Poems

Might come a sudden bird-call to the ear,
Across the canyons, faint and far away…
O Heart, how sweet … half heard and wholly dear.

BY THE HOSPITAL

WHO goes to meet the windy night
With unseen comrades shouting by,
Who grips a bough in swift delight
To let it dip and loose and fly;

Who runs for rest that running gives,
Runs till his throbbing muscles speak;
Who bends to feel how keenly lives
The joyous grass beneath his cheek —

With sudden tears his eyes shall fill,
With quick-drawn breath he sees them plain —
Those bodies that must lie so still,
So tired – in the House of Pain.

“OH, DRYAD THOUGHTS”

OH, Dryad thoughts of lovely yesterday! —
You melted through a sunny wood like mist,
With here a wind of laughter, there a stray
Pleased flower, tipped and kissed.

To-day among the noises of the street,
The press of faces, sullen, gay, and wise,
I hear you calling, calling me; I meet
Your clear, untroubled eyes.

MUSIC IN THE PAVILION

FACES that throng and stare and come and go —
The air a-quiver as the voices meet;
And loud Humanity in mingled flow
Passes with jarring tread of many feet.

But over all the chatter of the crowd
(The background for its delicate relief)
Now trembling in a thread, now wild and loud,
The violin laughs and sings, and cries its grief.

Then, through it all, and round it all, the sea;
A solemn heart with never-ceasing beat,
Bearing an undertone of mystery
The harsh and lovely notes, the shrill and sweet.

Surely it is my life – of plodding days,
With one Ideal holding clear and good;
And sounding over, under, through my ways,
Something apart – and never understood.

REBUKE

THE tortured river-banks, the toiling piers —
I walked thereby as older grew the day,
And sick with sorry clamor in mine ears,
Heart-weary turned my steps and went my way.

“O place full-voiced of wretchedness!” I cried.
(The sun had set, the dusk was closing in)
“O place where laboring Life goes heavy-eyed,
Compound of grime and discord, strife and sin!”

I turned me back, and lo, a miracle!
For misty violet lay along the land.
The shining river in mysterious spell
(Divinely touched by some transmuting hand).

A path of wonder was, and on it stirred,
(Black-shaped, and jeweled with a crimson spark)
A ship that slowly moved; and, faintly heard,
A cheery song rose blithely to the dark.

IN CAMP

I

AS down I bent with eager lips
Above the stones and cresses cool —
The yellow tent, the little moon,
I found within my twilight pool.

The fringing trees, the floating moon,
The bubble tent – I passed them by,
And sipped a tiny, shattered star,
Deep drinking from that mirrored sky.

II

MY tent is shadowed day and night
With leaves that shift in moon and sun;
Across its walls of lucent white
The lovely varied tracings run;

And black and slender, quickly sped,
I watch the little feet at dawn —