IRLF 
 
 E73 3E5 
 
GIFT OF 
 
WILLIAM DARWIN CRABB 
 
 Author of "Poems of the Plains," "Lyrics of the Golden 
 West" and "Poems of the Golden West." 
 
POEMS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GOLDEN WEST 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM DARWIN CRABB 
 
 1920 
 
 HARR WAGNER PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 California 
 
Copyrighted 
 
 1920 
 By William Darwin Crabb 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Biographical Sketch ix 
 
 DEDICATORY: 
 
 The Ideal / . 13 
 
 Personal , . . 15 
 
 Why Sing? 16 
 
 NATUBE: 
 California Scenes. 
 
 California Sunrise 17- 
 
 Cape Horn of the Sierras 17 
 
 Eocks of Monterey 18 
 
 Two Departures Tamalpais 19 
 
 City of the Golden Gate 20 
 
 Shasta 22 
 
 Sacramento Valley 23 
 
 Other Scenic Pieces. 
 
 In the Desert Overland 24 
 
 Humboldt Lake 25 
 
 Indian Summer on the Plains 25 
 
 POEMS OF SENTIMENT. 
 Friendship. 
 
 Song of Friendship 27 
 
 A Dirge 28 
 
 Is Spring for All? 29 
 
 Edgar A. Poe 31 
 
 That Dreamless Sleep 32, 
 
 Our Marian 40 
 
 Since Thou Art Not Here 40 
 
 Live and Let Live 42 
 
 Lament of Mrs. E. A. Poe 42 
 
 WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS. 
 
 I. California Sunset 45 
 
 II. Dead 46 
 
 III. Wedlock 47 
 
 IV. A Bell Toll 47 
 
 V. Fourteen-Lined Love Tale 48 
 
 VI. By-and-By 49 
 
 VII. A Tide 49 
 
 
 Q 
 O 
 
Contents 
 
 VIII. Perhaps 50 
 
 IX. A Tenting Place 50 
 
 X. A Magnet 51 
 
 XL A Trace of Eden 51 
 
 XII. This or That 52 
 
 XIII. Pharisaism 53 
 
 XIV. Paradoxes 53 
 
 XV. A Eover 54 
 
 XVI. Be Merciful 54 
 
 XVII. A Heroine 55 
 
 XVIII. A Comet-Thought 56 
 
 POEMS OF LOVE. 
 
 Vivian 57 
 
 Annette 69 
 
 Agnes 70 
 
 The Good Star of Hope 72 
 
 My Golden Nugget My Valentine 74 
 
 Alone .-... . . . . . . . 76 
 
 My Young Wild Rhyme . 77 
 
 Three Wrecks 78 
 
 Her Gifts to Me 80 
 
 Esther 83 
 
 Ellen . , 84 
 
 Inet ;..;> 85 
 
 To Esther 86 
 
 Esther 87 
 
 My Flowers 89 
 
 Tl e Loved Unknown 91 
 
 Confidence 93 
 
 To Anna . ., 95 
 
 RELIGION AND PATRIOTISM. 
 
 The Valley of Peace 98 
 
 Song for Faith 100 
 
 Our Inner Temple HO 
 
 What Is Great? Ill 
 
 Peace 113 
 
 My America 114 
 
 The Child of Woe 115 
 
 My Far-Away 118 
 
 Telouchkine 119 
 
 TALES. 
 Introductory. 
 
 Life A Tale 121 
 
 Driven from Eden 121 
 
 The Ishmaelite 129 
 
Contents iii 
 
 Page 
 
 lola 137 
 
 In Lighter Vein. 
 
 Money 140 
 
 Growing Old 141 
 
 Chinatown Inland 144 
 
 An Overland Sweat 145 
 
 This Is a Day 146 
 
 Sham 147 
 
 Who s Guve naw? 149 
 
 PKAIEIE BLOSSOMS. 
 
 The Thoughts of a Genius 150 
 
 Knowledge 150 
 
 A Mystery Eevealed 150 
 
 Tea and Coffee 151 
 
 Warm and Cool 151 
 
 A Burial 152 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Be It So 152 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 In the little town of Amity, whose character is indicated 
 by its name, not far from Columbus, Ohio, the author, 
 William Darwin Crabb, was born. 
 
 After a preparatory course, he entered the Ohio Wesleyan 
 University, and graduated in the Classical Course with 
 honor. 
 
 Among his classmates and acquaintances while there were 
 some of our notable men, such as United States Senator 
 Foraker, Governor Pattison of Ohio, Governor Hamilton of 
 Illinois, Professor Battelle, editor of Locke J s National 
 Monthly; Bishops Luccock, McDowell and Thirkield, Span 
 ish-American Missionary Superintendent Dr. Drees, John G. 
 Wooley, famous prohibition leader, and Professor White of 
 Harvard. 
 
 During his senior year in college Mr. Crabb was editor 
 of the college paper. He took post graduate work, and 
 also read a full course in law, sufficient for admission to 
 the District Court of California, but not with the intention 
 of applying for admission, or taking up the practice of 
 law, but simply for the purpose of broadening his education. 
 . ^He taught for awhile after graduation, and while Prin 
 cipal of the lola Schools, in Kansas, he received an offer 
 from Governor Harrington of Alabama to make him manag 
 ing editor of a proposed new magazine in the South. But 
 literary lines had been so broken up by the preceding war 
 that he deemed it inadvisable and did not accept. 
 
 Shortly afterward, he came to San Francisco, and taught 
 for awhile in this State. 
 
 He was elected to a position as Principal in the Univer 
 sity of the Pacific, and remained there three years. 
 
 In the little town of Eumsey, nestled so picturesquely 
 among the foothills and mountains, where "Old Dame Na 
 ture" has given of her best to please the eye of mankind, 
 are located the good staunch friends who made it possible 
 for the author to publish his book at this time, and in his 
 behalf I wish to express hearty appreciation.. 
 
 His literary productions have been as follows: While in 
 college, editor of the college paper, he contributed to it of 
 prose and poetry; also to Locke s National Monthly ("Pe 
 troleum V. Nasby V magazine), the Ohio State Journal, at 
 Columbus, and others. 
 
 His first volume of poems entitled, "Poems of the 
 
x Biographical Sketch 
 
 Plains, 7 published by Hurd & Houghton of New York City, 
 was issued while he was yet in school. This book was well 
 received, and the whole issue promptly sold. 
 
 At Columbus, Ohio, he published a volume entitled, 
 Lives of the Ohio State Officers and Legislators. . 
 
 Soon after he came to San Francisco he had printed a 
 small book simply to give to friends and not to put on the 
 market, entitled, "Silver Shimmer." 
 
 Afterwards he contributed prose and poetry to the Over 
 land Monthly, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Argonaut, 
 and others of the San Francisco papers. Here he compiled 
 the rules of all the courts then practicing in San Francisco 
 in a good-sized law volume, which was promptly sold to 
 attorneys and proved very profitable. 
 
 Just before the earthquake he had published by the 
 Whitaker Eay Co. another volume of poems, entitled, 
 "Lyrics of the Golden West." The first edition was sold, 
 and, just on the eve of a second edition, the fire of the 
 San Francisco earthquake consumed the publishers plant, 
 plates and all, making it impossible to issue the second 
 edition. 
 
 Since then he has been holding his productions, both 
 prose and poetry, having in hand now material for several 
 volumes. 
 
POEMS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GOLDEN WEST 
 
DEDICATORY 
 
 THE IDEAL. 
 
 To Her 
 
 who first a song, a voice, 
 Accordant with seraphic lyre 
 From Heaven came to win her choice, 
 And sing her being thro my heart, 
 And make anew my soul acute, 
 Enkindling with angelic fire 
 
 Voice sweeter than the mellow lute 
 Song artless, yet the perfect art; 
 To her these songs I set apart. 
 
 To Her 
 
 whose eyes came beaming light 
 And love and dawning s quick surprise 
 Into my love-dead soul of night 
 Eyes rich wjth all hues mingling clear; 
 
 Benignant eyes, dear blue-and-brown ; 
 Keats-emerald eyes; sweet violet eyes; 
 
 Eyes speaking from the soul deep down; 
 Those wonder-eyes, kind lamps of cheer 
 To her these songs I offer here! 
 
 To Her 
 
 of rich carnelian lips, 
 Kiss pure as warm carnation s kiss 
 On -honey-dews the sunrise sips 
 And face whose smile of ruby light 
 To many weary sunless hearts 
 Brings hope-inspiring tropic bliss 
 
 And every laughing joy imparts 
 And dapples leaves and flowers with bright 
 To her these rhythmic lines I write. 
 
14 The Ideal 
 
 To Her 
 
 of fonder queenlier charm 
 Than Esther s charms, humanely royal, 
 A crownless regal Grace in form, 
 Yet diademed with priceless crown, 
 
 Rare gems upon her queenly crest 
 Of mind and heart, divinely loyal; 
 
 A placid harbor is her breast, 
 A great good heart ne er anger-blown 
 
 My anchored heart may trust the best 
 Round her these sprays of song are strown, 
 To her this wreath of love is thrown. 
 
 To Her 
 
 of Grecian form and face, 
 The sculptor s dreamed ideal glory, 
 With Venus limbs and Helen s grace, 
 Unstained as vestal maids of Rome, 
 
 Revealing all her charms of now 
 And all the dreams of classic story 
 
 Who lifts her hands in blessings vow 
 Above my spirit s temple-dome; 
 I bring this blushing book of bloom 
 To her, my heart s one only home ! 
 
 To Her 
 
 of iridescent bright 
 Serene celestial gifts of mind, 
 To her, the spirit exquisite, 
 To her the measureless in loves 
 
 That move my being with their thrill 
 Who seeth all, yet seemeth blind 
 When seeming blind is mercy-kind ! 
 Imperial force of heart and will, 
 Yet gentler than the pretty dove s 
 Meek notes of pathos thro the groves 
 To her with songs he comes who roves! 
 
Personal 15 
 
 To Her 
 
 (tho years I roam afar 
 Unrestful as in primal age 
 The ark-sent dove neath sun and star 
 Roves o er the waste that all engirds), 
 
 My heart is held, tho unconfined 
 To her, the wiser than the sage, 
 I bring these poems love-enshrined, 
 One book her blessing hath entwined, 
 Fond notes as songs of dying birds 
 At sunset plaintive timid words. 
 
 Yet Her 
 
 bright name might make them great; 
 For living in her thoughts and words 
 And name is moving thro the gate 
 Of rooms resplendent with all bliss, 
 
 Grand furnishings of regal mind ; 
 And, as her halo there engirds 
 
 The singer, songs must be refined 
 Transfigured by this Esther s kiss 
 They must be budding great by this. 
 To her, my H/ove the first the last, 
 These artless rhvmes I meekly cast ! 
 
 PERSONAL. 
 
 TO HER whose tender hand has touched to raise 
 
 So many dying hopes, and not for praise; 
 
 Whose heart beats friendship for the throbbing 
 
 world, 
 
 Yet loves but one always whose heart is pearled 
 With unpaid deeds of kindness, and whose eyes 
 Are half-way envied by the violet skies 
 Whose eyes -have shone out on the cloudy ocean, 
 On which, so tossing with a wayward motion, 
 My trembling bark of heart goes on its sailing 
 
16 Why Sing? 
 
 Have shone out, on the routeless sea, unfailing, 
 As magnet light-house lights that God has given 
 To win, and light me, to the port of Heaven ; 
 Whose life is pure, and sweet, and good, and 
 
 great 
 To her these humble songs 
 
 I DEDICATE. 
 
 WHY SING? 
 
 You smile and ask me why I sing? 
 
 Tis easier to sing than tell 
 
 I only know there is a string 
 
 So superfine, its music brings 
 
 A plaintive voice, on gifted wings, 
 
 That tries to sweeten wormwood tears 
 
 I only know a tender strain, 
 Sent sweetly through my wayless night, 
 Entrances me; and then I write 
 And sing a yearning song again. 
 
 I only know a golden lyre 
 Gleams yellowly, whose every wire 
 Pours poetry along the glisten 
 That I stand riveted and listen; 
 And so my soul on timid wing 
 Begins in trembling tone to sing. 
 
NATURE 
 
 CALIFORNIA SCENES 
 CALIFORNIA SUNRISE. 
 
 A California sunrise, over-fair! 
 
 See, scarlet-colored margins fringed with green! 
 Lo ! fields of red and crimson bordered there ! 
 
 Here, blue expanses spanned with whitened sheen ! 
 Lo ! yellow banners floating in the air ! 
 
 Now, purple pastures sweet as eye hath seen! 
 Here, pink as blossoms mellow with delight ! 
 O many-hued, sky-ocean s painted Bight, 
 Bent like Benin against the shore of night ! 
 
 CAPE HORN OF THE SIERRAS. 
 
 Swift as a hawk we sweep around 
 Where God s battlements descend, 
 Till cliffs rest on blooming ground 
 In the growing vale below; 
 Till this Eden to the eyes 
 Seems as distant as the skies ; 
 Towering summits seem to blend 
 With the stars that circle low, 
 Blend, and motionless attend. 
 
 Circling round so high and swift, 
 On this mid-suspended rim, 
 E en the vale below lies dim, 
 And the living seem to shift 
 In mid-shadow, while we drift 
 Near where the planets smile above ; 
 And the heart with tender love 
 
18 Rocks of Monterey 
 
 In its fancy would address them, 
 In its rapturous joy caress them, 
 And the heart, its love confessing, 
 Would on Nature s heart, caressing, 
 Lay its silent hands in blessing. 
 But the soul feels the Divine, 
 Begs forgiveness by a sign, 
 Bows in awe at Nature s shrine. 
 
 ROCKS OF MONTEREY. 
 (From the Overland Monthly.) 
 
 Brown rocks, frayed edges of the lands, 
 Enfigured with a netted work 
 Of woods of pine, where blossoms lurk 
 
 Beneath fern leaves as neath green hands, 
 
 Worn rocks, the finger-raveled edges 
 
 By finger-tips of Monterey, 
 
 A queenly hand, the mobile bay, 
 More gemmed than princess hands with pledges, 
 
 Lorn rocks, so torn and fringed by fingers, 
 In-carved with shapes and shadings rare, 
 Arranged in color-patterns fair, 
 
 One turns to go, yet ever lingers! 
 
 Gray rocks, upon whose foldings grand 
 Made ivory-smooth by sweeping spray, 
 The fingers of the tidal bay 
 
 Play organ-tunes along the strand, 
 
 Rough rocks, yet in perspective seen, 
 
 A girth of every gorgeous hue 
 
 And mellow shades wrought thro and thro 
 Of purple-blue and water-green, 
 
Two Departures Tamalpais 19 
 
 Lone rocks, the chosen, safe retreat 
 For shy unbosomings of love, 
 While stars, and white, thin mists above 
 
 Give beauty to the water s fleet, 
 
 And, woman-wise and man-discreet, 
 
 The sympathetic, bounding seas 
 
 On rocks, stern-kind in sympathies, 
 More loud than lovers voices beat. 
 
 How o er the granite keys they play! 
 
 These rhythmic fingers pearly white, 
 
 With rings of emerald and light, 
 Topaz and amethystine ray. 
 
 Thou beauteous hand, thou matchless bay, 
 I love thy jeweled glow, thy spray, 
 Thy myriad splendors in the day, 
 Thy bridal omens, when the drifted 
 Star-gems so fairy -like are sifted. 
 
 -x 
 
 I sit the fringed rocks among; 
 I feel thy finger-touch magnetic; 
 I see thee weaving things prophetic, 
 All thoughts profound, sublime, pathetic, 
 Strength for the old, joy for the young! 
 
 TWO DEPARTURES TAMALPAIS. 
 
 While Tamalpais fair " Sleeping Beauty" lay 
 With face turned skyward and with locks to 
 
 south, 
 Disheveled veiled the sloping mountain way, 
 
 The sun went west from Alcatraz stern isle, 
 Then kissed with glowing lip the tidal mouth 
 
20 City of the Golden Gate 
 
 Of San Francisco s mobile matchless bay, 
 
 E er exquisitely parted with its smile 
 With rosy hand then waved farewells to night, 
 Then swept beyond into the westward light 
 To revel mid Pacific islands bright. 
 
 So doth thy soul, more free, more bright than sun, 
 
 With earthly loves, asleep in beauty, left 
 On Time s Tamalpais mount-tops one by one, 
 
 From militant and fortressed isles of earth, 
 Move Godward, and, with lips aglow and cleft, 
 Doth kiss the tidal mouth, that lures anon, 
 
 Of Aidenn s isled seas of jeweled worth 
 With spirit-hand then wave farewells to time, 
 Then wing beyond to that Elysian clime 
 To dwell amid its endless scenes sublime. 
 
 CITY OF THE GOLDEN GATE. 
 [Written June, 1901.] 
 
 Here stand two sunlit battlements, 
 
 The pillars of the Golden Gate, 
 
 They, many a year of olden date, 
 As angel-builded resting tents 
 Have seemed to weary, beaten ships 
 
 Which gleamed with eyes, with griefs untold, 
 That gazed above stern-bitten lips 
 
 Dreamed o er their loves, but gazed for gold. 
 
 A gate between of shining wave 
 Swings always, always out and in. 
 
 Here feet find rest some hearts a grave, 
 And hopes fulfill, or die by sin. 
 
 And, as a mouth drilled thro the mounts, 
 It seemed to breathe a breath of gold 
 
City of the Golden Gate 21 
 
 Out of the deep-gorged peaks that hold 
 Their mints of minerals and the founts 
 Of blessed streams, with beds of treasure 
 
 And banks of wealth and blooming glory 
 Where Nature is eternal pleasure, 
 
 And trees are green, when Time is hoary. 
 
 And like a large rich-laden flower 
 
 Of gorgeous hue and deepest sweet 
 
 Where bees crowd on with fretting feet 
 The bay blooms up, with under-power, 
 From ocean s heart of trembling blue; 
 
 And men crowd on its restless rim, 
 Where steeples tower and banners flow, 
 
 And sunny winds float sound of hymn. 
 
 The city of the Golden Gate- 
 Shall she be built a grand and fit 
 Metropolis? Or she forget 
 
 The Builder "6 f all good and great, 
 Till He shall strike His fiery hand 
 
 Beneath the proud magnificent 
 
 And sink her streets of hollow sand 
 
 And sea-swirl lull her discontent? 
 
 Shall she become the dream fulfilled 
 
 Of Poe s fantastic poetry 
 
 Become "The City in the Sea" 
 And ocean tread the iron-willed? 
 And rocks rise up in wrath and close 
 
 The eye-entrancing Golden Gate, 
 And leave it to a strange repose, 
 
 Or winds and sea-waves long debate? 
 
22 Shasta 
 
 SHASTA. 
 
 Amid clear chanting waterfalls, and mid 
 
 The silent listening and enchanted pines, 
 Beneath whose stately, manly size are hid, 
 Like nestling children, beauteous shrubs and 
 
 vines 
 Strong-natured pines upon the slopes arranging 
 
 In amphitheatred, encircling lines, 
 Eternal list ners to the ever-changing, 
 Yet ever-changeless, chanting waterfalls 
 With flowing, ebbing, sounding, whisp ring calls. 
 
 Mid forest shades beneath that wonder sky 
 
 Of mountain California with her sun 
 That seldom clouds, I lift my eager eye 
 
 Across the laughing, leaping sun-spots as they run 
 Athro the shadows round me super-fair 
 Creep thro the shrubs, climb up the vines in air 
 In gentle swiftness lest themselves they lose 
 Mid sun-browned shadows dusty-footed shoes. 
 
 Thus looking out beyond the singing world 
 About my musing, trancing place of rest, 
 
 Behold ! A looming, luring vision set impearled 
 Upon the heaven of blue, eternal, blest, 
 
 Beams Shasta glorified, pure pearl of white; 
 
 More grand than Mars, more bright than Venus 
 light. 
 
 Olympus dwindles neath thy flashing glories, 
 
 As shrink, in manhood, childhood s wonder-stories. 
 
 But chosen words are but as smoke and dust 
 That dim the splendors one would thrust to 
 view 
 
Sacramento Valley in Spring 23 
 
 But as the sins of men before the vision thrust 
 To taint the whiteness of the great white throne of 
 
 God. 
 
 Or shrink its grandeur mar the snow-white hue : 
 Shall words rush in where angels meekly trod? 
 
 SACRAMENTO VALLEY IN SPRING. 
 
 With oaks of never-fading green 
 
 And banks of changing green and brown 
 And, like the very stars come down, 
 Strown yellow-bloomed, and set between 
 With every hue that sky hath seen! 
 
 Old live-oaks, tressed with mistletoe 
 Uncombed, unclipt, and old as they, 
 Beneath whose shades the blossoms play, 
 While sweet winds make the new buds blow 
 And sparkle in the morning glow ! 
 
 Thus Sacramento in her bloom 
 And Nature s rhapsody of spring, 
 When love and beauty smile and swing 
 
 Their scenes and censers of perfume 
 
 Below Sierra s snowy plume. 
 
24 In the Desert Land Overland 
 
 OTHER SCENIC PIECES 
 
 IN THE DESERT OVERLAND. 
 
 Overland ! The sterile lands, 
 
 How they glitter in the eye ! 
 
 While the hot airs stand and shimmer, 
 
 As a million spirit-wands, 
 
 With their hot and blinding glimmer, 
 
 Till the only thought is DRY ! 
 
 Sand and sun and sun and sand ! 
 Till the heart is skeptic guessing 
 Why this desolation spread! 
 Why the sun the sands should wed, 
 With no single child of blessing 
 With but sultry winds to whirl them, 
 And the whirlwind sent to swirl them? 
 Ah ! we cannot understand ! 
 
 Skeletons on ways of sands ! 
 Lo ! the pale clouds, overdrifting. 
 Go up higher, as forever 
 Shunning their eternal sifting 
 Clouds up-reaching their thin hands, 
 As imploring: Blue skies, never 
 Leave us to this sandy shifting, 
 And its breath of burning fever!" 
 
 Sand between two fertile strands 
 0, how like the broken-hearted ; 
 Sand between two holy lands, 
 Land of age and youth departed ! 
 Out from youth s green garden hurried 
 Still-born hopes with folded hands 
 Are by sands of dead faith buried. 
 
Indian Summer on the Plains 25 
 
 God, we yield! we may not know 
 
 All the sweetness born of woe ! 
 
 Who shall say, though desert-worried, 
 
 If this desolate repose 
 
 May not blossom as the rose. 
 
 HUMBOLDT LAKE. 
 
 Here it lies in silentness, 
 
 Lonely in a lonely waste, 
 Banks of sand and alkali 
 Silent till the thoughts oppress 
 
 Smooth as pavements marble-faced, 
 Smooth and colored as the sky. 
 
 One lon^ dwelling on its beach, 
 
 One lone bird, with note nor word, 
 
 Drifting, as if naught to choose, 
 
 Despondently and out of reach! 
 Leave this listless, lonesome bird 
 
 This strange mirage of dancing hues ! 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER ON THE PLAINS. 
 
 Grass! grass! plashing, plashing under the hollow 
 
 glass 
 
 Held, hung, and hollowed over the world of grass ! 
 Sky of glass, palm of the hand of God on high ! 
 Grass and sky under and over, filling the world 
 
 and eye ! 
 Space ! space ! and never a sign and never a single 
 
 trace 
 Of fallen cities, or where a tyrant has set his face ! 
 
26 Indian Summer on the Plains 
 
 Far, far away look at a setting star, 
 
 With never a forest, nor even a single spar, 
 
 Far, far a-reach from a single tree to mar 
 
 The streaming light to throw on the face a bar! 
 
 Flowers ! flowers ! taller, grander, standing above 
 
 as towers 
 Over a roof of green! Now falling their leaves in 
 
 showers. 
 Bloom! bloom! fading, falling, falling away in 
 
 gloom ! 
 Green ! green ! falling away, going down to a 
 
 tomb ! 
 
 Roof! roof of green wrought in wonderful woof 
 Over the world as a temple, you wrought as a roof; 
 Flowers, as towers, now that the crisping hours 
 Come, temple, towers, all fading, falling your 
 
 powers ! 
 Stand ! stand ! gray, brown, dead as a withered 
 
 hand, 
 
 Gray as a ruined temple in an old and fabled land ! 
 Gales ! gales ! swift running and whirling ! wails 
 Sounding from under the chariot wheels! gales 
 Whirling the dust, tossing the grass, flapping the 
 
 veils 
 Veils ! veils of Indian summer smoke walking the 
 
 air with trails ! 
 
 Red! red light of the sun face of the moon o er- 
 
 spread ! 
 Redder than anything living, redder than anything 
 
 dead, 
 Red in the struggle of death, neither living nor 
 
 dead 
 This is Indian summer red, painfully red ! 
 
POEMS OF SENTIMENT 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 SONG OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The leaves are turning brown now 
 
 That fold the blow of soul; 
 Yet younger grows the inner bloom 
 
 Within its blossom-bowl, 
 But of all the young flowers in the heart 
 
 Resplendent yet in youth, 
 Hail ! new-born flower of friendship, 
 
 Planed by thee and truth ! 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 So the days may flower and fall, Jo, 
 
 Around the golden blow 
 That swings and swings so young yet, 
 
 Where none but thee shall know. 
 
 The smiles were growing old, Jo, 
 
 Sad and unreconciled, 
 And wandered o er the face, Jo, 
 
 Uncertain, tear-beguiled. 
 Dearly the smiles dropped on the cheeks, 
 
 Blooms from the stems of joy, 
 That bended with their smile-bloom, 
 
 When life was but a boy. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
28 A Dirge 
 
 Kisses may still betray, Jo, 
 
 And hands belie, and words 
 Be said as fond as songs sung, 
 
 Yet be as mocking birds, 
 And utter as fair and sweet a strain 
 
 Out of as false a soul; 
 But eyes are truth, and yours, Jo, 
 
 Shine all its sweet control. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Loves are as blooming moments 
 
 That melt like summer snow ; 
 But friendship, as a cent ry flower, 
 
 Conceals its budding glow 
 Under the living leaves of heart 
 
 (While loves expand and pass), 
 And sways at last its full bloom 
 
 Over the "sea of glass." 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 (Tune, The Croquet Song.) 
 
 A DIRGE 
 
 Talk low; it is done, 
 His love-hope is dead. 
 Go, lay it alone; 
 Its glory is fled 
 Go, bear it as one 
 Bears sorrowful tread !- 
 Dead longings in lead. 
 
 The bud that was fair 
 Will never be bloom; 
 
Is Spring for All? 29 
 
 Tis covered in brown 
 Leaves, dead as despair, 
 Slain by its own gloom 
 Leaves dead and dropped down. 
 
 The star is gone over 
 
 Is set in the sea, 
 
 Which gloometh, where hover 
 
 Ill-bodings to me ! 
 
 The star, as the clovers 
 
 Swirled under the dust, 
 
 Rolls under the tosst 
 
 Sea, cold as dead lovers, 
 
 And pale as a bust. 
 
 The cheek that was red 
 Is paler than shrouds 
 Is colder than lead! 
 The beauty of dawn, 
 Blak-veiled in the clouds 
 Of mourning, is gone ! 
 
 IS SPRING FOR ALL? 
 
 Yes; they tell me spring is coming, 
 
 With the drumming 
 Of the builder, 
 
 And the humming 
 Something milder 
 
 Than the sighing 
 Winds of winter is the flying 
 
 Of the bumble-bee and birds ; 
 But those lying 
 
 Sick and dying, 
 What are these or what are words? 
 
30 Is Spring for All? 
 
 Can they tell them 
 Of its beauty 
 
 So as to make the 
 Longing light? 
 
 Can they spell them 
 In their duty, 
 
 Lying prostrate, and awake the 
 Ling ring day and half the night? 
 
 Thus to take to them delight? 
 
 Many seeds 
 
 That, in September, 
 Fell mong weeds, 
 
 From many a member, 
 Frosted, 
 
 Have been blasted, 
 And will never sprout 
 
 And grow 
 Never will come out 
 
 And blow 
 Never know, 
 
 And never feel, the break of winter for a 
 
 Spring. 
 So of many 
 
 Youths of life 
 And love and beaut} in the fall 
 
 Have not any 
 Quit the strife? 
 
 To how many graves we bring 
 Graves of those we would remember 
 
 Flowers that passed through cold Decem 
 ber 
 And outlived the loved we weep, 
 
 The wept that sleep? 
 
Edgar A. Poe 31 
 
 EDGAR A. POE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Weird meteor of a doleful dye 
 
 Thus flaming in a gloomy sky, 
 
 As wayward as a comet wild, 
 
 Thou strange, romantic, unknown child, 
 
 A bust of deep, unearthly woe, 
 
 Mysterious, morbid, dreamy Poe! 
 
 II. 
 
 Lamented be the day that found 
 Thy storm-swept vessel rockward bound ; 
 And doubly cursed the fatal day 
 When thy lone lifeboat shattered lay 
 In floating fragments o er the sea ! 
 A mournful loss when Heaven lost thee! 
 
 III. 
 
 Thou wast an angel strayed to earth, 
 Thy voice commingling with the mirth, 
 And dreaming, not of gloom, but joy 
 And Heavn n and beauty, fair-haired boy: 
 But " fallen!" what a word of wail! 
 What ranks of anguish crowd its trail! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Who knows the swelling veins of gall 
 That rent thy soul when thou didst fall 4 ? 
 Who knows the quenchless flame that fired 
 Consumed thy peace, and then expired 
 And left the evil all unburned 
 The ashes of thy soul unurned? 
 
32 That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 THAT DREAMLESS SLEEP. 
 
 A Song for Life. 
 
 I. 
 
 We muse, in measured tones of woe: 
 "0 for the deep and dreamless sleep!" 
 
 Then smile an interlude of "No!" 
 "Ah, Life, delusion-crowned and steep, 
 
 I choose the silent rest below!" 
 
 We sing, but break the rhyme to leap, 
 
 To looming peaks, illusive-bright, 
 
 Then chafe to rise to loftier height. 
 
 Tis easy uttered in the light ; 
 
 Tis easy spoken in the play, 
 But well repented of, when night 
 
 Suggests the darkness and decay 
 The hollow silentness and blight, 
 
 When we are still and put away 
 Yea, then we fear, and cry: "Forgive! 
 Repeat, years, repeat, and live!" 
 
 II. 
 
 Lone, like a single stem of wheat 
 Left leaning o er a headed field, 
 
 And, bending with untimely heat, 
 A queenly chastened woman kneeled, 
 
 And paled to hear herself repeat 
 
 That wish few hearts have ever sealed ;- 
 We chant it sunward on the breeze, 
 
 Then pray: "Be broken in the trees!" 
 
 Her child, the seal of peaceful love, 
 Had melted in the breath of God 
 
 And flown, like incense sweet above ; 
 And friends had fallen to the sod 
 
That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 Left her to grieve a mateless dove, 
 In ways of night all newly trod; 
 She moans above her dead delight, 
 1 I die! I fly beyond this night!" 
 
 But words are like alluring signs 
 
 To tell not all, or tell amiss, 
 The thoughts within the secret lines; 
 
 And grief may picture signs of bliss, 
 As bliss may seem to bloom in wines 
 
 And, when the pale god came to kiss 
 The white seal on her lifted brow, 
 She thrust it back "Not now! Not now!" 
 
 The dead face of a love may stare 
 
 Away the quiet of the breast ; 
 The dead kiss of a child may wear 
 
 Away the lips of early rest. 
 Now days o^. grief to her are fair, 
 
 For, while her life swings in the "West, 
 The hours go up with shining wings 
 Sweet with the "song for life" she sings. 
 
 III. 
 
 With purpose stronger than the oaks, 
 
 And aspirations tall as pines 
 Above the mountain-crowning rocks 
 
 With wits that shone as diamond mines 
 With fine-cut face, Adonis locks, 
 
 A youth broke through the twining vines 
 Of young affections, into strife, 
 Which, won, is pain which, lost, is life ! 
 
 He ran the labyrinthine way 
 
 Of learning swift as love in youth, 
 
 He rose! He fell aye, in a day! 
 Those hearts he sacrificed in ruth; 
 
 His rude deeds to the heads of gray ; 
 
34 That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 His subtle dodges with the truth; 
 Deserted friendships, whose frank eyes 
 Ran tears of blood from broken ties; 
 
 These deeds hung on him, ill-voiced seers, 
 
 As dry leaves on the dying oak, 
 And rustled their eternal jeers. 
 
 He watched the going up of smoke, 
 And dared to utter, through his fears; 
 
 Take up the life ambition broke! 
 The ismoke ascends and melts in peace 
 Thus, life, like incense, find release!" 
 
 The night poured down the way he trod; 
 
 In midnight dusk and silvery light, 
 The moon gleamed like an eye of God ; 
 
 And, like angelic eyes by night, 
 A thousand stars shone out abroad 
 
 And moon and stars, with glistening might, 
 Seemed searching out his covered thoughts 
 And frowning on his coward plots. 
 
 His heart strikes weary fists with fate, 
 Which beats it till it bleeds, and he 
 
 Goes down beneath the ruthless weight, 
 Like tents beat down upon the lea 
 
 And then he calls, "Unlock death s gate!" 
 And loudly knocks "Swing back for me!" 
 
 But, when ajar, how quick to cry: 
 
 "Swing shut! quick, quick! I will not die!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 We look up at the happy stars, 
 
 That shed like gleams of peace their beams ; 
 We look in on the thousand scars 
 
 And pangs of heart, then speak in dreams, 
 Not all of sleep "Death, end these wars 
 
 Which keep us from pacific streams 
 
That Dreamless Sleep 35 
 
 That wind yon star-delightsome land!" 
 Then wake and tremble where we stand. 
 
 Then wake and tremble that we dared 
 To dream of parting hands with dust, 
 
 Till dust should more than be impaired 
 Should fall in pieces fine as rust; 
 
 And few have then so far despaired 
 That they could lay the crumbled trust, 
 
 With no regret, to whence it came 
 
 Could welcome what our dreams declaim. 
 
 V. 
 
 Flowered in the splendor of her youth, 
 
 And tossed by every balmy stir, 
 Of atmospheres of spring and truth, 
 
 More fair than all fair things that were, 
 Unscarred by any touch of ruth, 
 And un-embittered by the myrrh 
 That comes to many maidens, she 
 Was won to love s dear rhapsody. 
 
 The snows flowed down; the flowers came up; 
 
 The birds went over; golden bees 
 Dug in their mines, and bore their cup 
 
 And bars of gold; and summer seas 
 Went on, as stars came down to sup 
 
 Still smiling at his winsome pleas 
 And, playing in the meads of pleasure, 
 She moved to love s redundant measure. 
 
 Go over, birds; and, gold-winged star, 
 Come down to sup ; and, seas of fame, 
 
 Come in; and, bees, bear cup and bar 
 Of gold; and flowers, arise and flame 
 
 Another came her joy to mar 
 
 Who won her lover; hence she came 
 
36 That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 To seek the river s deadly pall, 
 
 But shrank, and clasped this life of gall ! 
 
 Sing not of those, whose spirits stray 
 Insanely through a fancied night ! 
 
 They of a frenzy plunge away 
 
 No logic plans, but pangs and blight 
 
 Have sprung the balance; so that they 
 Are worse then dead, and have no might 
 
 To will for life or death; tis these 
 
 That fall by self, the shattered trees! 
 
 VI. 
 
 When friends have passed the silent door, 
 And loves, as birds through broken panes, 
 
 Have flown, but left their spots of gore, 
 We sit among those darling stains, 
 
 And say: " Tis done! I strive no more! 
 Shut down the blinds ! The best of gains 
 
 Is rest of rests ! We whisper low, 
 
 Then meet the echo with our, "No!" 
 
 VII. 
 
 In keen, illusive action taught 
 We wind our life into a ball 
 
 As acrobats, then toss the thought 
 As one would toss a thought of gall 
 
 So wildly tossed, yet shrewdly caught. 
 We feign yet fling it but to fall 
 
 Back to the hands that hurled it fro, 
 
 Then kiss the Life we feigned to throw. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 My lamp looks in my weary eyes, 
 And seethes its sorrowful complaint. 
 
 And seems to call in endless sighs: 
 
 "Turn down the wick! I burn in vain!" 
 
That Dreamless Sleep 37 
 
 But, when I would, it strives to rise, 
 And flares its wish to burn again; 
 "Turn down the Life!" tis swiftly sighed, 
 Then swift repented, and denied. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Love, thou wild, ungoverned god! 
 
 Thou rude executor of lives ! 
 Uncertain plowing human sod 
 
 With keenest of all pruning knives 
 Cutting our peace off bud by bud ! 
 
 Thy blood-plashed plow, it drives and drives 
 Its red share thro the roots of soul 
 Uprooting every cherished bole. 
 
 Yea, who can iyeak that power, that breaks 
 A million hearts, and yet can smile ; 
 
 And peaceful sleeps, and joyful wakes 
 A million more hearts leads to guile, 
 
 To where the light of hope forsakes. 
 I saw one join that sombre file 
 
 Of those who bear the tarnished urns 
 
 Of dusts of peace that ne er returns. 
 
 She died not quick, as day goes down, 
 Nor quick as flowers that droop by frost; 
 
 As California s April-grown 
 
 Luxuriant grass half blossom-lost, 
 
 She slowly died; as it turns brown 
 
 By summer drought, and dust embossed, 
 
 Returns to dust. Her pallid face 
 
 Death crowded graveward space by space. 
 
 But even she looked back to earth, 
 
 And yearned for years. They were not much 
 To such as she; and yet their dearth 
 
 Was worth her wish. Ah ! worth the touch 
 Of beads of prayer, "Tho void of mirth, 
 
That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 Let speed the >steed of life; for such 
 Is better than the breathless bed 
 Where I must sleep, when I am dead!" 
 
 And, when she fell, as shivered bust, 
 Down from the saddle, in the race, 
 
 Her last words were: "Yea, G-od is just; 
 But, oh! to lie with upturned face, 
 
 Yet see no skies ! Lie in the must 
 And chill of that deep breathless place !- 
 
 Oh ! let me stay with life and sorrow, 
 
 At least, till one more sweet to-morrow ! 
 
 And, when her voice had died to rest, 
 
 In all the agonies of signs, 
 She cried for life ! It may be best, 
 
 "We dread to drop the slender lines, 
 So still ride on, though sable-dressed, 
 
 And cling to life, as clinging vines, 
 And, when we crumble, stir our dust 
 To transient life, to plead for "trust." 
 
 Like pictures on the silent walls, 
 
 We hang our lives, then turn to leave ; 
 
 When, hearing something in the halls, 
 We fear some ghosts, we would deceive, 
 
 Are stealing in with secret palls 
 
 To take the lives we seem to grieve 
 
 We turn and seize them quick with trembling 
 
 And own the truth we were dissembling! 
 
 XL 
 
 We plan to sparkle like the dew 
 
 To sparkle through an hundred years 
 
 To sparkle like the splendid few 
 
 Sweet drops that crown the upper spears ; 
 
That Dreamless Sleep 
 
 But, learning, all too soon and true, 
 
 That those which lie unseen, as tears 
 We never shed, outlive the rest, 
 We fall to common lots at best; 
 
 To getting gain, and garments spun 
 Enough for needs ; and take to ease ! 
 
 We rise not in the beating sun ; 
 We take to shadows of the trees. 
 
 We turn from all we might have won 
 To hammocks swung in healthful breeze 
 
 And grateful choose a life discreet 
 
 Where death comes with belated feet. 
 
 So loves may die ; and hearts may break 
 And fortunes sink, as vain as dust; 
 
 And forms may sleep, to never wake 
 Come all things that may wear or rust, 
 
 Or life can give, or life could take, 
 We beg of Nature longer trust, 
 
 Before we pay the debt, whose claim 
 
 Takes all, except the chiseled name! 
 
 Come back, then, years that sorrow stole ! 
 
 Come back, days, that folly slew! 
 Come back, Life, too near the goal! 
 
 The deeds against thee, Life, undo ! 
 Life, unroll the wrinkled scroll! 
 
 Come back, Life, we would be true 
 We love thee well would give all things, 
 Ere thee, Life, with speeding wings! 
 
40 Since Thou Art Not Here 
 
 OUR MARIAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 As kind is our Marian as dew, 
 The kindest of all that is true- 
 No breath of the tropics so mild, 
 As mild as the smile of a child; 
 As rich are thine eyes as the fold 
 Of light through a mantle of gold. 
 
 II. 
 
 As gentle as tropical bowers 
 Yet mingled with lovable powers. 
 As pure as Elysian perfume 
 Is thy heart of a Paradise bloom 
 Yea, purer than all that is pure 
 By purity rendered secure. 
 
 III. 
 
 And faith thou hast flowing as fountains, 
 
 And strong as the masterful mountains, 
 
 The kindest and truest a friend, 
 
 That boldest fast unto the end 
 
 Our dear little lovable Girl, 
 
 Our deep-hearted, bright-hearted Pearl ! 
 
 SINCE THOU ART NOT HERE. 
 
 I. 
 
 There s a laugh in the treetop, a smile in the sky, 
 And the birds with their merriment filling the 
 glade, 
 
 And many a matron with love in her eye, 
 And jollity sporting around in the shade 
 
Since Thou Art Not Here 41 
 
 But the mirth in my eye, it is courting a tear 
 Tho I smile, my heart weepeth, since thou art not 
 here. 
 
 II. 
 
 The jest ringeth round in a circle of joy; 
 
 And mine chimeth in with the chorus of laugh, 
 And none ever dreams of a thought to annoy 
 
 The sweetness and gayety born, as we quaff 
 Such respite of care. But, alas ! in their cheer, 
 Tho I laugh, I am lonely, since thou art not here. 
 
 III. 
 
 Tho strong is the friendship, that welcomes me 
 
 home 
 
 To the hearths of the noble and good of our land, 
 And tender the ties that would bid me not roam, 
 And warm is their kiss and the grip of their 
 
 hand, 
 Yet I cannot but roam from these ties, that are 
 
 near, 
 While thou art far dearer, and way from me here. 
 
 IV. 
 
 My heart leapeth high, as I sit by the side 
 Of the fairest of sisters, companion of youth ; 
 
 And her eye, like the light on the incoming tide, 
 Shines up into mine with its love and its truth 
 
 There is peace in her gaze, yet it bringeth a tear; 
 
 For, oh ! it reminds me that thou art not here. 
 
 V. 
 
 There s many a maiden, too, gathering flowers, 
 And throwing about me the bloom and their 
 smiles, 
 
42 Live and Let Live 
 
 While the gold-gilded moments string off into 
 
 hours ; 
 
 Yet my fancy the brightest maid never beguiles 
 Away from thy flowers and thy smile with its 
 
 cheer 
 And the day groweth longer, since thou art not 
 
 here. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And, when meditation comes on with the eve, 
 And I loiter alone, in my musing I sigh. 
 
 They chide me for weeping and wonder I grieve 
 With such happiness here and a Christ in the 
 sky. 
 
 Then I go to my chamber and plead, with a tear, 
 
 That Jesus may shield thee, since thou art not here. 
 
 VII. 
 
 And the lamp of his love cometh down with the 
 
 night, 
 
 And I go to my rest by the light of its beams. 
 And my slumber is sweetened by thoughts of de 
 light; 
 
 And I fancy I m with thee again in my dreams 
 Which go with the morning, which comes with a 
 
 tear, 
 And still I am lonely and thou art not here. 
 
 LIVE AND LET LIVE. 
 
 Strive? to be sure we should strive, till we thrill 
 Our being with struggles of muscle and mind. 
 
 But, ah! is the world but a canyon-like rill, 
 
 With room but for one and no room to be kind? 
 
 Full wide is the river to work and forgive, 
 
 Nor tangle our oars as we live and let live. 
 
Live and Let Live 43 
 
 The diligent hand may wax rich without harm 
 To other hands reaching the bounties of life. 
 
 But, alas! that so many are cast in a storm 
 By those who would gather the wreck of their 
 strife. 
 
 We sift all the grain through and leave in the sieve 
 
 The chaff for a brother : nor live and let live. 
 
 It is nothing humane that we sift the grain thro , 
 Then cast to a brother the leavings of chaff. 
 
 It is nothing humane that we make a storm strew 
 The strength of our foes, as we gather, and quaff 
 
 Our glasses of gains, and we smile as they grieve. 
 
 He only lives well, w r ho can live and let live. 
 
 It is nothing humane if a neighbor should strain 
 A weary, thin hand for the gladness of life, 
 
 That swords of our avarice strike it and stain 
 With blood of defeat the one weaker in strife: 
 
 There s a kernel for each in Life s beautiful sieve, 
 
 And chaff for the wind, if we live and let live. 
 
 There is room on the tide of Life s changeable way 
 For all who go rowing to pass and return 
 
 And never strike oars, as we sprinkle with spray 
 The brothers who pass with the prizes they 
 earn 
 
 With sprays of delight that they win, as we give 
 
 Clear way to the weaker, and live and let live. 
 
 It is better to wring from inanimate earth, 
 By resolute effort, the wealth we desire 
 
 Than wring from a brother the wealth he brought 
 
 forth 
 From the tempests of sin, or the furnace of fire. 
 
 How many, alas! are refusing to give 
 
 Fair way to a foe. and to live and let live. 
 
44 Lament of Mrs. Edgar Allen Poe 
 
 LAMENT OF MRS. EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Twas fair to toil ; and willing feet 
 And hands, that reached, and finger tips 
 
 Moved swift as stars, until defeat 
 Laid hushing fingers on his lips 
 
 And crushed success twas not meet 
 To have defeat so oft repeat! 
 
 I could endure were it but sure 
 
 This toil would once bring rest to him. 
 
 For could he reach 
 
 The golden scenes that ever swim 
 
 Beyond his hand, I would not cry: 
 
 "That I could die that we could die!" 
 
 The day has night; the years lie down; 
 
 And stars close eyes in cheery sleep; 
 Sometimes the sun lays down his crown; 
 
 The troubled seas toss not so deep 
 Sometimes, and quell their surge and sound. 
 
 And rest is found, yea, rest is found. 
 
 But our hopes bow in fruitless prayer; 
 
 We reach and toil, we yearn we fail; 
 I would rest ! It is not fair, 
 
 This sea we ride ! Take down the sail ! 
 Let s sleep, death deep; for tis not sweet 
 
 To have defeat thus still repeat ! 
 
California Sunset 45 
 
 WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS. 
 
 Some feeble ivayside flowers in sterile ground, 
 
 That bloomed in love to cast their sweetness round 
 
 To glad-den hearts, who, shifted by the sweet 
 And tender blossoms nodding at their feet, 
 
 Nor thought to thank the slender angel flowers 
 That cheered them thro their weary journey- 
 hours! 
 
 WAYSIDE BLOSSOMS. 
 
 I. 
 CALIFORNIA SUNSET. 
 
 A California sunset, over fair ! 
 
 See, scarlet-colored margins fringed with green! 
 Lo, fields of red and crimson-bordered there ! 
 
 Here blue expanses spanned with whitened 
 
 sheen ! 
 Lo, yellow banners floating in the air, 
 
 And purple pastures sweet as eye hath seen! 
 Here pink with blossoms mellow with delight! 
 
 many-hued sky-ocean s painted bright 
 Bent like Benin against the shore of night! 
 
 Some lives have been as that, with scarlet sin 
 Fringed round with pleasure-gardens, green, alas ! 
 
 With secret bowers of bloody-red within! 
 
 And crimson hands have stained the crystal glass 
 
 Reflecting God s truth-blue skies that have been! 
 White bows of promise, neath whose bended 
 way 
 
46 Dead 
 
 Drag yellow jealous banners ! purple lips 
 
 That sorrow touched, and pink lips, pink a day 
 
 Of love, that yearns a year, a moment sips! 
 splendid, painful, sad, strange life, alas! 
 
 II. 
 DEAD. 
 
 His eyes were big with tears, and weepings loud 
 
 Were smothered by his efforts, while 
 A hand, as thoughtless, as the shovels, shuffles 
 
 The heavy-thumping clay down, with a will, 
 Upon the heedless dead. Ah! how it ruffles 
 
 The Tahoe of his heart, so crystal still! 
 And how it roils the clear, with every clod 
 
 That falls upon his heart and dead, God! 
 
 Tis sad to see the last leaves fall and float 
 
 Off on the chilly stream to some broad bay 
 To mingle with the drift of many a boat 
 
 There wrecked and tossing, helpless, night and 
 
 day, 
 Upon its top-pitched swell. Tis sad to note 
 
 The fade of twilight; it is sad to lay 
 The last sunbeam upon the couch of night 
 
 And know that, ere it wakes, some soul takes 
 flight. 
 
 Tis sad to <see the last, brown deadened blade 
 
 Of grass entombed beneath the first white snow; 
 Tis sad, tho sweet, to hear across the glade 
 
 The mellow song of some lone bird, and know 
 That, when its plaintive, dying notes shall fade 
 
 To silence, tis the last; tis sadder, tho , 
 To follow out the best friend (as a wave 
 
 A body dead, afloat) to some lone grave. 
 
A Bell Toll 47 
 
 III. 
 WEDLOCK. 
 
 God placed in man the golden gift of love, 
 
 And which would be attended with the sweetest 
 Enjoyment with which all of earth could move 
 
 A human heart altho tis called the fleetest. 
 Of false love this is true. O land above ! 
 
 It surely, Heaven, is not thou that meetest 
 Such love to mortals simply to enhance 
 
 The lassitude that followeth the dance ! 
 
 ! there is bliss indeed in being wed ; 
 
 But tis not in the wedlock of the hand, 
 Nor in the law of w r edlock weak as lead, 
 
 Nor in the wedlock custom may demand. 
 The bliss of many wedded ones is dead, 
 
 Because they are not wedded with the band 
 That never galls the wed, whose touch and kiss 
 
 At fifty years of age is young with bliss! 
 
 IV. 
 A BELL TOLL. 
 
 Ah ! do I hear now, yonder lifted bell 
 
 Pour groans for dead from out its brazen lips? 
 Infernal sounds ! I reel beneath thy knell 
 
 Which strikes my heart down like a sledge, and 
 
 rips 
 A half-well wound! No sounds resound so fell 
 
 As bell-knolls, whose weird tolling never drips 
 Upon my mind like music, since the time 
 
 No matter, that was in another clime ! 
 
48 Fourteen-Lined Love Tale 
 
 I see a box of varnished ebony, 
 
 Lined with fine silk and velvet, white as purity, 
 With glinting silver studs, and hinged, I see, 
 
 With gleamy gold. How fair! Yet not security 
 Against the pain of those bereft, who cry 
 
 Around the dead, nor yet against obscurity 
 That waits the favored sleeper; for the sleep 
 
 Some think is better than to live and weep. 
 
 V. 
 FOURTEEN-LINED LOVE TALE. 
 
 Oh ! she was loveliness itself, fair Lillie, 
 
 And purer than a white-lipped lily-flower, 
 And not like many girls at sixteen, silly. 
 
 Her great eyes beggar all descriptive power; 
 And looked they on her timid lover, till he 
 
 Seemed floating on their violet-tide. No hour 
 Was long, when she was with him; when away 
 
 A minute seemed a lonesome, ling ring day. 
 
 how their love thoughts blind them how en 
 thrall them! 
 
 I ll not say what futile fancy wove 
 Around them, or say what a flashing column 
 
 Of crumbling sweets, a-gilt with fickle love, 
 They built by moonlight, and they never thought 
 That what seemed "Is!" should end, "Alas! is 
 not!" 
 
By-and-By 49 
 
 VI. 
 BY-AND-BY. 
 
 What histories are writ in by-and-by ! " 
 
 The buxom country lass laughs out at eve: 
 "Ha! Will will be here by-and-by, and I 
 
 My heart shall never more know how to grieve! 
 I fling a kiss! I fling away the sigh!" 
 
 Thus how her happy, healthy spirits heave ! 
 But then Will does not come, alas, and so 
 
 It grows into a "by-and-by" of woe. 
 
 Our joys are half made up of "by-and-bys," 
 
 Which we expect here to participate. 
 How few of which we ever realize! 
 
 We are not now, but "by-and-by" are great. 
 We are now blind, but "by-and-by" have eyes. 
 
 But this is sure, that if we only wait 
 And work in godly patience, you and 1 
 
 Will grasp the whole in yon great "By-and-By." 
 
 Nameless, with your holy violet eye ! 
 
 thousand promises of "by-and-by"! 
 expectation, born to smile and die ! 
 
 * by-and-by, thou unintended lie ! 
 O may we not yet realize on High 
 
 The promises and all the memory 
 Of what we hoped to have beneath the sky, 
 
 At least, above it in the "By-and-By"? 
 
50 A Tenting Place 
 
 VII. 
 A TIDE. 
 
 Strange ! As I write, some half -unwelcome guest 
 
 Comes peering o er the page, mild as a dove, 
 And yet it stirreth something in my breast 
 To painfulest convulsions, which so move 
 The deepest soul, and lift the lake of tears 
 Until it overfloods the bank of years: 
 sweet, pure, patient love, I feel thy breast 
 Throb thro the years to mine, "unrest! unrest!" 
 
 VIII. 
 PERHAPS. 
 
 Perhaps we may be glad in time ; how sad 
 Uncertainty in that strange word, "perhaps"! 
 
 Perhaps? The very thought would drive one mad. 
 Such doubt, while looking to the future, wraps 
 
 The soul in shrouds. Perhaps we may Alas ! 
 With Christ, sail on the crystal "Sea of Glass." 
 
 IX. 
 A TENTING PLACE. 
 
 An untamed bird sits on yon mountain pine 
 Which, solitary, from its mount-top flows 
 Above the vale, which like an emerald line 
 
A Trace of Eden 51 
 
 Winds round the base. The gentle wind that 
 
 blows 
 Reminds of her soft breath; the stars that shine 
 
 Seem gleaming as her eyes; and dim-seen bows 
 Of promise, in the valley mists, seem bent 
 
 As those that arched her eyes : here is my tent ! 
 
 X. 
 
 A MAGNET. 
 
 The melancholy that doth hang a hope, 
 
 Small as a star, in Heav n is better than 
 The mirth that hangs the real, large as the scope 
 
 Of burning sun, in sordid earth, for man; 
 For merriment is as a magnetized rope 
 
 To draw us earthward; melancholy an 
 Untarnished magnet, making our God-given 
 
 Life-needle swing from Earth and tip toward 
 Heaven. 
 
 XL 
 
 A TRACE OF EDEN. 
 
 Of all the good of earth, and all the wise, 
 And all the beautiful beneath the skies, 
 
 The pearliest trace of Eden s Paradise. 
 
 Still found in Earth, we find in: "Give gifts, 
 free! 
 
 In love, forgive, as God forgiveth thee!" 
 
52 This or That 
 
 XII. 
 THIS OR THAT. 
 
 One poet sings, "Life is an empty dream"; 
 
 Another contradicts the one, and says, 
 " Tis real and is earnest." "Well, we deem 
 
 That neither falsifies in full yeas? nays? 
 For do the things in dreaming only seem? 
 
 Nay, they are real, earnest, till they craze 
 Some weary, wayward dreamers here below 
 
 These dreams so earnest with their woe. 
 Some lives dream on and on, but dream no thing 
 
 Of deep importance, dreamy platitude ! 
 And talk their dreams aloud. Some, faithless, sing, 
 
 A dream of beauties destitute of good. 
 Some dream, and, as they dream, they sweetly 
 swing, 
 
 Sometimes beyond this worldly amplitude, 
 And bring back, from the region of a star, 
 
 Some sacred thought, grand, glorious, from afar! 
 
 These are the geniuses, sublime of head 
 Some dream forever out beyond the crowd, 
 
 Then whisper back to us ; these are the dead. 
 Some dream in silence, sewing at a shroud ; 
 
 Low down by buried coffins they have wed. 
 
 A dream awake, a dream asleep, tis ours. 
 
 But be it only THIS: be sanctified; 
 Be in the will of Him of prideless power; 
 
 Glide up away from him of powerless pride ; 
 Be it but thus, and, like a chastened tide 
 
 Of dream-veiled beauty, it shall break in days 
 Eternal thro the dreamless, holy ways. 
 
Paradoxes 53 
 
 XIII. 
 PHARISAISM. 
 
 I do not find the stiffened jackets in 
 
 The works of Christ. They are the devils work, 
 Who wish to turn all goodness into sin 
 
 And make the gloom of sin its soulless irk 
 Appear as goodness; hence befooled men, 
 
 Beneath their stiffened jackets, bear a dirk 
 Sheathed in their dismal devil-given creeds, 
 
 Which, when they speak, stabs Truth until it 
 bleeds. 
 
 Tis not because of Jesus sweet Christianity; 
 
 But tis because men will pervert the truth. 
 And twist high Heaven s sane into insanity, 
 
 And cramp our Saviour s mercy into ruth, 
 And would press all the human from humanity, 
 
 And sprinkle whiteness on the heads of youth. 
 O Jesus! Will it ever, ever be 
 
 That men can see the mercy thou canst see? 
 
 XIV. 
 PARADOXES. 
 
 what a world of paradoxes this! 
 
 The very motives that would prompt a man 
 To shower on others well-meant gifts of bliss 
 
 Spread ruin on the very road o er run; 
 A cruel blow seems kinder than a kiss. 
 
 Start to perform the very best you can, 
 Your kindness seems at last to simply end 
 
 In tragedy. Be kind, and you offend. 
 And every pleasant thing that God has given 
 
 Seems but a snare to tangle us in woe; 
 
54 Be Merciful 
 
 And every woe by which a man is driven 
 Drives him where only fruits of blisses grow ; 
 
 And he that tastes of happiness below 
 
 May break his fiddle for the time to come 
 
 Make your oration here, but there you must be 
 dumb. 
 
 XV. 
 A ROVER. 
 
 He feigned full many a smile and many a laugh 
 
 And far-fetched merriment and soulless glance, 
 And strove to scatter with his friends the chaff 
 
 Of levity, and laugh to see it dance 
 In thoughtless joying, and he strove to quaff 
 
 The glass of glee, but therein lurks a trance, 
 A curse, that turns the liquid into foam; 
 
 He drank its nothingness to the health of home. 
 
 XVI. 
 BE MERCIFUL. 
 
 She standeth quailing at the midnight shimmer 
 That floats far down upon the mourning river. 
 See what a passionate, convulsive tremor 
 
 Creeps o er her faded frame ! A death cold shiver ! 
 Wild eyes from face as pale as pale moon s glim 
 mer, 
 Look back ! be quick ! she leaps ! . . is still 
 
 forever ! 
 Who blames ? who knows ? woe-bewildered 
 
 daughter, 
 Thy secret, save God and the tongueless water? 
 
A Heroine 55 
 
 Twere well to think more deeply ere we talk. 
 
 Twere well to scan the heights of mercy first; 
 For could we see o erhead the swooping hawk, 
 
 Why would we blame the timid quail that durst 
 Dart swiftly and so headlong gainst a rock, 
 
 And thus meet death rather than face the worst? 
 Ah ! thus familiar death appears less dread 
 
 To some sad ones than swooping woe o erhead! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 A HEROINE. 
 
 I knew a life, the sweetest sacrifice, 
 
 But one, earth ever knew. O she was great, 
 Great by the standard of most human eyes, 
 And greater in the eyes round Heaven s gate. 
 
 Ideal beauty blushed, fell on its knees 
 And stammered, as it tried to emulate 
 
 Her beauty, for it did surpass th ideal 
 Her meek, unbounded beauty, yet was real ! 
 
 And she was born a child of rarest song, 
 
 And thoughts of mild, yet big magnificence 
 A poetess even when she lay along 
 
 The blooming stream of childhood, and the sense 
 Was riveted to hear her chastened tongue 
 
 Pour forth her written sonnet-eloquence, 
 In her most song-engifted utterance 
 
 The very blossoms listened in a trance ! 
 
 
 
 So even her beauty, most divinely gifted, 
 Stood pouting, envious of her gift of mind. 
 
 But, oh ! her boundless soul seemed ever lifted 
 Beyond the reach of selfishness too kind 
 
 To have seen a fly adrift, and not have drifted 
 In sympathy, most superfine-refined, 
 
56 A Comet Thought 
 
 Down with the drowning mote, to reach and weep 
 Till she could lift the small waif from the deep! 
 
 Yet she was sacrificed for golden-shine 
 Who gave for gilt, a life so near divine? 
 
 A father! father! will she be debased? 
 
 She dies instead! and her sweet memory, traced 
 
 On maiden hearts, has kept how r many chaste? 
 
 XVIII. 
 A COMET-THOUGHT. 
 
 Last night mine eyes walked o er the far embroi 
 dered 
 
 Blue heavens, and they strolled along its seas 
 Of silvered clouds, and toward the wild, unordered 
 
 Swift comet-rivers leaned against those trees, 
 Whose buds are waving stars, whose tops do blos 
 som 
 
 With suns and moons, which toss, oh, far across 
 them! 
 
 I thought I saw trailed upward thro the crimson 
 
 Of sunset clouds the shadow of that thought. 
 My soul leaps westward leaps and swiftly swims 
 
 on 
 The crimson flood! I reach my arms, and it is 
 
 not! 
 
 My soul falls backward, sick from its exertion, 
 And feeling all desire amid its deep desertion. 
 
 This frets the flesh away, this trackless yearning 
 
 This pleading, everlasting call! 
 Oh, this eternal reaching, and returning 
 
 Heart-empty to this tame and barren ball! 
 Ah! even Cleopatra s love were breastless, 
 
 When this aspiring adds unrest to restless! 
 
Vivian 37 
 
 POEMS OF LOVE. 
 VIVIAN. 
 
 What iridescent beauties twine 
 
 And round Thee weave their radiant glory, 
 
 My Vivian with the soul benign 
 
 With heart that glows the old loved story, 
 
 And mind and spirit thoughts that shine 
 
 With worth more rare than stars divine. 
 
 How difficult to sing thy grace 
 
 Of mind and heart and smile and way 
 
 Of magnet touch and beauty-trace 
 
 In lines of form and every ray 
 
 Of luscious tints on lip and face ! 
 
 Thy ways thy winsomeness enhance, 
 Enlacing as with angel laces 
 That flow from every kindly glance; 
 While God, the Super-Angelo, 
 Thy cheeks of light and brow aglow. 
 And wondrous eyes, and laughing mouth, 
 All tropic as the witching south, 
 O erfloods with springs of love and thought- 
 Such thoughts and loves as He alone, 
 Great Artist, ever yet has thrown 
 On such few perfect luminous faces ! 
 
 One love, as manna in the dew, 
 Yet strong as surges of the ocean, 
 My heart entwineth thro and thro , 
 My soul suffusing with devotion 
 A worship at the shrine for you, 
 My Vivian with the spirit voice, 
 With heart and smiling eyes of few. 
 
58 Vivian 
 
 With face of strength and fine decision, 
 
 I see thee standing glorified, 
 
 And glowing in a rhythmic vision ; 
 
 And, like a seraph sanctified 
 
 In gentleness, I see Thee glide 
 
 As Psyche o er the fields Elysian. 
 
 You hold the lustre of my loves 
 As rugged as the mounts of mist, 
 Yet delicate as turtle-doves, 
 And pure as skies of amethyst, 
 And fecund as Brazilian groves ! 
 
 What gracious, lambent eyes are thine ! 
 They flame, yet their illuming sparks 
 Pain not as fires, but warm, refine; 
 And on thy heart s entrancing tide 
 They float, two double gleesome arcs 
 That lure me from the world aside 
 And with me joy ward always glide. 
 
 Thou dear delightsome Heart of hearts, 
 
 Thou ever loyal Queen of Beauty! 
 
 Not thine the beauty of the arts, 
 
 But re-incarnate love and duty; 
 
 Not thine the large, voluptuous splendor 
 
 Of Amazonian queen, but slender, 
 
 Graceful, beauteous, lithesome, tender! 
 
 Thy brilliance, like the playful birds; 
 Thy smiling cheerfulness of face, 
 Life-brightening in looks and words. 
 Like happy butterflies that chase 
 Amid the seas of sunny flowers, 
 Thy pretty ways of heart and mind 
 Do spray about Thee dazzling showers 
 Of feelings, thoughts and luring powers, 
 Pearls, rubies, diamond, chrysoprase 
 
Vivian 59 
 
 Jade, emerald, opal every kind 
 Of life florescent, crystalline 
 That fill us with a sweet amaze ; 
 See this is Thine, to glint and shine ! 
 
 When these refining thoughts enwreath 
 
 Thy coronal around thy mind, 
 
 And o er thy heart their fragrance breathe, 
 
 And lift the curtain, swing the blind, 
 
 How, dancing from thy window-eyes, 
 
 Come, laughing like sweet stars and skies, 
 
 Such silvery, golden flocks of chime, 
 
 That tell to sight amid the sound, 
 
 Their visions bountiful, sublime, 
 
 And delicately dear abound, 
 
 In joys and yet . . sometimes in sighs! 
 
 Thy mind is like the shining sun. 
 Or scintillations of a star, 
 Thy thrilling thoughts so sparkling are, 
 And steady in their royal run; 
 Sometimes pathetic thoughts are spun 
 Like moonlight rays that gently sift, 
 So bright and luminous they lift 
 To love above dark clouds adrift. 
 
 Thy loving spirit, oh, how true ! 
 Celestial, winning one to Thee, 
 For spirit help more high and free 
 My sweep of spirit-thought anew 
 Drops kindly through my soul like dew 
 Alight from Paradisal skies ! 
 And love, so strong and good and wise, 
 Binds me in willing sacred ties ! 
 
 How priceless is thy smile which first 
 Came to my dove-deserted ark 
 Of heart an-hungered, athirst 
 
60 Vivian 
 
 Came like a dove into my dark, 
 Sweet messenger with leaves of light 
 That scattereth my dismal night. 
 
 Thou Princess, in the realm of Love, 
 
 I saw and loved, and sought and won; 
 
 I felt thy heart, afar, alone, 
 
 Beat confidence to mine, my dove, 
 
 In kindness mourning from the Grove 
 
 Of fallen leaves and wintry cold 
 
 So mine throbbed back a thro the wold 
 
 Of sorrows round untold, yet . . told! 
 
 But something with entrancing wing, 
 By somewhat ever unexplained, 
 I love because I am constrained; 
 And thus to Thee my heart must sing. 
 Upon my heart the signet ring 
 Has set thy seal, thy regal seal; 
 I feel its warming stamp of weal, 
 And lips to lips our love reveal ! 
 
 Stand by my side, my wished-for bride, 
 Turn face to face, my lily Call, 
 And fashioned finest, best of all. 
 Through all the changes that betide 
 I fold thee to my heart with pride; 
 And eye to eye we see the deep 
 That lieth through those eyes, where leap 
 Love s rising springs that laugh or weep. 
 
 Thine eyes, how like a seraph s own! 
 Look fondly into mine; no art 
 Or song can reproduce their heart 
 Rare tints of ardor richly strown, 
 But loves like crystalline a -light 
 And tintings so magnetic bright 
 Are unportrayable delight ! 
 
Vivian 61 
 
 So bright and fairy-like thy ways, 
 So free and cheery-like thy words, 
 That make all days as holidays, 
 All places bowers of flowers and birds, 
 And bees and beaming butterflies! 
 And yet so deep, so good, so wise, 
 As deep as seers, hence sometimes sad ; 
 As good as lilies white, hence glad; 
 As wise as wisdom, hence so true ; 
 So wise, so good, so earnest, You! 
 Do I need gentleness to touch 
 The dusky hours with smiles of day, 
 Thou comest to my heart with such 
 A glow of light and love alway! 
 
 Do I need strength to fend the blows 
 That batter at my heart and tear 
 The bastioned soul until it flows 
 With spirit-blood the strength to dare, 
 Thou comest thro these clashing throes; 
 Thy gentle soul to greatness grows, 
 And wins a palm for me, and sows 
 Rare seeds of blooms for w r eeds of woes! 
 
 Do I need Patience in my Hope, 
 While others hesitate and grope, 
 Thou, Vivian, comest running fleet 
 Like steady glinting seraph feet; 
 And kissing soul to soul, thy meet 
 And perfect patience, mild and sweet, 
 Diffuseth thro my soul replete. 
 
 Do I need adamantine Trust 
 To hold this burden that has grown 
 From blinded deeds of those who must 
 From what they are, have left unknown 
 My censered shrine, encurtained, lone 
 
62 Vivian 
 
 My kindlier, nobler self, hence thrust 
 Unwittingly their hands of stone, 
 With unintended ruth and dust 
 Down thro my soul, my real own; 
 And, as a sword all rough with rust 
 And broken-edged, unthought by them, 
 My paradisal Trust dethrone, 
 And crush and mar my diadem! 
 
 Do I need Trust once more enthroned, 
 
 Thou, Vivian, comest like the sun, 
 
 And shinest through the lone bemoaned, 
 
 And, in thy wisdom golden spun, 
 
 Thou lookest thro the misty dun, 
 
 And seest all my truer self 
 
 My more prophetic finer self 
 
 And call st it precious more than pelf! 
 
 Hence Thou hast come and re-enthroned 
 
 My prostrate Trust! Thou sittest Queen, 
 
 Since Thou hast known, since Thou hast seen! 
 
 Do I need Love to warm the chill 
 That hung so long like Arctic frost 
 Athro the long extended frill 
 And full of Arctic night, embossed 
 In lonesome waste and snowy hill 
 Do I need Love to warm this chill 
 That hung so long and blew so shrill 
 Around my soul, so like a ghost 
 ForeTer sheathed in wraps of woe 
 And canopied in skies of snow 
 In mounts Antarctic wandering lost! 
 
 I called long through this frigid night 
 
 Heard but the echo of my voice ! 
 I cried out thro this endless blight 
 Because my cries seemed better choice 
 Than this cold silence and affright 
 Than this benighted gray-hued white ! 
 
Vivian 63 
 
 And then as sudden as the flash 
 
 Of brilliance from the gate of Heaven 
 
 Thou, Vivian, stood st in the even 
 
 Outside the glistening gate of Aidenn; 
 
 Before thy look the ice was riven 
 
 And all that blighted sky of ash 
 
 Suffused with budding blooming life, 
 
 As Thou, bright Beauty, mild as doves, 
 
 Beatified, my love-clad maiden, 
 
 Cam st looking, leaning, reaching, folding me. 
 
 Translating me to ardent groves, 
 
 Winding thine arms around me, holding me 
 
 Jeweled with thy jo3 T ous smiles 
 
 In love-embowered summer isles ! 
 
 What matchless speaking eyes are thine ! 
 
 I know, have known, no other eyes, 
 
 Of all the beautiful that shine, 
 
 So superfine in sympathies: 
 
 Their look a voiceless voice from Thee 
 
 That casts such lustrous looks to mine 
 
 Sends resurrection love to me ! 
 
 I prize thy perfect form, petite, 
 
 Such lithesome grace in every line. 
 
 Not training s art made Thee elite; 
 
 The Grace, Elite, was always thine ; 
 
 For, Vivian, Thou wast born th elitest, 
 
 Endued with all the Graces sweetest, 
 
 The daintiest, winningest, best and neatest 
 
 How could I other than admire ! 
 
 How could I other than aspire 
 
 To Thee, the acme of desire ! 
 
 None else so lovably elite, 
 
 None else so lovably complete 
 
 All forms and colors, thoughts and loves, 
 
 And luring ways of artless art, 
 
64 Vivian 
 
 Spontaneous as the artless doves, 
 And glorified in every part 
 By artless wisdom of the heart 
 In all so charmingly replete ! 
 
 How long the hours, how dull the day, 
 Dear Vivian, with loyal heart, 
 When thou art absent from the way ! 
 Thou seem st from me as far apart 
 As sparkling stars are from the earth, 
 It tints with pathos all my mirth. 
 
 I reach my arms out o er my pillow, 
 In dreams that Thou art by my side; 
 And then, beneath its drooping willow, 
 My soul bends down, to grief allied, 
 When I awake and find, alas! 
 Twas but a dream of Thee to pass 
 As shadows o er the dancing grass! 
 
 How full thy heart, how nobly tall 
 Thy matchless spirit, masterful! 
 And yet, my Queen, Thou art petite 
 So fine of limb and grace withal, 
 And transcendentally elite, 
 With ankle as a tripping girl s 
 That draws one s vision with control 
 As tho entwined with strings of pearls ! 
 
 I love Thee as the stars the night; 
 I love Thee as the sun the noon. 
 If Thou art here tis beauteous light 
 Commingled sun and stars and moon! 
 Away from Thee, the shadows fall 
 And cast their pity over all. 
 
 Thou heart of peace, Thou crown of Loves 
 Invincible ! I feel thine arms, 
 
Vivian 65 
 
 Like blooming vines amid the groves 
 That decorate with clinging charms 
 The rugged trees, enfolding me, 
 That I may give my life to Thee ! 
 
 Thy love to me a regal guest, 
 
 The royal blood of one great soul 
 
 If wed to mine, that were the best! 
 
 Tis richer than a golden bowl 
 
 Concealing in its carven breast 
 
 The Orient s ruby pigeon-blood 
 
 Or silver mount with diamond hood ! 
 
 To know me as I am, and still 
 To love me as thy mated soul, 
 This were a laughing sapphire rill ! 
 Enchanting girl, am I thy goal 
 To what shall be from what has been? 
 Shall rills of joy in purling sheen 
 Glide on before? Or shall there roll 
 Rude tides to toss thee from my grasp, 
 And pluck thy soul from out my clasp 
 While tossing seas shake foam between? 
 
 My scintillating morning star, 
 
 Oh, hold to me ! I cling to Thee ! 
 
 As to the ship the dipping spar, 
 
 Then Love shall live with Thee and glee. 
 
 And Love and glee abide with me ! 
 
 Oh, Thou art more than "much to me"; 
 Thou rt me just all thus mine . yet free! 
 Do I have joy? It is from Thee! 
 Heart-pain have I to cloud the glee? 
 It is o er Thee, from Thee, for Thee! 
 
 I touch my fingers to thy hair, 
 
 And smooth its brown-hued richness down, 
 
66 Vivian 
 
 And kiss that precious brow so rare 
 Infolded neath its silken brown 
 Caress thy cheeks with royal care 
 Press face to face, the Strong, the Fair! 
 
 Thou, Vivian, art all Beauty s own, 
 From tasteful loops of rare brown hair 
 To feet fit for footstool of throne ! 
 Thy chosen loops of locks so rare, 
 Thy forehead fit to hold a crown, 
 Thine eyes than Helen s eyes more sweet, 
 Thy face in every line replete 
 With rich endowments yet discreet, 
 Thy form Adonis might embrace, 
 Enamored of its faultless grace ! 
 
 I prize thy spirit musings, still; 
 
 Admire thy mind s infolding gifts; 
 
 Desire thy heart s impassioned will, 
 
 That warms my life, my love uplifts ; 
 
 I prize thy bosom s noble thrill, 
 
 Thy clasping arms that shield from ill ; 
 
 I trust thy sacred guiding hand; 
 
 I prize the passion of thy kiss; 
 
 I love Thyself, Thou Eden Land ! 
 
 I could not, Vivian, love amiss 
 
 In loving Thee; Thou charming wand 
 
 Thou drewest me to treasures grand. 
 
 And not the great white mounts of snow, 
 Or woods profound of Amazon, 
 Where ills and darkness ever go, 
 Or plains of Lena Winter-blown, 
 Or ocean s storm grand ebb and flow ; 
 Not these thy symboled greatness show. 
 
 Thy greatness is the mast ring soul, 
 And queenly reticence of mind, 
 
Vivian 67 
 
 And clear affections large control 
 Thy love-lured vines of bloom that wind 
 Their tropic tendrils and unroll 
 Each flaming blossom from its boll! 
 
 Behold thy heart, thy mind, thy soul! 
 
 If I could these three once portray 
 
 I might be written on the roll 
 
 With those whose songs effulgent day 
 
 Shall never dim! alas! but I 
 
 Can only strive and ever fail 
 
 To reach a place so bright and high; 
 
 Hence, hiding from the loveless throng, 
 
 Can only breathe these words so frail, 
 
 And cast to Thee this broken song, 
 
 So little of the thought is done 
 
 To what Thou art, Thou One Alone ! 
 
 My heart would tell thee how I love thee ; 
 But, oh ! the meagreness of words, 
 In winsomeness so far above me, 
 Thou laurel-crowned ! The angels gird 
 Thee round with beauties rare to prove me; 
 I cannot write these charms; but feel 
 The mellowed movements of thy hair, 
 The open radiance of thine eye! 
 Like star : kissed flakes of foam a-keel, 
 Thy smile ensprays my way! What fair 
 Fine alabaster skin ! What rare 
 And wdnsome form ! . . But, Vivian, I 
 Can never write in words and rhyme 
 Thy Beauty sweeter than sweet Thyme ! 
 
 I draw Thee to me and enshrine 
 Myself within thy bower of charms, 
 And thus by words and looks and actions 
 I tell, while nestled in thine arms, 
 Thy soul-entrancing sweet attractions. 
 
68 Vivian 
 
 But still how little I can tell 
 Compared with all that I divine ! 
 
 And yet, my Beauty, this is well; 
 For, tho I through the coming years, 
 Keep telling thee how much thou art 
 How beautiful, how good, how shine 
 Thy loveliness and grace, dear heart! 
 Keep telling Thee in looks and words, 
 And actions clad with joys or tears, 
 I have not told thee all, and still 
 I cannot tell Thee all ! Like birds, 
 Bright-plumed in Paradise that swell 
 The rhapsody of welling song, 
 The story grows, the music will 
 Forever grow, a chanting throng, 
 Keep telling thee and telling thee, 
 My peerless girl, mine yet to be ! 
 My priceless pearl ! My unexcelled, 
 My soul s desire, at last fulfilled! 
 
 Now, grasp my hand, thou sprite of May! 
 The clinging of thy hand is strength; 
 Make me all thine, and thus, at length, 
 After so long a desert way, 
 Bring me into thy bower of day, 
 And all delights : Make thee all mine ! 
 Let heart with heart now intertwine, 
 And all the darkness turns to shine! 
 
Annette 
 
 ANNETTE. 
 
 The day was when I courted all 
 I courted suns and moons and stars, 
 And balmy airs brimful of sounds 
 Of winged singers melodies; 
 I loved the clouds that hung on high 
 That fringed the blue and balmy sky; 
 I loved the fire-wheeled thunder cars ; 
 I courted all the blooming grounds, 
 And courted with abundant eye ; 
 And all I saw enraptured me, 
 Because, Annette, I courted thee. 
 
 When I went wild with ecstasy 
 
 At joyous songs of mated birds 
 
 It was because, Annette, therein 
 
 Was joy because the sound was sweet ; 
 
 Not sweet because twas sweet, ah, me ! 
 
 Twas sweet because it breathed of thee. 
 
 The glad bird voices were not words, 
 
 Nor tuned to my violin, 
 
 As thine was tuned; yet they, Annette, 
 
 Were musical and chimed with glee, 
 
 As thine, w r hen I was wooing thee. 
 
 I never dreamt, my dear Annette, 
 
 That ever any arm but mine 
 
 Could clasp thee close; I never thought 
 
 The universe another bore 
 
 Could woo my loved Annette, and yet, 
 
 Once, ere the morning star was set, 
 
 When I had breathed the final line 
 
 Whose dying notes were scarce forgot 
 
 Ere I had more than closed the door, 
 
 Another came ; I saw I see ! 
 
 That Death, Annette, was wooing thee. 
 
7U Agnes 
 
 Tell me, Annette, was there one night 
 I did not watch by thee and pray 
 So death, Annette, could find no time 
 To woo my loved one ; without rest 
 I guarded thee. He veiled my sight; 
 
 starless gloom ! dead delight ! 
 He won my pale Annette away ; 
 
 He wedded thee ! How weird the chime 
 Of wedding bells; how white thy breast, 
 When thou gav st back my ring to me 
 And Death, Annette, was wed to thee ! 
 
 When back I gaze to-day, Annette, 
 
 1 wonder how the world could blame 
 Our youthful love so pure, refined. 
 So little doubt, so much of trust; 
 God knows, I never since have met, 
 Another love as saintly yet. 
 
 I m not of those who love to name 
 Dead mem ries o er, nor yet the kind 
 To pine for what has gone to dust; 
 And yet my heart is not so free, 
 Annette, as when I courted thee. 
 
 AGNES. 
 
 Agnes, the clouds above me 
 Are melted into mellow light 
 Beneath this magic sun, "I love thee! 
 Love thee as the soul loves right 
 Love thee as the skies of night 
 Love the sweet stars above thee. 
 
 Agnes, all seems to move me, 
 Where all ways lead me, unto thee. 
 
Agnes 71 
 
 By all my smiles, my tears, I love thee ; 
 By every bending of the knee, 
 By every surge of spirit s sea, 
 By all unspeakably I love thee ! 
 
 Agnes, my Agnes, prove me ; 
 
 But stay not, Agnes, thus so far 
 
 Barred from me, while I love thee 
 
 As the lake-tide loves its star, 
 
 Fondling on its bosom bare 
 
 Its image only, while above 
 
 And distant shines the queenly love. 
 
 Agnes, come nearer, nearer! 
 And let the image be supplanted 
 By thyself so dearer, dearer 
 That my paths may be enchanted ! 
 Agnes, how my soul hath panted 
 Panteth always to be nearer! 
 
 Agnes, my Agnes, prove me ! 
 For all strings of my spirit beat 
 In harmony of tone, "I love thee!" 
 Evermore I could repeat, 
 Linked with thy life so sweet, 
 Agnes, my crown, "I love thee!" 
 
 Agnes, art thou above me? 
 
 The magnet of thy perfect mind 
 
 Can lift me, if thou love me; 
 
 And doubt thou lovest were unkind ! 
 
 Just love me, and I am refined ! 
 
 Agnes, my Agnes, love me ! 
 
72 The Good Star of Hope 
 
 THE GOOD STAR OF HOPE. 
 
 In the splendors of September s 
 Brilliant purple, silver, yellow 
 All the hues of glowing embers, 
 Mingled tints intense, but mellow, 
 Our star shone upon the way, 
 Two lives opened to the day. 
 
 My star hovering o er the night, 
 
 Thy star flaming from God s hands! 
 
 One star beautiful and bright, 
 
 Two lives, but in parted lands. 
 
 Two lives playing in the light, 
 
 Each unknowing thro the flight 
 
 Of wayward years, their hearts were plight. 
 
 One star shining thro the strife 
 Of strange experiences of each 
 Two lives yearning for a life 
 Seeming always out of reach ; 
 Always running, reaching, yearning, 
 Ever empty-hand returning! 
 
 Thus the flushing years went by! 
 Always something only guessed; 
 Always something seemed to fly 
 Rhythmic beauty unpossessed! 
 Neither knowing! always after 
 Something holding joy and laughter. 
 Yearning for the only guessed, 
 Pleading for the unpossessed! 
 
 Two lives born beneath one star, 
 Wedded from their very birth, 
 Tho they dwell in lands afar, 
 The very antipodes of earth, 
 Still, that sweetest glow of night 
 
The Good Star of Hope 73 
 
 Drew them with its magnet light 
 Till their roving spirits meet 
 Each the other makes complete. 
 
 Thus the flushing years went by 
 
 Always something seemed to fly 
 
 Then I feel you coming nigh ! 
 
 So our light hath twined his rays; 
 
 Ribbons, scintillant and kind, 
 
 Round our wills and lives and ways, 
 
 Fondly holding us entwined 
 
 One life, one love inwrought from two 
 
 You in me and I in you! 
 
 Weary grew my bruised feet, 
 Hopeless grew my bleeding heart, 
 Till the strain we always greet 
 "Written: "Love, how far thou art!" 
 Long the path that led to Thee, 
 Princess, yet to Thee it led; 
 Far the way that led to me, 
 Soul-mate, yet to me it sped ! 
 
 Stand with me while decades roll 
 
 Neath that efflorescent star, 
 One in mind and heart and goal ! 
 One in Love and Life we are, 
 Knit by tendrils of devotion! 
 Thought and passion, like an ocean, 
 Flowing, mingling into one: 
 Thus our star its work has done ! 
 May our rays together run, 
 Ever brighter, always one ! 
 
74 My Golden Nugget My Valentine 
 
 MY GOLDEN NUGGET MY VALENTINE! 
 
 The Golden Sun shines o er the mountain, 
 
 The golden mount of unmined hearts; 
 The silvery glitter of the fountain 
 
 Of youth and beauty joy imparts ! 
 And I go searching for the one 
 
 Rich hidden heart to search till won 
 Yea, richer than the golden sun! 
 
 Thro pains of nights and thirsts of noons, 
 
 Thro longings under desert moons, 
 
 Thro labors of the aching soul 
 And bleedings of the spirit feet 
 
 To reach the miner s joyous goal, 
 To grasp at last the treasure sweet! 
 
 Till suddenly, mid crowning beauties, 
 That dream of follies or of duties, 
 
 I see, I stop, I turn, I greet, 
 AVith lifted pick, the glowing treasure, 
 
 A piece of gold of champion measure; 
 All pain and labor turned to pleasure, 
 
 Crowding aside the plainer kind, 
 I rushed upon my brilliant find 
 
 And out of the mount of hearts I dug it 
 My precious, peerless, priceless Nugget ! 
 
 No heart so large, so good, so great, 
 
 No nugget, Love, with half the splendor, 
 Or royal, rich, entrancing w r eight 
 
 So strong and warm ; and yet how tender 
 The heart of Thee, my red-laced Fate 
 
 My good fate, yea, my fond Defender, 
 My grander than Jerusalem s Gate ! 
 
 With what swift greed I worked and dug it 
 Out of the mines of hearts, my Nugget ! 
 
 My Vivian, my golden Fleece, 
 
 What rest of heart has come with Thee ! 
 
My Golden Nugget My Valentine . 75 
 
 What warming Love, what glee, what peace, 
 
 What wealth of body, heart and mind ! 
 This nugget, with its diamond eyes, 
 
 Its smooth white breasts, great shining pearls 
 And crowned with pinkest pearls enshrined 
 
 Unique, unequaled all the girls 
 That ever smiled beneath the skies 
 
 Cannot compare with thine that haven 
 Above thy sweetest heart they cover! 
 
 Oh. how I prize their pretty sweetness, 
 How love to fold their matchless neatness! 
 
 Thus diamond eyes their fires uncover, 
 And pearl of pick and whiteness lies 
 
 Upon thy golden form, my Lover 
 Xo wonder, then, with greed I dug it 
 Out of the mount of hearts, my Nugget! 
 
 Thou perfect prize, thou reddest gold, 
 
 So highly covered and so burning 
 With suns of love and life that mould 
 
 Themselves to every jeweled turning 
 To every dainty form and earning 
 
 The richest love, the best devotion 
 That man could give to trusting woman. 
 
 The purest, loftiest emotion. 
 The manliest, most superhuman; 
 
 And yet. with all this glow intense, 
 Endazzling e en the super-sense, 
 
 Thou rt clothed with skin of Alabaster, 
 My golden girl, my golden Fleece! 
 
 My Princess of the goal of Peace, 
 Strong bar of gold, rich recompense 
 
 Thou bar of gold, yet, as the aster, 
 So smiling, nodding, gentle, tender, 
 
 I bow before Thee, Sweet Defender. 
 I worship at thy throne, my Nugget ! 
 
 Out of the Mount of Hearts I dug it ! 
 
76 Alone 
 
 ALONE. 
 
 Out in the green of the wood, 
 Sprinkled with many-hued bloom, 
 Playing with winds that are rude 
 Yet, mid the glow it is gloom, 
 And my heart is as lead or a stone, 
 For absent from Thee is Alone! 
 
 "Alone!" what a dirge in the word! 
 
 "Alone!" what a grief in the thought! 
 
 All the myrrh that time ever has stirred, 
 Or Araby s riches have bought 
 All regrets for the joys that have flown 
 Are hung on the shield of "Alone!" 
 
 With Thee I never grow lonely; 
 Sweet thoughts, as illumined evangels, 
 Troop round me from Thee, my One Only ! 
 In garmented lustre of angels 
 Melting the lead and the stone 
 And hurling outcast the Alone ! 
 
 This proof that I love is the truest: 
 That, with Thee, my spirit is ever 
 Aglow with the brightest and newest 
 And all that is joyous and clever, 
 And all the lone shadows are thrown 
 Out of my soul, with "Alone!" 
 
 Sweetheart, without thee my life, 
 Mid the still of the wilds, or the bowers 
 Of musings outside from the strife, 
 Or the beds of the canopied flowers, 
 Of the crowds of the city, I own 
 But roams with the spirit "Alone!" 
 
My Young Wild Rhyme 77 
 
 Many the signs that I love Thee, 
 Clear as the sky, when the bluest 
 And cleanest, is arching above Thee 
 And shining the finest and truest ; 
 But the one I highest enthrone 
 Is : With Thee I never am lone ! 
 
 Love me, and life is a boon; 
 Be with me, and life is a song 
 Sung o er the stars and the moon, 
 And e er in the midst of a throng 
 Of thoughts of all gladness and Duty 
 Transfigured to radiant Beauty. 
 
 The spirit of Christmas is glad 
 Since, Vivian, Thou art beside me. 
 How could there be anything sad 
 Or gloominess ever betide me ! 
 Thou crown of all women, I feel 
 Thy touch and the kiss of Thy weal! 
 
 Come close to me, Darling, and fold 
 Me round as a chainlet of pearls, 
 With thine arms as a chainlet of gold. 
 And kiss me, Thou rarest of girls, 
 And now and forever dethrone 
 That word from our language, "Alone!" 
 
 MY YOUNG WILD RHYME. 
 
 One little flower of love I bring, 
 God touch it with the glow of spring, 
 And give it tints of more than pearl ! 
 Tis not a queenly maid I sing, 
 Nor fancied love of fair young girl, 
 Nor red-cheeked maid of social times, 
 But her who sings my young wild rhymes. 
 
78 Three Wrecks 
 
 All of the joys there are for me; 
 All of the love, the fond, the free; 
 All of the magic paths o er-trod, 
 That stirred all songs of pathos sea, 
 And touched with beauty, pureness, God, 
 Was waked to life in distant times, 
 When sang she me my young wild rhymes. 
 
 How sweet the strong love born at noon; 
 
 Or young love hid in heart of June ; 
 
 Or love of those who wisely wed, 
 
 And sad the thought they pass too soon; 
 
 But sweeter far her love, who led 
 
 Me from my wayward, boyhood times, 
 
 While singing me my young wild rhymes. 
 
 THREE WRECKS. 
 
 A wreck in the blue of the heaven, 
 
 Wreck of a billowy cloud 
 Cloud-waifs that are drifting and driven, 
 
 Shreds of a cloud-ship shroud! 
 The trail of a midnight comet 
 
 Caught in the spar of a cloud ! 
 
 Stars in their raiment of yellow, 
 Floating a-top of the waves 
 
 A-top of the high blue billow 
 Dashing up over the graves 
 
 Of the crew of the stranded vessel, 
 
 The cloud-ship that broke on the waves! 
 
 A glimmer of twilight waiting 
 
 The roll of blue waves to their strand, 
 With waifs and a starry freighting 
 
Three Wrecks 79 
 
 To crush it down into the sand, 
 To hurry this remnant of twilight 
 
 To the sky-shore and dash it a-strand ! 
 
 The face of the moon on a pillow 
 
 Of blue encased in the foam 
 Of a white cloud stitched to the billow 
 
 Cold face, pale face in the spume, 
 And dumb and afloat as a corpse s 
 
 Asleep on the sea and its foam! 
 
 A hum of the fall of a river 
 
 That sounds like the flutter of wings 
 
 Of a bird in the sky, and ever 
 Its measure is sad, as it sings! 
 
 A rainbow of white in the heavens, 
 
 Drooped down from the centre as wings. 
 
 The milk-white way, for the roaming 
 Of strange stars treading the way 
 
 For those that come up from the gloaming 
 To East and go down in the spray 
 
 That breaks on the walls of a city, 
 
 Where they rest through the lustre of day. 
 
 Now and then one flashing and falling 
 Down from the highway, as a life ! 
 
 Voices of "far-off" calling! 
 Sparks from a memory rife ! 
 
 A pale face pressing a window, 
 Lips blue as the lips of her life ! 
 
 Lips folding the name of a lover! 
 
 Heart dead as a heart-dead tree! 
 Tears catching the purple above her 
 
 And the dead-faced moon, maybe, 
 And painting them into a picture 
 
 Of a tide-tossed face on the sea! 
 
80 Her Gifts to Me 
 
 Thin hands in the moonlight folding 
 
 Bitterly over a breast, 
 Clasping them over, as holding 
 
 Her own sad history prest 
 Alone to a pitiful bosom, 
 
 Alone to a blighted breast! 
 
 A sky, like a sea, in motion, 
 The wreck of a cloud o erhead ! 
 
 A sail a-trail in the ocean, 
 
 Spars bowing above the dead ! 
 
 A wreck in the heart of a maiden, 
 Xo wonder her face is sad! 
 
 No \vonder the red cheek blanches; 
 
 No wonder the lips are thin ; 
 No wonder a tear-tide drenches 
 
 Her face ; no wonder the din 
 Of a storm, and a wreck, and a sea-wail, 
 
 Is stirring her heart within, 
 At a scene like this ; no wonder 
 
 She leans with a trembling chin, 
 Her wan face pressing the window ; 
 
 No wonder her lips are thin ! 
 
 HER GIFTS TO ME. 
 
 Mid the fragrance of heliotrope, 
 
 And all the shades of purple and blue, 
 And droopings of vines on the slope, 
 
 And blossoms of varied hue ; 
 With red of all shades, and the white 
 
 Mid green of all various shadow; 
 And birds of all families twittering, 
 
 E en hummingbirds dodging and glittering- 
 
Her Gifts to Me 81 
 
 Everything smiling delight; 
 
 And, timidly crossing the trail, 
 The pretty young squirrel and quail; 
 
 An atmosphere quiet as Aidenn, 
 Delicious, enlyring, inspiring, 
 
 Suffusing my love with desiring 
 The loves of my beautiful Maiden 
 
 Magnificent, rare El Dorado ! - 
 
 Such beauty, such grandeur, such tonic 
 
 Must rouse in the soul a cyclonic, 
 Tempestuous impulse of passion 
 
 To sing in Swinburnian fashion; 
 Or sing in a strain that is quieter, 
 
 The rhythmic, idyllic, Ionic 
 To Storm in my songs as a rioter, 
 
 Or sing with the tender emotion 
 That melteth the soul to devotion! 
 
 As I dream mid this rich rosy sheen 
 
 As I muse of my radiant queen, 
 I know which you guess it will be ; 
 
 For you see thro shadows and glee 
 All the thinking and loving of me 
 
 En rapport so your heart with my own 
 That you know me and feel me so easily 
 
 You get to my nature so teasily, 
 As you say with an eye-flash and glance : 
 " Twill not be the riotous, Darwin; 
 Not a raging and Delphian trance 
 
 Will not be the bitter cyclonic 
 Will not be the cold-hearted cynical, 
 
 Nor the peevish and narrow and "finnical," 
 Aloof on the snow-blasted pinnacle ! 
 
 But you will be the bard to entrance 
 With the love-songs of tender Ionic 
 
 The warm-hearted singer, the Grecian, 
 As warm as the colors of Titian, 
 
82 Her Gifts to Me 
 
 As the gold of the fleeces Elysian, 
 
 Entrancing, ecstatic, harmonic, 
 And thus will your genius a star win, 
 
 My noble, poetical Darwin!" 
 Thus you know where my memory clings ! 
 
 To the heart and the love and the life 
 Of my radiant nymph my heart brings 
 
 Its loves and its joys and its songs ! 
 For to Thee all my being belongs. 
 
 Thy joys make me glad, and thy wrongs 
 
 Stir my hatred, my bitter resistance! 
 I grieve at thy burdens and strife ! 
 
 I long so to make thine existence 
 One round of the leisurely songs 
 
 In thy heart of the sweetest of pleasures 
 And all the best wishing of treasures : 
 
 Could I bring all these wishings to Thee, 
 Still, Love, it would hardly be half 
 
 Of the red-blooded wishes from me, 
 Or half thy deservings, my Charmer! 
 
 But no heart could ever be warmer 
 Than my heart s emotions for Thee! 
 
 I would make the great world ring with laugh 
 Of gladness for Thee if I could 
 
 Blot out all your shadows and sadness, 
 And give thee a fullness of gladness! 
 
 I wish it, I know that I would, 
 Thou Treasure of everything good! 
 
 Oh! how could I ever repay 
 
 My God for what he bestows 
 On me all the way every day 
 
 Such things as I need, as he knows? 
 So, Vivian, how could I ever 
 
 Repay Thee for all thy bestowments, 
 Thro all of the multiplied moments 
 
 Of pleasures from Thee and thy charm? 
 
Esther 83 
 
 I worship Thee next to my God! 
 
 And sometimes when love, like a flood 
 For Thee so entrancingly warm, 
 
 Floods my spirit from chamber to chamber, 
 What wonder, if Thou art become 
 
 Divine unto me, when you clamber 
 Up into the throne in the home 
 
 Of all that is best to the room 
 To the throne of my kingdom to the reign 
 
 O er the best of my life to the realm 
 Of a Princess s throne to the helm 
 
 Of the ship of my life ! Thou Vein, 
 The richest I ever have mined, 
 
 Most fathomless, reddest, refined! 
 
 ESTHER, 
 
 Esther, the light sun lingers 
 
 And works with his gilded fingers 
 
 In the tops of the trees, 
 Under and over tangling 
 
 His silken rays, 
 
 With broken ravelings spangling 
 The breeze. 
 
 Esther, the sun with gilt fingers, 
 That works in the tree-tops, lingers 
 
 Where I can see, 
 But never can feel, his glory; 
 
 And so of thee 
 The dim-remembered story" 
 
 Unf elt I see ! 
 
84 Ellen 
 
 ELLEN. 
 
 Back years, many years in the distance, 
 Where the sea of the past in the far-off 
 Clasps hands with my life-sky of purple, 
 Forever I see, by the foaming, 
 Her feet in the pebbles of sea-shells, 
 Her hair in the hands of the sea-breeze, 
 Her lips in the kiss of the sea-surf 
 And her violet eyes in a tear-tide 
 Forever I see, by the foaming, 
 A memory fond and eternal: 
 And daily I kneel by the sea-shore, 
 And holding my ear to the sea-shells, 
 Pink-lipped and eternally singing, 
 In echo, the sounds of the voices 
 That mingle their melody o er them, 
 I catch, from their lips pink, singing, 
 The prayer of my beautiful Ellen. 
 Then, looking away to the future, 
 I see, on the rim of an ocean 
 More peaceful than placid Pacific, 
 Out of Time in the country eternal 
 On the rim of the waters of crystal, 
 Her hair in the hands of the breezes 
 Of balm in the blisses of Heaven, 
 Her soul brimming over with beauty 
 And love that is more than eternal. 
 And so I reach back in the distance, 
 Regretting the shore I am leaving, 
 And lean with a hope to the future, 
 Rejoicing at what I am nearing. 
 Look back dim-eyed to a picture, 
 A memory fond and eternal, 
 Look on, with a hope, into Heaven, 
 For a love that is more than eternal 
 Look back on the dead and a parting 
 With memory fond and eternal 
 
Inet 85 
 
 Ahead with the hope of a meeting 
 With love that is more than eternal. 
 
 INET. 
 
 Strange I hesitate to leave you; 
 Stranger I could stay and grieve you- 
 Like a wind that standeth still, 
 Trembling with divided will, 
 Doubting if it be the best 
 Blowing East or blowing West ! 
 
 Inet, by thy paling face ; 
 By thy form s befitting grace; 
 By thine eyes of double blue. 
 And thy tears that all-imbue, 
 Leaving thy supernal thought 
 Beaming thro and beauty fraught. 
 
 By thy Byron-bended lip, 
 Changing with emotions trip ; 
 By thy lovely forehead bent 
 Like a crown of wonderment ; 
 By thy hands that never rest, 
 And thy soul s impassioned zest ; 
 By thy heart, abounding sweet, 
 Which would stand and never beat 
 Rather than it beat untruth 
 By the beauties of thy youth; 
 By all these, and more I pray, 
 My unrest to let me stay! 
 
 By my older memories 
 
 Of a younger face and eyes 
 
86 To Esther 
 
 By a love I cannot give 
 To the best of all that live ; 
 By a longing born to me, 
 Dead, yet seeming still to be. 
 
 By the bloom on Anna s grave; 
 By the surges of a wave 
 That has swept my laugh away- 
 By all these, and more, I pray 
 Let me go from thy caress, 
 Vain to rest my restlessness ! 
 
 TO ESTHER. 
 
 God set a clock up in my heart ; it standeth 
 
 And measureth my wayward hours of living. 
 
 It ran, long time, so fitful by the heaving 
 
 Unrest of one sweet, boyish, broken passion. 
 
 I said (God knoweth well what motive so com- 
 
 mandeth) : 
 
 "Doze on, my heart! tis not worth while believing 
 A dream tis but my unforgetting fashion!" 
 And so I heard it, thro my years of slumbers, 
 Tick tenderly and measuring my yearnings, 
 Tong mellowly my hourly heart-returnings 
 Unto the hilltop of my early passion; 
 While morning fire of boyhood died to embers, 
 And I dozed on, nor rose to keep its burnings 
 love, forgive me! twas my wayward fashion. 
 
 It was my fashion until at the setting 
 Of yester s sun the tender and the mellow 
 Were drowned eternal in the sudden billow 
 Of an alarm tumultuous loud with passion 
 That God had set before begun regretting, 
 
Esther 87 
 
 To go off when sweet, distant-parted Esther died 
 
 and yellow 
 Hang leaves today, that yester-morn hung green 
 
 mid bloom of fashion! 
 
 So is the way. We grow up as the bushes 
 
 That balmy south winds blow two tops together; 
 
 Their lip-leaves kiss their branch arms woo each 
 
 other, 
 So float they in the May with warm and pleasant 
 
 passion, 
 Till suddenly the wind wheels northward, and the 
 
 blushes 
 Of leaves and flowers steal off, and they, aged by 
 
 weather 
 Of griefs, are blown to other mates so is the 
 
 fashion. 
 
 The one then nearer to the cold wind s blasting 
 Dies earlier, and God sets off that crashing 
 And loud alarm, that starts the other dashing, 
 Wild with the anguish of his hidden passion, 
 Thro his short lane of life! Thus seems God s 
 
 casting. 
 
 Our weak eyes cannot read this mystic flashing, 
 Yet God knows best His is a perfect fashion! 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 I. 
 
 The days unevenly fly over, Esther, 
 In jagged flocks of unforgetful years 
 Some low and sorrowful as in disaster; 
 Some higher longings carry as the condor; 
 And still the green upon my spirit seres, 
 As witherth the grasses, in the autumns, under 
 
88 Esther 
 
 The southward-soaring flocks; and still the wonder 
 
 Is that thine arrow, buried in my tears, 
 
 Fresh woundeth still tho> far that " Early Tester." 
 
 II. 
 
 Sometimes a hundred birds go over, Esther, 
 
 And never win my never-resting eye; 
 
 Then one small note may prove a strong requester, 
 
 And marvel eyes will suddenly be lifted 
 
 And follow them along the yellow sky, 
 
 Until the last one silent-sad has drifted 
 
 A-down the gloaming distance, then I sigh, 
 
 Thus, far are flown my hopes of " Early Tester." 
 
 III. 
 
 Sometimes a lone bird worries over, Esther, 
 And winds unfriendly beat, and beat it back, 
 And so it flutters earthward from the bluster, 
 And, silent-grieving as a thwarted rover 
 Who chafes, if forced to bend his zigzag track, 
 Hangs, tempest-baffled, stationary over. 
 So (0 my deepest worshiped, wayward lover) ! 
 Storm-beat and weeping through its veil of black, 
 I seem to touch heart to that Early Tester." 
 
 IV. 
 
 And so the birds go on and over, Esther, 
 
 As solemn days string over into years ; 
 
 Still new the memory of that disaster, 
 
 And all the word from back of me is "never!" 
 
 The while the green within my spirit seres ; 
 
 And all the utterance from o er the river, 
 
 Tho r mystical, is clear to me, "dissever!" 
 
 And all my answer is the threaded tears 
 
 That string a-down the path to "Early Tester." 
 
My Flowers 89 
 
 MY FLOWERS. 
 
 I sit among the flowers alone to-day, 
 
 And yet I am not cannot be alone, 
 
 For, everywhere that blossoms hold their sway 
 
 In winsome dignity or sunshine play, 
 
 There ever comes my living Flower, my own, 
 
 With more than splendor of enticing flowers, 
 
 And pulsing with immortal love-born powers. 
 
 The asters, star-strewn from the vivid earth, 
 Nod toward me, smiling with a modest sense 
 Of rarest worth and high nobility of birth ; 
 But, oh! my love s bright eyes, profound, intense, 
 Look into mine, outshining in their look 
 All other stars (which swiftly pale, forsook), 
 And fill my look, my heart, my all with thee, 
 My musing, beaming May, best star to me ! 
 
 Syringa swing their pure and spotless white 
 
 Above my head o er my once weary life 
 
 Drop petals as the snow, yet warm as flakes of 
 light; 
 
 Pure, peaceable"; they say, and lull the wind 
 blown strife ; 
 
 But thy pure, helpful hand swings closer to me, 
 Love, 
 
 And, putting back syringa branches, strokes my 
 cheeks, 
 
 And strews the petals of thy pure white hallowed 
 peace 
 
 Upon my face and inner soul and sweetly speaks 
 
 By touch as frank, love-full as souls above; 
 
 And thus, Dear Heart, my spirit-chafings cease ! 
 
 Forget-me-not, so delicately blue, 
 
 Looks up and pleads, with reticence and grace, 
 
 "Come, touch my soul, enwrapt in loyal hue, 
 
90 My Flowers 
 
 And brush my timid loneliness with thy strong 
 
 face!" 
 Then, opening to my keepsake withered? Yes, 
 
 but true, 
 
 And vocal with a blessed, blessing memory! 
 Thou, Darling, comest, with my look, and that small 
 
 spray 
 
 Transforms to thee, thou pretty, patient May, 
 Transforms to thee, my true, my loyal Love to 
 
 thee 
 
 Who fillest all my vision, all my ways, my heart! 
 " Forget me not forget thee not!" thus, brilliant 
 
 Bird, thou art 
 
 Forever singing to my happy spirit! Thee forget? 
 Seas, continents, might come between yea, death 
 
 might be, 
 But cleaves my soul to thee thro time, thro tides 
 
 eternal yet. 
 
 Carnations flame my eyes before and fill 
 With fragrance all the arbor where I sit. 
 Impassioned loves seem throbbing till they thrill 
 The beauty-lover till it seemeth fit 
 Their dumb, red loveliness with mutual arms em 
 brace ! 
 
 But thou, warm-hearted and impassioned lover, 
 Dost come more close than they bend over 
 My joy-o erflowing soul and fold thy shapely arms 
 About my being press those scarlet, lip-love 
 
 charms 
 
 Of thy carnation heart, and flood, in tropic kisses 
 As vivid as thy love, my magnet heart with passion ! 
 That is thy strong, impulsive, lawful, chaste, sweet 
 
 fashion ! 
 And thus thy love is strength, protection, pureness, 
 
 blisses, 
 
 My lily white, my pure and frank queen-lily grace; 
 My aster beauty, star that never fails fixed in my 
 sky; 
 
The Loved Unknown 91 
 
 My true blue Princess my forget-me-not; and my 
 Carnation richness flaming such impassioned love- 
 caresses ; 
 My joy, my light, my everything, my now and by- 
 
 and-by ! 
 
 Mid flowers with thee I evermore would tarry, 
 My bright, my beautiful, my iridescent Carrie ! 
 
 THE LOVED UNKNOWN! 
 
 In-centred in my throbbing, chambered heart, 
 
 Is one most beauteous, sacred sanctuary, 
 The central room, more chaste than chiseled art 
 
 More garnished than all Phidian statuary, 
 Or painted sentiment alone apart. 
 
 Thou midmost chamber of my soul so rife, 
 About whose threshold breaks the beating strife 
 
 Of all the billowy conflicts of my spirit life. 
 
 Though graced in beauties, central, tender, first, 
 A twilight-sad, a dimming shadow e er 
 
 Hung o er its might-be splendid fittings erst, 
 A presence waiting, with her fingers fair, 
 
 To touch aglow the hidden wealth with touch 
 As angel finger-tips, and look with such 
 
 A light of eyes, and voice of life, so much ! 
 
 Such presence waiting with her holy cheer 
 To lift the shadows from my human shrine; 
 
 Sweet sounding feet upon the steps to hear 
 A hallowed face with saintly love to shine 
 
 Not as a martyr s shines; but come to smile 
 My spirit from its martyr-Patmos isle 
 
 To victor-day, instead of sad erstwhile ! 
 
92 The Loved Unknown 
 
 So out of this unpeopled spirit shrine 
 
 A cry has sounded through the marching years 
 A cry unheard to human heart save mine, 
 
 Out-breathed toward God, with wavering hopes 
 
 and tears! 
 My heart, in its concealed Gethsemane, 
 
 Sweating drops of blood for some unknown for 
 
 Thee, 
 Withholden pleading heart, so long from me. 
 
 Bright forms and faces other voices, loves 
 
 Came trooping on and took their common places; 
 
 From windows looked as delicate white doves, 
 And brought their meed of joys and helps and 
 graces ; 
 
 But this, which all rooms else are brass beside 
 Its diamond worths, in weeping shades must bide, 
 
 To wait the coming of a kindred heart, denied! 
 
 The pleading mounts like martyr s incense up, 
 
 "How long, Thou Merciful, how long!" and still 
 My heart lifts in its anxious hands the cup, 
 
 And tries to say, "Though long, thy way my 
 
 will! 
 I wait I wail out of my soul s deep, "Give 
 
 The heart companion newly let me live ! 
 Yet but a cross looms in the doorway dim, 
 
 Nailing my hope deferred upon it limb to limb ! 
 
 May your kind heart ne er know this painful 
 yearning 
 
 That hath no answer, save the anguished cry 
 Whose dimmer echo is but the returning, 
 
 Undying cry over again, "I die! 
 If thou give not the kindred heart to take 
 
 My vacant shrine of heart, that will not break, 
 Thou ever breaking for that unknown s sake!" 
 
Confidence 93 
 
 He knows. He holds by me my cross. I wait. 
 
 I wait ? Yet always, through the days and nights, 
 Waking and sleeping, thinking and dreaming, in a 
 
 strait 
 
 Betwixt despair and hope of sweet delights, 
 There breathes from out the spirit-depth the cry, 
 As lulled child s sob! then struggling, breaketh 
 
 high, 
 "Come in, thou coming presence, or I die!" 
 
 Look ! suddenly a holy hand is seen 
 
 To part the mist! a voice, "I hear thy cry! 
 
 It is enough ! Thy dead life springs to green ! 
 
 She cometh whom I perfect made for thee!" 
 Whate er I be to thee, thou, Love, hath stepped 
 
 Within the unpossessed room, out-swept 
 The shadows, anguish, doubtings, where I wept. 
 Sweet, strange uplift, my sunlight, kindred heart, 
 
 Thou new, bright guest to make the dead life 
 
 living 
 Pure, beautiful, who such as thou here art? 
 
 God long withheld to give more perfect giving. 
 Withheld "One little while"; how long that (little) 
 "while"! 
 
 Yet now how short it seems, under thy soulful 
 
 smile ! 
 Prolonged forever be this present "little while"! 
 
 CONFIDENCE. 
 
 Untroubled, diamond confidence, 
 
 This would I have, my priceless pearl, 
 
 That need not question whither, whence, 
 When, why, amid the changing whirl, 
 
 But, pure as gold, and clear, intense. 
 Just my own loyal little girl. 
 
94 Confidence 
 
 That in thy goings and thy thought, 
 
 Thy pleasures, pains, thy sweet desire, 
 By what or whom thy heart is sought, 
 
 Thou, on thy soul s impearled lyre, 
 Shalt only feel my touch of finger 
 
 Shalt know me there and feel my gaze- 
 My presence always with thee linger, 
 
 By all thy bright or cloudy ways! 
 
 To know thou standest in the light 
 That all thou art within is day, 
 
 And all thy movements diamond bright 
 And open as a sunny bay 
 
 That thou hast nothing to conceal 
 
 To know which might becloud my weal! 
 
 To know, if with thee, or if miles 
 Stretch out their desert loneliness, 
 
 Still, lover s look, or lover s smiles, 
 Or touch, or voice, or saintly kiss, 
 
 Love-speaking gifts or written words 
 
 Do never flit like secret birds 
 To any heart but mine intense 
 And clear and single confidence ! 
 
 To know thou knowest all I know 
 Concerning our dear fellowship 
 
 To feel I know that thou dost throw 
 Out in the search-light s glowing dip 
 Thy heart and way that, lip to lip, 
 
 We only ever feel the flow 
 
 Of man s and woman s holy love, 
 Proved truer as we ever prove! 
 
 To have thee cure this heart disease, 
 Wrought in my -spirit thro the years 
 
 Of broken longings, sorrow s seas 
 Of dead hopes and of leaden tears ! 
 
 To cure by such o ermast ring love, 
 
To Anna 95 
 
 Such single love as from above 
 Might fill an angel s heart of fire, 
 Or weight with love a seraph s lyre ! 
 
 No woman s hand but thine for me! 
 
 No tender folding arm but thine ! 
 No other s love-look would I see! 
 
 Thy kisses so my soul refine 
 No other lips shall magnetize 
 My nature into ecstasies! 
 
 Is this too much to give, my queen? 
 
 Nay, had I powers of heart and mind 
 And charms of all e er love has seen 
 
 Abundant as the fire-refined 
 Rich Afric diamonds and the gold 
 
 Of Incas stored, I d give thee all, 
 
 And cry, my queen, * Tis all too small ! 
 
 Is this too much to ask from thee, 
 My Princess, with the pearled crown, 
 
 Invisible to all but me 
 
 And Christ, who, loving us, looks down? 
 
 1 > 
 
 TO ANNA. 
 
 Could all this, then, of life so warm, 
 
 And eyes and tints of pulsing form, 
 
 And thoughts and soul and love and passion, 
 
 Transcendant beauty, vigor, charm, 
 
 With every fibre thrilling life 
 
 Seraphic strength in conquering strife 
 
 Gainst all unbeautiful and bad 
 
 Could these, my voiceless Anna, die? 
 
 These tints of living hues turn ashen f 
 
96 To Anna 
 
 This sainted form thus smileless lie, 
 The laughter dead in silence sad? 
 
 What? Death, you say, claims all of this! 
 
 Thy tropic love-full luring kiss 
 
 Now chills like lips of frosted lead ! 
 
 How slight thy frame, a child s in weight! 
 
 Thy flush of colors all have fled, 
 
 And Thou are still so still, so slight 
 
 How shadowy and weirdly white ! 
 
 White, motionless, so like the light, 
 
 On marble shrouds from stars of night ! 
 
 As happy stars that glide away 
 
 As dawning comes, to lose their glow 
 
 By deep engulfing in the day, 
 
 In All-engulfing reigning Sun 
 
 Thou, Anna, darker earth forsook, 
 
 Drawn upward from the earthly blight 
 
 And all its fickleness and stain, 
 
 Away from all thy withering pain 
 
 Out of the pain and stain of night 
 
 Into the glad, eternal deep 
 
 Of God s ineffable sweet light! 
 
 How rapturous thy dying look ! 
 
 How strange thy pale unbreathing sleep ! 
 
 Ought we to weep? Can I refrain? 
 
 Anna, though my heart may break 
 Since thou hast flown so far apart, 
 
 1 cannot lose thee, for its cords 
 Extend to Thee ! they draw, they ache 
 With that unutterable strain; 
 
 Yet break not with my breaking heart. 
 By this I have the certain token, 
 More vivid than all uttered words, 
 A prophecy fore er unbroken: 
 
 I cannot lose Thee, always mine, 
 Alive for aye with love divine!" 
 
To Anna 97 
 
 Thou cans t not leave me in thy going; 
 I cannot lose Thee in my staying; 
 This glowing of my soul is knowing; 
 This wishing of my heart is praying. 
 How beautiful in life, but, dead, 
 Thou art more beautiful and glowing: 
 Grief-winged, love-winged, I speed to Thee 
 On, upward from this waiting dread 
 To thine eternal loving free!! 
 
The Valley of Peace 
 
 RELIGION AND PATRIOTISM 
 
 THE VALLEY OF PEACE. 
 
 Shall we strive without fruit in the struggles eter 
 nal 
 
 For name on the earth or for purse in the hands? 
 We shall end in a dearth that consumeth the vernal 
 Delights of the life, and the death of the lands 
 Of the heart that was flowery, now burning 
 with sands. 
 
 Shall unholy ambitions aspire to be set 
 
 In the gardens of fancy false Edens we crown 
 
 The cool heights of life with to drink and forget 
 The bitter below, and to never go down 
 Till the wildest desires in fruition shall drown? 
 
 Shall we beat a bold march with anticipate feet 
 For the fancy -built Edens? With hope over 
 grown, 
 
 Shall they strike, to be stricken in turn, and re 
 treat 
 
 In despair, and fall down as the trees over 
 blown, 
 Lie as helpless as they and as dust-overstrown? 
 
 Shall we rush as a storm that would master the 
 
 mountains, 
 
 And pour out our blood as the clouds that are 
 red? 
 
 Ah, the storm shall be broken to murmuring foun 
 tains 
 
The Valley of Peace 99 
 
 Retreating dismayed to the lowliest bed 
 
 In the bottom of ocean, and lie down as dead. 
 
 Can we not be content with the peace that is sweet 
 In the shadows of vines over ways that are mild? 
 
 But as birds from the vines, must we fret as we 
 
 beat 
 Our wings to the trees that are lofty and wild 
 
 To do battle with serpent-desires indiscreet? 
 
 They shall twine us in coils strong as sinews of 
 
 sin, 
 And shall drag us down lower, down lower, 
 
 alas ! 
 Than the vineyards of peace that we left; and we 
 
 win ? 
 
 But the dust of defeat and the dirges of grass 
 Seethed over hope-graves we shall mourn as we 
 pass. 
 
 Oh ! the fair little valley, delectable vale, 
 Set full of humilities blooming in glory, 
 
 Vined over in virtues, untorn by the gale, 
 
 That blows in high places of Earth that are hoary 
 And fretted with frosts and hail-gashed until 
 gory. 
 
 Oh ! the sweet little valley, shut in from the storms 
 By roses of candor with petals of splendor! 
 
 duties so fruited with beautiful forms 
 
 Abashing to pleasures ! Oh ! chastened and 
 
 tender 
 And holy affections and God is Defender! 
 
 Come down from the strife in the idol high-places, 
 And in from the wars on the turbulent plains. 
 
 Why look thus so long into treacherous faces? 
 You only shall gain from your terrible pains 
 A life that is maimed and a spirit with stains. 
 
100 Song for Faith 
 
 Would you taste of true pleasures humility-sent, 
 Red jewels of Jesus have paid for the peace 
 
 That remaineth for us, and the price of content. 
 They have bought you a rest that is richer than 
 
 fleece 
 Of all glory or gold that the years may increase. 
 
 Turn back from a battle of futilest blows! 
 You shall strive but be foiled in the struggle at 
 
 last. 
 Here Heaven has planted a perfect repose, 
 
 Where branches are fruited with joys, and they 
 
 cast 
 Their blossoms of love for the beds of your rest. 
 
 SONG FOR FAITH. 
 
 I. 
 
 Kneel down upon the sanded plains 
 Extended back beyond the years 
 
 Of recollections gemmed with tears 
 Set, in repeated rings of pains 
 
 On spirit fingers red with stains ! 
 
 Reach back to recollections, sweet, 
 In years with smiles, as gleaming sets 
 
 In rings of promise holy jets 
 On white pure fingers, ere defeat 
 
 Had stained with struggles indiscreet! 
 
 Kneel down upon the sanded life, 
 Look back a moment turn and gaze 
 
 With net-strewn eyes to future ways 
 Thro tangled vision to the days 
 
 That fret with expectations rife 
 
 With thoughts delusive, hands of strife! 
 
Song for Faith , - 191 
 
 Look to the sacred fields above 
 
 To God s eternal in extent, 
 Yon boundless ring in glory bent, 
 
 And set with worlds as sweet as love 
 And worlds of power and beauty blent ! 
 
 Have faith a moment; strength beget 
 
 By yon strong scenes and thoughts that roll 
 
 In floods of might upon the soul ! 
 Have faith a moment feel that yet 
 
 Some days are not red with regret! 
 
 Have faith a moment; stir to life 
 
 Dead wishes; call to marshal ways 
 The scattered plans of futile days 
 
 The broken ranks of early strife! 
 
 Have faith a moment; in desire 
 
 Arise and cry: "I shall be heard 
 In songs as sweet as singing bird 
 
 With faith that mighty scenes inspire, 
 Shall ravish hearts that love the lyre!" 
 
 Aye faith a moment! Then a shadow 
 Shall slide, like death, beneath the ring 
 
 That bore you faith: you turn, you bring 
 Sad recollection broken string ! 
 
 From earlier, fancied El Dorado, 
 A desert now, with sandy sting! 
 
 For faith is made a broken thing 
 
 When you remember youthful strings 
 
 Broken, and your broken wings. 
 
 You fling your mantle to the earth; 
 
 You prostrate you; you dew the dust; 
 You cast aside the ruined trust, 
 
 The faithless faith of worthless worth! 
 
102 : : Song for Faith 
 
 Another glass of brilliant hues 
 
 With pictured beauties, you have planned, 
 
 Has toppled on the spirit sand 
 
 And clanged to pieces ? Lo ! your hand 
 
 Is bleeding from the cut and bruise. 
 
 Brush up the fragments; lay them by, 
 Like frozen drops of poisoned dews, 
 
 A heap of sad, chaotic hues 
 The ruins of a shattered lie, 
 
 A sorrow to the aching eye ! 
 
 II. 
 
 "0 thou of little faith, alas! 
 
 Shall youth s defeat forever cast 
 Its shadow o er all life thou hast? 
 
 Shall wills be broken, as a glass 
 Of fancy in the soul ? . . . alas ! 
 
 We listen to such language float 
 To us from men, strong in belief! 
 
 We snatch a moment from our grief, 
 That we may feel their faith, remote ! 
 
 The child in power, but tower in faith 
 Runs by us, doubtful in the race, 
 
 While we, who run with shifting pace 
 Then fall prone in the dusted path, 
 
 Lift up to such, a weary face. 
 
 We raise our red eyes in surprise 
 To see them win to hear them call 
 
 In tones alluring: "Ye who fall, 
 
 Look up! arise! have faith! be wise!" 
 
 We smile again thro veils of sighs. 
 
 The weak confound the strong and wise; 
 We see the child, so strong in power, 
 
Song for Faith 103 
 
 Crowned with its wishes in an hour 
 
 We see, and read, thro faithless eyes: 
 "By faith he wins; by doubt he dies!" 
 
 We read until the letters set 
 
 Their photograph upon the soul. 
 We murmur: "Yea, stand up! control 
 
 The fretful surges of regret 
 The faithless never conquered yet! 
 
 "Shall men rush by entrancing song, 
 
 The echoes of diviner things? 
 And mock and say: "Alas! be strong! 
 
 Sweep down the ways of time, among 
 The mighty ones ! With broken wings, 
 
 Stand not aside, and weak complains 
 Pour forth in sad and sunless strains! 
 
 "We shall be heard, in words of fire 
 
 In words that burn tempestuous ways 
 Thro subtle hearts, till they shall blaze 
 
 Responses to our red desire 
 Shall call in words, that shall amaze 
 
 The heedless to our song and lyre ! 
 The orator shall reap the field 
 
 Which to the poet would not yield." 
 
 We hasten down mid turbid men 
 Have faith a moment how fair! 
 
 When faith has trampled down despair, 
 Is all the world we rise to win ! 
 
 And in that moment, yea, we dare 
 To set our banner in the air, 
 
 "Be ye not faithless it is sin!" 
 
 Have faith a moment how frail! 
 Then look back o er the sterile past 
 
 And see a withered effort cast 
 Unheeded to the sand and gale ; 
 
104 Song for Faith 
 
 This recollection throws its blight 
 Of gloom upon us how frail 
 
 Our sickened faith ! A helpless wail 
 Now flings its sadness on delight, 
 
 And hides it in our sudden night ! 
 
 Lie down alas ! it cannot be 
 
 That men shall hear us let us asleep 
 In dreams of bitterness, and deep ! 
 
 No faith, no work to you, to me, 
 Dead ships upon a dark-dead sea! 
 
 III. 
 
 [ armied soul, torn by defeat 
 
 Thro reeking years of retrospect, 
 
 Thou bleedest still to recollect 
 Will not inure to barren heat 
 
 Too bitter with too little sweet! 
 
 : soul with unextinguished might! 
 
 Ah ! soul subdued for want of faith, 
 Inaction is prophetic death! 
 
 Run swift, by faith, from sullen night 
 To plenitude of golden light!" 
 
 What? "Golden light"! Ye would not hear 
 
 The pearly melodies of youth, 
 The songs of unpolluted truth 
 
 Some few, ye listened but to jeer 
 And taunt the poet of his tear! 
 
 And hearers, when we poured desire 
 In burning eloquence of speech, 
 
 Ye would not feel their fiery reach ! 
 The rostrum with the futile lyre 
 
 But crumbled, when we would aspire ! 
 
Song for Faith 105 
 
 Men would not hear those sacred sounds; 
 
 But golden sounds ! The earth shall listen 
 To metal melodies that glisten! 
 
 Arise in faith from barren ground! 
 
 We speed swift to the marts of earth; 
 
 We sing a canticle to gold, 
 And cry: "Be rich, and you shall fold 
 
 New wonders in their dress of birth 
 Hang keys of glory to your girth!" 
 
 The slighted singer shall arise ; 
 
 And men shall crowd to hear the cling 
 Of gold, who spurned to hear him sing! 
 
 The rostrum paved with silver buys 
 The auditors the world denies 
 
 To him who brings no offering ! 
 
 faith ! we feel thy hand endow 
 One spirit with the strength of ten. 
 
 We thrust our arms, where other men 
 Are gaining ah! we know 7 not how? 
 
 God ! touch thy finger on that brow 
 That leans to mine let love unpin 
 
 Its knotted bitterness of sin, 
 
 Knotted, alas! . . . we know not how? 
 
 Nay he has gold, and women kiss 
 
 That demon net-work on his brow, 
 And call it fair they know not how? 
 
 Men have forgotten that for this. 
 
 They say: "That wise, deep trader s eye!" 
 Sweet sunny lie . . they know not why? 
 
 They say: "That fine keen trader s brow!" 
 And love his words they know not how? 
 
 Aha ! have faith a moment ; we 
 Shall hold the magnetizing touch 
 
106 Song for Faith 
 
 That draws so many, and so much 
 
 Of all the deep and human sea 
 Have faith a moment, chin to knee ! 
 
 "We reach a bold hand toward the shine 
 Then we remember, that, in woe, 
 
 We reached before, and to and fro 
 
 We grasped the mammon from the mine 
 
 And drowned in placers thoughts divine. 
 
 We gained a time, then Heaven swept 
 The burning curse, and Satan gleams 
 
 And all its fallacy of dreams 
 
 To other hands, yet, hands that reapt 
 
 What we had sown, while they had slept. 
 
 recollection stern as swords! 
 
 Be still a moment! Faith is dead? 
 Be sad, but silent at her head! 
 
 The deeds of promised mighty tread 
 Have vanished into drooping words! 
 
 The golden idols we had set 
 
 In splendor by a future way 
 Have melted in the desert day 
 
 And drifted in the sand-regret, 
 And night has veiled their painful fret. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We famish in the sombre waste 
 
 Lo! No! A light breaks on the night 
 
 From eyes of beauty and delight, 
 The outlooks of a spirit chaste. 
 
 A voice, a woman, come to love ! 
 
 She speaks in accents sweet attuned 
 To mild looks, mild as mellow-mooned 
 
Song for Faith 107 
 
 And peaceful purple swung above, 
 And touching as the turtle dove. 
 
 We lift our pale looks from the earth; 
 
 We feel relief from gushing tears; 
 A moment we forget the years 
 
 And all their wilderness of dearth, 
 And all their shallowness of worth. 
 
 She calls in words that heal as balms : 
 "Have faith, and you have love, and you 
 
 Have plucked a promise rendered true; 
 And peace shall leave out in the calms, 
 
 And blossom in your very palms ! 
 
 We do have faith; we rise to kiss 
 
 The love inviting us to peace 
 But, ah ! peace comes by faith, and this 
 
 Comes only thus the golden fleece 
 Of all the earth ; thus we may win 
 
 By work in faith but not in sin! 
 
 We do have faith ; we breathe our smiles ; 
 
 And sorrow, grown in gloomy caves, 
 Droops in their sunshine. Sturdy waves 
 
 Of faith, forgetful of the wiles 
 Of early fancy, drown their graves. 
 
 Faith! faith a moment; then it breaks 
 On thirsty sands that drift up thro 
 
 The gory years! We see, anew, 
 That childhood lover, who forsakes 
 
 All we can offer, hope, or do ! 
 
 Frail faith ; not faith that shall endure I 
 We tremble at love s sudden frown, 
 
 And murmur as the stars go down 
 The hopes that shone out to allure ! 
 
108 Song for Faith 
 
 We move not from our dreary places, 
 But fall upon the famished earth, 
 
 And loose again the gathered girth, 
 And lean down our deploring faces ! 
 
 Love-lorn and weak, we lie and cast 
 
 A glance of pity, each to each, 
 While all things seem to fly our reach ; 
 
 And we point backward o er the past 
 Then kiss our faith in death, at last! 
 
 V. 
 
 The young have faith. This may be well, 
 But when the days of danger come 
 
 The days of false hearts yea, and some 
 That scathe you with the breath of hell, 
 
 That try the soul shall faith expire? 
 Or come thro purified with fire? 
 
 This makes the difference in lives, 
 The faith of one despairs and dies, 
 
 While one endureth as the skies; 
 In winning lives the faith survives. 
 
 Then be not faithless, but believing; 
 
 The reeking corpses of designs 
 Dead unfulfilled, and drear repines 
 
 Are strewn around you, undeceiving 
 All faithless workers in the mines. 
 
 One man has sown, in dreamy youth, 
 On fields to reap sweet, fancied flowers 
 
 Of love, thro long refulgent hours 
 One deeming all things are but truth. 
 
 One man has sown the world with songs, 
 And deemed the lauding world should rise, 
 
 And sheave them into shining ties 
 
 And bear them home in chanting throngs. 
 
Song for Faith 109 
 
 One man has sown in eloquence 
 
 The hearts of men and deemed that they 
 
 Should follow down the harvest-way, 
 And gather into silken tents 
 
 His works sheaved into super-sense. 
 
 One man has sown the rocky earth, 
 
 With sparks of silver and of gold, 
 And deemed that he, as tales are told, 
 
 Should reap in mines of wonder-worth. 
 
 All sow in faith, the sterner few 
 
 In faith enduring. More there be 
 Have faith a moment; then the sea 
 
 Goes down beneath them, deep and blue. 
 
 Be strong of faith. No human might 
 Can hew peace out of rugged strife, 
 
 Or taste aught of the sweets of life, 
 If one be faithless in the fight. 
 
 We must be wise, we must endure 
 
 The keen inclemencies of time 
 Some harsh lines breaking up the rhyme 
 
 Of changing years ; and hands impure 
 Must touch sometimes our garment-hem, 
 
 We must endure the touch of them; 
 
 We must have many gifts, if we 
 Would garner noble fruits of earth ; 
 
 But these were still of little worth 
 If we be faithless. It must be 
 
 That we have faith, or days of dearth. 
 
 Such faith will win the wealth of time; 
 
 But, sweet faith, that leadeth one 
 To holy days beyond the sun 
 
 To God s days with their rests sublime. 
 
110 Our Inner Temple 
 
 OUR INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 We stand looking out, and the curses of gains 
 Do gleam, like a charm-serpent, into our eyes; 
 And we strike oars, and strive up the river of 
 
 sighs, 
 
 Till we reach lands of silver ay ! win silver chains, 
 That link and re-link us to riches of pains ! 
 
 Till the fair walls of heart-temple crumble within; 
 And spiders of greed, in the desolate rooms, 
 Have spun and entangled the forsaken blooms 
 Of feelings divinest, and which should have been 
 Bloom-bougiis for good thoughts, and not spiders of 
 sin! 
 
 What matters to Him, who hath builded a world, 
 What palace of marbles or mansion of woods 
 We may build? Or the wealth or the splendor of 
 
 goods 
 
 We may wrap our mortality in? or impearled 
 And plentiful jewels? or lingers, ring-curled? 
 
 But the temple of spirit! bring hither thy gold, 
 And all the rich jewels of children of thought, 
 That are pure in thy heart, and fair be they 
 
 wrought 
 For the temple and shrine that should never grow 
 
 old- 
 Be all of it clean as the crystals of gold. 
 
 Be it sweet with the breath of all thoughts that are 
 
 true! 
 Be it hoarded with feasts that are life to the 
 
 soul! 
 Build it strong and divine with its beauties, its 
 
 goal 
 
What Is Great? Ill 
 
 Is highest of all, and is brighter than dew 
 
 Yea, this is the tower that must reach to the Blue! 
 
 And One shall come in that is fairer than day, 
 And shall sup with thy soul, and shall lay his 
 
 dear hand 
 
 With its blessing upon thee, in words that com 
 mand 
 And shall kiss thy lips peace, and shall bend down 
 
 and lay, 
 A rest on thy life, that shall be rest for aye ! 
 
 WHAT IS GREAT? 
 
 All earth is not great in all time; 
 
 It shall pass as the leaves and as we; 
 And all we call great and sublime 
 
 Is an atom cast under the sky 
 And His hand-palm may measure the sea. 
 
 The queen by the populous Thames 
 
 Rules more than the queen of the bees 
 
 Subscribed in her limited claims? 
 
 How much more the sovereign of seas, 
 
 Than the queen of inhabited trees? 
 
 Cast out of the balance the soul, 
 
 Which queen shall be lifted of these, 
 
 The queen that the people control, 
 Or she who controlleth the bees? 
 
 Frail queen of the isles in the seas? 
 
 We stand on the summits of earth 
 
 Look down through the surges of trees 
 That belt them about as a girth, 
 
112 What Is Great? 
 
 And we bend to the snows on our knees, 
 Adoring the grandeur of these ! 
 
 These wonderful spires of the world 
 
 Are but as unevenness seen 
 On oranges, save they are pearled 
 
 With sparkles of ice, and are green 
 With finger-ring forests, between! 
 
 This only? little of thought! 
 
 Arise and go down in the vale ! 
 And yet with a price we are bought 
 
 With a price, and his promises fail 
 Not even to us, in the vale ! 
 
 The spirit! aye, this is the trust, 
 Outweighing the burden of earth, 
 
 And not the frail fashioned of dust 
 The price an Immanuel worth ; 
 
 Be it born to his beautiful birth! 
 
 Shall we sell it for bullets of gold, 
 To shoot down the pleasures of life? 
 
 To be eaten, as mortals, by mould? 
 Or to master a brother in strife? 
 
 For a breath shall we barter a life? 
 
 Shall we buy with it only a passion, 
 That begins a sweet-shining desire, 
 
 That burns mid the madness of fashion, 
 Consuming all beauty, as fire, 
 
 In the gloom of despair to expire? 
 
 Shall we sell it for only a flame, 
 Burning letters of glory a time? 
 
 Shall we part with a gem for a name? 
 That shall die to dull letters in time 
 
 As cold words written in rime 
 
 On a pane in a wintery clime? 
 
Peace 113 
 
 Our hopes are far richer than these, 
 
 Far grander than all, if we hold 
 To the gems of Immanuers seas. 
 
 They are richer than rubies or gold; 
 They are love that shall never be old. 
 
 Our God has a garden of sweet, 
 
 A mine of untarnishing gold, 
 A name of renown and replete 
 
 With applause that shall never be cold 
 Love-songs that shall never be old ! 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 Lo ! peace is the essence of beauty, and we 
 
 May see it enrapt in the soul of a flower, 
 
 And. smiling in joy from a sun-strewn sea, 
 
 When the turbulent storms and the waves of power 
 
 Have gone with their mobs and left it to quiet, 
 
 And beauty has leveled the thrones of the riot. 
 
 The sporting of beasts and the flutter of birds, 
 In plays of beauty, in ways of mirth, 
 Are scenes of delight, and the notes, as words, 
 Are belting the years with a shining girth 
 With bands of glory and clasps of peace 
 With gleams excelling the golden fleece. 
 
 The stars in heaven, the eyes below 
 Have nothing of beauty if naught of rest, 
 And how with the frantic and swirling snow, 
 And the tossing of clouds on the rifted crest, 
 Implore that the wars of men may cease 
 And harmony sit on the thrones of peace ! 
 
114 My America 
 
 War, war ! and its heart of brass ! 
 Be ground into dust to the waters be cast, 
 To the winds be blown! be crushed as glass !- 
 Be floated and drifted and lost in the past ! 
 To love be ransom, and beauty release ! 
 And strife be drowned in the flow of peace! 
 
 " Peace in Heaven! and peace upon earth!" 
 The sound has struck on the walls of strife. 
 Shall it rebound to a world of dearth 
 Of peace and all of the sweet of life? 
 Or level the walls, as the trumpet of old, 
 And wind the earth in its golden fold? 
 
 Peace in Heaven! and queen of men! 
 Implore, implore that the walls go down 
 Holding the cannons of battle and sin! 
 That thoughts of beauty and love may drown 
 Cold drifts of hate ! that the snows may cease 
 And earth be jeweled with deeds of peace. 
 
 MY AMERICA. 
 
 I. 
 
 America ! My Land of Light ! 
 Home of the free ! fair land of love ! 
 Hater of wrongs! Lover of right! 
 Stripes redder than the pulsing blood! 
 Stripes whiter than the lily white! 
 Stars of gold in the blue above ! 
 All throbbing love and glowing good ! 
 My great, "true blue" America! 
 Thou strength of Liberty and Law ! 
 
The Child of Woe 115 
 
 II. 
 
 I love Thee as the flowers the sun ! 
 I love Thee as the leaves the dew! 
 I love Thee as the stars the moon! 
 I love Thee as the sky its blue 
 Eternal symbol of the True ! 
 I pray for Thee, I weep for Thee, 
 I smile for Thee, I sing with glee 
 For Thee ! My hand shall ever be 
 To wave thy banner, clothed in glory! 
 To fight for Thee ! I sing thy story 
 Of triumph over land and sea! 
 
 America ! America ! 
 Thou strength of Liberty and Law ! 
 
 III. 
 
 America! Thou land foreseen 
 Thou vision of the seers of old! 
 Thou art supreme, as thou hast been 
 Thou nugget of the finest gold! 
 And so I love my country more, 
 Because it is the land foretold! 
 So free beneath thy flag we stand, 
 And wave to Heaven the shining fold 
 From mountain, vale and ocean shore ! 
 And wrapped about in stars and blue, 
 And clothed in stripes of winsome hue 
 America ! I will be True ! 
 
 "THE CHILD OF WOE!" 
 
 She walks on the shore of a wintry night; 
 
 And her hands are thin, and her hair is white 
 
 White with the snows that come below, 
 And each flake, pitying, tries to light 
 
116 The Child of Woe 
 
 So tenderly over the " Child of Woe" 
 And yet as they gather soft and slow, 
 Clustering over her neck of snow, 
 
 She shivereth under her scanty fold 
 
 Cold, so cold! 
 
 The world is white, and the sky is hid 
 By tears that fall from under the lid 
 
 Of clouds shut over the eye-like moon, 
 As, frozen a frosty white, they glide 
 
 Down the cheek of the sky, so soon 
 To light and mingle them, cold as stone, 
 With tears meandering, one by one, 
 
 Over her face men with gold! 
 
 Cold, so cold! 
 
 The clouds, o erhanging, are white and chill 
 As the snowy earth; and, up on the hill, 
 
 The marble monuments, slim and tall, 
 Lean up to the sky so pale and still; 
 
 And her face is white as the snows that fall- 
 And the drearest spot in her heart of all, 
 Is where there trembles the cheerless wail, 
 
 A word too sad for the world to hold, 
 
 "Cold, so cold!" 
 
 The snows crowd into her tattered shoe 
 No wonder her lips are thin and blue ! 
 
 And blue ne er symboled a sweeter mind, 
 Or a soul whose needle could dip more true 
 
 To Heaven than hers, or a heart more kind; 
 And still the eyes of the world are blind 
 And, 0, here cometh a whirl of wind! 
 
 God, help her see through the flying fold 
 
 Of snows, so cold! 
 
 How rise the drear and gathering drifts! 
 And each, like a living ghost, uplifts 
 
 As though it reached for the cold embrace 
 
The Child of Woe 117 
 
 Of the upper drift, that wails and sifts 
 Down chillingly into her whitened face ! 
 
 How fast it covers the latest trace 
 
 Of her freezing feet, as, pace by pace, 
 She strives on, hugging the scanty fold, 
 
 Cold, so cold! 
 
 And no one offers a guiding hand 
 To help her over the whitened sand, 
 
 As fair lights out of the windows gleam 
 Where all within is a tropic land 
 
 Ah ! would it a want of charity seem 
 Should she, adrift with the snowy stream, 
 Half-way think and half-way dream 
 
 That the hearts and hands that have the gold 
 
 Are cold, 0! cold? 
 
 0, me ! what a homeless waif of woes ! 
 Sailing alone on a sea of snows, 
 
 Her yearning voice so frail that none 
 Will listen at all, and no one knows 
 
 Its cry is meant for a signal gun! 
 So the strong go by her one by one 
 No wonder, then, as she tosses on, 
 
 She sighs, a-clutching her scanty fold, 
 
 "The World is cold!" 
 
 And, ! as she goes, will no one come 
 And make in his heart an inch of room? 
 
 And warm her cheek with a Christian tear? 
 And take her out of the snowy gloom? 
 
 What a pitiful call for a bit of cheer! 
 0! how can a Christian help but hear? 
 Then send her to me, for, ! I fear 
 
 No one will know, till a snowy fold 
 
 Winds her cold! 
 
118 My Par- Away 
 
 MY FAR-AWAY. 
 I. 
 
 link of love ! lifted eye, 
 
 Impassioned girl, my "Far- Away!" 
 Expectant song of "by-and-by," 
 
 Glad yester-morn but sad to-day! 
 My soul stands up and looks afar 
 And trembles like a straying ,star 
 And reaches back, with eyes ajar, 
 To thee, my joy, my "Far-away." 
 
 II. 
 
 voice, a-reel with wines of song 
 
 More fond and fine than foam or spray 
 That can from vines of earth be wrung, 
 
 Sing marches for my feet to stray 
 Somewhere that sin may not betide, 
 And streams of youthful thought beside 
 Beside thy ,soul temptation-tried 
 And found so true, my "Far-away!" 
 
 III. 
 
 eyes, beneath another sky, 
 
 Look up now, while I look, and pray! 
 
 1 am not gone so far but I 
 
 Can catch the kind and tender ray! 
 There is a wire from me to thee 
 By way of Heav n I bow my knee 
 Glad eyes of love, shine o er to me 
 By way of Heav n, my "Far-away!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 distant heart, beat on! beat, 
 And beat thy warm and darling May! 
 
Telouchkine 119 
 
 Half way to thee we seem to meet, 
 
 And heart to heart we seem to lay. 
 I feel the throb of thine, I know, 
 By way of Him who sayeth, "Lo! 
 I m with you always!" Angel, so 
 I seem with thee, my " Far- Away!" 
 
 TELOUCHKINE. 
 
 I. 
 
 The spire of great " Saint Peter s and St. Paul s, 
 
 Lost like a needle in the purple skies, 
 
 Stood gleaming in the centuries of light 
 
 And dwindled, o er Slavonic, Titan walls 
 
 Of grand Saint Petersburg, to fairy size, 
 
 A gold-hued world poised on its airy height; 
 
 And on this poised unpeopled-planet stood 
 
 A steadfast angel, emblem of the good, 
 
 Enshielded blue with heaven s blue amplitude. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now, by the driving tempests of the skies 
 And stealing frosts and feathery snowy feet, 
 It leans to fall, w r hile men, who creep below 
 Like insects, upward gaze with dust-small eyes 
 (While aspirations drag the stony street 
 By leaden fears, and over ever go 
 The silvery clouds that kiss the angel s face), 
 And idly speculate, and, skeptic, trace 
 The gulf impassable of towering space! 
 
 m. 
 
 But Telouchkine, a tzar uncrowned, gazed 
 The airy ocean thro , but not, as they, 
 
120 Telouchkine 
 
 With fruitless wondering and helpless thought: 
 
 His thoughts in brilliant upward steppings blazed 
 
 A vaulting wonder-deed, heroic way 
 
 To reach the falling angel! Thus he wrought 
 
 A restoration for the seraph King, 
 
 Exalted emblem of man s primal spring, 
 
 The Eden seraph now with failing wing. 
 
 IV. 
 
 He clomb the spire ! The shouts of surging specks 
 Came floating up in faint far murmurings 
 When Telouchkine now by the angel stood! 
 He scanning downward upward little recks 
 If he be nearer those sweet pearled strings 
 That star the blue at noonday solitude 
 To one so skyey deep ! Brave Telouchkine ! 
 A plain-clad king with crown more superfine 
 That Inca s gold and Afric s diamond mine. 
 
 V. 
 
 For he alone dare win its lofty gleam 
 Redeeming Russia s angel clothed with gold: 
 Twas thus with man; for halting wisdom tried, 
 And haughty folly, ages to redeem 
 The angel in us" from its ruin old. 
 Twas unavailing folly s shallow-eyed 
 And peering throngs around the Titan wall, 
 Till Christ came down and, crowned King of All, 
 This "Angel in us" saved from endless fall! 
 
TALES 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 LIFE A TALE. 
 
 A tale is but breath, 
 
 Yet life is a tale 
 Borne over by death, 
 
 And told in a wail, 
 Or in sweetness, hereafter. 
 
 Our lives are but tales 
 
 Told in accents of pathos 
 Of loves under veils 
 
 Told in burnings of passion, 
 In tempests of wails, 
 
 In flashes of evil, 
 In songs, in curses 
 
 In all, every whit, 
 Lives are tales! 
 
 DRIVEN FROM EDEN. 
 Tale of a Pioneer. 
 
 Time is a heartless intruder, 
 That ruthlessly trudges behind one, 
 And tramples and crushes to splinters 
 The painted glass-figures of fancy 
 The castles in Spain of the dreamer, 
 In youth and the budding of manhood 
 
122 Driven from Eden 
 
 So how can I gather a story 
 
 To-day out of glittering fragments, 
 
 Once perfect and brilliant of color 
 
 In youth, when the earlier fancies 
 
 Lay fairer than roses around me? 
 
 Now dim are the dreams of my childhood, 
 
 And faded the follies of love-days. 
 
 I. 
 
 Far back lie the realms of my childhood, 
 Divine with the promise of love-days, 
 In the meadow r s that one of the poets 
 Pronounced, in his ecstasy, Eden 
 Where tides of the beautiful grasses 
 Of prairies, with glorified blossoms, 
 Shook hands with the tides of the waters, 
 And kissed to the kiss of Vermilion 
 There prairies are dotted with timber, 
 As islands deep-green in the ocean: 
 Twas there in the breeze and the shadow 
 Of one of those islands of forest 
 She dwelt, who was queen of all beauty, 
 Eulalie, the pride of Vermilion. 
 
 Birds floated around and above her 
 And swung on their pinions of purple, 
 And all the rich hues under heaven; 
 They chirped on the branches a message 
 Of "peace to Eulalie!" and freighted 
 The air with their languorous love-lays. 
 The meadow-larks ,swayed, at a distance, 
 On stems of the riotous dock-weeds. 
 Twas peace in the sound of the breezes, 
 And peace in the caroling voices 
 Of birds in the peace of the tree-tops. 
 Twas peace in the whispering grasses; 
 And delicate voices of waters 
 Sang peace, to the lulling of lilies 
 
Driven from Eden 123 
 
 Whose peace was the charm of their petals. 
 Twas peace unexplored in the star-lands; 
 With only a breach of their promise 
 Of peace, as was seen in the falling 
 Of a meteor at eve, as if sorrow 
 Had crept into loves of the planets, 
 And so, now and then in the twilight 
 A star fell from out of the cluster 
 Down to night of eternal despairing! 
 Twas peace in the voices of Nature. 
 Twas peace in the night and the morning, 
 And peace all the day and the even. 
 And peace is the essence of beauty. 
 Peace, white-armed, sweet peace is the goddess 
 That soars o er the passions that rend us 
 That deadens the spirit of hatred 
 Of jealousy, envy, ambition! 
 Yea, peace, that maketh contentment ! 
 Such peace was in soul of Eulalie, 
 Whose prayer was, "May God s peace be with 
 you." 
 
 I dwelt on the river Vermilion, 
 Not far from the home of Eulalie 
 why should my spirit awaken, 
 To follow the feet of an angel? 
 Then toss on its pillow of passion? 
 My love was as pure as the heavens, 
 And true as its blueness of beauty. 
 But I was devoid of the graces 
 And ways that should win her affection. 
 My gait was uncouth; and uncomely 
 My form; and the money to cover, 
 My many defects still was lacking. 
 What charm hid in dusky complexion? 
 Or coarse hair, as straight as the rushes? 
 Then why should my spirit awaken 
 To toss on its pillow of passion? 
 Ah ! was it, as coldly was told me 
 
124 Driven from Eden 
 
 By one who had power to do evil, 
 Because (it was false as the wine-cup) ! 
 I saw through the eyes of a dreamer! 
 But she, she was sweet as the blossoms, 
 As pure as the buds of the lilies 
 Caressing the flow of Vermilion. 
 The smiling, that chased back her laughter, 
 Rippled like the brook ; and it tinted 
 Her features, expressive as twilight 
 Doth chase down the sunset and tinteth 
 The skies from which Helios retreated! 
 Alas! now to find that my fancy 
 Is not as it was; and that somehow, 
 My power of impassioned expression 
 Is not as it was in those love-days! 
 Alas! that the eyes of Eulalie, 
 Yea, all her enrapturing beauties 
 Have faded so far into distance; 
 They are dim through the mists of the moun 
 tains 
 
 Of pleasure are dim and uncertain 
 Thro smoke of the desolate valleys 
 Of humiliation and sorrows! 
 My words are grown heavy as iron. 
 Muse ! give me the words that are lacking 
 To tell what I saw in Eulalie, 
 So glorified fair with the touches 
 Of love from the heart of a dreamer? 
 But, to-day the dear view is uncertain, 
 Her form interchanges with others, 
 Who thrust their dim faces between us, 
 And smile as they claim recognition! 
 Yes, to-day, her dear voice is uncertain, 
 And comes like an echo of echo ! 
 It paineth me sore to distinguish 
 Her voice from the voices of many 
 That come from their shadow of waiting, 
 And call, through an ocean of distance, 
 And claim do they get it? remembrance. 
 Tell me why war these opposite forces, 
 
Driven from Eden 125 
 
 Opposing all goodness by evil 
 Opposing the sweet by the bitter? 
 
 How young, yet how ardent are lovers! 
 
 Love wakens the chords in some spirits, 
 
 That quiver, with flashes resplendent, 
 
 And sound in a lyric of beauty, 
 
 Till ending in music of heaven; 
 
 In some, tune is wakened in sweetness, 
 
 To die in harsh iteration 
 
 Of tunes that are dirges to pleasure! 
 
 Come closer; my voice, it grows weaker 
 
 Come closer, and listen; for somehow, 
 
 Now faces and voices that mingled 
 
 And made my remembrance uncertain 
 
 Are clear for the moment to mem ry 
 
 And, somehow, the mists of these mountains 
 
 Of pleasure, the smoke in the valleys 
 
 Of humiliation and sorrows 
 
 Are breaking away, and my fancies 
 
 Shine clear on the banks of Vermilion! 
 
 I see now the first of life plainly; 
 
 Tis strange that the commonest trifle, 
 
 Sometimes, is remembered for ages, 
 
 While deeds we call great are forgotten! 
 
 I went to the home of Eulalie; 
 
 I went in my youth burning blushes 
 
 And, Oh! with a sort of foreboding! 
 
 We met ; and I knew, by the clinging 
 
 Of lips and their passionate pulses, 
 
 And more by the wonderful kindness 
 
 That shone in her eyes, who was victor. 
 
 We wooed on the banks of Vermilion. 
 We called to the fish in the river 
 Alluring them up to the margin. 
 The birds to the grounds of enchantment 
 
126 Driven from Eden 
 
 Came down to the margin of waters; 
 And fishes came up to the lilies, 
 So charmed by the rapturous singing. 
 Love shown in the blush o the roses! 
 Twas fair in the cups o the lilies! 
 Love caroled from bills o the singers, 
 Twas sweet in the waters of crystal! 
 love, in the dew o the morning, 
 And soft in the flow o the grasses! 
 love, in the cloud and the even, 
 That blushed to the color of crimson ! 
 love, in the gleaming of Venus, 
 And mild in the paleness of Luna ! . 
 love, in the soul o the woman 
 Who loved so the love of "a dreamer !" 
 
 II. 
 
 God! oppositions of forces! 
 They make the wild, turbulent plunging 
 Of torrents and swirling tornadoes! 
 The maiden saw not as her parents. 
 They said I was "only a dreamer!" 
 .Because Oh, when I remember, 
 My old, timeworn spirit doth tremble 
 Again with a storm of rebellion! 
 Because I had loftier yearnings 
 Than cramping all thoughts to the getting 
 Of money by tricks of the trader 
 Because I unburdened my spirit 
 Of some of its plungings of passion, 
 And tenderer play of emotions, 
 In figures of speech and in sonnets, 
 They said to me, cold as the iceberg : 
 "Foolish youth, you are only a dreamer. 
 Do you deem the invention of figures 
 Of speech and of amorous verses 
 Is enough for the fairest of women? 
 Why, you are as clumsy as dock-leaves, 
 
Driven from Eden 127 
 
 While she is as graceful as lilies 
 
 Shall lilies lock arms with the dock-leaves?" 
 
 I ventured to answer, not mildly: 
 "Nay, nay! but the dock, so uncomely 
 Yet strong, may lean over the lily, 
 Protecting from sun and the tempest!" 
 
 Far better I never had spoken! 
 For red as the raging of wine-cups, 
 He cried: "Let the bottom be riven 
 From under the dashing Vermilion! 
 Let clouds that are red in the even 
 Turn dark as your tawny complexion! 
 If ever so clumsy a dreamer, 
 Unpolished, shall wed my Eulalie ! 
 You may level the loftiest mountain, 
 You may dry up the springs of the ocean, 
 But this lies beyond your endeavor 
 Go ! go from her future existence ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Yea, lives may begin soaring upward 
 
 Delighting a thousand beholders, 
 
 As rings rise in smoke toward the sunbeams 
 
 Ascending, so soon to be broken 
 
 To be broken, as rings of our smoking 
 
 Are broken on merciless tree-tops: 
 
 Yea, hearts may turn sad, until ripples 
 
 Of gayness sink dead neath the waters 
 
 And the surface that rippled in sunshine 
 
 Lies turbid o er bodies of dead men. 
 
 But a will that is utterly broken 
 
 Or bent for the arrows of curses, 
 
 While the heart still unbroken is glowing 
 
 With rashness and poisonous passions 
 
 Is the worst of all bitterest sorrows. 
 
 There are wills that are stronger than iron, 
 
128 Driven from Eden 
 
 But more may be bended as pewter 
 There are wills with a seeming of beauty, 
 But godless as glasses of Bacchus ; 
 There are wills that can never be broken, 
 But wound, as a twine on the finger. 
 Why chant to the hurrying people? 
 "Why clang to the pitiless pavement 
 Steps driven by wills that are stormy? 
 A sound in the heart of the marble 
 Rings back, "it is resolute battle 
 Stern war with the all that ennobles!" 
 And big lights that gleam in the windows 
 Of men of the world, how they glimmer! 
 1 * We hate thee ! we hate the emotions, 
 The yearnings and brazen ambitions 
 Of humble men, daring to battle 
 For thrones of exalted opinions 
 And characters grander than temples!" 
 
 IV. 
 
 We parted as others have parted; 
 And Earth put on garments of mourning. 
 She said, as I turned to go from her: 
 "Searle, stand like a man! It is sorrow 
 That bridges the way to the fullness 
 Of power and the goal of our being ! 
 Searle, go ! you are going forever ! 
 I shall follow your footprints, aye, always; 
 Shall glide like a shadow in mourning, 
 Along the forsaken Vermilion, 
 Forsaken of you and its sweetness. 
 Be strong love, farewell!" Thus she van 
 ished, 
 
 As pale as the snow in the mountains. 
 To me the delights of Vermilion 
 Turned dead as the rocks of the desert 
 Turned dead as our hopes; and an angel 
 In black led me out of the valley, 
 
The Ishmaelite 129 
 
 And swung a sword over the gate-way. 
 I crushed with the hammer of will-power, 
 The thing we call "lonely!" and turning 
 I set my face westward from Eden. 
 
 THE ISHMAELITE. 
 I. 
 
 A cloud to east in upper air 
 
 Was dipping from the boiling sea 
 Her golden waves. It bent its knee 
 
 And dipped, and lifting, unaware, 
 
 Some oversplashed its cup and fell 
 And flashed afar a lightning flash, 
 
 And sounded with the distant swell 
 Of thunder, with its hoarse-toned plash. 
 
 II. 
 
 "Wild Bill" and I mid seas of grass 
 And I a roaming rhymer, then, 
 And he a wildest waif of men 
 
 He, dreaming of a shattered glass 
 
 Of golden beauty, in the days 
 When love and confidence, a-bloom, 
 
 Lined all his heart s perfumed ways, 
 Now sered to wasted ways of gloom. 
 
 III. 
 
 "0 gold-eyed stars!" Wild Bill began, 
 
 "That smile one thing and wink another 
 (In this far, man is false-eyed brother), 
 If men have found a fellowman 
 The world may trust, as trusting woman, 
 
130 The Ishmaelite 
 
 That all may trust in suns or thunders, 
 I ll waive my strife and turn to human, 
 And add one to the seven wonders. 
 
 IV. 
 
 "Men say I spurn the very thought 
 Of any throbs of heart that beat 
 What woman s tongue pronounces sweet. 
 
 They may not see the sombre spot, 
 
 Encased in rocky, froward souls, 
 
 Where love may weep in tears of weakness- 
 
 Ours woe controlled, theirs joy controls; 
 Their love a boon, and ours a bleakness. 
 
 V. 
 
 "Aye, you are young; and poets know 
 The meaning of a plaintive story 
 Can drop tears on a hand, though .gory 
 
 And desperate well be it so, 
 
 I laugh with those who jest at love, 
 And build a room more, with the rest; 
 
 Yet, deep within, the soul will move 
 With curses at the hollow jest. 
 
 VI. 
 
 "If, in some mood of inspiration, 
 You thrust my secret into rhyme, 
 I charge you keep it until Time 
 
 Shall fix my grave for decoration. 
 
 It may be turned to fruitful warning 
 To whom would go the way I ve gone 
 
 May save my memory some its scorning, 
 When all but this is overgrown. 
 
 VII. 
 
 "My distant Mary was a blonde, 
 A pale face mellowed by some care 
 
The Ishmaelite 131 
 
 Unusual, so finely fair. 
 And I, somehow, have never found 
 A face, an eye, or sunny hair, 
 
 A heart, a head, or limbs, or breast, 
 Or love, or goodness could compare 
 
 With hers, divinest, loveliest! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 "The birds were thicker in the trees, 
 
 And sat and twittered unafraid 
 
 When she was there ; and, when she prayed, 
 All Nature seemed upon its knees ; 
 And rich bees, overladen, came 
 
 And clustered on her clasping hands; 
 And tall-topt flowers, with hearts aflame, 
 
 Tipped to her cheeks as charmed wands. 
 
 IX. 
 
 "Her song was like the melody 
 
 Poured liquidly along the keys 
 
 Of some piano in the skies 
 Like some angelic symphony 
 That glideth, on its wings of bliss, 
 
 Along the glittering glassy sea; 
 For nothing bears so pure a kiss 
 
 Of Heaven as music s melody. 
 
 X. 
 
 "She sang one time and, Oh! her voice! 
 
 While shining with a glance divine 
 
 Her blue-blue eyes did overshine 
 The splendor of the sky apoise ! 
 Rude bearded men look up and weep, 
 
 And rough brown hands and brawny arms 
 Lift up and swing, and young folks leap, 
 
 Run wild at its melodious charms. 
 
132 The Ishmaelite 
 
 XI. 
 
 "And (as the tides rush to the moon), 
 
 A thousand waking sympathies 
 
 Rush up to kiss her melting eyes! 
 And strong men, rising one by one, 
 Unthinking, crowd and weep and lean 
 
 Like leaning ships; and children shout 
 And mingle in the magnet scene, 
 
 And white-haired men bow heads devout. 
 
 XII. 
 
 "Then I was but a lad, and yet 
 
 Was wise in feelings that to me 
 
 Were more than all beside; and she, 
 Too wise and faithful to forget. 
 Some said: But she is rich in purse, 
 
 And soon will scorn him, poor and humble ! - 
 God! crush that heart-consuming curse, 
 
 That block of gold o er which fools stumble! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 "Be sure I was not rich; but then 
 
 I had a turn of mind that many 
 
 Count better than a soulless penny 
 A buoyant soul that most of men 
 Would give a fortune to possess. 
 
 They called me wild I knew not why; 
 But then I made this off-hand guess: 
 
 To make me odious in her eye ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "Thank God, I was not dull or tame; 
 For Mary could not love a drone, 
 Nor worship hearts of gold or stone 
 
 I was not wild nor tame, I claim. 
 
 Could God then love me aught the less, 
 Because I claimed the right of motion? 
 
The Ishmaelite 133 
 
 There was no form twixt heart and cross, 
 Nor stupidness in my devotion. 
 
 XV. 
 
 "But still they called me wild, the same 
 Ah! then it made we weep: such tears 
 Have long since perished with the years 
 
 I glory in the ruffian name. 
 
 One Rudolph came, a moneyed drone, 
 Who claimed (by right of unearned gold 
 
 And by the right that parents own) 
 Their offered child a slave is sold! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 "Her parents loved him for his riches, 
 And tried to sell her to a drone 
 1 She asked for bread ; they gave a stone ! 
 
 They sewed a veil with golden stitches, 
 
 And thought to hide from her the boy 
 Whose cupid had no golden arrow 
 
 They thought a little golden toy 
 
 Would turn her from her bitter sorrow. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 "Now, what if minted silver shine 
 And rattle in the purse and chink 
 In chests chained down by diamond link? 
 What if the burden of a mine 
 Of minted gold should pouch and weigh 
 
 One s pockets, till the law would pass 
 And wink, and maidens droop, and say, 
 How rich! how grand! yet sad, alas! 
 
134 The Ishmaelite 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 "Yea, what of silver-glancing glint? 
 
 And what of gold and glowing gilt? 
 
 And palaces that tower and tilt 
 O er wide-spread lands afar a-tint 
 With harvest wealth that tower a-top 
 
 This little tilting, toppling earth? 
 All these were but a trifling drop 
 
 To satisfy a world of dearth. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 "For what were these if one must miss 
 
 The only face, the only form, 
 
 The only breast or clasping arm, 
 The only elevating kiss, 
 The only hand whose press or touch 
 
 Could raise the dead heart or arouse 
 One slumbering joy the only such 
 
 To heal the heart that bleeds and bows? 
 
 XX. 
 
 "To cease to love too saintly true, 
 
 Too fond to ever disobey 
 
 Parental will, too frail to say: 
 I will not wed, and live to rue! 
 And so Alas! hold, till I quiet 
 
 This stormy motion in my breast 
 This damned lunging spirit-riot 
 
 Of recollection then the rest! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 "The pallor of my evil star, 
 
 Perhaps, as cold, w r eird light in dreams, 
 Has cast its hue in pallid streams 
 Before you, and its lines afar 
 You follow, till your thoughts unveil 
 
The Ishmaelite 135 
 
 The bitter truths I strive to tell 
 At which the wildest soul will quail, 
 As demons at the wails of hell. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 What God has joined! Those words were mad 
 dest. 
 
 Had she been glad by his caress, 
 
 When wed, my heart had murmured: * Bless 
 The saintly flower ! But, oh, the saddest, 
 I saw her when the year had flown, 
 
 A shadow then, and sorrow-veiled, 
 By walks that youth with joy had strown 
 
 They feigned they knew not why she failed. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 "Swift passed another year; and I 
 (As was my way since she was wed), 
 Went wandering (with the stars o erhead), 
 
 Where holy water glimmered by 
 
 The deep and glinting lake, where we 
 Had both breathed wishes up to God, 
 
 And I to her, and she to me 
 
 Now one lone flower bloomed on the sod 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 "One marvelous, symbolic flower; 
 
 Too delicate to stand alone, 
 
 It leaned against a heartless stone, 
 Yet exercised its fainting power 
 In breathing perfumed prayers to me. 
 
 Just then I started, for I felt 
 Some feeling pull me to my knee ! 
 
 I looked ! the flower had turned to wilt ! 
 
136 The Ishmaelite 
 
 XXV. 
 
 "A thousand longings, resurrected, 
 Eushed to the lake! I cast my eyes 
 Upon its wave-reflected skies! 
 
 Two hands played with two stars, reflected; 
 
 One pale breast cooled upon the lake; 
 One white face kissed the floating moon! 
 
 I called ! the sleeper would not wake ! 
 I cried out in the night alone ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 "I plunged into the star-strewn lake! 
 
 I clutched twas she! silent Mary! 
 
 Dead on the waters solitary! 
 The ripples on the lake-shore break; 
 But red heart-surges break and toss 
 
 Her soul on billows, till the child 
 Through death is lifted from her cross, 
 
 While I, tossed woeward yea, am wild! 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 "0 red-winged life! with bloody beak 
 Scouring the wild plains of my heart 
 To catch prey for the hungry mart 
 
 Of misery! I was not weak: 
 
 I paid them for their godless sneers 
 No matter how. I made them feel 
 
 The reflux of my youthful tears 
 
 Drop back on them like frozen steel. 
 
 Since this was said, his tongue is dumb. 
 
 His grave is fixed for decoration? 
 
 Or, for neglect, or desecration? 
 I know not if a friend has come 
 With flowers, or spray of "live-forever," 
 
Tola 137 
 
 To honor this strange Ishmaelite: 
 If so, I say, God bless the giver! 
 This is my flower, this song I write. 
 
 He died (some say, a desperado) 
 
 The steadiest nerved the coolest man 
 
 That ever set foot on the plain 
 The Hero of the Estacado. 
 Ah ! dare we hope, he found the flower 
 
 That melted by the heartless stone 
 And that, through God s eternal hour, 
 
 He is not "wild," and not alone? 
 
 IOLA. 
 
 lola blushed and dropped her head, 
 
 And fondled my hand, and teased, and said: 
 
 "Now tell me the tale you used to, when 
 
 I was a laughing girl, as then 
 
 You told me, swinging over the gate, 
 
 Forgetting the hour was growing late." 
 
 And so I smiled, as I raised her head, 
 
 And chucked her under the chin, and said: 
 
 "The Plains were as wide as the widest sea; 
 
 And the top was alive With a toss of glee 
 
 The whole year through ; and the houses stood 
 
 As few as ships on the ocean flood 
 
 Twas there I dwelt with the bride whose eyes 
 
 Were violet, black, nor the color of skies, 
 
 But a beautiful color, nor wild, nor tame, 
 
 A color that never has found a name. 
 
 The land was as broad as the broadest main 
 
 Forever a-surge Again and again 
 
 The waves were green, with a painted foam; 
 
 And again and again, as the dry winds came 
 
138 lola 
 
 In the heated August, and the longing 
 
 Saw never a cloud, in the flushing sky 
 
 The size of a hand, has the green turned gray, 
 
 And again and again has the gray grass spray, 
 
 As the Indian summer sun looked down, 
 
 Turned from a gray to a deader brown. 
 
 "One time we stood and the stern round sun, 
 When the east was red and the west was dun, 
 Rose burning so hot that the grasses spires 
 With dew-tips tossing like tongues of fires, 
 Strung off to the east as a caravan 
 Of pilgrims clad in flame, and ran 
 And swung their arms, and, one by one, 
 Seemed pouring into the templed sun. 
 
 "Then, as the east was turning red, 
 The upper heavens turned dun and dead; 
 And, low in the west and pinned to land, 
 Flowed up two strips of a rainbow band, 
 And torn and bloody and blue, alack! 
 And caught in a cloud of green-tinged black. 
 
 And ever then, as the bow shone brighter, 
 The tint to the orient grew lighter 
 And less and less, as a dying crater, 
 And the green-tinged black grew darker and 
 greater. 
 
 The wind kept stopping, then starting again, 
 And looking a-west and pulling the rein 
 To rest his steed till the cloud should come, 
 When, spurring his steed in the stormy gloom, 
 High o er his tangled and dusty mane 
 He would swing his hands and swoop the plain 
 And shout and sing till the prairies ring 
 And the frightened grasses drop and cling 
 To the sounding ground a-quail with thunder! 
 And then, as we looked, the sun w r ent under. 
 
 "Such a terrible sky, on a rain-bowed morning 
 Is our, as well as a sailor s warning! 
 She said, as she pressed her cheek to mine, 
 And her chestnut hair did kiss and twine 
 
lola 139 
 
 And mingle with mine. Now, clasping her, 
 I shuddered to feel her bosom stir 
 With a beat it never had beaten before. 
 I looked in her face a tear fell o er 
 My darling s cheek ! for she, you know 
 Was young as a girl, as yet, and so 
 I called her my darling and girl, tis true; 
 But you are older than she, and you 
 Are prouder and bolder than she; and I 
 Somehow could never, I know not why, 
 Call you the same as her however, 
 My love for you is strong as a river 
 And so, if I never should give you the name 
 That I gave to her, it is all the same. 
 
 "Then a terrible rush of wind came on. 
 Whirling the dust, and then was gone. 
 Not a single mote of the world in motion! 
 Still as a heart in last devotion! 
 
 "The black o erhead then flashed with fire 
 And the stillness startled as if a lyre, 
 Whose wires hung spanning the universe, 
 Were struck to mutter a mighty curse ! 
 The world awoke, with a pealing noise, 
 And startled and shook, as a mote, a-poise, 
 Would shiver upon a quivering thread ! 
 Scarcely the stunning sound was dead, 
 When the sudden rush of a fiery flood 
 Streamed over the heavens. I started stood! 
 And a burning bullet, a blazing ball, 
 Shot down from the battery clouds, where wall 
 On wall is set with cannon to war 
 The world below fell like a star 
 Flew red and swift, and a scented heat 
 Followed the trail of its flashing feet! 
 And, hissing by, as a heated dart, 
 Its breath I feel I cling I start 
 But never a breath again, and never 
 Another word, from her lips forever!" 
 
IN LIGHTER VEIN 
 
 MONEY. 
 From the San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 There is one song, if sung, that is matter of fact; 
 
 I ve been the land over found truth in a friend. 
 
 And know how sweet love is, and know it exact 
 
 How sweet the applause of the lines I have 
 
 penned ; 
 
 But of all that is sweet and of all that is sunny, 
 Tis the best, my friends, to have "plenty of 
 money ! 
 
 There s a smile from the great and a bow from the 
 
 common, 
 
 And kisses and pressure of hands that are warm, 
 And leaning of bosoms of beautiful women, 
 
 And compliments thicker than hail in a storm 
 All the words of the world, they are sweeter than 
 
 honey, 
 
 If a man, my friends, but has "plenty of 
 money I 
 
 "Away with despair! here s a drink to the many!" 
 He sings; and the many cry: "Health to the 
 one!" 
 
 "A health to my Mary, my Lucy, my Jennie!" 
 He drinks to them all, with affection for none. 
 
 This is no sin for him, it is simply "so funny!" 
 
 For he, my friends, he has "plenty of money!" 
 
 So I say, if you wish to sail smooth o er the waters 
 Of life, why, see that you gather the pennies ; 
 
Growing Old 141 
 
 And men will be friends, yea, and all of earth s 
 
 daughters, 
 
 All Marys, and Lucys, and Daisies, and Jennies 
 Then your sins and shortcomings will be only 
 
 4 funny." 
 Three cheers for the man who has "plenty of 
 
 money ! 
 
 "GROWING OLD." 
 By Miss Fading Flirt. 
 
 I take the Bible from the shelf 
 And o er the "Record" pore and pore, 
 
 And read it over to myself, 
 
 "Was born in eighteen-f orty-four ! " 
 
 I would not utter it aloud 
 
 No, not for all my father s gold 
 
 Still will the thought upon me crowd, 
 
 "I m growing old!" 
 
 I looked into the glass to-night. 
 
 I noticed little veins of blue 
 Stood out upon my brow of white 
 
 I mused "Alas! then this is true, 
 My face has not a sign of red!" 
 
 And yet my heart is hardly bold 
 Enough to say, what might be said, 
 
 "I m growing old!" 
 
 "They" only come now "as a friend" 
 And sit upon the farthest chair. 
 
 They re careful now not to offend ( !) 
 By mentioning that I am fair, 
 
142 Growing Old 
 
 Or venturing to press my hand, 
 
 Are not so "rude" as to enfold 
 Their arms about me, as I stand 
 
 Ah! growing old! 
 
 They talk of politics and money, 
 
 The ones that used to talk of "love" 
 
 And "luscious lips as sweet as honey," 
 And say, "Come nestle near, my dove!" 
 
 They "wonder why I do not wed," 
 Yet never "offer" 0! how cold! 
 
 They mean, by this, I am afraid, 
 
 "You re growing old!" 
 
 I thought I heard two saucy girls 
 Say, as they passed the other day, 
 
 "Of late her boasted flood of curls 
 
 Is growing thin well, that s the way!" 
 
 It s true ; for, when I comb my hair, 
 The comb fills full as it can hold. 
 
 I almost cry out in despair, 
 
 "I m growing old!" 
 
 One time my hands were pigeon-breasted 
 How fondly then they used to kiss them! 
 
 How many tears upon them rested! 
 
 But now somehow they never miss them. 
 
 Instead of dimples now are knuckles, 
 And Charlie, who once came to hold 
 
 Them fondly, stays away and chuckles, 
 
 "She s growing old!" 
 
 William, with your "little ones!" 
 Charlie, with your smiling eyes, 
 
 Two stars now sparkled into sons! 
 many others, whose "good-bys" 
 
 Each left upon my heart the trace 
 
Growing Old 143 
 
 Of fleeting years! you say, I m told, 
 I dare not look you in the face, 
 
 Since growing old! 
 
 The mothers call upon me now, 
 
 And ministers, to sympathize 
 And point me to the promise bow" ( !) 
 
 "You re pale," they say, with scores of 
 "whys?" 
 
 me ! they know, as well as I, 
 My color in my youth was sold, 
 
 And that the only reason why 
 
 Is "growing old!" 
 
 1 see my face is growing thin ; 
 
 I see my lips have lost their red; 
 I ve lost the dimple on my chin 
 
 And half the hair upon my head. 
 I m growing prudish in my notions; 
 
 I fear I m growing to "a scold;" 
 I m growing angular in motions 
 
 "I m growing old." 
 
 I see the maidens in the street 
 
 Smile, as I pass them of a morn. 
 Men have quit gazing at my feet; 
 
 And bachelors now say, "Forlorn!" 
 That used to call me "young and green." 
 
 Sometimes they say, "Old maid," I m told, 
 And, "Growing pious, growing lean, 
 
 And growing old!" 
 
 I gave my younger, sweeter life, 
 
 To witcheries and smiles and lies, 
 And frightened at the thought of "wife" 
 
 My older life I give to sighs. 
 I look back to my warmer days, 
 
 Now that my heart is growing cold, 
 And sigh, "Flirtation never pays, 
 
 When we are old!" 
 
144 Chinatown Inland 
 
 CHINATOWN INLAND. 
 
 There s a little sweet spot in the oaks, 
 Once the prettiest place in the dell, 
 
 Where the Chinaman chatters and smokes, 
 
 Concocting his heathenish jokes, 
 In that mystical Orient smell. 
 
 I sit at my window and groan, 
 
 To remember the time when the place 
 In beautiful blossoms was sown, 
 And all the rich breezes were blown 
 
 Through the leaves of the shadowy space. 
 
 New shanties have buried the bloom, 
 
 And the forests have faded to stumps; 
 They have laden the air with perfume, 
 And the place has a beggarly gloom, 
 The sight of which gives me the "dumps." 
 
 Lo ! the rickety sign of Chin Lung 
 
 Him washee for Melican men. 
 See ! the sleepy-eyed heathen Lin Chung, 
 With a wide-awake wag of his tongue, 
 
 Seducing us into his den. 
 
 He sits mid the opium fume, 
 
 With boxes of bitter cigars, 
 I inwardly sin, I presume, 
 But I do hate the sight of his room, 
 
 And his sallow face pitted with scars. 
 
 With a gait I dislike and eschew, 
 Like a laden pack mule, see Ah Sam 
 Trot away with a flop of his shoe, 
 With his pole and a cabbage or two 
 All seemingly sprinkled with balm. 
 
Overland Sweat 145 
 
 I presume that the spirit is wrong, 
 
 But I cannot but think as he scuffs 
 Along, he s a giaour from "Cantong," 
 Or a Buffalo Bill from "Hong Kong," 
 Or one of less notable "roughs." 
 
 Get out of the way for Miss Kip ! 
 
 As she shuffles along on her toes, 
 With a curious heathenish tip 
 With a look in her eyes and a lip 
 
 That pictures unspeakable woes. 
 
 AN OVERLAND SWEAT. 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 While the warm winds, floating over, 
 
 Like too passionate a lover, 
 
 Hug us till the coolest fret! 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 Let me warn you, Eastern "bummer," 
 
 Contemplating such a trip, 
 
 Wait until the end of summer, 
 
 Or come round upon a ship. 
 
 Sweat! Sweat! Sweat! 
 
 How d ye reckon I can scribble, 
 
 With this everlasting dribble? 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 Till the babes break out in pimples, 
 
 And the coal dust fills the dimples 
 
 On the ladies sweet young faces. 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 Till we all grow black and wet, 
 
 And our kisses leave the traces 
 
 Of our lips and a regret! 
 
146 This Is a Day 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 Fair necks colored black as crows ! 
 
 Darkness on the lady s hose, 
 
 Which indelicate she shows 
 
 In her desperate endeavor 
 
 Now to keep cool now or never! 
 
 Sweat ! Sweat ! Sweat ! 
 
 Would my clothes were webs as thin 
 
 As what little spiders spin! 
 
 THIS IS A DAY. 
 I. 
 
 This is a day of Advances, 
 
 A time that allures and entrances 
 
 The young with its follies and fancies, 
 
 And throws on the hair of the old even glances 
 
 Too young with follies enhances 
 
 For sure tis a day of Advances! 
 
 II. 
 
 This is a day of Romances, 
 
 A time of the passionate dances 
 
 Of hearts mid the tossing of lances 
 
 That bleed out happiness chances 
 
 And changing of plots, and Romances ! 
 
 III. 
 
 This is a day of Derision, 
 
 A time of dreaming, of vision, 
 
 Of fortunes and fields of Elysian, 
 
 So of hanging of hands indecision 
 
 Of wishing, non-acting Derision! 
 
Sham 147 
 
 IV. 
 
 This is a day of Denouncing, 
 A time of prophetic pronouncing 
 Of spoken and written announcing 
 Of ribbons and pleating and flouncing 
 Of characters pliant and bouncing 
 Non-breaking, elastic, Denouncing! 
 
 V. 
 
 This is a day of Uprising 
 
 At nothings a time of advising 
 
 For nothing of "hefting" and sizing, 
 
 Without any buying surprising, 
 
 Concocting and fruitless Uprising! 
 
 SHAM. 
 
 (Song of a Sorehead.) 
 
 His tongue may be smooth, and his beard be "di 
 vine, 
 
 His complexion be pure, and his eye like a star; 
 He may talk of his guineas, and trip to the Rhine, 
 
 But be careful you value him only at par, 
 Lest he gull you in trade : Let him sing out his 
 
 psalm ; 
 Then leave him ; for he, like the world, is a sham. 
 
 The boy with his marbles and figures of mud 
 Rules great as the king over cannons and men; 
 
 The girl with her dolls is the mother in bud; 
 And the motherless chicken will soon be a hen; 
 
 And either is false as a shell without clam, 
 
 For all are the world s, and the world is a sham. 
 
148 Sham 
 
 Who cares for the languorous love of a girl! 
 
 She may smile, it is sweet ; she may frown, it is 
 
 sour; 
 Her flood of fair curls in a day may uncurl, 
 
 And the red of her countenance pale in an hour! 
 Volcanoes of passion will cool to a calm, 
 For love and the world are alike, and a sham. 
 
 He that seemeth a saint, yet may prove but a 
 "brick"; 
 
 And tame is the man with the sobriquet "wild"; 
 And the trade we call cash, after all, is "on tick"; 
 
 And the parent is oft more a child than the child. 
 That turns out a poison you purchased for balm; 
 Tis the way of the world, and the world is a sham. 
 
 The man on the street, with his red-hued balloons, 
 
 Is a sham, as are they, and the buyers, and you! 
 
 And some men we call good are but plated as 
 
 spoons 
 
 Fragmentary characters, patched as with glue; 
 So, a touch, and they break, and come down with a 
 
 slam; 
 For, oh, my young dreamer, the world is a sham! 
 
 Overhead there are leaves that were yesterday 
 
 green ; 
 
 To-day they are dead and a sham, as the world, 
 While the mortified sunbeams are skulking be 
 tween ! 
 
 A leaf, a dead trifle, unbidden is hurled 
 In my face, as my song in the world s with a slam ! 
 Is this, as all other things earthly, a sham! 
 
Who s Guve naw ? 149 
 
 WHO S GUVE NAW? 
 
 A "Returning Board" Reminder. 
 
 " Hi! Pompey, why you settin thar 
 
 You cogitatin politics?" 
 "I m reasonin how to make it cl ar 
 
 Jest how we got in sich a mix. 
 I can t exactly think wha faw 
 We re needin more n one Guve naw, 
 Each cryin peace, yit threat nin waw. 
 
 "Thar s Hampton thout a speck of law, 
 
 And whar he gits his stamps is queeah; 
 And Chamberlain wall, I do n know, sah, 
 
 But I m a-growing luny hee-ah ! 
 That s why I can t jes tell wha faw 
 We re needin more n one Guve naw, 
 Both speakin peace, an actin waw? 
 
 "An look heeah, sah, I can t jes claw 
 
 This mattah through my cu lly head 
 How Drew have captuahed Flowi-daw 
 
 By moldin laws or moldin lead 
 To force him in; d yer see wha faw 
 They chucked Drew in as Guve naw, 
 By speakin peace and actin waw? 
 
 "And Looseanah s gone to waw; 
 
 For Nicholls sw ars he s Guve naw ; 
 And Packard sw ars the hull of law 
 
 Is on his side faw Guve naw. 
 It puzzles me mo and mo wha faw 
 We can t make out who s Guve-naw, 
 And stop peace men from makin waw!" 
 
150 Prairie Blossoms 
 
 PRAIRIE BLOSSOMS. 
 
 THE THOUGHTS OF A GENIUS. 
 
 A genius thoughts at best are like wild cattle ; 
 
 They always come in droves and out of order 
 Not like a well-drilled army into battle, 
 
 More like the bison on the Kansan border. 
 So we must catch them while we can. What rattle 
 
 They make stampeding on the fertile plain 
 
 Within a bold and mighty genius brain! 
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 We know but little of our neighbor s pains; 
 
 They nurse, then loathe, then bless, then curse, 
 
 by turns. 
 The mind forever after knowledge strains, 
 
 Altho tis sorrow to the heart that learns. 
 The greedy heart of man wails out complains, 
 
 If life refuses more of knowledge yearns 
 For more of knowledge! Knowledge! "Tho it 
 
 knows 
 Tis always pickled with the juice of woes." 
 
 A MYSTERY REVEALED. 
 
 One morning,in the balmy month of June, 
 (You know it is not balmy all the year), 
 
 There was a bustle in our little town, 
 And matrons to and fro began to steer 
 
 And, at the corners, whisper, undertone, 
 A secret each into another s ear, 
 
Prairie Blossoms 151 
 
 But whisper confidentially, of course! 
 What was it? Marriage, cradle, or a hearse? 
 
 The saucy boys quit kicking up their heels; 
 
 Each hangs about the corner for a chance 
 To steal behind some matron, as she deals 
 
 This secret to a friend, with cautious glance 
 Forgets to cry for toys, forgets his meals, 
 
 Hands punched into the pockets of his pants; 
 Forgets all but his big desire to hear 
 The news that s setting all the town on ear. 
 
 The fact is this (to keep the ball in motion 
 That set the town in such a fermentation 
 
 And proved so bring the-dead-to-life a potion), 
 The fact is this confuse my trepidation! 
 
 I scarce can say it! Maybe it s a notion, 
 I dread to think or speak of! But the fact 
 Is one was there was born, to be exact! 
 
 TEA AND COFFEE. 
 
 Well, I have been to "tea," and drunk it, too, 
 Altho I think it isn t healthy, very; 
 
 And coffee hurts the nerves I always knew, 
 Yet, like a toper, save not quite so merry, 
 
 I always drink them both, and so do you. 
 Perhaps I d better be a toper cheery 
 
 Than growling with dyspeptic melancholy 
 
 Brought on by swilling tea and coffee, Pollie. 
 
 WARM AND COOL. 
 
 Tis strange how balmy winds may bend young 
 
 trees, 
 
 And strange how warm young lovers kindness 
 blows 
 
152 Prairie Blossoms 
 
 And bends their actions by its loving breeze, 
 
 Till what they plant for joys grow knotted woes ! 
 
 The lover comes to winter; so he flees 
 And leaves her turns her flowery spring to 
 snows. 
 
 A BURIAL. 
 
 The old cock crew so very sad and loud, 
 He burst his mighty heart and fell and died! 
 
 Then Pompey went and wound him in a shroud, 
 And bore him to the turnip-patch, and cried, 
 
 And laid him in the ground, the while a crowd 
 Of wond ring hens, with heads askew, soft sighed 
 
 To hear clods fall on chiefest of the cocks, 
 
 And asked each other, "Was he orthodox?" 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 BE IT SO. 
 
 What framer of imaginations 
 
 Has not his platitudes 
 
 And mine is on me. 
 
 Light and dull as withered cornstalks. 
 
 My brain lies in its sheathing, 
 
 Like juiceless pumice in a cider press. 
 
 I laugh at nothings 
 
 Stare blank at keenest of wit-faces. 
 
 My fancies glut themselves on nothings, 
 
 Satisfied. 
 
 The sun-engilded cloud, 
 
Be It So 153 
 
 That swings along the sunset, like a censer, 
 
 Is nothing more magnificent to-day 
 
 Than tumble-weeds 
 
 Rolling over the sered Winter-fields. 
 
 The green leaves, the tracts of the Church of Na 
 ture, 
 
 Shaking at us, eloquent, betimes, 
 
 To-day are utter blank tracts 
 
 Poor brown paper unwritten, unattractive. 
 
 The bird-songs. 
 
 On which my fond imaginings have sailed, 
 
 In infinite speed, in infinite beauty, in infinite pur 
 ity, 
 
 Up to the gates of a new-born Eden, 
 
 To-day sound as the clamorous croak of frogs. 
 
 The glimmering river, 
 
 On which have floated I, entranced in vision, 
 
 Out to the limitless, and said: 
 
 "The river of God s peace falling into infinity 
 
 Grand sublimity!" 
 
 To-day tis as the murky play-puddle of the street- 
 boys. 
 
 Over me the blue skies hang as a faded dim-blue 
 awning, 
 
 Undelightful. 
 
 The beauty of a woman s eye is as a broken goggle- 
 glass. 
 
 Lying in the dusty street, dull-gleaming, 
 
 Uncoveted. 
 
 The redness of a woman s cheek for loveliness, 
 
 Is as the red bricks neath my feet. 
 
 The voluptuousness of her bosom 
 
 And deepness of the passions of her rounded beau 
 ties 
 
 Are flat commonness 
 
 Unenticing as the rattling skeleton in my study. 
 
 My aspirations, dropt from the ceiling of my mind, 
 
 Like crumbling plaster, 
 
 Are swept out unregretted. 
 
154 Be It So 
 
 My hopes are bees in Winter, 
 
 Blank aimless ! 
 
 One lone hill of thought thrust up on this level, 
 
 Repeated at long intervals. 
 
 This the little flowerless thought-hill: 
 
 "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" 
 
 Verily! verily! 
 
 What shall I write then? What 
 
 Shall be the goal, the finish of the thought? 
 
 I ve followed on the trail, till that I sought 
 
 Is seen a gauzy glimmering; and I know not 
 
 If it be some immortal ending of a thought 
 
 Far in the Heaven, or flash of nothing near 
 
 A firefly near, or window light beyond it thro 
 
 The tossing trees, or rising star set in the blue! 
 
 But I see no more of it a tear 
 
 Has put it out! What shall I write then? What 
 
 Shall be the finish of the feeling wrought? 
 
 I write I look 1 see ... a blotted spot! 
 
 So what I yearn to write is written . . . not; 
 
 And what is written here, compared to what 
 
 I would were writ, is as a blot ! 
 
 A holy stillness hovers in the air 
 And bathes the soul in peaceful reverie; 
 Breathe low, nor speak, nor sigh, nor even dare 
 To break the sweetened still with sounds of glee ! 
 
 The very flowers their purest homage tend 
 And kiss their fragrant incense to the sky. 
 They look above, and drop and blend 
 Their sinless tears where dying shadows lie. 
 
 The silver moon unveils her timid face 
 Made mild with messages of speechless love 
 God s felt, but unseen, presence fills the place 
 And melts the heart to prayer so look above! 
 
FINIS. 
 
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