Songs Ysame

When mists of tears are lifted.

A hundred tunes seem intertwined
To mingle in his singing,
When but a single rose, perhaps,
Has set his fancy winging.

On a Fly-Leaf of Irving

WELCOME art thou, O singer!
If thou dost know a song
That makes the long eve shorter
Because its joys are long.
Welcome art thou, tale-bearer,
If thou canst bear away
Part of the cares that burden
The dull and dreary day.

On a Fly-Leaf of Riley's "Afterwhiles."

UNTO him alone who strays
Sometimes through the yesterdays,
Lingering long in wood and field,
Is the meaning all revealed
Of these songs. Adown the rhymes
Runs a path to bygone times;
But 'tis found by those alone,
Who the fresh green hills have known,
And have felt the tender mood
Of the country solitude;
Who through lanes of pink peach blooms
Used to see the lilac's plumes
Nodding welcome by the door
Where the home-folks come no more.
Blest the singer, then, who leads
Back again through clover meads,
'Til old scenes we seem to see,
Fair as once they used to be.
Who can call from years long gone,
Friends we trusted, leaned upon;
For whose sake we learned to bless
Toilworn hands and homespun dress.
As he sings of them, and thus
Wafts the pure air back to us
Of the fields, there comes again
Childhood's faith in God and man.

Chiaro-Oscuro

SOMEHOW I love to look at the picture I made of her,
Work of an idle time, the summer of life's long year;
For as I stand and gaze, dreaming of those lost days,
Almost it seems to me I can see her sitting here.

That is the way she sat, with her head a trifle raised,
Looking thoughtfully out at a scene I could never see.
Delicate color of rose dawning and dying down,
Flushing the rare sweet face as she listened or spoke to me.

Whitest light of the sky I showered on her upturned brow,
Gathered the darkest shades and brushed them into her hair,
Thinking the while I worked of the law that always sends
The deepest shadows to follow the high lights everywhere.
Now as I sit and gaze at the dream on the canvas caught,
Sadly the thought comes back, to torture with unbelief —
Why must it always be that the strong white light of love
Is followed forevermore by the deepest shadow of grief?

When She Came Home

"When she comes home again, a thousand ways
I fashion to myself the tenderness
Of my glad welcome."

    Riley.
"WHEN she comes home," I thought with throbbing heart,
That danced a measure to my mind's refrain.
Again from out the door I leaned and looked,
Where she should come along the leafy lane.
And then she came. – I heard the measured sound
Of slow, oncoming feet, whose heavy tread
Seemed trampling out my life. I saw her face.
Then through my brain a sudden numbness spread.
The earth seemed spun away, the sun was gone,
And time, and place, and thought. There was no thing
In all the universe, save one who lay
So still and cold and white, unanswering
Save by a graven smile my broken moan.
She had come home, yet there I knelt alone.

A Resolve

THE fields of thought are plowed so deep,
So carefully are tilled,
That all the granaries of the world
With plenteous store are filled.
Unless I deeper plow and sow,
What sheaf, then, can I bring?
So like the black-bird in the field,
I'll eat the wheat and sing.