IMMORTELLES
I
As some warm moment of repose
In one rich rose
Sums all the summer's lovely bloom
And pure perfume —
So did her soul epitomize
All hopes that make life wise,
Who lies before us now with lidded eyes,
Faith's amaranth of truth
Crowning her youth.
II
As some melodious note or strain
May so contain
All of sweet music in one chord,
Or lyric word —
So did her loving heart suggest
All dreams that make life blest,
Who lies before us now with pulseless breast,
Love's asphodel of duty
Crowning her beauty.
A LULLABY
I
In her wimple of wind and her slippers of sleep
The twilight comes like a little goose-girl,
Herding her owls with many "tu-whoos,"
Her little brown owls in the woodland deep,
Where dimly she walks in her whispering shoes,
And gown of glimmering pearl.
Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
This is the road to Rockaby Town.
Rockaby, lullaby, where dreams are cheap;
Here you can buy any dream for a crown.
Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
The cradle you lie in is soft and is deep,
The wagon that takes you to Rockaby Town.
Now you go up, sweet, now you go down,
Rockaby, lullaby, now you go down.
II
And after the twilight comes midnight, who wears
A mantle of purple so old, so old!
Who stables the lily-white moon, it is said,
In a wonderful chamber with violet stairs,
Up which you can see her come, silent of tread,
On hoofs of pale silver and gold.
Dream, dream, little one, dream;
This is the way to Lullaby Land.
Lullaby, rockaby, where, white as cream,
Sugar-plum bowers drop sweets in your hand.
Dream, dream, little one, dream;
The cradle you lie in is tight at each seam,
The boat that goes sailing to Lullaby Land.
Over the sea, sweet, over the sand,
Lullaby, rockaby, over the sand.
III
The twilight and midnight are lovers, you know,
And each to the other is true, is true!
And there on the moon through the heavens they ride,
With the little brown owls all huddled arow,
Through meadows of heaven where, every side,
Blossom the stars and the dew.
Rest, rest, little one, rest;
Rockaby Town is in Lullaby Isle.
Rockaby, lullaby, set like a nest
Deep in the heart of a song and a smile.
Rest, rest, little one, rest;
The cradle you lie in is warm as my breast,
The white bird that bears you to Lullaby Isle.
Out of the East, sweet, into the West,
Rockaby, lullaby, into the West.
DUM VIVIMUS
I
Now with the marriage of the lip and beaker
Let Joy be born! and in the rosy shine,
The slanting starlight of the lifted liquor,
Let Care, the hag, be drowned! No more repine
At all life's ills! Come, bury them in wine!
Room for great guests! Yea, let us usher in
Philosophies of old Anacreon
And Omar, that, from dawn to glorious dawn,
Shall lesson us in love and song and sin.
II
Some lives need less than others. – Who can ever
Say truly "Thou art mine," of Happiness?
Death comes to all. And one, to-day, is never
Sure of to-morrow, that may ban or bless;
And what's beyond is but a shadowy guess.
"All, all is vanity," the preacher sighs;
And in this world what has more right than Wrong?
Come! let us hush remembrance with a song,
And learn with folly to be glad and wise.
III
There was a poet of the East named Hafiz,
Who sang of wine and beauty. Let us go
Praising them too. And where good wine to quaff is
And maids to kiss, doff life's gray garb of woe;
For soon that tavern's reached, that inn, you know,
Where wine and love are not, where, sans disguise,
Each one must lie in his strait bed apart,
The thorn of sleep deep-driven in his heart,
And dust and darkness in his mouth and eyes.
FAILURE
There are some souls
Whose lot it is to set their hearts on goals
That adverse Fate controls.
While others win
With little labor through life's dust and din,
And lord-like enter in
Immortal gates;
And, of Success the high-born intimates,
Inherit Fame's estates…
Why is 't the lot
Of merit oft to struggle and yet not
Attain? to toil – for what?
Simply to know
The disappointment, the despair and woe
Of effort here below?
Ambitious still to reach
Those lofty peaks, which men aspiring preach,
For which their souls beseech:
Those heights that swell
Remote, removed, and unattainable,
Pinnacle on pinnacle:
Still yearning to attain
Their far repose, above life's stress and strain,
But all in vain, in vain!..
Why hath God put
Great longings in some souls and straightway shut
All doors of their clay hut?
The clay accurst
That holds achievement back; from which, immersed,
The spirit may not burst.
Were it, at least,
Not better to have sat at Circe's feast,
If afterwards a beast?
Than aye to bleed,
To strain and strive, to toil in thought and deed,
And nevermore succeed?
THE CUP OF JOY
Let us mix a cup of Joy
That the wretched may employ,
Whom the Fates have made their toy.
Who have given brain and heart
To the thankless world of Art,
And from Fame have won no part.
Who have labored long at thought;
Starved and toiled and all for naught;
Sought and found not what they sought…
Let our goblet be the skull
Of a fool; made beautiful
With a gold nor base nor dull:
Gold of madcap fancies, once
It contained, that, – sage or dunce, —
Each can read whoever runs.
First we pour the liquid light
Of our dreams in; then the bright
Beauty that makes day of night.
Let this be the must wherefrom,
In due time, the mettlesome
Care-destroying drink shall come.
Folly next: with which mix in
Laughter of a child of sin,
And the red of mouth and chin.
These shall give the tang thereto,
Effervescence and rich hue
Which to all good wine are due.
Then into our cup we press
One wild kiss of wantonness,
And a glance that says not less.
Sparkles both that give a fine
Lustre to the drink divine,
Necessary to good wine.
Lastly in the goblet goes
Sweet a love-song, then a rose
Warmed upon
her
breast's repose.
These bouquet our drink. – Now measure
With your arm the waist you treasure —
Lift the cup and, "Here's to Pleasure!"
PESTILENCE
High on a throne of noisome ooze and heat,
'Mid rotting trees of bayou and lagoon,
Ghastly she sits beneath the skeleton moon,
A tawny horror coiling at her feet —
Fever, whose eyes keep watching, serpent-like,
Until
her
eyes shall bid him rise and strike.
MUSINGS
INSPIRATION
All who have toiled for Art, who've won or lost,
Sat equal priests at her high Pentecost;
Only the chrism and sacrament of flame,
Anointing all, inspired not all the same.
APPORTIONMENT
How often in our search for joy below
Hoping for happiness we chance on woe.
VICTORY
They who take courage from their own defeat
Are victors too, no matter how much beat.
PREPARATION
How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where
The soul was fertilized with black despair.
DISILLUSION
Those unrequited in their love who die
Have never drained life's chief illusion dry.
SUCCESS
Success allures us in the earth and skies:
We seek to win her, but, too amorous,
Mocking, she flees us. – Haply, were we wise,
We would not strive and she would come to us.
SCIENCE
Miranda-like, above the world she waves
The wand of Prospero; and, beautiful,
Ariel the airy, Caliban the dull, —
Lightning and steam, – are her unwilling slaves.
ECHO
Dweller in hollow places, hills and rocks,
Daughter of Silence and old Solitude,
Tip-toe she stands within her cave or wood,
Her only life the noises that she mocks.
THE UNIVERSAL WIND
Wild son of Heav'n, with laughter and alarm,
Now East, now West, now North, now South he goes,
Bearing in one harsh hand dark death and storm,
And in the other, sunshine and a rose.
COMPENSATION
Yea, whom He loves the Lord God chasteneth
With disappointments, so that this side death,
Through suffering and failure, they know Hell
To make them worthy in that Heaven to dwell
Of Love's attainment, where they come to be
Parts of its beauty and divinity.
POPPIES
Summer met Sleep at sunset,
Dreaming within the south, —
Drugged with his soul's deep slumber,
Red with her heart's hot drouth,
These are the drowsy kisses
She pressed upon his mouth.
HER EYES AND MOUTH
There is no Paradise like that which lies
Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes:
There is no Eden here on Earth that glows
Like that which smiles rich in her mouth's red rose.
HER SOUL
To me not only does her soul suggest
Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood,
But, oceaned far beyond the golden West,
The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood.
HER FACE
The gladness of our Southern spring; the grace
Of summer; and the dreaminess of fall
Are parts of her sweet nature. – Such a face
Was Ruth's, methinks, divinely spiritual.
AT THE SIGN OF THE SKULL
It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below —
But the things of this world are a fleeting show.
The postchaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;
Two horses strain its rusty brake
Named Pleasure and Disgust.
Our baggage totters on its roof,
Of Vanity and Care,
As Hope, the postboy, spurs each hoof,
Or heavy-eyed Despair.
And now a comrade with us rides,
Love, haply, or Remorse;
And that dim traveler besides,
Gaunt Memory on a horse.
And be we king or be we kern
Who ride the roads of Sin,
No matter how the roads may turn
They lead us to that Inn.
Unto that Inn within that land
Of silence and of gloom,
Whose ghastly landlord takes our hand
And leads us to our room.
It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below —
But the things of this world are a fleeting show.
A CAVALIER'S TOAST
I
Some drink to Friendship, some to Love, —
Through whom the world is fair, perdie! —
But I to one these others prove,
Who leaps 'mid lions for a glove,
Or dies to set another free —
I drink to Loyalty.
II
No dagger his, no cloak and mask,
Free-faced he stands so all may see;
Let Friendship set him any task,
Or Love – reward he does not ask,
The deed is done whate'er it be —
So here's to Loyalty.
SLEEP IS A SPIRIT
Sleep is a spirit, who beside us sits,
Or through our frames like some dim glamour flits;
From out her form a pearly light is shed,
As from a lily, in a lily-bed,
A firefly's gleam. Her face is pale as stone,
And languid as a cloud that drifts alone
In starry heav'n. And her diaphanous feet
Are easy as the dew or opaline heat
Of summer.
Lo! with ears – aurora pink
As Dawn's – she leans and listens on the brink
Of being, dark with dreadfulness and doubt,
Wherein vague lights and shadows move about,
And palpitations beat – like some huge heart
Of Earth – the surging pulse of which we're part.
One hand, that hollows her divining eyes,
Glows like the curved moon over twilight skies;
And with her gaze she fathoms life and death —
Gulfs, where man's conscience, like a restless breath
Of wind, goes wand'ring; whispering low of things,
The irremediable, where sorrow clings.
Around her limbs a veil of woven mist
Wavers, and turns from fibered amethyst
To textured crystal; through which symboled bars
Of silver burn, and cabalistic stars
Of nebulous gold.
Shrouding her feet and hair,
Within this woof, fantastic, everywhere,
Dreams come and go; the instant images
Of things she sees and thinks; realities,
Shadows, with which her heart and fancy swarm
That in the veil take momentary form:
Now picturing heaven in celestial fire,
And now the hell of every soul's desire;
Hinting at worlds, God wraps in mystery,
Beyond the world we know and touch and see.
KENNST DU DAS LAND
FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE
Know'st thou the land where the lemo