THE RUBY
Ah—she was fair, this daughter of a queen!
Jewels upon her breast's soft fall of snow,
Jewels—in golden hair—and fierce aglow,
The gem of pride upon her brow serene!
Sleeping soft moonstone, emerald's baleful green,
A single sapphire, singing soft and low
Of wars for beauty's sake in years ago,
And flaming opal—wed with tourmaline.
Yet was there one great stone she might not wear,
And so her eyes were weary, and her mouth
Curved in the listless line of vain desire.
No diamond pure was hers the right to bear,
But—crimson poison petal of the South—
The ruby shone in deep unholy fire.
SPRING AND AUTUMN
The painted World has laid her jewels down,
Let fall the pinchbeck hair about her face
And croons a love song. In a far-off place
Where she was strutting in her silken gown
She met the Youth. His face was young and brown.
"Good day to you," she cried, the frosty lace
About her shoulders trembled. Ah—disgrace!
He turned, and left her weeping in the town.
She smiles not any more, her heart disdains
The wind's rough courting, loud and indiscreet.
Her tears dissolve the earth in ceaseless rains
And though her searching steps be light and fleet
Through frowning city or soft country lanes,
Now never more may Spring and Autumn meet.
THE LOST MOMENT
This moment I so careless threw away,
Tossed to the ages, with a spendthrift hand,
Little I recked the labour that had planned
This flash eternal of a Summer day;
Æons of sequent toil had passed to pay
Wealth to the freighted instant. Slow and grand
Wavers a solemn dirge across the land,
One soul, in my lost moment, found a way
To throw the mock to Time, and call him slave.
And I—a pauper still—gaze wise at last
To all the grey horizon line of nought.
But from the heart I deemed an empty grave
Gleams forth like spark my precious gem of past
Shrined in the setting of a deathless thought.
THE COMING OF LOVE
I dreamed that love came, as the oak trees grow,
By the chance dropping of a tiny seed;
And then from moon to moon with steady speed,
Tho' torn by winds and chilled with heedless snow,
The sap of pulsing life would upward flow,
'Till in its might the heavens themselves could read
Portents of power that they must learn to heed.
This was my dream—the waking proved not so—
For love came like a flower, and grew apace;
I saw it blossom tenderly and frail
Till the dear Spring had run its eager race,
Then the rough wind tossed wide the petals red;
The seeds fell far in soil beyond my pale.
I know not, now, if love be lost, or dead.
EVENING AT WASHINGTON
The purple stretches of the evening sky
Lean to the fair white city waiting here,
Flecking with gold the marble's lifted tier,
Down the blue marsh where crows to Southward fly.
Flanked by dim ramparts, where the tide dreams by,
High from the city's heart, a lifted spear,
In its straight splendour makes the heavens seem near,
Symbol of man-made force that shall not die.
To the tall crest we gaze in self-command,