Do the things that were stolen remain stolen?
Do the lives that were destroyed remain dead?
Do the stragglers who failed still fail?

Does the sleeper who slept the sleep of the merchant awake only to the merchant?

Does the law that was yesterday at my throat awake only to the law?

Does the singer awake only to sing, the artist to paint, and the orator to talk?

Or does the merchant awake to the man?

Or does the law of the state awake to the law of the heart? Or do stolen things shift back into right relations? Or is the singer silent, or does the artist put aside his paints, or has the orator stopt talking, because something greater than song or art or eloquence has appeared in the face of the multitude?

How are you, dear world, this morning?

We have had confidences other days but somehow the confidences of this day are sweetest of all,

They find me where I am remote, they seek me out where I am reluctant, they confirm me where I

am weak,

They melt me down from flaw and angle into purity and circle,

They interpret me to last night's strangers and they introduce me to the real meanings of my vagrant past,

They remove me from my quarrels and they deliver me to truce and peace.

For now I see that when of old I thought of justice and believed I was dreaming that only then was

I awake,

For now I see that the wrongdoer is the first to withdraw wrong and is the only one who can with

draw it,

For now I see that all the effort I spent trying to discover why lives were beautiful or ugly has shown me that all ugliness and all beauty finally must lapse in one transfiguration,

For now in the confidences of this morning, in the rapture of this awakening, I find my illimitable roots trailed backward and forward and round into all time and all men,

Pledging my love to countless surrenders and repeals.

O MY DEAD COMRADE

(for W. W.)

O my dead comrade-my great dead!

I sat by your bedside-it was the close of day

I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house: The light shadowed-departing, departing

You also departing, departing

You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions in death,

Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of your sunbeams.

I sat by your bedside. I held your hand:

Once you opened your eyes: O look of recognition! O look of bestowal!

From you to me then passed the commission of the future, From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine, Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the tide,

From

your hand that touched mine, from your soul that touched mine, near, O so near

Filling the heavens with stars

Entered, shone upon me and out of me, the power of the spring, the seed of the rose and the wheat,

As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to god!

O my great dead!

You had not gone, you had stayed-in my heart, in my veins,

Reaching through me, through others through me, through all at last, our brothers,

A hand to the future.

Frank Dempster Sherman

Frank Dempster Sherman was born at Peekskill, New York, May 6, 1860. He entered Columbia University in 1879, where, after graduation and a subsequent instructorship, he was made adjunct professor in 1891 and Professor of Graphics in 1904. He held the latter position until his death, which occurred September 19, 1916.

Besides being a writer of airy lyrics and epigrammatic quatrains, Sherman was an enthusiastic genealogist and a designer (especially of book-plates) of no little skill. As a poet, his gift was essentially that of a writer of light verse-fragrant, fragile, yet seldom too sentimental or brittle. Pleasant is the name for it, a pleasantness perfumed with a pungent wit. Sherman never wearied of the little lyric; even the titles of his volumes are instances of his penchant for the brief melody, for the sudden snatch of song: Madrigals and Catches (1887), Lyrics for a Lute (1890), Little-Folk Lyrics (1892), Lyrics of Joy (1904). A sumptuous collected edition of his poems was published, with an Introduction by Clinton Scollard, in 1917.

AT MIDNIGHT

See, yonder, the belfry tower

That gleams in the moon's pale light-
Or is it a ghostly flower

That dreams in the silent night?

I listen and hear the chime

Go quavering over the town,
And out of this flower of Time
Twelve petals are wafted down.

BACCHUS

Listen to the tawny thief,
Hid beneath the waxen leaf,
Growling at his fairy host,
Bidding her with angry boast

Fill his cup with wine distilled
From the dew the dawn has spilled:
Stored away in golden casks

Is the precious draught he asks.

Who, who makes this mimic din
In this mimic meadow inn,
Sings in such a drowsy note,
Wears a golden-belted coat;
Loiters in the dainty room
Of this tavern of perfume;
Dares to linger at the cup
Till the yellow sun is up?

Bacchus 'tis, come back again
To the busy haunts of men;
Garlanded and gaily dressed,
Bands of gold about his breast;
Straying from his paradise,
Having pinions angel-wise,-
'Tis the honey-bee, who goes
Reveling within a rose!

TWO QUATRAINS

IVY

Upon the walls the graceful Ivy climbs

And wraps with green the ancient ruin gray: Romance it is, and these her leafy rhymes Writ on the granite page of yesterday.