UC-NRLF 55 fl5D IN THE SKY GARDEN POSTHUMOUS POEMS OF STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD EDITED BY CHARLES WHARTON STORK EX LIBRIS THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FROM THE FUND ESTABLISHED AT YALE IN 1927 BY WILLIAM H. CROCKER OF THE CLASS OF 1882 SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL YALE UNIVERSITY 36/ff IN THE SKY GARDEN IN THE SKY GARDEN POSTHUMOUS POEMS OF STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD PREFACE BY FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE SELECTED AND ARRANGED WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY CHARLES WHARTON STORK NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXXII COPYRIGHT 1922 BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS To Harcourt, Brace & Company the Editor and the Publishers of this volume wish to make grateful acknowledgment for permission to reprint the poem entitled Stephen Moylan Bird, which appeared in The En chanted Years, a volume commemorative of the hundredth year of the University of Virginia. Of the other poems several have appeared in Voices and about fifteen in Contemporary Verse. PREFACE THE poems of Stephen Moylan Bird depend upon no interests or fashions of the present day, and have something of that quality which makes date and place irrelevant. His vein had not been worked out to the perfection of lyric such as is found in Shelley and in Keats ; but he had gone far beyond mere promise, and these brave relics of a poet in the making deserve to be gathered into a volume. So preserved, his verses will be read and valued, I think, when most of the poetry that now makes loud appeal is forgotten along with the excitements or the eccentricities which called it forth. FRANCIS B. GUMMERE. Haverford, Pennsylvania. 646507 THE LIFE OF STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD 1897-1919 N. B. This sketch appeared in abbreviated form in the New York Nation and is here reproduced with the kind permission of the proprietors. iT is in one way unfortunate that a poet should have a "romantic" history; for though the idle will be attracted to his memory by curiosity, the judicial may incline to be prejudiced against his work. The critic, in his desire to escape the bias of popular senti ment, is apt to become abnormally restrained and cautious in his pronouncements. With regard to Stephen Moylan Bird, let me say that I had the fullest conviction of his remarkable genius before I heard of his death or had any further knowledge of him than came from his poems and very reserved correspondence. On this evidence I was led to believe that Bird was the most promising American poet in the realm of ideal beauty since the time of Poe. But though Moylan Bird was a deep admirer of Poe, his own character and style were much nearer to those of Keats. I fully realize the danger of this comparison, which is made rather under the compulsion of the truth as it appears to me than gratuitously for effect. American Wordsworths and Shelleys have been so fre quently proclaimed that the well-wisher of a new aspirant would prefer, if possible, not to weight him with a similar title. Yet here 5 is a poet, dead at twenty-one, to whom in a quite new and personal way a thing of beauty is a joy forever, who lives in and makes real to us a world of glowing enchantment. Before deprecating the idea of "an American Keats," would it not be well to consider what ridicule would have been heaped upon him who a hundred years ago should have asserted that the original Keats at twenty- one, was what we now mean by "a Keats"? No poetry seems to win its way more slowly than does that which is of, perhaps, the highest type, viz., poetry of ideal beauty. It was twenty-five years before the poems of Keats were reprinted or gathered into a collected edition. Stephen Moylan Bird was born in Galveston, Texas, on Octo ber 12, 1897. On both sides he came of distinguished ancestry, chiefly Southern. He was directly descended from General Stephen Moylan of Revolutionary fame, and the brother of his great grandfather was Robert Montgomery Bird, the playwright, whose "Gladiator" held the stage up to the last generation. The Birds were Virginians, the Moylans Pennsylvanians of Irish stock, and on his mother s side the poet inherited Welsh blood. Theorists of race temperament may attribute to Celtic ancestry the poet s sense of imagination and verbal melody. The father was a church organist. Moylan had an older sister, Alice, married before his death, and a younger brother, Robert Lee. Previous to the war Moylan Bird lived almost his whole life in Galveston. From the first he showed himself extremely sensitive and high-spirited, with a passionate love of wild nature and animals. This was carried to an extent which bordered on senti mental extravagance. For instance, he used to pick up any flower that he found lying on the street and, bringing it home, put it on a special tray kept for the purpose. Shy of outsiders, he was 6 devoted to his mother, sister, and brother, and was taught at home for several years. Uncle Remus, Alice in Wonderland, and Gulliver were his earliest favorites among books. When he went to school, he at once developed into a brilliant student, finishing his high school course when barely sixteen, at least two years ahead of the average. His favorite studies were English and natural history. He became a tremendous reader, visiting the library at every odd moment. His favorite authors were Kipling, Ernest Thompson Seton, William J. Long, and William Beebe. His great ambition was to be a naturalist and go to South America. Of the poets he was fondest of Vergil (in Latin) and Poe. He did not in general care for the Victorians or the New England poets, but admired Longfellow s "Skeleton in Armor" and Browning s "Last Ride Together." It is not hard to divine in him the temper of adventurous rather than sentimental romance. In many respects he was as healthy and normal as possible. He passed duly through the period of craze for trains and boats and emerged into baseball. Always of splendid physique, he became devoted to swimming and bicycling, anything that would get him out into elemental nature. His sister says of him that he was always an "unreconstructed Southerner," choosing Lee and Stonewall Jackson for his heroes, and never easily granting any virtue to the "Yankees." Though he memorized much of "Paradise Lost," he disliked Milton for his Puritanism. His favorite novelist was Mary Johnston, whose Lewis Rand he read many times. He was absolutely fearless and very hot-tempered, especially against any kind of cruelty. As he grew older, he came to loathe anything ugly, dirty, or base, whether in externals or in character, and it was his misfortune that his vivid and ex- 7 pressive features could never conceal his thoughts. He would not go to church, preferring to worship in the larger temple of nature. Being as he was, it is not surprising that Bird made no friends at school. With his aristocratic temper he was quickly antagonized by the sort of boys he was thrown with in a large, new com mercial city such as Galveston. When his mother asked why he held aloof from the others, he answered, "Mother, if you knew what those boys were saying, you wouldn t want me to associate with them." To make up for this Moylan Bird withdrew into his home whenever possible, idolizing his mother and making his brother his only comrade in boyish amusements. His mind de veloped rapidly into wider interests, he showed a surprising power of memory, and became a very fluent and spirited talker. With all his sensitiveness, his main characteristics were his winning gentleness and humor. It was after his graduation from school that the real tragedy of Moylan Bird s life began. Shut out by lack of money from his ambition of becoming a naturalist, he first went into railroad ing. Although he hated this work, his quickness and accuracy made him an excellent employee; indeed, it was characteristic of him that he succeeded in all he undertook. A short time later he shifted into the cotton business and became one of the best cotton clerks on the exchange, but his real self remained nearly as unsatisfied as before. It was from this time that he began in odd moments to write down short lyrics as they occurred to him in intervals of leisure. He never apparently took himself seriously as a poet, never felt himself far enough along to think of a literary career; he simply wrote because he could not help it, wrote on the backs of envelopes or street-car transfers. It was in the winter of 1917-18 that Moylan Bird first came 8 into touch with me in my capacity of editor of Contemporary Verse. I well remember pausing as I was about to return his contribution with the usual printed slip. Immature as this effusion was, there was in it a quality of magic that arrested me. The writer gave a glimpse into a world of remote beauty, which he himself knew only imperfectly as yet, but which was far different from the usual realm of nowhere inhabited by the restless souls of youthful versifiers. I wrote a word of encouragement. Three or four more sets of manuscripts came with growing definiteness and artistry of touch. Then all at once, like a sunburst, came half a dozen pieces which made me jump from my chair with a shout. They seemed to me, and still seem, among the loveliest lyrics of their kind ever written in America. With the first lines I was spellbound by the imaginative sweep of the emotion and the fresh music of the plastic rhythm. Here was a boy who had not only created a world of his own but could bear his reader along with him surely and steadily "on the viewless wings of Poesy." Let those who will judge by a stanza whether this enthusiasm was unjustified. My soul-harp never thrills to peaceful tunes; In Nature s wildness my heart finds its home, When sporting, playmate to the winds and waves, O er the wild Orkneys battlefields of foam. It was to me nothing less than a miracle, a new vision of loveli ness evoked by eight or a dozen typewritten lines. Moylan Bird s brother writes that my first acceptance was a tremendous encouragement. At all events, more equally beautiful poems were rapidly forthcoming, and during the spring I placed eleven on our files. The first three were published in June with 9 an editorial note calling special attention to the new author. Both critics and readers largely confirmed the opinion of the editor. But we must return to the personal history of the author. His indignation roused by stories of German atrocities, the young poet, though under the conscription limit, had volunteered for the navy before any of his poems were published. He wrote me that he hoped to escape from his present stifling existence into a wider world ; he longed especially to get out upon the ocean he had so vividly pictured to himself. But his expectations were completely disappointed. During the summer of 1918 he served as a recruit by the Great Lakes and on Narragansett Bay. He found the life even rougher and more degrading to his spirit than his office work had been. Not a ray of beauty or kindliness redeemed the eternal drudgery of mess and drill. It must be borne in mind that this boyish idealist was unable to make any contact with the average American "rookie," was doubtless unable to sense the better motives that lay behind the immediate duty of learning how to kill. Brought up on tales of heroism, he must have writhed under the feeling that dying for one s country had now become a mere affair of business and mechanics. The true poet is exceptional, and modern war knows no exceptions. Furthermore, living at home, Bird had been able largely to shun the rough-and-tumble of life which most of us learn gradually to meet and face. He expected from life what life could never give him, but the disillusionment for him must have been more brutally sudden than we others can well realize. I received from him only a few brief letters during the summer and a few scraps of verse which he had not had time to get into good shape. He quoted to his sister one of my replies in which I urged him not to let the soldier kill the poet. The words had 10 for him a deeper meaning than I could have divined. About the same time his mother was taken desperately ill and he wrote her : "If anything happens to you, mother, I ll kill myself." His sister has told me that he often used to argue with her in defence of suicide, saying that a man had the right to do what he liked with his own life. She spoke of duty to one s friends and family, but he was unconvinced. In October Moylan Bird received an appointment as cadet at West Point. He had done well in the navy and would have won his ensign s commission, but he had the feeling that in a school for officers he would be associated with gentlemen, with those of his own instincts and susceptibilities. For this reason, though his family urged him not to accept, he finally decided to do so. Of his life at West Point little is known and probably not much will ever be revealed. In the first place, he was terribly disappointed in his hope of getting the kind of better education he wanted. The instruction in literature seemed infantile. Then the life in general seemed even worse to him than that in the navy. No doubt when the armistice was signed the idea of war lost all meaning. He stayed on because he was determined to stick it out, to keep up his record of never failing in anything he undertook. He wrote little of what was going on within him in the last weeks of the year. It has come to light, however, that he had two roommates who were determined, according to their ideas, to "make a man of him." As he refused to accept their ideas as to manhood, they changed their tactics and told him they would "give him hell." How well they kept their word we can only guess by the sequel. He first wrote his mother that he doubted whether he should be able to stay on. Then in a final letter he asked for money so that he might return home at once. As his mother had sat 11 down immediately en receipt of this to send the money, a telegram was brought her announcing that her son had been found shot in his room on the first day of the new year. He died before his family could reach him. A mystery attaches to the end in that the boy had received his honorable discharge from the Academy just before the fatality occurred. Still, that Moylan Bird took his own life seems probable, especially in view of such a fragment as the following : THE VOICE Like a cool vapor falling The voice of Death is calling; "In my dim land is Peace, By Lethe-languid fountains In my mist-shrouded mountains All cares and clamors cease." There is to me in these lines the quiet joy of a soul escaping from the bonds of an unnatural existence to its homeland of visionary beauty. The poet s only true happiness lay in the world of his imagination, a world completely denied him both by his regime of life and his associates. He was terribly homesick and could not get leave to return for Christmas. His deeply affectionate, hypersensitive spirit had been tortured deliberately for many weeks, at a time when both his body and mind were under con tinual strain. The strict moralist may condemn, but few of us surely can deny a measure of understanding sympathy to the despair that drove this beauty-worshipping boy to his final resolution. It is not the purpose of this brief article to do other than present 12 and interpret the course of Moylan Bird s career. Those who wish to use it as evidence against the evils of military life are welcome to do so. Cases of suicide under such conditions have been by no means rare. They are part of the cost of war, it is said. This, however, is not the place to deal with arguments or generali ties. Our concern is now not with the poet s past but with his possible future fame. Of the fifty or so of Moylan Bird s poems that give him at his best none is over thirty lines. Almost all are imaginative lyrics of wild nature: the mountains, the woods, and especially the sea. The individual note of these lyrics is the passionate ideality of their feeling and the golden, dawnlike quality of their atmos phere. Classic allusion is as felicitous as in one of the masters. Though following conventional lines, the imagery and the verbal music are entirely new and vital ; one forgets all possible proto types, as when reading such of Keat s sonnets as "To one who has been long in city pent" and "As late I rambled in the happy fields." To me there is something quite as original and beautiful in Moylan Bird s "May." The Pan-thrilled saplings swayed in sportive bliss, Longing to change their roots to flying feet, And, where the buds were pouting for Pans kiss, The high lark sprinkled music, dewy sweet. I wandered down a golden lane of light, And found a dell, unsoiled by man, untrod, And, with the daffodil for acolyte, I bared my soul to all the woods, and God. The impatient joy of the first stanza and the deep reverence of the second are alike rendered with spontaneous melody and 13 fancy. Unforced as is the style, almost every touch is vividly appropriate. Faultless the lines are not, but they have an uncon scious ease and abandon more winsome than any mere correctness. We have noticed passages about the sea and the woods. Let the following stand as an interpretation of the mountains, which, be it remembered, the poet had seen only with the inward eye : THE SILENT RANGES Give me the hills, that echo silence back. Save the harp-haunted pines wild minstrelsy. And white peaks, lifting rapt Madonna gaze To where God s cloud-sheep roam the azure lea. Give me the Lethe of the harebell s wine, And in the fleece of silence folded deep, Let half-heard echoes of an Oread s song Breathe on the drowsy lyre of my sleep. Naturally the emotional field of a boy of twenty is not large. Moylan Bird was in love with love but never with any particular "rare and radiant maiden." Philosophy and abstractions in gen eral he meddled not with. He has a couple of penetrative satiric ventures. The chosen familiars of his acquaintance are the spirits of nature. Pan, the nymphs, and the personified hours and sea sons are for him the "real people." Most of his imagination is personal, but there is a promising touch of drama in "The Witch." Because her dark eyes loved the shades That rimmed the gold of every dell, When listening to the talking trees They said that she communed with Hell. Two successful realistic poems emerge from a group in which for the most part he is ill at ease. One is to a Red Cross nurse; the other, "A Song of American Industry," has a splendidly virile ring. Following is the third stanza: What of the gun-works flame-shot gloom? Where dim in the throbbing, heated room The cannon are born to hurl their shell Into the teeth of the hosts of Hell, And roar from their iron throats the lay ; "Excel your labors of yesterday/" This is of course crude and hasty, but it indicates clear possibili ties along modernistic lines. The poem which Bird regarded as his masterpiece and which has been most admired and reprinted is entitled "What if the lapse of ages were a dream*?" This is remarkable for fine single lines and command of blank-verse cadence as well as for sus tained imagination. I suggested the omission or strengthening of a few phrases, but the poet was very strict in never using an adjective that was not his own. This effort shows a very unusual mentality in an idealist of twenty. It opens as follows : What if the lapse of ages were a dream, From which we waked, clutching the primal bough, Seeing familiar thunder-piercing crags, Vast dripping woods, and saurian-bellowed swamps, That wearied the new heavens with their noise, Wild seas, that maddened, foaming, ever gnawed At fog-wrapped cliffs, and roaring in defeat, Ran to eye-wearying distance, without shore 15 All things familiar; but our dull ape minds Troubled with visions vague; the hungry roar Of the great sabred tiger far below Seeming in our wild dream the thunderous sound Of hurtling heated monsters, made of steel. It was not surprising that in a city without original works of art Bird should have been deeply impressed by the congenial spirit of Maxfield Parrish, which he of course divined only from reproductions. A lyric shows the poet s love of chivalry and his gift of losing himself in a remote world of beauty. Mr. Parrish, to whom I sent the poem with a brief sketch of the author s life, wrote characteristically : "Young Bird s history is the saddest thing I ever heard. His tribute to my work is well- nigh overwhelming; goodness knows, it must have been the thoughts that he put into it." We must now attempt a summary. Did Moylan Bird really write anything that the world will not willingly let die? This is obviously not a question that his biographer may attempt to settle. Enough material has been furnished the reader to enable him to decide for himself. I believe of course that most sym pathetic lovers of poetry will incline to give a decided affirmative, even when they leave out of account the tragic circumstances of the author s life. Mr. Henry Newbolt in his recent, very stimulating volume A New Study of English Poetry makes the point that a true poet is great even in his imperfect early work. Keats was a great poet in Endymion, and Endymion will always be read, even though it is hardly fuller of beauties than of blemishes. The poet s per sonality is unmistakably there almost from the first. Had Keats 16 died at twenty-one instead of at twenty-six, ought we not to prize "I stood tip-toe" and the early sonnets? If Bird did not write "Much have I travelled in the realms of gold," neither did Keats before coming of age write any passage of blank verse with such finely harmonized imagination as "What if the lapse of ages were a dream." As for Chatterton, who holds a secure place in the British Parnassus, I cannot see that he has left any thing worthy to be compared with Moylan Bird. Hardly more can be said for the artistic personality of Rupert Brooke. The youthful American s nature seems in every way the finer and might in fortunate surroundings have proved the manlier. I never saw Moylan Bird, but his photograph, which faces me as I write, proves to me that he was all those who knew him best have told me of him. Brown, slightly curling hair is brushed back from a forehead of commanding width and height. The dark eyes, deep-set below level brows, have the wistful candor and genial sympathy of the true Celt. Celtic, too, are the lines that diverge from the prominent nose to the corner of the mobile, dis tressingly sensitive lips. The partial weakness of the mouth is offset by the squarish resolute chin. It is an unforgetable, mes merizing face, a face that is somehow terrible to study because of its unlimited susceptibility to feeling. The expression is that of an utterly unworldly lover of life, and it is that of one who will not flinch and cannot lie. Withal the countenance is surprisingly mature, nobody would take it for that of a man under twenty- five. The more I look at it, the more I feel that there was no one in this generation whom I should have cared more to know. But here in these poems is a sufficient consolation for those who were not privileged to meet with Moylan Bird in the flesh. Their spirited joy in all the loveliest aspects of nature, their almost 17 supernatural tenderness and purity of feeling, make them unique as all beauty is unique. We should not underrate the pervasive force of tenderness in art, a quality which, according to a great critic of painting, ranked Correggio as the spiritual equal of the titan Michelangelo. But we must return to our smaller scale. Short as these lyrics are, there is a deep, unaccountable glow in them that becomes brighter and softer the more one feels oneself into them. To be sure such poems have little to do with the feel ings and literary fashions of the hour. They are neither Whit- manesque nor imagistic. The savant who maintains that a poet of today should not deal with classic mythology will reject them utterly. Are we therefore to brush them aside like so many useless butterflies? This is not the answer of the late Professor Francis B. Gummere, a critic second to none of this generation in America. He writes : "The poems of Stephen Moylan Bird depend upon no interests or fashions of the present day, and have something of that quality which makes date and place irrelevant." CHARLES WHARTON STORK. 18 IN MEMORIAM S. M. B. crowded room was rank with smoke And raw with fumes of drink. The air was harsh with curse and joke; How could you else than shrink? Was this, then, life? Tou could not know tfhat evil was not king, And the savage law of blow for blow Was not the only thing. For you had dwelt in youthful dreams, Ethereal regions fair Of starlight meads and moonlight streams Untouched by grief and care. Tou loved to war with cleansing seas, Tou loved all kindly mirth, Tou people with sweet phantasies Our sordid modern earth. Tour playtime done, you gladly strove act a true man s part, Tou were but plunged amid the drove Of tramplers in the mart. And then came war. Tou volunteered, Aflame for nobler strife. With hero soul, no foe you feared. " Ah! here," you said, "is life." They chained your spirit in the grime Of dreary camp routine, And two men pulled you toward the slime Where even love is unclean. "We ll make a man of you," they cried, And jeered with taunting yell. "Tou won t? All right then, damn your pride! We ll make your life a hell." They kept their promise well, the two; They know, and God knows, how. They tortured, poisoned, murdered you. May God forgive them now! For weeks and months with rankling art They probed you to the quick. They saw you writhe at each new smart Till all your soul was sick. The tiny room was thick with smoke And raw with fumes of drink. From foulest curse and filthiest joke Tou could not else than shrink. 20 Tour strength, your hate -were for the foe. Half-mad there at the end, Tou were not nerved to strike a blow And kill a should-be friend. Then suddenly you saw the lands Where poet souls belong, Where rules a Power that understands, Where comes no taint of wrong. Tou saw your spirit s homeland there, Still lovely, still the same. Tou, all too gentle, all too rare tfo learn life as it came, Tou could no longer breathe the air Of fetid lust and shame. Tou did not well. But you were not, As we are, slowly steeled tfo bear the ills our fates allot. Tou broke, you could not yield. room was hell and life was hell, But there so near outside Was your own world where moonbeams dwell On dream-fields soft and wide. Tou did but seek your own once more; Tou fled the garish light. Tou raised the latch-pin, swung the door, And stepped into the night. c. w. s. 21 CONTENTS In the Sky Garden . . . . . 26 Maxfield Parrish . <. . . . - . . . . . . 27 What if the Lapse of Ages Were a Dream *? 28 Flights of Fancy . 30 The Lark ....-,.... 31 God s Garden . . . . \ , .32 Treasure . * 33 The Wind . . . * ...... . . . . 34 Dream Fields . . . ... . ... . . .35 Castle Dream . . . 36 The Moon Girl . . . . . . ... .... 37 Mist o Dreams . . 38 Harpalyce . . . . . . 39 The Wood Child 40 The Witch .............. 41 The Bugle Note . . ... . . . . . .-.;.,. .42 Knight Errant . . . . . . 43 Your Hair . . 44 Chant d Amour . . . . . . ., . . i , . . . 45 Spring Fantasy . . . . . . . . , ; ., . . . . 46 Pan s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Pan s Pipe . . .... . . . . . . . . 48 Pipes o Pan 49 May 51 Untrod 52 23 Spring Dresses 53 Dryad Trees 54 The Questing Bee 55 The Drowned Grass World 56 The Dying Seasons 57 Spume 5^ Sea Foam 59 On a View from My Sister s Cottage 60 The Cornish Sea 6l Evening 62 Wildness 63 Snow-Blush 64 Llewellyn 65 The Silent Ranges 66 Twilight 67 Evening Dreams 68 Forget-Me-Not 69 Knowledge Lost, Ignorance Regained 70 Beauty 7 1 Life 72 The Recruit Poet 73 Pan Dead? 74 Skagerack 75 Song of American Industry 76 The Red Cross Nurse 78 Dejection 79 Requiescat 80 Higher Dawn 8l The Voice 82 IN THE SKY GARDEN IN THE SKY GARDEN IN God s own garden I have sung alone, Moon-borne up to the angels castle towers, And fingering a wind-strung, wild guitar, Have sung my soul song to the knee-deep flowers. And once an angel tossed a rosy kiss, Fluttering to me, a warm butterfly And now, though I may walk in earthly ways, My heart still haunts the garden in the sky. 26 MAXFIELD PARRISH I FELT the warm glow of your sun-kissed hills Sweep o er my spirit like the breath of Spring, And all the old perfume of chivalry Breathed from your castles, sky-flung on their crags, Romance and glamour of the olden days Came back to me. Once more the knights rode by To watch the snowy arms of maidens wave From towered, mirror-moated Camelot. Are you a mortal 4 ? In the sky s own blue You dipped your brush to paint those azure depths, And from the sunset s crucible you dared To steal your stately argosies of clouds. Now all the mortal scales fall from my eyes And, with my spirit s sight, I seem to see An angel, with strange introspective gaze, Who stands and paints the vales of Paradise. WHAT IF THE LAPSE OF AGES WERE A DREAM? \VHAT if the lapse of ages were a dream, From which we waked, clutching the primal bough, Seeing familiar thunder-piercing crags, Vast dripping woods, and saurian-bellowed swamps, That wearied the new heavens with their noise, Wild seas, that maddened, foaming, ever gnawed At fog-wrapped cliffs, and roaring in defeat, Ran to eye-wearying distance, without shore All things familiar; but our dull ape minds Troubled with visions vague; the hungry roar Of the great sabred tiger far below Seeming in our wild dream the thund rous sound Of hurtling heated monsters, made of steel; And the God-scattered worlds that gem the sky Seeming in vision dread the blinding glare Of myriad windows in huge range on range Of mountain buildings, teeming o er with life. The wallowing pleiosaurus gurgling snort Changed in our dream to rhythmic, panting roar Of black insensate steel amphibians, Daring the ocean s dread horizon line; And the high flap of pterodactyl wings Making us whine with fear, for, in our dream, We saw vast lifeless birds, that roaring flew, 28 Commanded by weak puny likenesses Of our ape-selves ; we cringed with terrors vague Of ungrasped thoughts we could not understand- What if the lapse of ages were a dream*? 2 9 FLIGHTS OF FANCY MY fancies fly like butterflies, Aimless, mid beauty and perfume; The Ancient Wood s columnar aisles; In old rose gardens, bright with bloom. Where Neptune s horses toss their manes, Trampling in foam upon the shore; Down narrow craggy mountain dells, Filled with the cataract s deep roar. Nothing they know of boundaries; Mid wand ring planets, fly afar, And burning back like meteors, Bring me a verse from every star. THE LARK HE longs for God to hear his minstrelsy, Nor rests content with lower earthly things, And, winding up the silver stairs of dawn, Before the towers of the angels sings. There the bright golden treasure of his song, He pours like minstrel of the elden time, And, glad with his reward of showered smiles, Slants, singing, earthward like a cadenced rhyme. GOD S GARDEN I SAW His goldenrod for maidens hair, Stretching away for many an Ophir mile; Saw where He nurses buds for maiden mouths, Watching each pouting petal with a smile. I saw girl eyes in dewed forget-me-nots, Beside their unspoke words clear ripply stream- But then the Dawn kissed open both my eyes, Dissolving with her smile my garden dream. TREASURE cannot pluck the roses of the dawn, Or coin the silver largess of the moon, Or hoard the gold that hides in lilies hearts, Making the drowsy bee in riches swoon. And yet, I own them all, for to my soul My wandering fancy Nature s treasure brings, To store them, safely guarded in my heart; And I am richer far than Ophir s kings. 33 THE WIND FRESH from the mountains changeless snow You kiss the heat from out my brow ; Your heart-song is a lyreful trill Learned from the romping, icy rill That taught you, as it rushed along, That low, heart-cooling Druid song. You whisper secrets of the snows, Found where the slender harebell blows; Through the ice palaces you seek, Jeweling the eagle-echoed peak; Thrill to his tempest-scattered screams, As he awakes the clouds blue dreams. Tell me their dreams! You wander far, Through ragged cloud veils, see each star Smile reassurance through the wrack That Dawn comes down her silver track, To make Night fold her sable wings. The Heav n-aspiring lark high sings, Among your unseen airy streams; You romp the clouds among moonbeams, So you must know. Tell me their dreams! 34 DREAM FIELDS MY heart goes often piping o er the fields Of other mortals dreams, to strive to find What lies within their pregnant mystery. But all my piping never lures them forth, And all I see behind the shifting scenes, Is a phantasmagoria of hues And sounds of deeds and thoughts, yet unexpressed, And vast events that quicken, yet unborn. 35 CASTLE DREAM I WANDERED dream-hung hallways, listening To the faint echoes of the heart-harps strings; I found the secret chamber, where within The Muse of Poetry to Genius sings. From breathless hall to breathless hall I roamed, Until came sneaking in the furtive dawn, And the vast vapor castle of my dreams Melted before the golden smiling Morn. THE MOON GIRL LOW in the east, old Neptune s breath Spreads low in wispy white-fog bars, And through I watch, with rapt, fixed eyes, The naked Moon Girl, shameless sweet, Climbing her dew-drop ladder stars To her night-hung throne in the skies Up to her throne to modest film Her charms in her sky-flung star-dust veil. Her sweet, soul-bathing smile, serene Falls like a cool hand on my brow. Around her, courtier planets lie, And past her, jester meteors fly, Leaving a twinkling merry trail ; Modest fore all th admiring sky, She reigns Night s undisputed Queen. 37 MIST O DREAMS SHE dreams and all her dreams float in her eyes, So dusky gray themselves are floating dreams, Mist-gray, yet deep within, a tale of blue Spring sky that azure-smiles through ragged fog, Or blue like water s veiled opal gleam, Neath the mist maidens trailing silken scarfs. Oft, through her eyes, I watch her errant soul Walking the still, dumb corridors of Thought, With priestess step and strange elusive smile, Pursing the curved and moulded coral wealth, As dreamy as the dream that conjured it. Ah, then I long to grasp her wandering thought! What vision made her smile Love s first sweet kiss? HARPALYCE SHE left her father s marble halls, When he gave up his soul to Death; She hearkened to the dryad calls, That whispered in the forest s breath. Now on the Xanthus river steeds She flees, a foam wreath, by the dells, Or, when her spirit surcease needs, She woos her couch of asphodels. All mortal maidens bloom and die, Jove gave her immortality. Pure as the mountain breezes sigh Her bare limbs breathe virginity. High on Parnassus dawn-loved peak, Or cradled in cool Delphic arms, She hides away; and, though they seek, No mortals ever glimpse her charms. 39 THE WOOD CHILD SHE needs no playmate; laughing sweet, She scatters songs upon the breeze, And, holding to brown bunnies ears, She chases leaves around the trees. Nor does she shame to show the woods Her lily-slender, white child-limbs; The lotus envies her bright form, When in the mirror stream she swims. But sometimes, when on lily pads, She woos the ripples soft caress, Her blue eyes fill, and through her steal Vague, troubled pangs of loneliness. 40 THE WITCH BECAUSE her dark eyes loved the shades, That rimmed the gold of every dell, When listening to talking trees, They said that she communed with Hell. Because, with no interpreter, Her soul was face to face with God, They said she heard the Devil s words, When walking flowered ways, untrod. And when, poor fools, they seared her form, And freed her soul with burning fire, One, trembling, saw her spirit go, On slender smoke wreaths rising higher. THE BUGLE NOTE THE leader of the scouting party frowned, And peered with furrowed brows around him. Lost They were, for now for many weary miles, They had been wandering through wooded hills, Unknown to them. Now they had come upon A narrow sunny dell. Huge stately trees Grew from its grassy floor, and spread their limbs To shade a tiny brook, that flowed along And laved their roots with dreamy murmuring. The leader spoke: "To find our lost command Is our first care. Perhaps a bugle call Will bring them to us, and we can but try." He raised the bugle to his lips and blew. The loud, clear notes rang on the sunny air, And in the noonday stillness, carried far. A wandering Echo, loitering through the dell, Caught up the call, and slow repeated it, Over and over, till it fainter grew, And died away in falling cadences. Scarce had it died, when faint and far away, Thin as an elfin trumpet, through the trees, An answer came, and then faint shouts of men, And signal shots. " Tis they," the leader cried. Then through the wood they saw the marching forms Of their command, and closing up their ranks, Went forth to meet them in the sunny glade. 42 KNIGHT ERRANT "Gaily bedight, a gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow." Poe. IN glittering mail of imagery, My errant fancy rides away, A gallant knight with waving plume, To ride the dream-roads night and day. He rescues naked maiden dreams From lustful giants castle lairs, Or rides the dark, soul-chilling ways To slay the monstrous black nightmares. My fancy is a gallant knight, He bears the blade of chivalry, And flushed with joy of deeds well done, Comes gaily riding home to me. 43 YOUR HAIR DlD some Love Fairy of forgotten rime Break with her spell the pond rous lock of Time, And down year-haunted hallways silent creep To Ophir s vaults, where all the misers sleep, Where gold lies careless piled like yellow chaff, And seizing a bright armful with a laugh, Run back to Now from Then s grave-chilly gloom, Fly swift up to a high wind-haunted room, Sit by her spinning wheel in high-backed chair, And weave that Midas Dream, your wondrous hair? Long dreamy waves, like aureate water-whirls, And burning like Aurora s wantoned curls, That flash athwart the eastern sky at dawn, Blazing the day s renascence, every morn! Dim in the fay s heart, Beauty s lyre rang, And, as she worked her wheel, she pensive sang Of smiling maiden charms, where she would place This wondrous hair to crown a lovely face. 44 CHANT D AMOUR TO moon-strung lyres of the mountain wind, The warp and woof of Love s sweet minstrelsy In introspective mood I dreamy wove. Often to higher heights I climb to find, Above the circumscribed ken of man A realm removed where I might sing of Love Nor risk the rough jeers of the lower herd. High up my heart-flute carols like a bird The laurel-folded nightingale who dreams, And sings into the moon s leaf-laced beams. O, Pan ! Strange elf -god of the untrod ways ! Vainly I seek through rain-veiled April days, Through Spring s bright gossamer of sun-shot haze, When flirting eerie down the valleys wild Your magic piping comes, thin high above The woodland s murmurs. You alone can tell The rapturous freedom of wild pagan love, With bloodless, cold restrictions all removed; Tell me, O, Elf -God! I have never loved! SPRING FANTASY HAREBELL, of the untrod dell Heaven s own vintage in a cup, Blue-eyed, smiling, you look up, To catch the warm and quiv ring bliss Of the cavalier sunbeams golden kiss Kiss with a hungry, eager sip Of the wine upon your azure lip. Drunk with the draught, they dance the breeze, Spattering gold beneath the trees; Ringing their round in the ancient grove, They tell the breezes of their love; But the breezes flout their least caress, And their feet the daisies bend and press, As they rush o er the fields, o er the sea s blue waves, To their father s chill and gusty caves, To hide flushed faces in his beard. Laughter gales rise he has heard Of the sunbeams love. "They will not grieve. Their love but lasts from dawn to eve. Hearts cool at eve as at dawn they swell. They were mad with the wine of the fair harebell." Swaying with laughter in the dell. PAN S VICTORY OLD Pan came early out one year; Keen, mean the frost imps nipped his ear, Shrilling: "What now, mad minstrel clown*? The snow still covers dale and down!" And old Pan wandered on forlorn, But his eyes hoped, like the east ere dawn, Piping a wind-shrill minor tune, To woo the absent maiden, June, Till under his blankets yawned the sun, The frightened snow away did run, The blackbird piped up clear and strong, A glad heart-thrilling mating song; And the violets bloomed with never a fear, For Spring came early, too, that year. 47 PAN S PIPE HE wandered through the wilding world, sun-splashed With spattered gold and broidered with bright bloom, Striving to give expression to a song Of nature s own wild harmony; he smiled An elfish smile, half mischief, half love-dreamed; He plucked the dream- tuned lute strings from the heart Of Poetry, he willed the wild dumb voice Of dew-splashed fragrant forest to his work; Stole from the merriment of frisking lambs, The verdant grace of breeze-bent reeds; and last Fashioned the whole with curve of maidens limbs, Elf-smiled on the fulfilment of his dream, With far-off mind breathed into it his soul Keen as a dagger s thrust, yet numbing sweet The sound wild fluted from the heart of Spring. PIPES O PAN THE lilting echoes of Pan s silver pipes Adown the budding woodland dells comes drifting, Like petals sifting Through the green tendrils of a flowering vine, That twine on twine, Circles the slender birches in the glade, Like some fair maid, Half gowned in trailing filaments of green, Through which is seen The glory of her round breasts snowy splendor, And white limbs slender. Out of Spring s warm, sweet heart Pan s music swells Like water bells, Rung by the Naiads in the waterfall, The brooklet call To drowsy blood, made slow and dull as death, By Winter s breath, To wake the drowsy pulse to joyous thrill. The laughing rill Runs not so joyous as my wakened blood Ah, life is good ! To breathe the new-born breeze, That, sweeping through the trees, Steals their perfume and gives it all to me, So all my senses thrill. Now all my heart 49 Dances apart, To the wild music of immortal Pan No longer man, But airy sprite am I, Child of the wide earth, and cloud-castled sky ! MAY THE Pan-thrilled saplings swayed in sportive bliss, Longing to change their roots to flying feet, And, where the buds were pouting for Pan s kiss, The high lark sprinkled music, dewy sweet. I wandered down a golden lane of light, And found a dell, unsoiled by man, untrod, And, with the daffodil for acolyte, I bared my soul to all the woods, and God. UNTROD I FOUND a fold of Nature s robe, Where violets never dreamed of man, And Bacchanalian buttercups, With cups upheld, cried: "Health to Pan!" And where the wealthy miller-bee Hummed miserly in dusty gold, Gorging himself with stolen sweets The ivory trumpet lilies hold. And there I laid me down to sleep, Folded on Nature s mother breast, And through the mazy ways of dreams, I wandered to the realms of Rest. SPRING DRESSES THE bashful Spring girl-shy begins To show her art; a green web spins To clothe the shivering tracery Of every patient, pleading tree. And on her wild bird-singing loom She broiders bright the veil with bloom, And girlish-proud, the happy trees Flaunt their new dresses to the breeze. 53 DRYAD TREES THEY have their little vanities, The slender, girlish-supple trees; They love to watch their mirrored forms In pools, unruffled by the breeze. They watch their shadow tracery Sun-cast in silent woodland glades, And murmuring as they sleepy sway, They drift to dreams of lights and shades. For all of them are Dryad souls, That lay earth-bound a little time, Then upward rose: tall maiden trees, To woo the errant breeze with rhyme. 54 THE QUESTING BEE MY soul goes questing like the honey-bee, In untrod gardens, where Love walked of old, And, humming on sweet errands, slyly learns The secrets the Madonna lilies hold; Where the Sun Dial Miser jealous counts His glowing tale of golden-slipping hours, That all escape, despite his watchful care, To paint the sun-dreams in the hearts of flowers. And no one thinks the honey-bees have souls, That drink the love vow from the blushing rose, But, by the fountain s silver poetry, The marble Faun stone-smiles; he better knows. THE DROWNED GRASS WORLD AROUND me stretched the drowned grass world, and sighed At its own desolation. Eerie cried The bittern homing grayly through the mist, That eastward lay a nebulous amethyst, But in the west the sun a broad red smile Beamed on his world he left for little while; A smile of ownership; its crimson glow Stretched seaward, fading. Deeper red and low In purple bank of mist he sank away, And with a chilling rush the world was gray Gray grass, gray water, creeping gray mist veil And in the gray it seemed my soul would fail. I raised my voice in wild impassioned cry: "The why of this; the why of Life why! why!" An eerie answer thrilled the mist-drowned plain The crane s wild scream, like far-off cry of pain Then silence claimed the shrouded world again. THE DYING SEASONS THE buttercups held up their gold to me, The lily, with her maiden-slender charms, Filled all my soul to surfeit with perfume, When Spring sank swooning into Summer s arms. I drank the languid Lethe of July The honeysuckle poured upon the breeze, Then dreamily watched Midas-Autumn change, With magic touch, to gold the waiting trees. Cold shrank my soul before the frost s chill breath, I heard the North Wind s trumpets, icy-loud; And now I sleep till Pan shall silver pipe Deep folded in the Snow Queen s numbing shroud. 57 SPUME GlVE me a foam- wreath for my brow, And let me be a merman bold, Hurled afar on the careless spray, Blown on old Neptune s breath away, To the isles of palm and gold. And, on the rolling dolphin s back, Let me over the breakers ride, O er the waving daisy-fields of foam, Let me live, let me sing, and forever roam, And laugh with a Sea God s pride. SEA FOAM A FANTASY I DIPPED my face into the beryl sea, And through the surf bells, ringing without cease, I heard a mermaid sing from some sea cave : "Down, down, come down, for here below is peace. I will give you all my maiden charms I will shower you with rose pink shells I will gladly lie within your arms, On bridal sand, lulled by the swells." "But, alas, mermaid, I cannot come below, For down beneath the sea I cannot live." And she replied: "Down here is endless peace. Drown, drown, come drown ! Why stay above and strive ? Down here the weary mortals rest, Down deep the cool sea currents lave; You shall sleeping kiss my rounded breast, On a coral couch, where sea fans wave ; You shall hold my white limbs, soft caressed, In the opal gloom of a coral cave; My lips on yours shall be warm pressed, As you die for aye ! in your coral grave !" 59 ON A VIEW FROM MY SISTER S COTTAGE KNEE-DEEP, the marsh grass bravely stands And flaunts its spears of vivid green Against the tide s majestic sweep, Swinging ashore its silver sheen. Between the blue of sky and tide Ghost-gray the circling sea-gulls fly, And the wild sea s own loneliness Thrills through me on their eerie cry. And, when calm evening veils the day, The tall pines censer swings afar And bears me on its wondrous sweep Up to a dream in some bright star. Co THE CORNISH SEA COME, we will go, to Land s End bound, Past lurking cove and breathing sound, And, o er the lark-thrilled, dewy lea, The opal of the Cornish Sea. There Neptune thrones in royal might, Watching his white-maned lions fight And neath his frowning gaze, far seen, The rainbow realm of his demesne. As changeful as a poet s heart, As guileful as the coquette s art It stole my soul from me away, And there tis dream-chained, night and day. EVENING FUNEREAL chilled the air. Along the beach, The dying day trailed purple scarfs of mist, And high above the wind s long fingers reach, The evening sky was hollow amethyst. Each plumed palm its fronded head sad waved, Amid the sombre dusk s gray mourning pall, Above where Day lay cold and shadowy graved, And one pink cloud its silver tears let fall. Only the sun warm smiled. No cause for tears He found, though all the breakers sobbed forlorn; His cheerful face strove to allay their fears For after death is not the day re-born"? 62 WILDNESS MY soul-harp never thrills to peaceful tunes; In Nature s wildness my heart finds its home, When sporting, playmate to the wind and waves, O er the wild Orkney s battlefield of foam, My steed a white-maned tempest, wild and gray, Whose hoofs strike fire from each frightened wave, While the loud thunder strides the crumbling crags, And shakes his sabre when the breakers rave. Why walk, monk-like, in cloistered aisles of peace, When, whispering on every errant breeze, Fanning the latent fire of my blood, Comes the far bugle summons of the seas? SNOW-BLUSH I SANG of Love upon a virgin peak Where the Madonna snows in holy peace Breathed the pure incense of the edelweiss; Yet as I sang amid the awful hush, The passioned Sun God strode across the East, And o er the whiteness of the snow s pale cheek,- Halting my song with wonder stole a blush ! LLEWELLYN LlKE the weird echo of a hunting horn, His name still lingers in his native hills, The wild winds chant it to the mountain ash It glides along the murmurs of the rills. The high cold pride of Snowdoun marked his face. He fought aye, died, but gained a deathless fame, For still the harp-winds and the poet-rills Chant to the hills he loved his echo-name ! THE SILENT RANGES GlVE me the hills, that echo silence back, Save the harp-haunted pines wild minstrelsy, And white peaks, lifting rapt Madonna gaze To where God s cloud-sheep roam the azure lea. Give me the Lethe of the harebell s wine, And in the fleece of silence folded deep, Let half-heard echoes of an Oread s song Breathe on the drowsy lyre of my sleep. 66 TWILIGHT "The charmed sunset lingered low adown In the red west." Tennyson. THE colors linger in the west, All loath to leave, but one by one The gentle twilight kisses them, And grayly veils them with the sun. Then softly reaching up she lights Her tapered altar zenith-high, Then, on the dimly gleaming peak, She waits the moon to claim the sky. EVENING DREAMS THE West has dreamed, a Midas Dream, That all he touches turns to gold, But wakes to find his riches gone, Among gray cloud peaks, frowning cold. The East has dreamed, a dream less rich, Of floating on a silver sea, But, moon-kissed, wakes in bright delight, To find her dream reality. 68 FORGET-ME-NOT AT sunset wept a little bloom That Pan forgot to kiss; It murmured all the night its plaint, To be denied such bliss. Its tiny face was wet with tears, When rosy came the day; A sunbeam smiled; embraced it then, And kissed the tears away. KNOWLEDGE LOST, IGNORANCE REGAINED (Without any apology to Milton) \VHICH way I turn is nut myself am nix." So spake the Arch Lunatic; at his words, The other Devils tapped their echoing domes, As though they asked: "Is any one at home 4 ?" Then in a heated blast they all made noise: "Knowledge is ignorance, for now we know That we know nothing; whereas we before Thought that the pains that throbbed within our lofts Came from too great a weight upon their beams, But now we realize that it was but The high air pressure outside on our domes Caused by the vacuum within." They- raised a yell: "Ign rance is bliss; and bliss is happiness! So we are happy as we are now free ; We cannot worry as we cannot know Better to joy in happy ignorance, Than worry o er the things we think we know !" 70 BEAUTY SO many girls have depthless eyes, So many slender lily limbs, And wondrous wild- rose body grace, To which one s mind in beauty swims. But, Oh how few, alas, can run In Beauty s music-flowing race; So many girls are body sweet, But crown all with an ugly face ! LIFE I WOULD love to shake from my feet the dust Of hated civilized life And go to the roaring torrid zone The land of eternal strife, Of blazing colors and blinding rains, Where one must fight to live, Where Joy walks hand in hand with Death, And only the strong survive. There would I live as the cave man lived, And play and fight and strive And leap and run through the tangled trees By Strength, only, kept alive; And all through the blazing tropic day To live wild, exultingly free, And sleep at night in the moon s white beams, In the top of a giant tree. THE RECRUIT POET 6 CHOW detail!" in the ordered rush, No gentleman would ever shirk; How can I hear Pan s silver pipes, Amid the grinding wheels of work 4 ? But gentle Night sets free my soul, For the brief moment ere I sleep ; Rejoicing in its liberty It walks dream valleys, folded deep. It gathers golden threads of verse And falls asleep amid bright skeins, And, furtively, Reality Binds it again in Routine chains. 73 PAN DEAD? \VHERE are the elfin, minor strains of Pan That down the moonbeams to my sleep would glide, To sport among the harp strings of my dreams And wake the sleeping harmony to smile? War sounds his brazen trumpet o er the world, Shattering the inner ear with loud discord, Scorching the Muse s acolytes with flame, And with ring Beauty with a Kaiser s laugh. Yet, is Pan dead? Sometimes above the din Of brutal, bloody strife, dim, heart-heard notes Call to my soul like ghosts of yearning sounds I will find Pan! My Inner Self will go To green- and gold-shot glades, deep drowned in peace, To look and listen, follow inner sounds, Elusive as the asking eyes of Love. Through whisp ring colonnades that will not tell, Though well they know, and whisper, on and on, With flushed face kissed by perfumed Dryad breaths; On with delightful hopes unrealized, And yet always to be, ... and elfin-far, Pan s fairy flute notes ever just ahead. 74 SKAGERACK (The waves on the British shore) I HEARD the breakers moaning for the dead, Those bold descendants of the Island strain Who died to prove a lie the Sea-Hun s boast; But mingled with the monothrob of woe, I caught the swelling of a deeper note, And seemed to hear, brave as a smile through tears, "Yet, all is safe, Britannia rules the sea!" 75 A SONG OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY WHO am I, rising gigantic now From the fighting man to the man at the plow? My voice is heard through the ring of the strife To aid Democracy s fight for life; And I chant mid my labors, day by day: "Excel your labors of yesterday!" What of the marvelous works of steel? Wild music to one, if he can but feel, Is the wondrous machinery s roar and flame; He sees the one thought and he catches its name, Ringing clear, loud through the clanging fray: "Excel your labors of yesterday!" What of the gunworks flame-shot gloom? Where dim in the throbbing, heated room, The cannon are born to hurl their shell Into the teeth of the Hosts of Hell, And roar from their iron throats the lay, "Excel your labors of yesterday!" What of the shipyard s loud turmoil? Where the sweating workmen unceasing toil To send an argosy over the sea, Carrying food to the fighting free, To laugh at the U-boat dastards and say: "Excel your labors of yesterday!" Men die that the whole world may be free, But one and all, they depend on me; Their flashing swords and shrieking shell Are born of me mad Huns to quell ; The breath of victory swells my lay: "Excel your labors of yesterday!" 77 THE RED CROSS NURSE SHE comes, between the rows of pallid beds, As the dew maiden comes to wistful flowers, And smiling benediction, drop by drop, She cools the dry heat of the aching hours. Sometimes she reads; sometimes her laughter rings In many a jest to smooth out lines of pain, Or silently her soft eyes understand, Like a June heaven misted o er with rain. DEJECTION ONE time, my lips could always shape a song On golden loom of Verse, weave Beauty s praise, The while my Life s craft loitered slow along The singing current of unshadowed days. But now I weary grow of goalless strife; No more within my heart a Love Bird sings, And when my hand strays o er the Harp of Life, It makes but discords on the sounding strings. 79 REQUIESCAT And I must rest, yet do not say: She died, In speaking of my lying here alone." Riley. I DRIFT and dream on opiate stream, With dream fog ever overhung, And, lily-lulled, I faintly hear An endless love song, ever sung. The flowers nod above my head But do not say that I am dead. I lie in peace so sweet and deep, It can be naught but blessed sleep. 80 HIGHER DAWN I WALKED the nomad road that, ribbon-thrown, Climbed restless on in search of higher dawns; I gathered dandelion treasures, strown Bright, newly coined, on the lazy lawns. Up, up I went, until I felt God s breath Blow from my soul all earthly dust away; I longed to spread Icarian wings of Death And fly beyond the glorious gates of day. 8l THE VOICE LlKE a cool vapor falling The voice of death is calling: "In my dim land is Peace. By the Lethe-languid fountains, In my mist-shrouded mountains All cares and clamors cease." 82 45273 64C5G7 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY