Songs Ysame

Eclipse

GOD keep us from the sordid mood
That shrinks to self-infinitude,
That sees no thing as good or grand,
That answers not the hour's demand,
And throws o'er Heaven's splendors furled
The shadow of our little world.

In the Dark

HERE in the dark I lie, and watch the stars
That through the soft gloom shine like tear-bright eyes
Behind a mourner's veil. The darkness seems
Almost a vapor, palpable and dense,
In which my room's familiar outlines melt,
And all seems one black pall that folds me round.
Only a mirror glimmers through the dusk,
And on the wall a dim, uncertain square
Shows where a portrait hangs. Ah, even so
Beloved faces fade into the past
And naught remains except a space of light
To show us where they were.
How still it seems!
The busy clock, whose tell-tale talk was drowned
By Day's uproarious voices, calls aloud,
Undaunted by the dark, the flight of time,
And through the halls its tones ring drearily.
The breeze on tiptoe seems to tread, as though
It were afraid to rouse the drowsy leaves.
The long, dim street is quiet. Nothing breaks
The dream of Night, asleep on Nature's breast.
Hark! Some one passes. On the pavement stones
Each stealthy step gives back a muffled sound,
Till the last foot-fall seems in distance drowned.
So Death might pass, bent on his mission dread,
Adown the silent street, and none might know
What hour he passed or what he bore away.
Ah, sadder thought! So Life goes, unawares,
Noiseless and swift and resolutely on,
While the dumb world lies folded in the gloom,
Unconscious and uncaring in its sleep.
And towards the west, the stars, all silently
Like golden sands in God's great hour-glass, glide
And fall into the nether crystal globe.

Felipa, Wife of Columbus

MORE than the compass to the mariner,
Wast thou, Felipa, to his dauntless soul.
Through adverse winds that threatened wreck, and nights
Of rayless gloom, thou pointed ever to
The North Star of his great ambition. He
Who once has lost an Eden, or has gained
A paradise by Eve's sweet influence,
Alone can know how strong a spell lies in
The witchery of a woman's beckoning hand.
And thou didst draw him, tide-like, higher still,
Felipa, whispering the lessons learned
From thy courageous father, till the flood
Of his ambition burst all barriers
And swept him onward to his longed-for goal.

Before the jewels of a Spanish queen
Built fleets to waft him on his untried way,
Thou gavest thy wealth of wifely sympathy
To build the lofty purpose of his soul.
And now the centuries have cycled by,
Till thou art all-forgotten by the throng
That lauds the great Pathfinder of the deep.
It matters not in that infinitude
Of space, where thou dost guide thy spirit-bark
To undiscovered lands, supremely fair.
If to this little planet thou couldst turn
And voyage, wraithlike, to its cloud-hung rim,
Thou wouldst not care for praise. And if, perchance,
Some hand held out to thee a laurel bough,
Thou wouldst not claim one leaf, but fondly turn
To lay thy tribute, also, at his feet.

'Twixt Creek and Bay

'TWIXT creek and bay
We whisper to our white sails "stay!
Oh, Life, a little while delay!
'Twixt creek and bay."

So loath to go
From these calm shallows that we know,
We fain would stay the year's swift flow,
Nor onward go

To banks more wide,
Where seaward drawings of the tide
Impel to deeper depths untried,
Where Life grows wide.

'Twixt creek and bay —
The morning deepens into day,
And richer freight we bear, alway,