm.

And yet expectant, as who knows the dawn,

And all night thrills with memory and desire,

Searching in what has been for what shall be:

The marvel of the ne’er familiar day,

Sacred investiture of life renewed,

The chrism of dew, the coronal of flame.

Low in the valley lies the conquered rout

Of man’s poor, trivial turmoil, lost and drowned

Under the mist, in gleaming rivers rolled,

Where oozy marsh contends with frothing main.

And rounding all, springs one full, ambient arch,

One great good limpid world—so still, so still!

For no sound echoes from its crystal curve

Save four clear notes, the song of that lone bird

Who, brave but trembling, tries his morning hymn,

And has no heart to finish, for the awe

And wonder of this pearling globe of dawn.

Light, light eternal! veiling-place of stars!

Light, the revealer of dread beauty’s face!

Weaving whereof the hills are lambent clad!

Mighty libation to the Unknown God!

Cup whereat pine-trees slake their giant thirst

And little leaves drink sweet delirium!

Being and breath and potion! living soul

And all-informing heart of all that lives!

How can we magnify thine awful name

Save by its chanting: Light! and Light! and Light!

An exhalation from far sky retreats,

It grows in silence, as ’twere self-create,

Suffusing all the dusky web of night.

But one lone corner it invades not yet,

Where low above a black and rimy crag

Hangs the old moon, thin as a battered shield,

The holy, useless shield of long-past wars,

Dinted and frosty, on the crystal dark.

But lo! the east,—let none forget the east,

Pathway ordained of old where He should tread.

Through some sweet magic common in the skies,

The rosy banners are with saffron tinct;

The saffron grows to gold, the gold is fire,

And led by silence more majestical

Than clash of conquering arms, He comes! He comes!

He holds His spear benignant, sceptrewise,

And strikes out flame from the adoring hills.

ALICE BROWN

BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE

Burnt are the petals of life as a rose fallen and crumbled to dust.

Blackened the heart of the past is, ashes that must

Forever be sifted, more precious than sunbeams that

open the budding to-morrow.

Once was a passion completed,-too perfect, the

Gods have not broken to borrow—

Blackened the heart of the past is, ashes that must

Forever be sifted. O, loving to-morrow

The rose of the past is, Life-Eternity’s dust.

ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT

FOUR FOUNTAINS AFTER RESPIGHI

Fresh mists of Roman dawn;

For water search the cattle;

Faintly on damp air sounds the shepherd’s horn

Above fountain Giulia’s prattle.

Triton, joyous and loud

Of Naiads summons troops;

A frenziedly leaping and mingling crowd,

Dancing, pursuing groups.

At high noon the trumpets peal,

Neptune’s chariot passes by;

Trains of sirens, tritons, Trevi’s jets heal

Then trumpets’ echoes sigh.

Tolling bell and sunset,

Twittering birds and calm;

Medici’s fountain, shimmering net,

Into the night brings balm.

JESSICA CARR

IN THE TROLLEY CAR

The swart Italian in the trolley car,

Hoarded his children in his arms and breast;

The mother, all unheeding, sat afar,

Her splendid eyes were vague, her lips compressed.

One Raphael-boy slipped from his father’s knee,

Climbed to her side, and gently stroked her cheek,

She turned away, and would not hear his plea,

She turned away, and would not even speak.

With trembling lips the child crept back again

To the warm shelter of his father’s breast;

We looked indignant pity, for till then

We thought that mother-love bore every test.

We rose to go, the father-mother said,

In deep, low tones, “Don’t t’inka hard you bet

The younges’ was too-seeck, and he is dead,

She will be alla right, when she forget.”

When she forgets! “Great-Heart,” hold closer yet

Thy precious brood and let it feel no lack!

Until her soul shall wake, but not forget,

When the warm tides of love come surging back.

RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY

IN IRISH RAIN

The great world stretched its arms to me and held me to its breast,

They say I’ve song-birds in my throat, and give me of their best;

But sure, not all their gold can buy, can take me back again

To little Mag o’ Monagan’s a-singing in the rain.

The silver-slanting Irish rain, all warm and sweet that fills

The little brackened lowland pools, and drifts across the hills;

That turns the hill-grass cool and wet to dusty childish feet,

And hangs above the valley-roofs, filmed blue with burning peat.

And oh the kindly neighbor-folk that called the young ones in,

Down fragrant yellow-tapered paths that thread the prickly whin;

The hot, sweet smell of oaten-cake, the kettle purring soft,

The dear-remembered Irish speech—they call to me how oft!

They mind me just a slip o’ girl in tattered kirtle blue,

But oh they loved me for myself, and not for what I do!

And never one but had a joy to pass the time of day

With little Mag o’ Monagan’s a-laughing down the way.

There’s fifty roofs to shelter me where one was set before,

But make me free to that again—I’ll not be wanting more,

But sure I know not tears nor gold can turn the years again

To little Mag o’ Monagan’s a-singing in the rain.

MARTHA HASKELL CLARK

CRETONNE TROPICS

The cretonne in your willow chair

Shows through a zone of rosy air,

A tree of parrots, agate-eyed,

With blue-green crests and plumes of pride

And beaks most formidably curved.

I hear the river, silver-nerved,

To their shrill protests make reply,

And the palm forest stir and sigh.

Curious, the spell that colors cast,

Binding the fancy coweb-fast,

And you would smile if you could know

I like your cretonne parrots so!

But I have seen them sail toward night

Superbly homeward, the last light

Lifting them like a purple sea

Scorned and made use of arrogantly;

And I have heard them cry aloud

From out a tall palm’s emerald cloud;

And I brought home a brilliant feather,

Lost like a flake of sunset weather.

Here in the north the sea is white

And mother-of-pearl in morning light,

Quite lovely, but there is a glare

That daunts me.

Now the willow chair

Suggests a more perplexing sea,

Till my heart aches with memory

And parrots dye the air around,

And I forget the pallid Sound.

GRACE HAZARD

TO HILDA OF HER ROSES

Enough has been said about roses

To fill thirty thick volumes;

There are as many songs about roses

As there are roses in the world

That includes Mexico … the Azores … Oregon…

It is a pity your roses

Are too late for Omar…

It is a pity Keats has gone…

Yet there must be something left to say

Of flowers like these!

Adventurers,

They pushed their way

Through dewy tunnels of the June night

Now they confer….

A little tremulous….

Dazzled by the yellow sea-beach of morning

If Herrick would tiptoe back…

If Blake were to look this way

Ledwidge, even!

GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

DANDELION

O Little soldier with the golden helmet,

What are you guarding on my lawn?

You with your green gun

And your yellow beard,

Why do you stand so stiff?

There is only the grass to fight!

HILDA CONKLING

RED ROOSTER

Red rooster in your gray coop,

O stately creature with tail-feathers red and blue,

Yellow and black,

You have a comb gay as a parade

On your head:

You have pearl trinkets

On your feet:

The short feathers smooth along your back

Are the dark color of wet rocks,

Or the rippled green of ships

When I look at their sides through water.

I don’t know how you happened to be made

So proud, so foolish,

Wearing your coat of many colors,

Shouting all day long your crooked words,

Loud… sharp… not beautiful!

HILDA CONKLING

VELVETS

(BY A BED OF PANSIES)

This pansy has a thinking face

Like the yellow moon.

This one has a face with white blots;

I call him the clown.

Here goes one down the grass

With a pretty look of plumpness;

She is a little girl going to school

With her hands in the pockets of her pinafore.

Her name is Sue.

I like this one, in a bonnet,

Waiting,

Her eyes are so deep!

But these on the other side,

These that wear purple and blue,

They are the Velvets,

The king with his cloak,

The queen with her gown,

The prince with his feather.

These are dark and quiet

And stay alone.

I know you, Velvets,

Color of Dark,

Like the pine-tree on the hill

When stars shine!

HILDA CONKLING

THE MOODS

The Moods have laid their hands across my hair:

The Moods have drawn their fingers through my heart;

My hair shall never more lie smooth and bright,

But stir like tide-worn sea-weed, and my heart

Shall never more be glad of small sweet things,—

A wild rose, or a crescent moon,-a book

Of little verses, or a dancing child.

My heart turns crying from the rose and book,

My heart turns crying from the thin bright moon,

And weeps with useless sorrow for the child.

The Moods have loosed a wind to vex my hair,

And made my heart too wise, that was a child.

Now I shall blow like smitten candle-flame:

I shall desire all things that may not be:

The years, the stars, the souls of ancient men,

All tears that must, and smiles that may not be,—

Yes, glimmering lights across a windy ford,

And vagrant voices on a darkened plain,

And holy things, and outcast things, and things,

Far too remote, frail-bodied to be plain.

My pity and my joy are grown alike.

I cannot sweep the strangeness from my heart.

The Moods have laid swift hands across my hair:

The Moods have drawn swift fingers through my heart.

FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS

HILL-FANTASY

Sitteth by the red cairn a brown One, a hoofed One,

High upon the mountain, where the grasses fail.

Where the ash-trees flourish far their blazing bunches to the sun,

A brown One, a hoofed One, pipes against the gale.

I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering;

No one but the pine trees and the white birch knew.

Over rocks I scrambled, looked up and saw that Strange Thing,

Peakèd ears and sharp horns, pricked against the blue.

Oh, and, how he piped there! piped upon the high reeds

Till the blue air crackled like a frost-film on a pool!

Oh, and how he spread himself, like a child whom no one heeds,

Tumbled chuckling in the brook, all sleek and kind and cool!

He had berries ’twixt his horns, crimson-red as cochineal.,

Bobbing, wagging wantonly they tickled him, and oh,

How his deft lips puckered round the reed, and seemed to chase and steal

Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music low!

I said “Good-day, Thou!” He said, “Good-day, Thou!”

Wiped his reed against the spotted doe-skin on his back,

He said, “Come up here, and I will teach thee piping now.

While the earth is singing so, for tunes we shall not lack.”

Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me.

Up scrambled I. So we sat beside the cairn.

Broad into my face laughed that hornèd Thing so naughtily.

Oh, it was a rascal of a woodland Satyr’s bairn!

So blow, and so, Thou! Move thy fingers faster, look!

Move them like the little leaves and whirling midges. So!

Soon ’twill twist like tendrils and out-twinkle like the lost brook.

Move thy fingers merrily, and blow! Blow! Blow!”

Brown One! Hoofèd One! Beat time to keep me straight.

Kick it on the red stone, whistle in my ear.

Brush thy crimson berries in my face, then hold thy breath, for—wait!

Joy comes bubbling to my lips. I pipe, oh, hear!

Blue sky, art glad of us? Green wood, art glad of us?

Old hard-heart mountain, dost thou hear me, how I blow?

Far away the sea-isles swim in sun-haze luminous.

Each one has a color like the seven-splendored bow.

Wind, wind, wind, dost thou mind me how I pipe, Now?

Chipmunk chatt’ring in the beech, rabbit in the brake?

Furry arm around my neck: “Oh, Thou art a brave one, Thou!”

Satyr, little satyr-friend, my heart with joy doth ache!

Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music tremulous,

Water over steaming rocks, water in the shade,

Storm-tune and sun-tune, how they flock up unto us,

Sitting by the red cairn, gay and unafraid!

Brown One, Hoofèd One, give me nimble hoofs, Thou!

Give me furry fingers and a secret furry tail!

Pleasant are thy smooth horns: if their like were on my brow

Might I not abide here, till the strong sun fail?

Oh, the sorry brown eyes! Oh, the soft kind hand-touch,

Sudden brush of velvet ears across my wind-cool cheek!

“Play-mate, Pipe-mate, thou askest one good boon too much.

I could never find thee horns, though day-long I seek.

“Yet, keep the pipe, Thou: I will cut another one.

Keep the pipe and play on it for all the world to hear.

Ah, but it was good once to sit together in the sun!

Though I have but half a soul, it finds thee very dear!

“Wise Thing, Mortal Thing, yet my half-soul fears thee!

Take the pipe and go thy ways,—quick now, for the sun

Reels across the hot west and stumbles dazzled to the sea.

Take the pipe, and oh-one kiss! then run, run, run! run!”

Silence on the mountain. Lonely stands the high cairn,

All the leaves a-shivering, all the stones dead-gray.

O thou cold small pipe, which way is fled that Satyr’s bairn?

I am lost and all alone, and down drops the day.

I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering

There I got this Pipe o’ dreams. Strange, when I blow,

Something deep as human love starts a-crying, troubling.

Is it only sky-music, earth-music low?

FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS

THE MIRAGE

Across the Bay are low-lying cliffs,

Where stand fishermen’s cottages:

I can barely distinguish them with the naked eye.

But to-day the cliffs are lifted, escarpt,

Perpendicular, mysterious, inaccessible,

And those sordid dwellings have become

The magnificent fortified castles of Sea-kings.

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN

A road goes up a pleasant hill,

And a little house looks down:

Ah! but I see the roadway still

And the day I left the town.

The day I left my father’s home,

It’s many a year ago,

And a heart and hope were brave to roam

the long, long road I know.

The long, long road by hill and plain,

It’s tired the heart might be:

But hope stayed bright in sun or rain,

And a Voice that called to me.

A Voice that called me over the hill

And out of the little town:

Ah! but I see the roadway still.

And the good house looking down.

The house that spake me never a No!

As I started brave away,

But said with a blessing, Go!

And followed me every day.

It followed me down the road of years,

For a father’s heart is true,

And joy is sweet in a mother’s tears

For the deeds her child may do.

The poor little deeds, all powerless

For the Kingdom of God would be,

Save in His mercy will He bless

The road that goes with me:

The road that left a pleasant hill,

Where a little house looks down:

Ah! but I bless the roadway still,

And the land beyond the town.

MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.

THE LILAC

The scent of lilac in the air

Hath made him drag his steps and pause

Whence comes this scent within the Square,

Where endless dusty traffic roars?

A push-cart stands beside the curb,

With fragrant blossoms laden high;

Speak low, nor stare, lest we disturb

His sudden reverie!

He sees us not, nor heeds the din

Of clanging car and scuffling throng;

His eyes see fairer sights within,

And memory hears the robin’s song

As once it trilled against the day,

And shook his slumber in a room

Where drifted with the breath of May

The lilac’s sweet perfume.

The heart of boyhood in him stirs;

The wonder of the morning skies,

Of sunset gold behind the firs,

Is kindled in his dreaming eyes:

How far off is this sordid place,

As turning from our sight away

He crushes to his hungry face

A purple lilac spray.

WALTER PRICHARD EATON

GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE

God, through his offspring Nature, gave me love,

Though man in opposition saith me nay,

And taketh from my heart its life to-day,

As through the valley of the world I rove.

Still unaccompanied, within the grove

That doth enamored beings hold at play,

My spirit must pursue its lonely way,

And strive to pluck some flowers that bloom above.

Oh, wherefore then doth Nature give desire

To have that which mankind may not possess,

And force him to endure on earth hell’s fire,

And live in one perpetual distress?

Some evil power must such love inspire,

And with it masquerade in Cupid’s dress!

CHARLES GIBSON

TO MUSIC

“Music, the language, the atmosphere of the Soul.”

Fly back where Melodies like lilies grow,

My weary heart is bending low;

Fly higher yet to joyful realms above,

Where holy Angels dwell in love.

Fly higher still and hear the Angel throng

And bring to me their Glory-song:

Ah Music, thou and I above the World

May dwell where heaven with shining song is pearled!

While Sun and Moon and all the planets roll

I’ll love thee, Music, language of my soul!

Music-lark from on high, song that doth fly,

Spark of the sky!

MAUDE GORDON-ROBY

THE VOICE IN THE SONG

High in the apple bough jauntily swinging,

Hid by the branches in bridal array,

Straight from his heart, all his life in his singing,

Chants a wee bird, lures his mate with his lay.

“Sweet, sweet, my sweet,

Hear I entreat!

Say, love, together, this bright sunny weather,

Gold of the west we shall weave in a nest!

Have no fear! Trust me, dear!

Sunshine of May that will gild every day

Pledge I to thee if thou’lt harken to me.”

Lo! in the light thro’ the gay branches streaming,

Quivering in answer to all the bird sings,

Warm on a breath, leaps a soul with love gleaming,

Speeds to its mate on its glittering wings.

“Dear, on thy breast

Earth yields its best!

Loud in the singing I heard thy call ringing,

Pleading and strong in the voice of the song,

Whisper low,—Yes, just so!—

Softly revealing the depth of thy feeling,

Words in whose fire glow thy love and desire.”

MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON

HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE

I

MOUNT CARMEL

Where art Thou, O my Lord?

Mount Carmel saw the throng

Of priests and heard the song;

To Baal was their call—

From morn till night did fall.

Where art Thou, O my Lord?

Again Mount Carmel heard

Not in the spoken word,

Not in the earthquake’s shock,

Not in the rending rock

Where art Thou, O my Lord?

The still voice softly speaks;

Each soul it swiftly seeks

Not in the thunder roll,

But in the inmost soul.

II

VESPER HYMN

Send peaceful sleep, O Lord, this night,

To keep us till the morning light;

And let no vision of alarm

Come near to do Thy children harm

Within Thy circling arms we lie,

O God, in Thine infinity;

Our souls in quiet shall abide

Beset with love on every side.

III

THIS IS THAT BREAD

This is that Bread that came down from Heaven, he that eateth of this Bread shall live forever.

Bread on which angels feed,

Bread for the spirit’s need

By faith receiving,

New life do Thou impart,

New strength to every heart,

Pure love of God Thou art

To us believing.

IV

O SLOW OF HEART

O slow of heart to believe! Ought Christ not to have suffered these things and to enter into His Glory?

Quicken, Lord, my fainting heart,

Touch my eyes that they may see,

Let me know Thee as Thou art.

Life and Immortality.

V

ALL HAIL TO THEE, CHILD JESUS

All hail to Thee, child Jesus!

As the brooding darkness flies

At the swift approach of day,

Sun of righteousness, arise,

Chase the gloom of night away.

Great Prince of Peace, come to thine own,

And build in every heart Thy throne.

Come to shed Thy healing balm

On all nations of the earth,

Child Jesus, come with holy calm,

How we hail thy wondrous birth.

Great Prince of Peace, come to Thine own,

And build in every heart Thy throne.

All hail to Thee, Child Jesus!

VI

THE WINE-PRESS

Who is this that comes from Edom

In such glorious array,

With his festal garments gleaming,

Travelling on his royal way

With a face majestic, calm and grave?

I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

Why is thy apparel crimson,

Why is all thy garments’ pride

Stained as in the time of vintage

And with blood-red-color dyed?

Because of helpers I had none—

I have trodden the wine-press alone.

VII

WAKEN, SHEPHERDS!

(Angels) Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

(Shepherds) Waken, Shepherds, waken;

Whence this glowing light?

Ere the dawn of morning,

Solemn signs of warning

Portent of affright!

(Angels) Courage, Shepherds, courage!

Banish your dismay,

or ye all are saved.

In the town of David

Christ is born to-day.

(Shepherds) Harken, Shepherds, harken,

Hear the angels sing!

Jehovah sends a token,

He himself hath spoken

To proclaim our King.

(Angels) Hasten, Shepherds, hasten,

This shall be your sign;

Where the kine are stabled,

In a manger cradled

Lies the Child Divine.

(Shepherds and Angels) Angels, Shepherds, People,

Shout the glad refrain!

Joy to every nation

Bringing full salvation,

Christ has come to reign.

Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

CAROLINE HAZARD

REUBEN ROY

Little fellow, brown with wind—

I saw him in the street

Peering at numbers on the posts,

But most discreet:

For when a woman came outdoors,

Or slyly peeped instead,

He turned away, took off his hat,

And scratched his head.

I watched him from my garden-wall

Perhaps an hour or more,

For something in his attitude,

The clothes he wore,

Awoke the dimmest memories

Of when I was a boy

And knew the story of a man

Named Reuben Roy.

It seems that Reuben went to sea

The night his wife decried

The fence he built before their house

And up the side.

He wanted it but she did not,

Because it hid from view

The spot in which her mignonette

And tulips grew.

Nobody saw his face again,

But each year, unawares,

He sent a sum for taxes due—

And fence repairs.

My curiosity aroused,

I sauntered forth to see

Whether this individual

Were really he.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked

His eyes, like two bright pence,

Sparkled at mine; and then he said:

“A fence.”

“Somebody burned it Hallowe’en,

When people were in bed;

Before the judge could prosecute,

The culprit fled.”

Well, Reuben only touched his hat

And mumbled, “Thank you, Sir,”

And asked me whereabouts to find

A carpenter.

HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS

COUNTRY ROAD

I can’t forget a gaunt grey barn

Like a face without an eye

That kept recurring by field and tarn

Under a Cape Cod sky.

I can’t forget a woman’s hand,

Roughened and scarred by toil

That beckoned clear-eyed children tanned

By sun and wind and soil.

Beauty and hardship, bent and bound

Under the selfsame yoke:

Babies with bare knees plump and round

And stooping women folk.

MARIE LOUISE HERSEY

WREATHS

Red wreaths

Hang in my neighbor’s window,

Green wreaths in my own.

On this day I lost my husband.

On this day you lost your boy.

On this day

Christ was born.

Red wreaths,

Green wreaths

Hang in Our Windows

Red for a bleeding heart,

Green for grave grass.

Mary, mother of Jesus,

Look down and comfort us.

You too knew passion;

You too knew pain.

Comfort us,

Who are not brides of God,

Nor bore God.

On Christmas day

Hang wreaths,

Red for new pain.

Green for spent passion.

CAROLYN HILLMAN

MEMPHIS

Why should I sing of my present? It is nothing to me or you,

Rather I’d dream of Dixie and tie ships on the old bayou!

Rather I’d dream of my packets and the lazy river days,

Rather I’d dream of my levee and the crimson sunset haze,

Rather I’d dream of my triumphs, of the days that are long gone by,

Rather I’d dream of flame-tipped stacks against a saffron sky,

Of level lawns of topaz, of level fields of jade,

Of the rambling pillared mansions that my fathers’ fathers made!

Why should I sing of my present? It is nothing to you or me,

But the river road, the great road, the high road to the sea!

Aye, that is worth the dreaming, aye, that was worth the pain.

Send me back my river, and I shall wake again!

GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN

SAINT COLUMBKILLE

Columbkille! Saint Columbkille!

You naughty man, Saint Columbkille!

Why did you Finnian’s Psalter take

And secretly a copy make?

You know ’twas such a naughty thing

For one descended from a king

To lock himself into a cell,

’Twas far from right,-you knew it well,—

And copy Finnian’s Psalter through,

Against his will as well you knew.

And then to think a common bird

Should feel such shame, that when he heard

The breathing spy outside your door,

And felt your sainthood was no more,

Should through the crack attack the spy,

And in a rage pluck out his eye,

As if that saintly Irish crane

Would hide from all your Saintship’s stain.

I grieve to think that you did add

Sin unto sin; it is too bad.

For Finnian could not you persuade

To yield the copy that you made,

Until the King in his behalf

Ruled-“To each cow belongs her calf”:

And then you grew so mad you swore

On Erin’s face you’d look no more.

And crossed the sea the Picts to save,

Because you so did misbehave

To dear Saint Finnian: faith, ’twas ill

For you to act so, Columbkille!

A saint you were no doubt, no doubt!

What pity ’twas you were found out!

We know an angel (snob or fool?)

To Kiaran showed a common rule,

An axe, an auger, and a saw,

And told that saint it was the law

Of Heaven that Columbkille should be

Far, far above such saints as he;

For Columbkille contemned a crown,

While he these homely tools laid down,

To serve the Lord, and that the Lord

To each would give his due reward.

I wonder if that angel knew

That Christ these tools had laid down too.

O Columbkille! O Columbkille!

A saint like you must have his will,

But for myself I’d rather be

The common sinner that you see

Than make a crane ashamed of me,

And angels talk such idiocy.

E. J. V. HUIGINN

MISS DOANE

Miss Doane was sixty, probably;

She rented third floor room

That opened on an airshaft full

Of cooking smells and gloom.

She worked in philanthropic man’s

Well-known department store;

Cashiered in basement, hot and close,

For forty years or more.

Each night when she came home she’d stand

A moment in the hall,

Before she went into her room

With low and tender call.

And often I would hear her voice

Repeat a childish prayer;

Or read some old, old fairy tale

Of Princess, grand and fair.

One night I went to visit her

And spied, in little chair

A great wax doll, in dainty dress,

And curls of flaxen hair.

I praised the doll; its prettiness;

Miss Doane said, “I’m alone.

She comforts me. I wanted so

A child to call my own.”

Each night I heard her softly sing

A childish lullaby;

But once, and just before she died,

I heard her cry and cry!

WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

FALLEN FENCES

The woods grew dark; black shadows

rocked

And I could scarcely see

My way along the old tote road,

That long had seemed to me

To wind on aimlessly; but now

Came full to life; the rain

Would soon strike down; ahead I saw

A clearing, and a lane

Between gray, fallen fences and

Wide, grayer, grim stone walls;

So grim and gray I shrank from thought

Of weary, aching spalles.

On stony knoll great aspens swayed

And swung in browsing teeth

Of wind; slim, silvered yearlings shook

And shivered underneath.

Beyond, some ancient oak trees bent

And wrangled over roof

Of weatherbeaten house, and barn

Whose sag bespoke no hoof.

And ivy crawled up either end

Of house, to chimney, where

It lashed in futile anger at

The wind wolves of the air.

I thought the house abandoned, and

I ran to get inside,

When suddenly the old front door

was opened and flung wide

And she stood there, with hand on knob,

As I went swiftly in,

Then closed the door most softly on

The storm and shrieking din.

A space I stood and looked at her,

So young; ’twas passing strange

That fifty years or more had gone

And brought no new style’s change.

The sweetness, daintiness of her

In starched and dotted gown

Of creamy whiteness, over hoops,

With ruffles winding down!

We had not much to say, and yet

Of words I felt no lack;

Her smiles slipped into dimples, stopped

A moment, then dropped back.

I felt her pride of race; her taste

In silken rug and chair,

And quaintly fashioned furniture

Of patterns old and rare.

On window sill a rose bush stood;

’Twas bringing rose to bud;

One full bloomed there but yesterday,

Dropped petals, red as blood.

Quite soon, she asked to be excused

For just a moment, and

Went out, returning with a tray

In either slender hand.

My glance could not but linger on

Each thin and lovely cup;

“This came, dear thing, from home!” she sighed

The while she raised it up.

And when the storm was done and I

Arose, reluctantly

To go, she too was loath to have

Me go, it seemed to me.

When I reached old Joe Webber’s place,

Upon the Corner Road,

I went into the Upper Field

Where Joe, round-shouldered, hoed

Potatoes, culling them with hoe

And practised, calloused hand,

In rounded piles that brownly glowed

Upon the fresh-turned land.

“Say, Joe,” I said, “who is that girl

With beauty’s smiling charm,

That lives beyond that hemlock growth,

On that old grown-up farm?”

Joe listened, while I told him where

I’d been that afternoon,

Then straightened from his hoe, and hummed,

Before he spoke, a tune

“They cum ter thet old place ter live

Some sixty years ago;

Jest where they cum from, who they ware,

Wy, no one got to know.

“An’ then, one day, he hired Hen’s

Red racker an’ the gig;

We never heard from him nor could

We track the hoss or rig.

“Hen waited ’bout a week, an’ then

He went ter see the Wife;

He found her in thet settin’ room:

She’d taken of her life.

“An’ no one’s lived in thet house sence;

Some say ’tis haunted,-but

I ain’t no use fer foolishness,

So all I say’s tut! tut!”

WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

CROSS-CURRENTS

They wrapped my soul in eiderdown;

They placed me warm and snug

In carved chair; set me with care

Upon an old prayer rug.

They cased my feet in golden shoes

That hurt at toe and heel;

My restless feet, with youth all fleet,

Nor asked how they might feel.

And now they wonder where I am,

And search with shrill, cold cry;

But I crouch low where tall reeds grow,

And smile as they pass by!

WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

THE FAREWELL

What is more beautiful

Than thought, soul-fed,

That I may be the crimson of a rose

When dead?

My soul, so light a joy

And grief will be,

That it will gently press the brown earth down

On me.

WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON

SONG

Let me be great, as stars are great,

Singing of love, not of hate.

Love for sweet and simple things,

Like clouds and sea-shell whisperings,

Cool autumn winds, pale dew-kissed flowers,

Thin coils of smoke and granite towers,

Snow-capped mountain peaks that flash

High above a river’s crash,

Shrill songs of birds and children’s laughter,

Soft grey shadows trailing after

Sunbeam sprites that seek the woods

And lose themselves in solitudes.

All these I’ll love, never hate,

And loving them, I will be great.

OLIVER JENKINS

LOVE AUTUMNAL

My love will come in autumn-time

When leaves go spinning to the ground

And wistful stars in heaven chime

With the leaves’ sound.

Then, we shall walk through dusty lanes

And pause beneath low-hanging boughs,

And there, while soft-hued beauty reigns

We’ll make our vows.

Let others seek in spring for sighs

When love flames forth from every seed;

But love that blooms when nature dies

Is love indeed!

OLIVER JENKINS

ECHOS

Traveling at dusk the noisy city street,

I listened to the newsboys’ strident cries

Of “Extra,” as with flying feet,

They strove to gain this man or that-their prize.

But one there was with neither shout nor stride,

And, having bought from him, I stood nearby,

Pondering the cruel crutches at his side,

Blaming the crowd’s neglect, and wondering why—

When suddenly I heard a gruff voice greet

The cripple with “On time to-night?”

Then, as he handed out the sheet,

The Youngster’s answer-“You’re all right.

My other reg’lars are a little late.

They’ll find I’m short one paper when they come;

You see, a strange guy bought one in the wait,

I tho’t ’twould cheer him up-he looked so glum!”

So, sheepishly I laughed, and went my way

For I had found a city’s heart that day.

RUTH LAMBERT JONES

WAR PICTURES

“German Retreat From Arras”

“Official Films”-they came

After “Corinne and Her Minstrels”

Had ministered to fame.

After “Corinne and Her Minstrels”

Had pigeon-toed away,

We saw where bits of churches

And bits of horses lay.

We saw bleak desolation;

We saw no unscathed tree.

We shivered in our comfort

And murmured: “Can it be!”

But later, walking homeward,

Repeating: “Is it true?”

We brushed a khaki shoulder

And asked no more. We knew!

RUTH LAMBERT JONES

AN OLD SONG

When I was but a young lad,

And that is long ago,

I thought that luck loved every man,

And time his only foe,

And love was like a hawthorn bush

That blossomed every May,

And had but to choose his flower,

For that’s the young lad’s way.

Oh, youth’s a thriftless squanderer,

It’s easy come and spent,

And heavy is the going now

Where once the light foot went.

The hawthorn bush puts on its white,

The throstle whistles clear,

But Spring comes once for every man

Just once in all the year.

ARTHUR KETCHUM

ROADSIDE REST

Such quiet sleep has come to them!

The Springs and Autumns pass,

Nor do they know if it be snow

Or daisies in the grass.

All day the birches bend to hear

The river’s undertone;

Across the hush a fluting thrush

Sings even-song alone.

But down their dream there drifts no sound,

The winds may sob and stir:

On the still breast of Peace they rest

And they are glad of her.

They ask not any gift—they mind

Nor any foot that fares,

Unheededly life passes by—

Such quiet sleep is theirs.

ARTHUR KETCHUM

OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP

Bed is the boon for me!

It’s well to bake and sweep,

But hear the word of old Lizette:

It’s better than all to sleep.

Summer and flowers are gay,

And morning light and dew;

But aged eyelids love the dark

Where never a light peeps through.

What!—open-eyed, my dears?

Thinking your hearts will break.

There’s nothing, nothing, nothing, I say,

That’s worth the lying awake!

I learned it in my youth—

Love I was dreaming of!

I learned it from the needle-work

That took the place of love.

I learned it from the years

And what they brought about;

From song, and from the hills of joy

Where sorrow sought me out.

It’s good to dream and turn,

And turn and dream, or fall

To comfort with my pack of bones,

And know of nothing at all!

Yes, never know at all!

If prowlers mew or bark,

Nor wonder if it’s three o’clock

Or four o’clock of the dark.

When the longer shades have fallen

And the last weariness

Has brought the sweetest gift of life,

The last forgetfulness.

If a sound as of old leaves

Stir the last bed I keep,

Then say, my dears: “It’s old Lizette—

She’s turning in her sleep!”

AGNES LEE

MOTHERHOOD

Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently.

Following the children joyously astir

Under the cedrus and the olive tree,

Pausing to let their laughter float to her.

Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,

She saw a little Christ in every face;

When lo, another woman, gliding near,

Yearned o’er the tender life that filled the place.

And Mary sought the woman’s hand, and spoke:

“I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed

With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke

Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.

“I, too, have rocked my little one,

O, He was fair!

Yea, fairer than the fairest sun,

And like its rays through amber spun

His sun-bright hair.

Still I can see it shine and shine.”

“Even so,” the woman said, “was mine.”

“His ways were ever darling ways,”—

And Mary smiled,—

“So soft, so clinging! Glad relays

Of love were all His precious days.

My little child!

My infinite star! My music fled!”

“Even so was mine,” the woman said.

Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou,

Of thine.” And she:

“O, mine was rosy as a boug

Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,

To bloom for me!

His balmy fingers left a thrill

Within my breast that warms me still.”

Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,

And said, when Mary questioned, knowing not,

“Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?”

“I am the mother of Iscariot.”

AGNES LEE

ESSEX

I

Thy hills are kneeling in the tardy spring,

And wait, in supplication’s gentleness,

The certain resurrection that shall bring

A robe of verdure for their nakedness.

Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell,

Thy fields within the sunlight’s living coil

Now promise, while the veins of nature swell,

Eternal recompense to human toil.

And when the sunset’s final shades depart

The aspiration to completed birth

Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start,

We know how wanton and how little worth

Are all the passions of our bleeding heart

That vex the awful patience of the earth.

II

Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun

Glutting the spread of heaven to the floor

Of waters rhythmic from far shore to shore,

And thine the stars, revealing one by one,

Thine the grave, lucent night’s oblivion,

The tawny moon that waits below the skies,—

Strange as the dawn that smote their blistered eyes

Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done.

And thine the good brown earth that bares its breast

To thy benign October, thine the trees

Lusty with fruitage in the late year’s rest;

And thine the men whos@ blood has glorified

Thy name with Liberty Is divine decrees—

The men who loved thy soil and fought and died.

III

Toward thine Eastern window when the morn

Steals through the silver mesh of silent stars,

I come unlaurelled from the strenuous wars

Where men have fought and wept and died forlorn.

But here, across the early fields of corn,

The living silence dwelleth, and the gray

Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray

Breathes from the ocean like a Triton’s horn.

Open thy lattice, for the gage is won

For which this earth has journeyed though the dust

Of shattered systems, cold about the sun;

And proved by sin, by mighty lives impearled,

A voice cries through the sunrise: “Time is Just!”—

And falls like dew God’s pity on the world

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE SONG OF THE WAVE

This is the song of the wave! The mighty one!

Child of the soul of silence, beating the air to sound:

White as a live terror, as a drawn sword,

This is the wave.

II

This is the song of the wave, the white-maned steed of the Tempest

Whose veins are swollen with life,

In whose flanks abide the four winds.

This is the wave.

III

This is the song of the wave! The dawn leaped out of the sea

And the waters lay smooth as a silver shield,

And the sun-rays smote on the waters like a golden sword.

Then a wind blew out of the morning

And the waters rustled

And the wave was born!

IV

This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the noon

And the white sea-birds like driven foam

Winged in from the ocean that lay beyond the sky

And the face of the waters was barred with white,

For the wave had many brothers,

And the wave was strong!

V

This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the sunset

And the west was lurid as Hell.

The black clouds closed like a tomb, for the sun was dead.

Then the wind smote full as the breath of God,

And the wave called to its brothers,

“This is the crest of life!”

VI

This is the song of the wave, that rises to fall,

Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass

That has caught the soul of the moonlight.

Caught and prisoned the moon-beams;

Its edge is frittered to foam.

This is the wave!

VII

This is the song of the wave, of the wave that falls—

Wild as a burst of day-gold blown through the colours of morning

It shivers to infinite atoms up the rumbling steep of sand.

This is the wave.

VIII

This is the song of the wave that died in the fullness of life.

The prodigal this, that lavished its largess of strength

In the lust of attainment.

Aiming at things for Heaven too high,

Sure in the pride of life, in the richness of strength.

So tried it the impossible height, till the end was found:

Where ends the soul that yearns for the fillet of morning stars,

The soul in the toils of the journeying worlds,

Whose eye is filled with the Image of God,

And the end is Death!

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

FRIMAIRE

Dearest, we are like two flowers

Blooming in the garden,

A purple aster flower and a red one

Standing alone in a withered desolation.

The garden plants are shattered and seeded,

One brittle leaf scrapes against another,

Fiddling echoes of a rush of petals.

Now only you and I nodding together.

Many were with us; they have all faded.

Only we are purple and crimson,

Only we in the dew-clear mornings,

Smarten into color as the sun rises.

When I scarcely see you in the flat moonlight,

And later when my cold roots tighten,

I am anxious for morning,

I cannot rest in fear of what may happen.

You or I—and I am a coward.

Surely frost should take the crimson.

Purple is a finer color,

Very splendid in isolation.

So we nod above the broken

Stems of flowers almost rotted.

Many mornings there cannot be now

For us both. Ah, Dear, I love you!

AMY LOWELL

PATTERNS

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

I too am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,

And the train

Makes a pink and silver stain

On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

Just a plate of current fashion,

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

Only a whale-bone and brocade.

And I sink on a seat in the shade

Of a lime tree. For my passion

Wars against the stiff brocade.

The daffodils and squills

Flutter in the breeze

As they please.

And I weep;

For the lime tree is in blossom

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops

In the marble fountain

Comes down the garden paths.

The dripping never stops.

Underneath my stiffened gown

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

A basin in the midst of hedges grown

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

But she guesses he is near,

And the sliding of the water

Seems the stroking of a dear

Hand upon her.

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

All the pink and silver crumpled up upon the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

And he would stumble after,

Bewildered by my laughter.

I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes.

I would choose

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,

A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,

Till he caught me in the shade,

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,

Aching, melting, unafraid.

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,

And the plopping of the waterdrops,

All about us in the open afternoon—

I am very like to swoon

With the weight of this brocade,

For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom

In my bosom,

Is a letter I have hid.

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

Died in action Thursday sen’night.”

As I read it in the white morning sunlight.

The letters squirmed like snakes.

“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.

“No,” I told him.

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

No, no answer.”

And I walked into the garden,

Up and down the patterned paths,

In my stiff, correct brocade.

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,

Each one.

I stood upright too,

Held rigid to the pattern

By the stiffness of my gown.

Up and down I walked,

Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband,

In a month, here, underneath this lime,

We would have broke the pattern;

He for me, and I for him,

He as Colonel, I as lady,

On this shady seat.

He had a whim

That sunlight carried blessing.

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

Up and down

The patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

The squills and the daffodils

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.

I shall go

Up and down,

In my gown.

Gorgeously arrayed,

Boned and stayed.

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace

By each button, hook and lace.

For the man who should loose me is dead,

Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

In a pattern called a war.

Christ! What are patterns for?

AMY LOWELL

A BATHER

Thick dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade.

Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves,

Half-quenched in their various green, just a point of you showing,

A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once blotted into

The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again

Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged sharp as white ivory,

Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and your breasts,

Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves of ripe fruit,

And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence of leaves.

So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges

Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you,

The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum-oozing spruces,

While below runs the water impatient, impatient to take you,

To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness,

Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders,

Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty,

Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold you

To keep you submerged and quiescent while over you glories

The summer.

Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just

Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant perfection,

Standing up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes

Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence burns up in a halo,

For you are the chalice which holds all the races of men.

You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder,

And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow

your swimming, To behold the way they act.

And the scent of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning.

AMY LOWELL

LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS

Over where the Irish hedges

Are with blossoms white as snow,

Over where the limestone ledges

Through the soft green grasses show—

There the fairies may be seen

In their jackets of red and green,

Leprechauns and cluricauns,

And the other ones, I ween.

And, bedad, it is a wonder

To behold the way they act.

They’re the lads that seldom blunder,

Wise and wary, that’s the fact.

You may hold them with your eye;

Look away and off they fly;

Leprechauns and cluricauns,

Bedad, but they are sly!

They have heaps of golden treasure

Hid away within the ground,

Where they spend their days in leisure,

And where fairy joys abound;

But to mortals not a guinea

Will they give-no, not a penny.

Leprechauns and cluricauns,

Their gold is seldom found.

Maybe of a morning early

As you pass a lonely rath,

You may see a little curly—

Headed fairy in your path.

He’ll be working at a shoe,

But he’ll have his eye on you—

Leprechauns and cluricauns,

They know just what to do.

Visions of a life of riches

Surely will before you flash;

(You’ll no longer dig the ditches,

You’ll be well supplied with cash.)

And you’ll seize the little man,

And you’ll hold him—if you can;

Leprechauns and cluricauns,

’Tis they’re the slipp’ry clan!

DENIS A. MCCARTHY

L’ENVOI

When the time for parting comes, and the day is on the wane,

And the silent evening darkens over hill and over plain,

And earth holds no more sorrow, no more grief, and no more pain,

Shall we weary for the battle and the strife?

When at last the trail is ending, and the stars are growing near,

And we breathe the breath of conquest, and the voices that we hear

Are the great companions’ voices that have hallowed year on year,

Shall we know an instant’s grieving as we pass?

Shall we pause a fleeting moment ere we grasp the eager hands,

Take one last long look of wonder at the dimming of the lands,

Love the earth one glowing moment ere we pass from its demands,

Cull all beauty in its essence as we gaze?

Or with not one backward longing shall we leap the last abyss,

Scale the highest crags glad-hearted, fearful only lest the bliss

Of an earth-remembering instant should delay the great sun’s kiss—

Consuming us within the flame?

DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN

TO IMAGINATION

SUGGESTED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH’S “AIR CASTLES”

O beauteous boy a-dream, what visions sought

Of pictures magical thy eyes unfold,

What triumphs of celestial wonders wrought,

What marvels from a breath of beauty rolled!

Skyward and seaward on the clouds are scrolled,

A mystic imagery of castled thought,

A thousand worlds to lose,—or win and mould—

A radiant iridescence swiftly caught

Of ever-changing glory, fancy-fraught.

Blue wonder of the sea and luminous sky,

A thousand wonders in thy dreamlit face,—

Eyes that behold afar the turrets high

Of Ilium, and the transient mortal grace

Of Deirdre’s sadness, all the conquering race

Of Athens,—eyes that saw Eden’s beauty lie

In passionate adoration—visions trace

Across the tender brooding of the sigh

That wrecked a city and made chieftains die.

Forward not backward turns the mystic shine

Of those far-seeing orbs that track the gleam—

The fleecy marvel of the cloud is line

On line the wizard tracery of a dream.

O lad, who buildest not of things that seem,

Beyond what bounds of visioning divine

Came that far smile, from what long-strayed sun-beam

Caught thou the radiance, from what fostering vine

The power to build and mould the deep design?

Knowest thou the secret that thy brush would tell,

Is all the dream a bubbled splendor white,

Beyond those castles cloud-bound, does there dwell

The eternal silence of the dark—or light?

Will thy hand hold the pen which shall indict

The symboled mystery-write the final knell

Of rainbow fancy-is the distant sight

A nothingless encircled by a spell

Of gleaming bubbles wrought of beauty’s shell?

In vain to question, where the mystery

Of Youth’s short golden dream is lord and king.

The eyes that farthest gaze in ecstasy,

Were never meant to paint the immortal thing

They see, nor understand the joy they bring.

The misty baubles of the sky and sea

Sail on. Dream still, bright-visioned boy, and fling

The glittering mantle of thy thoughts that flee,

Weaving us evermore thy shining pageantry.

DORTHEA LAWRENCE MANN

DRAGON

Some saw a dragon eating up the light,

Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!

Some heard a lost bird riding out the night,

Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!

But I saw:

A low dark hill with its twisted back

Two wings of flame from the green cloud rack,

A sprawling flank overlaid with leaf

Glitter and gleam and shine like steel,

Crackle and lash like a serpent’s tail!

And I heard:

The wind draw out of the west and wail,

Dance and stagger and jig and reel!

With the long low sound of a life in grief!

I saw a life in grief

Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho

Dance and stagger and jig and reel!

Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!

JEANNETTE MARKS

“THE BOOKMAN.”

GREEN GOLDEN DOOR

Green golden door, swing in, swing in!

Fanning the life a man must live,

Echoes and airs and minstrelsies,

Love and hope that he called his,

Fear and hurt and a man’s own sin

Casting them forth and sucking them in,

Green golden door, swing out, swing out!

Green golden door, swing in, swing in!

Show me the youth that will not die,

Tell me the dream that has not waked,

Seek me the heart that never ached,

Green golden door, swing out, swing out!

Green golden door, swing in, swing out!

Long is the wailing of man’s breath,

Short is the wail of death.

JEANNETTE MARKS

SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD

Four graves there are upon the wooded crest,

Each one a shrine to pilgrims ever dear.

Uncovered, mute, are those who tarry here.

Romance’s dreaming master lies at rest

Beneath the cedars. Near is one whose breast

Held Mother Nature’s lore. Beyond, the seer

And sage. There, one who saw her duty clear,

Her name by little men and women blessed.

Four friends who walked in Concord’s pleasant ways

Long years ago. They dwelt and worked apart,

But now the world has crowned them with its bays,

And holds them close forever to its heart.

O, sacred hill! There Genius, guarding stays,

And from its slopes shall never Love depart!

JOHN CLAIR MINOT

THE SWORD OF ARTHUR

A castle stands in Yorkshire

(Oh, the hill is fair and green!)

And far beneath it lies a cave

No living man has seen.

It is the cave enchanted

(Oh, seek it ere ye die!)

And there King Arthur and his knights

In dreamless slumber lie.

One time a peasant found it

(Oh, the years have hurried well!)

It was the day of fate for him,

And this is what befell:

Upon a couch of crystal

(Oh, heart be pure and strong!)

He saw the King, and, close beside,

The armored knights athrong.

And all of them were sleeping

(Praise God, who sendeth rest!)

The sleep that comes when strife is done

And ended every quest.

Beside the good King Arthur

(How high is your desire?)

His sword within its scabbard lay,

The sword with blade of fire.

Now had the peasant known it

(Oh, if we all could know!)

He should have drawn that wondrous blade

Before he turned to go.

If but his hand had touched it

(The sword still lieth there!)

He would have felt in every vein

A lofty purpose thrill.

If but his hand had drawn it

(The sword still lieth there!)

A kingly way he would have walked,

Wherever he might fare.

But no; he fled affrighted

(Oh, pitiful the cost!)

And then he knew; but lo! the way

Into the cave was lost.

He searched forever after

(All this was long ago!)

But nevermore that crystal cave

His eager eyes could know.

Pray God ye have the vision

(Oh, search in every land!)

To seize the sword that Arthur bore

When it lies at your hand.

JOHN CLAIR MINOT

THE DIVINE FOREST

If there be leaves on the forest floor,

Dead leaves there are and nothing more,

If trunks of trees seem sentinels,

For what their vigil no man tells.

And if you clasp these guardian trees

Nothing there is to hurt or please;

Only the dead roof of the forest drops

Gently down and never stops

And roofs you in and roofs you under,

Mute and away from life’s dim thunder;

And if there come eternal spring

It is but more disheartening,

For Autumn takes the Spring and Summer—

Autumn that is the latest comer—

With the Springtime’s misty wonder

And the Summer’s yield of gold,

Weighs you down and weighs you under

To where the blackened leaves are mold. . .

The lone gift of the forest is ever new:

Eternity where dwell not you.

The forest, accepting, heeds you not;

Accepting all-you are forgot.

If there be leaves on the forest floor,

Dead leaves there are and nothing more.

Once the forest spoke but now is silent,

Save in the skyward branches whence no sound

Seems to touch ear of any man below—

Or else no longer the man knows how to hear.

Such men build roofs to keep the forest out,

Yet all their roofs are built of the forest’s self;

Only they make the dead tree a shield against the living.

Such lapsing of the forest then they use

And turn it into countless lowly dwellings;

Sometimes they even cut the living down

To leaven the dead roofs they would erect.

Though some of these low roofs are lovely there

Beneath the guardianship of forest trees,

And some yearn upward as with thought of wings,

Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark

To the upper forest and they

Fearful of the windy freedom of its top.

They have forgotten

That the greatest roof is but a banner

And that it was a tree that made a Cross.

CHARLES R. MURPHY

MAGIC

TO W.S.B.

I ran into the sunset light

As hard as I could run:

The treetops bowed in sheer delight

As if they loved the sun:

And all the songs of little birds

Who laughed and cried in silver words

Were joined as they were one.

And down the streaming golden sky

A lark came circling with a cry

Of wonder-weaving joy:

And all the arch of heaven rang

Where meadowlands of dreaming hang

As when I was a boy.

And through the ringing solitude

In pulsing lovely amplitude

A mist hung in a shroud,

As though the light of loneliness

Turned pure delight to holiness,

And bathed it in a cloud.

I stripped my laughing body bare

And plunged into that holy air

That washed me like a sea,

And raced against its silver tide

That stroked my eager glancing side

And made my spirit free.

Across the limits of the land

The wind and I swept hand and hand

Beyond the golden glow.

We danced across the ocean plain

Like thrushes singing in the rain

A song of long ago.

And on into the silver night

We strove to win the race with light

And bring the vision home,

And bring the wonder home again

Unto the sleeping eyes of men

Across the singing foam.

And down the river of the world

Our glowing, limbs in glory swirled

As spring within a flower,

And stars in music of delight

Streamed gayly down our shoulders white

Like petals in a shower.

And tears of awful wonder ran

Adown my cheeks to hear the clan

Of beauty chaunting white

The prayer too deep for living word,

Or sight of man or winging bird,

Or music over forest heard

At falling of the night.

And dropping slowly as the dew

On grasses that the winds renew

In urge of flooding fire,

And softly as the hushing boughs

The gentle airs of dawn arouse

To cradle morning’s quire.

The murmur of the singing leaves

Around the secret Flame,

Like mating swallows ’neath the eaves

In rustling silence came,

And flowing through the silent air

Creation fluttered in a prayer

Descending on a spiral stair,

And calling me by name.

It nestled in my dreaming eyes

Like heaven in a lake,

And softened hope into surprise

For very beauty’s sake,

And silence blossomed into morn,

Whose fragrant rosy-breasted dawn

Could scarcely bear to break.

I sang into the morning light

As loud as I could sing,

The treetops bowed in sheer delight

Before the slanting wing.

And all the songs of little birds

Who laughed and cried in silver words

Adored the Risen Spring.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

MICHAEL PAT

TO ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH

Old Michael Pat he said to me

He saw an angel in a tree.

He knew I’d never, never doubt him,

For what would heaven be without them.

The angel laughed for very glee

And sang out loud: “Heigh! come with me!”

Old Michael felt a creeping kind

Of wonder in his humble mind,

And, hardly knowing what to say,

Ran where the angel showed the way.

The lambs were running on the hills,

Glad laughter echoed from the rills,

And many hidden little birds

Talked pleasant things in singing words.

He followed up a mountain then

And saw a crowd of singing men

Approaching to a Crown of Light

Wherein they took a fresh delight.

He danced and sang and whooped and crew

To see the Lord of all he knew

Surrounded by the living songs

Of stars and men in countless throngs,

And then he died to life again,

And shovelled with the strength of ten.

He taught me how to say my letters,

And take my hat off to my betters,

And when I asked for fairy stories,

He told me of angelic glories.

He was a lovely farmer, he

Had seen an angel in a tree.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

SONG

FROM “FLESH: A GEOGORIAN ODE”

Ebb on with me across the sunset tide

And float beyond the waters of the world,

The light of evening slipping from my side,

Thy softened voice in waves of silence furled.

Flow on into the flaming morning wine,

Drowning the land in color. Then on high

Rise in thy candid innocence and shine

Like to a poplar straight against the sky.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE

(Killed in action, July 31, 1917)

Soldier and singer of Erin,

What may I fashion for thee?

What garland of words or of flowers?

Singer of sunlight and showers,

The wind on the lea;

Of clouds, and the houses of Erin,

Wee cabins, white on the plain,

And bright with the colours of even,

Beauty of earth and of heaven

Outspread beyond Slane!

Slane, where the Easter of Patrick

Flamed on the night of the Gael,

Guard both the honor and story

Of him who has died for the glory

That crowns Innisfail.

Soldier of right and of freedom,

I offer thee song and not tears.

With Brian, and Red Hugh O’Donnell,

The chiefs of Tyrone and Tryconnell,

Live on through the years!

NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONOR

EVENSONG

A shepherd piping, herald of the Night

Who comes with Silence up the coloured vale,

Treading low gently, clad in greyish white,

Poignantly piping, sound your reedy wail!

For Day departed moves in funeral train

Tended by Twilight and, in deepest rose,

The splendid Sunset melts beneath the main

While sweet the Sea-wind with cool softness blows.

As when a mother gathers to her breast

The child who frets for Dad’s remembered smart,

Now Light fades quickly in the ashen west,

And Night-Peace falls across my troubled heart.

Flutes, for the night through let my mind be still,

And God keep safe with Him my stubborn will!

NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONOR

THE PROPHET

All day long he kept the sheep:—

Far and early, from the crowd,

On the hills from steep to steep,

Where the silence cried aloud;

And the shadow of the cloud

Wrapt him in a noonday sleep.

Where he dipped the water’s cool,

Filling boyish hands from thence,

Something breathed across the pool

Stir of sweet enlightenments;

And he drank, with thirsty sense,

Till his heart was brimmed and full.

Still, the hovering Voice unshed,

And the Vision unbeheld,

And the mute sky overhead,

And his longing, still withheld!

—Even when the two tears welled,

Salt, upon that lonely bread.

Vaguely blessed in the leaves,

Dim-companioned in the sun,

Eager mornings, wistful eyes,

Very hunger drew him on;

And To-morrow ever shone

With the glow the sunset weaves.

Even so, to that young heart,

Words and hands and Men were dear;

And the stir of lane and mart

After daylong vigil here.

Sunset called, and he drew near,

Still to find his path apart.

When the Bell, with gentle tongue,

Called the herd-bells home again,

Through the purple shades he swung,

Down the mountain, through the glen;

Towards the sound of fellow-men,—

Even from the light that clung.

Dimly too, as cloud on cloud,

Came that silent flock of his:

Thronging whiteness, in a crowd,

After homing twos and threes;

With the longing memories

Of all white things dreamed and vowed.

Through the fragrances, alone,

By the sudden-silent brook,

From the open world unknown,

To the close of speech and book;

There to find the foreign look

In the faces of his own.

Sharing was beyond his skill;

Shyly yet, he made essay:

Sought to dip, and share, and fill

Heart’s-desire, from day to day.

But their eyes, some foreign way,

Looked at him; and he was still.

Last, he reached his arms to sleep,

Where the Vision waited, dim,

Still beyond some deep-on-deep.

And the darkness folded him,

Eager heart and weary limb.—

All day long, he kept the sheep.

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

HARVEST-MOON: 1914

Over the twilight field,

The overflowing field,—

Over the glimmering field,

And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield

Of sheaves that still did writhe,

After the scythe;

The teeming field and darkly overstrewn

With all the garnered fulness of that noon—

Two looked upon each other.

One was a Woman men called their mother;

And one, the Harvest-Moon.

And one, the Harvest-Moon,

Who stood, who gazed

On those unquiet gleanings where they bled;

Till the lone Woman said:

“But we were crazed…

We should laugh now together, I and you,

We two.

You, for your dreaming it was worth

A star’s while to look on and light the Earth;

And I, forever telling to my mind,

Glory it was, and gladness, to give birth

To humankind!

Yes, I, that ever thought it not amiss

To give the breath to men,

For men to slay again:

Lording it over anguish but to give

My life that men might live

For this.

You will be laughing now, remembering

I called you once Dead World, and barren thing,

Yes, so we named you then,

You, far more wise

Than to give life to men.”

Over the field, that there

Gave back the skies

A shattered upward stare

From blank white eyes,—

Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune

Of throbbing clay, but dumb and quiet soon,

She looked; and went her way—

The Harvest-Moon.

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEAODY

HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM

“Horseman, springing from the dark,

Horseman, flying wild and free,

Tell me what shall be thy road

Whither speedest far from me?”

“From the dark into the light,

From the small unto the great,

From the valleys dark I ride

O’er the hills to conquer fate!”

“Take me with thee, horseman mine!

Let me madly rode with thee!”

As he turned I met his eyes,

My own soul looked back at me!

LILLA CABOT PERRY

THREE QUATRAINS

THE CUP

She said, “Lift high the cup!”

Of her arm’s weariness she gave no sign,

But, smiling, raised it up

That none might see or guess it held no wine.

FORGIVE ME NOT!

Forgive me not! Hate me and I shall know

Some of Love’s fire still burns within your breast!

Forgiveness finds its home in hearts at rest,

On dead volcanoes only lies the snow.

THE ROSE

One deep red rose I dropped into his grave,

So small a thing to give so great a friend!

Yet well he knew it was my heart I gave

And must fare on without it to the end,

LILLA CABOT PERRY

A VALENTINE, UNSENT

Stay, flaming rose, ’twould grieve her heart

To see you fade away,

Unloved, unwelcome and apart

From every joy to-day.

Once long ago your tale was new,

Days distant yet so dear;

Why say her lover still is true,

When that is all her fear?

Why thus recall another’s pain,

Her tender heart to fret?

Best let her think he loves again,

Who never can forget!

MARGARET PERRY

SHIPBUILDERS

The German people reared them

An idol made of wood;

And Hindenburg before them

Lifelike and stupid stood.

To clothe him all in iron

And thus his soul express,

With nails and spikes they covered

His wooden nakedness.

And when they, thus had clothed him

All in a suit of mail,

Still came they, wild-eyed, looking

For space to drive a nail.

Whenever Teuton airmen

Slay boys and girls at play,

Or U-boats, drowning babies,

Create a holiday.

Then, gathering round their statue,

A happy German throng

Drive nails into the idol

To make him still more strong.

Avenge the babes, shipbuilders,

That on the seas have died;

Avenge the little children

Murdered for Wilhelm’s pride.

Come, gather at the shipyards,

And let your hammers ring,

For more than ships and cargoes

Waits on your fashioning.

Come, gather at the shipyards;

With every bolt you drive

Bethink you ’tis the Kaiser

Whose brutish head you rive.

Come, gather at the shipyards,

And swing with might and main;

’Tis Tirpitz and the Crown Prince

That you to-day have slain.

Come, gather at the shipyards,

And heat the metal hot,

For it is Bethmann Hollweg

You’re boiling in the pot.

Come, gather at the shipyards,—

And when the day is done,

You’ve spent it in driving spikes,

In Hindernburg the Hun.

Come, gather at the shipyards,

And toil with healthy hate,

For only you can save the world,

The Hun is at the gate.

ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER

UNFADING PICTURES

(“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 Alcæus 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.

Alcæus:

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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Table of Contents

Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

Contents

HOME-BOUND

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

YELLOW CLOVER

THE RETURNING

TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL

A BANQUET ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES

SONG

THE WORLDS

THE RIOT

HUNGER

EXIT GOD

ROUSSEAU

JOHN MASEFIELD

1620-1920

THE CROSS-CURRENT

CANDLEMAS

SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN

BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE

FOUR FOUNTAINS AFTER RESPIGHI

IN THE TROLLEY CAR

IN IRISH RAIN

CRETONNE TROPICS

TO HILDA OF HER ROSES

DANDELION

RED ROOSTER

VELVETS (BY A BED OF PANSIES)

THE MOODS

HILL-FANTASY

THE MIRAGE

THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN

THE LILAC

GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE

TO MUSIC

THE VOICE IN THE SONG

HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE

REUBEN ROY

COUNTRY ROAD

WREATHS

MEMPHIS

SAINT COLUMBKILLE

MISS DOANE

FALLEN FENCES

CROSS-CURRENTS

THE FAREWELL

SONG

LOVE AUTUMNAL

ECHOS

WAR PICTURES

AN OLD SONG

ROADSIDE REST

OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP

MOTHERHOOD

ESSEX

THE SONG OF THE WAVE

FRIMAIRE

PATTERNS

A BATHER

LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS

L’ENVOI

TO IMAGINATION SUGGESTED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH’S “AIR CASTLES”

DRAGON

GREEN GOLDEN DOOR

SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD

THE SWORD OF ARTHUR

THE DIVINE FOREST

MAGIC

MICHAEL PAT

SONG

IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE (Killed in action, July 31, 1917)

EVENSONG

THE PROPHET

HARVEST-MOON: 1914

HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM

THREE QUATRAINS

A VALENTINE, UNSENT

SHIPBUILDERS

UNFADING PICTURES

WITH WAVES AND WINGS

BLUEBERRIES

NOCTURNE

ENVOI

THERE WHERE THE SEA

MARRIAGE

PITY

A ROSE TO THE LIVING

THE STORM

WHERE THEY SLEEP

BEAUTY

COMRADES

THE FLIGHT

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