Sonnets and Songs

 
Like little, lisping laughter of the sea;
Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore—
Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell?
Soft—music ceases—I recall no more.
 

XIII

Alpha and Omega

 
I died to-day, and yet upon my eyes
A glamour of the gorgeous summer green
Still wavers, and my brain has kept a keen,
Sweet bird-song. Glad with light, the summer skies
Are sapphire, and a purple shadow lies
Across the hills—no change is on the scene
Since happy yesterday. Ah! can it mean
The body lives when stricken spirit dies?
 
 
The blow has fallen, yet I can recall
The first of days when this dead heart drew breath—
A wondrous moon-flower waking of a heart.
Strange—then as now the moment seemed to part
Body from soul, so like are birth and death;
So did I gain, and so I lost my all.
 

XIV

Flowers of Ice

 
The lights within the ice-floes are our flowers,
Lily and daffodil and violet.
Beneath these monstrous suns that never set
Tremble soft rainbows, young as Earth’s first hours,
Ancient as Time. No balm of gentle showers
Make for their growth; for them, gigantic, met
The immemorial ice and sun, to get
Such blossoms—pledge of Beauty’s bravest powers.
 
 
Violet and pale grass-green, the Spring-time dies
In the soft South. To us, in this grim world,
Daring with frozen heart and tearless eyes
The North’s white sanctity, Fate idly throws
These alms—a deathless Spring of ice enfurled,
And over all, far flung, the sunset rose.
 

XV

Love and Death

 
I can believe that my Beloved dies,
That all her virtue, all her youth shall fail,
And life, her rosy life, grow cold and pale,
To bloom again in braver Paradise.
I must believe that death shall close her eyes,
And hold her heart beyond a heavy veil,
Where silences surround her spirit frail
And waste the form where all my loving lies.
 
 
Ah, God! but no. And is my love so weak?
Her heart may pause, may falter and grow still,
But not her laugh, the color in her cheek—
That may not fade; the catch that lifts her breath,
Sobbing against my heart. Essay your will—
These are too dear to fill your grave, O Death!
 

XVI

The Message

 
When one has heard the message of the Rose,
For what faint other calling shall he care?
Dark broodings turn to find their lonely lair;
The vain world keeps her posturing and pose.
He, with his crimson secret, which bestows
Heaven on his heart, to Heaven lifts his prayer,
And knows all glory trembling through the air
As on triumphal journeying he goes.
 
 
So through green woodlands in the twilight dim,
Led by the faint, pale argent of a star,
What though to others it is weary night,
Nature holds out her wide, sweet heart to him;
And, leaning o’er the world’s mysterious bar,
His soul is great with everlasting light.
 

XVII

Tempest and Calm

 
First came the tempest, and the world was torn
Upon its mighty passion—all the deep
Trembled before it. From the haggard steep
To the sweet valley with its brooding corn,
Its foaming lips in expletives of scorn
Lashed into life the world’s eternal sleep;
Then, caught with madness, in gigantic leap
Expired upon the heights where it was born.
 
 
And then a hush—the dripping, tender rain
Falls in warm tears. The thunder could not wake
The grief that silence in her soul has furled.
Soft sighs the wind, the sea is gray with pain—
The fulness of a heart too tense to break—
And deep, unuttered sadness in the world.
 

XVIII

After Rain

 
The country road at lonely close of day
Rests for a while from the long stress of rain;
Dripping and bowed, the green walls of the lane
Reflect no glistening light, no colors gay
Has dying Summer left. The sky is gray,
As though the weeping had not eased the pain.
The Autumn is not yet, and all in vain
Seems Summer’s life—a blossom cast away.
 
 
The air is hushed, save in the emerald shade
The rain still drips and stirs each fretting leaf
To soft insistence of its little grief.
The hopeless calm all thought of life denies—
But hark! out through the silence, unafraid,
A robin ripples to the chilly skies.
 

XIX

Not through this Door

 
Not through this door of elemental calm,
Patient, wet woodland, resting after rain,
Brooding brown fields that wait the sleeping grain—
Not through this door may the wrecked spirit’s balm—
Come in and take possession. There’s a psalm
Nature has crooned to weariness and pain,
Easing the tumult of the world-worn brain,
Sweet, wholesome mother of the open palm.
 
 
But the disastrous heart cries out for men,
Strife where the fight is reddest. Verily
Peace comes with fighting with the strength of ten,
Here where the world is young, with naught to see.
But day blow out across the long, low sky—
Peace means an emptiness, which rests to die.
 

XX

Pot-Pourri

 
All my dead roses! Now I lay them here,
Shrined in a beryl cup. The mysteries
Of their sweet hauntings and their witcheries
Are not more subtle than this jewel clear,
Are not more cold and dead. The winter’s spear
Has fallen on their heart, a heart so wise
With lore of love. Dead roses. Beauty lies
Hid in a perfume still supremely dear.
 
 
Roses of love, time killed you one by one,
Laughed at my pains as sad I gathered up
All the fair petals banished from the sun.
Witness my triumph—how the dead loves bless
Life—from my heart, which is their beryl cup,
Crowning the winter of my loneliness.
 

XXI

Eadem Semper

 
How shall I hold you? By a scimitar
Of flashing wit suspended o’er your head,
Oh, my Beloved? Or with lips rose-red
Lure you to Lethe? Shall I stand afar,
Pale and remote and distant as a star,
Challenging love? Or by a scarlet thread
Jealousy’s wiles, beguile by scorn and dread?
Wounding the heart I love with hateful scar.
 
 
Nay, I can take no action, play no play;
All my wit falters when I hear you speak,
All my wise guile with which your wooing strove
Vanishes as the sun of yesterday.
I can but lay my cheek against your cheek—
Love me or leave me, I can only love.
 

XXII

To a Woman

 
Take all of me, pour out my life as wine,
To dye your soul’s sweet shallows. Violent sin
Blazed me a path, and I have walked therein,
Strong, unashamed. Your timorous hands need mine,
As the white stars their sky, your lips’ pale line
Shall blush to roses where my lips have been.
I ask no more. I do not hope to win—
Only to add myself to your design.
 
 
Take all of me. I know your little lies,
Your light dishonor, gentle treacheries.
I know, I lie in torment at your feet,
Shadow to all your sun. Take me and go,
Use my adoring to your honor, sweet,
Strength for your weakness—it is better so.
 

XXIII

Aspiration

I

 
The pale and misty particles of Time
Hover about us; scarce our eyes can see
Youth’s far-off dream of what we were to be.
Life’s truth, which once we would redeem with rhyme,
Has proved instead a world-worn pantomime.
The running river of expediency
Has drowned the hopes that Fortune held in fee—
Why fall upon the track so many climb?
 
 
Why strive to speak what all the earth has heard?
Why labor at a work the ages plan?—
Life has been lived so oft—an outworn thing!
Then hark! the time-sweet carol of a bird,
New as a flower; and see—ah, shame to man!
The endless aspiration of the Spring.
 

XXIV

Aspiration

II

 
The full throat of the world is charged with song,
Morning and twilight melt with ecstasy
In the high heat of noon. Simply to be,
Palpitant where the green spring forces throng,
Eager for life, life unashamed and strong—
This is desire fulfilled. Exalted, free,
The spirit gains her ether, scornfully
Denies existence that is dark or wrong.