Song-Surf

And still they will stand untaken,
Till drops their gold to the ground.

Yes, it was here – September
And silence round me yearned.
Again I've come to remember,
Again for musing returned
To the searing fields' assuaging,
And the falling leaves' sad balm:
Away from the world's keen waging —
To harvest and hills and calm.

LISETTE

Oh … there was love in her heart – no doubt of it —
Under the anger.
But see what came out of it!

Not a knave, he! – A smitten rhyme-smatterer,
Cloaking in languor
And heartache to flatter her.

And just as a woman will – even the best of them —
She yielded – brittle.
God spare me the rest of them!

For! though but kisses – she swore! – he had of her,
Was it so little?
She thought 'twas not bad of her,

Said I would lavish a burning hour-full
On any grisette.
And silenced me, powerful!

But she was mine, and blood is inflammable —
For a Lisette!
My rage was undammable…

Could a stiletto's one prick be prettier?
Look at the gaping.
No? – then you're her pitier!

Pah! she's the better, and I … I'm your prisoner.
Loose me the strapping —
I'll lay one more kiss on her.

FROM ONE BLIND

I cannot say thy cheek is like the rose,
Thy hair like rippled sunbeams, and thine eyes
Like violets, April-rich and sprung of God.
My barren gaze can never know what throes
Such boons of beauty waken, tho' I rise
Each day a-tremble with the ruthless hope
That light will pierce my useless lids – then grope
Till night, blind as the worm within his clod.

Yet unto me thou art not less divine,
I touch thy cheek – and know the mystery hid
Within the twilight breeze; I smooth thy hair
And understand how slipping hours may twine
Themselves into eternity: yea, rid
Of all but love, I kiss thine eyes and seem
To see all beauty God Himself may dream.
Why then should I o'ermuch for earth-sight care?

IN A CEMETERY

When Autumn's melancholy robes the land
With silence, and sad fadings mystical
Of other years move thro' the mellow fields,
I turn unto this meadow of the dead,
Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,
And wonder if my resting shall be dug
Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway
Of yonder cypress – lair of winds that rove
As Valkyries sent from Valhalla's court
In search of worthy slain.
And sundry times with questioning I tease
The entombed of their estate – seeking to know
Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel
The oblivion of Nature's silent flow,
Or here to wander wistful o'er her face.
Whether the harvesting of pain and joy
Which men call Life ends so, or whether death
Pours the warm chrism of Immortality
Into each human heart whose glow is spent.

And oft the Silence hears me. For a voice
Of sighing wind may answer, or a gaze,
Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.
Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold,
That ebb along the west, revealings wing
And tremble, like ethereal swift tongues
Unskilled of human speech, about my heart —
Till youth, age, death, even earth's all, it seems,
Are but brave moments wakened in that Soul,
To whom infinities are as a span,
Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,
And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds