tPS 
 
 3503 
 
 R4988 
 
 F4 
 
 1915 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 13M 
 
GIFT OF 
 
A 3te (fuatrauts 
 
 OUmstmaa 1915 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 My father, mother, brother: To you three 
 I humbly dedicate these verses, line by line. 
 I hope that in these poor thoughts you will see 
 That all I have of skill and power are thine. 
 
 321359 
 
SPRING SONG. 
 
 I heard a robin singing in the rain 
 I saw a rainbow sifting through a cloud, 
 And in my mind an eagle soared aloft, 
 While I but watched him, bent and bowed. 
 
 CHRISTMAS QUATRAINS. 
 
 Dew of a Western sunrise gleaming neath the dawn, 
 
 Scent of a Western garden at the door, 
 Mist sails upon the level ocean s floor, 
 And Christmas berries nodding on the clovered lawn. 
 
 A toast of coming Christmases to you I bring: 
 Be thine the sturdy power of the Yuletide long, 
 
 Be thine the Christmas flowers shadowing the Spring, 
 Be thine the tender blessing of the lifting fog. 
 
PROPHECY 
 
 The finest of us err when we are young: 
 Too lofty are our pinnacles of life. 
 
 But towers from these earlier ruins sprung, 
 At last shall stand out far above the strife. 
 
 LEGACY. 
 
 Leave me no memories fairer than the hills, 
 With bare flanks to the fostering sun; 
 
 Play me no sweeter music than the rills, 
 When finally life s sad labor s done. 
 
QUATRAINS IN A CHURCH. 
 
 It rises up; a fear-fraught melody, 
 The voices blending, quivering in the loft, 
 
 Seeking in vain an outlet to the sky 
 
 That waits above, so clear and blue and soft. 
 
 Whence comes the glory that encircles that slim beam 
 And paints the steel with gilt and sapphire light? 
 
 Tis but a dim reflection only a day-dream 
 
 From Natures sunlight, warm and fair and bright. 
 
 My faith is of the future, not the past. 
 
 Things that have been are dead and grey. 
 On the great deeds my fathers have amassed. 
 
 I shall rise upward to the fuller day. 
 
 The choir left the church; their voices rise and fall, 
 Like the dim echo of a torrent far away, 
 Whose flood, decreasing, dwindles slowly day by day, 
 
 Quavered with sad persistence through the silent hall. 
 
 You of blind faith, who only gaze above, 
 Think for an instant of all those below. 
 
 You "praise the Lord" with far more awe than love. 
 You miss the sunset see the after-glow. 
 
QUATRAINS OF WAR. 
 
 We were not made to fight and war, for that were sin. 
 And yet, we hear the battle s roar, the cannon s din! 
 And so we cry, and call upon the Lord above. 
 Perchance He is a-hunting gone our God of Love. 
 
 One man the less? Why, let him be. 
 He, stalwart fellow, earned his rest, 
 He did his duty he refused to flee 
 And now he has a bayonet in his breast. 
 
LOVE QUATRAINS. 
 
 My love is not like the cold sky; 
 
 Her hair is warm, her lips are soft. 
 Her heart beats swiftly in her breast and I? 
 
 I find her nearer than the stars aloft. 
 
 Thine eyes! Had I a thousand tongues; 
 
 The cunning of a thousand brains, 
 I could not tell one atom of my heart, 
 
 Nor sing their beauty in endless refrains. 
 
SUNSET. 
 
 Oh, sky of evening, in the sunset glow, 
 Thy star a pulse in Heaven s breast! 
 
 Oh, sky of evening, would that I might go, 
 And on thy bosom lie, at rest. 
 
 The sunset sank to silence in the sea, 
 And, like a bar of fire, one lone cloud 
 
 Stretched its sharp contour, light and free 
 Above the hills in reverent silence bowed. 
 
 Under the sanguine sunset, blood thou art; 
 
 A sacrifice beneath the many-domed clouds, 
 Dyed like the pulses of a bleeding heart, 
 
 Staining the fog-banks, sunset s purple draperied 
 shrouds. 
 
NIGHT. 
 
 Star, falling silently in space, 
 
 Are you a bit of some forgotten world 
 
 That played its part, and ran its race, 
 And now into oblivion art hurled? 
 
 The moon is strangely lucent on this night: 
 It seems a pendant from the heavens hung; 
 
 Diamonded above with the etherial light, 
 
 From the keen evening starren downward flung. 
 
 The great fair shudders, pales and dies away; 
 
 Taps plays a requiem. I have heard before 
 Taps softly ringing at the close of day: 
 
 Oh, would that I might hear its sound once more. 
 
A few 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY