WHEN in the dark we slowly drift away
O'er unknown seas, and busy thoughts at last
Are quieted, and all the cares are past
That, bandit-like, infest the realms of day-
To what pale country does the spirit stray?
Within what wan lit land, what regions vast,
Does this strange traveller travel far and fast,
Till in the east the day breaks, cold and gray?
Ah, tell me, when we slumber, whither goes,
And whence at waking comes, the silent guest,
Whose face no man hath seen, whom no man knows
The dim familiar of each human breast?
Behold, at length, when day indeed shall close,
Will this uneasy traveller, too, have rest?
LOVE, he is nearer (though the moralist
Of rule and line cry shame on me), more near
To thee and to the heart of thee, be't wist,
Who sins against thee even for the dear
Lack that he hath of thee; than who, chill-wrapt
In thy light-thought-on customed livery,
Keeps all thy laws with formal service apt,
Save that great law to tremble and to be
Shook to his heart-strings if there do but pass
The rumour of thy pinions. Such one is
Thy varlet, guerdoned with the daily mass
That feed on thy remainder-meats of bliss.
More hath he of thy bosom, whose slips of grace
Fell through despair of thy close gracious face.
Francis Thompson (1859–1907).
He loved her; having felt his love begin
With that first look, as lover oft avers.
He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,
Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in
To serve his suit; but when he could not win,
Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers;
And at her name his pulse no longer stirs,
And life goes on as if she had not been.
She never loved him; but she loved Love so,
So reverenced Love, that all her being shook
At his demand whose entrance she denied.
Her thoughts of him such tender color took
As western skies that keep the afterglow.
The words he spoke were with her till she died.
Helen Gray Cone (1859).
AN UNPRAISED PICTURE 1
I SAW a picture once by Angelo, -
"Unfinished," said the critic, "done in youth,"
And that was all, no thought of praise, forsooth!
He was informed, and doubtless it was so.
And yet I let an hour of dreaming go
The way of all time, touched to tears and ruth,
Passion and joy, the prick of conscience's tooth,
Before that careworn Christ's divine, soft glow.
The painter's yearning with an unsure hand
Had moved me more than might his master days:
He seemed to speak like one whose Mecca-land
Is first beheld, tho' faint and far the ways;
Who may not then his shaken voice command
Yet trembles forth a word of prayer and praise.
Richard E. Burton (1859– –
1 Reprinted from Dumb in June, by permission of the publishers, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company.
AMERICA TO ENGLAND, 1900 1
THE nightmare melts at last, and London wakes
To her old habit of victorious ease.
More men, and more, and more for over-seas,
More guns
until the giant hammer breaks
That patriot folk whom even God forsakes.
Shall not great England work her will on these,
The foolish little nations, and appease
An angry shame that in her memory aches?
But far beyond the fierce-contested flood,
The cannon-planted pass, the shell-torn town,
The last wild carnival of fire and blood,
Beware, beware that dim and awful Shade,
Armored with Milton's sword and Cromwell's frown,
Affronted freedom, of her own betrayed!
Katherine Lee Bates (1859–·
EAGER and shy, as when among her peers
A girl will pour her confidence, she told,
In voice where laughter ran a thread of gold,
A history all novel to our ears.
Her blissful eyes oblivious of tears,
With lingering touch she one by one unrolled
Her bridal memories from fold on fold
Of fragrant silence. Dead these fifty years
Was he with whom, young hand in hand, she went
To their first home, which simple neighbor-folk
Had filled with garden-bloom and forest scent;
Yet still of him, and that June path they fared,
Those welcoming flowers, her failing accents spoke;
Of how Love led her to a place prepared.
1 The two sonnets by Katherine Lee Bates are reprinted from America the Beautiful, by permission of the publishers, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
THE CUP OF LIFE1
ONE after one the high emotions fade;
Time's wheeling measure empties and refills
Year after year; we seek no more the hills
That lured our youth divine and unafraid,
But swarming on some common highway, made
Beaten and smooth, plod onward with blind feet;
And only where the crowded crossways meet
We halt and question, anxious and dismayed.
Yet can we not escape it; some we know
Have angered and grown mad, some scornfully laughed;
Yet surely to each lip- to mine, to thine -
Comes with strange scent and pallid poisonous glow
The cup of Life, that dull Circean draught,
That taints us all, and turns the half to swine.
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899).
NAY, never once to feel we are alone,
While the great human heart around us lies:
To make the smile on other lips our own,
To live upon the light in others' eyes:
To breathe without a doubt the limpid air
Of that most perfect love that knows no pain:
only, and not care
Whether the love come back to us again,
Divinest self-forgetfulness, at first
A task, then a tonic, then a need;
To greet with open hands the best and worst,
And only for another's wound to bleed:
This is to see the beauty that God meant,
Wrapped round with life, ineffably content.
The two sonnets by Archibald Lampman are reprinted from his Poems (Morang & Company), by permission of the executors of the Lampman estate.
NOT by the minutes of thin torture spun,
Not by the nights whose hours halt and slip back,
Not by the days when golden noon turns black,
Hast thou dismayed me; but that, one by one,
Pale shadows pass me of my tasks undone,
While, like a victim loosed from wheel and rack,
With will unnerved, breath scant and sinew slack,
I droop, where glad folk labour in the sun.
And yet, O winged Inquisitor, return,
Stay, though I cringe and cry and plead for grace,
If thou hast more to teach, still would I learn;
I choose, even with faint heart and quivering lip,
Some place in the great, patient fellowship
Of those that know the light upon thy face.
Sophie Jewett (1861-1909).
WITH you a part of me hath passed away;
For in the peopled forest of my mind
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind
Shall never don again its green array.
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,
Have something of their friendliness resigned;
Another, if I would, I could not find,
And I am grown much older in a day.
But yet I treasure in my memory
Your gift of charity, your mellow ease,
And the dear honour of your amity;
For these once mine, my life is rich with these.
And I scarce know which part may greater be,
What I keep of you, or you rob from me.
George Santayana (1863).
1 Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
The two sonnets by George Santayana are reprinted from Sonnets and Other Verse, by permission of the publishers, Duffield & Company.
|