Chapter III

Still, doth it suffice alone
That the world is fair?
O’er what fields have these hands sown?
Are they gold or bare?
And though all the flowers are flown,
If to God my heart is known,
Then shall I in truth be shown
How to live, why to live!

SONG.

Glad and sad make rhyme, my dear,
Glad and sad make rhyme.
Though the sun may not appear,
Though there be a time
When the hours are very long,
And there is no joy for you,
Weave this thought into a song:
Glad and sad make jingle true--
Happy jingle true!

They are joined together, dear,
Joined together they,
Like the dark sky and the clear
Of an April day.
Like the grief that dies in gladness
Turmoil into peace will grow,
Soon there is an end of sadness--
Glad and sad make rhyme, you know,
Perfect rhyme, you know.

They make perfect rhyme, my dear.
Perfect as can be;
Falling sweet upon the ear,
Telling you and me
That the thorn and rose are wed,
That night holds in store the dawn,
And till hope and trust are dead
Glad and sad will jingle on,
Jingle, jingle on!

’TIS NEVER NIGHT IN LOVE’S DOMAIN.

’Twas morning when one found his way
Within the garden lands of love.
He lingered till he thought the day
Should surely unto night yield sway.
But morning’s sun still shone above
In skies unmarred by evening’s gray,
While on the air rang this refrain--
’Tis never night in love’s domain.

Love’s palace beauteous is, and tall,
And broad, and grand is his estate.
Gay courtiers throng each spacious hall
Where laughing echoes ceaseless fall
And mock the silent outcast, hate,
Who ever cowers by post and wall.
And scowls as rings the glad refrain--
’Tis never night in love’s domain.

And thence through groves with myrtle grown
He followed Venus’ dove-drawn car
By paths he ne’er before had known,
And yet, the morning had not flown,
And yet, fresh winds blew from afar
As came, in ne’er decreasing tone,
The song through which ran this refrain--
’Tis never night in love’s domain.

Ah, love of mine, how well we know
The glories of those garden lands
Through which Lethean waters flow!
Oft we have wandered to and fro
Down those bright halls, and seen the hands
Of tiny elves that beckoned so
They kept the time to this refrain--
’Tis never night in love’s domain.

ESTRANGED.

It was but yesterday that thou
Wert with love-whispers eloquent,
Yet come and look upon her now
That life is spent.

How strangely white the face hath grown,
No longer prest by kisses fond;
Why turn’st, now that her soul hath flown
And rests beyond?

Why enter’st not the darkened room
To touch again those cold, white lips--
So cold and white, seen in the gloom
Of Death’s eclipse?

Thou wert so loving once, but now
Take that cold hand as lovers may,
Implant a kiss on that calm brow,
Nor turn away.

It was but yesterday that thou
Wert with love-whispers eloquent--
Thou wilt not look upon her now
That life is spent.

WHEN FRIENDS ARE PARTED.

Time keeps no measure when true friends are parted,--
No record day by day;
The sands move not for those who, loyal-hearted,
Friendship’s firm laws obey.

It is not well to note with dull precision
The flight of days or years;
Memory depends not on a proof by vision,
And has no foolish fears.

The migrant birds when they are Southward flying
Have no regrets; they go
Full of the knowledge born of faith undying,
That they again shall know

The homes and nests which they have left behind them
Unmarred by change the while;
The Southern lands they seek will but remind them
Of the North’s summer smile.

And so I know that you will come to meet me
In the old, well-loved way;
That, though a year go by, you still will greet me
As kindly as to-day.

WHEREAWAY.

Where are you going my bright blue eyes,
My boy so happy-hearted?
You are very young and very wise,
And early you have started.
Where is the city you’re bound for, lad?
Come tell me of it truly;
Is it one that is fair, and one that is glad
And was it builded newly?
Oh, tell me whereaway my lad--
Whereaway?

The day is fair and the skies are blue,
Come rest awhile and listen:
By far too great is the world for you,
The spires in dreams that glisten
Are far away from this quiet place
With many a mile between,
So rest, blue eyes, for a little space
Here where the slopes are green--
Oh, tell me whereaway my lad--
Whereaway?

Oh, dim and vague is the early haze
That holds your world of seeming;
This day is fairer than other days
Only in boyish dreaming,--
So do not hasten but pause to tell
Why you make such a hurry--
Do you want to go, have you pondered well
About the cost and worry?
Oh, tell me whereaway my lad--
Whereaway?

Oh, dear blue eyes and brave young heart
Why must you turn to leave me?
Am I so old that we now must part,
Why will you go to grieve me?
But he turns away with a smile and nod
And will not tell me truly
About the place to which he will plod,
If old or builded newly;
He does not answer “Where, my lad?”
Whereaway?

A SECRET.

He said, “No one shall ever learn
This secret that my heart must keep;
No matter how the wolds may burn,
No matter how my heart may leap,
No one shall know I love her so,
No one shall know, no one shall know!”

But though his lips were tightly sealed,
The very birds his secret guessed,
For in his eyes it was revealed,
And in his face it was confessed--
“I love her so, I love her so,
But none shall know, but none shall know?”

The wind soon found it and ran on
To tell it to the wondering flowers,
And bear it to the gates of dawn,
Where loiter all the coming hours,
That they might know he loved her so,
That they might know, that they might know!

Some time all secrets must unfold,
And soon did he a listener seek,
To whom his story might be told
Before the laughing world should speak
And tell her (if she did not know!)
He loved her so, he loved her so!

DISAPPOINTMENT.

The broad-armed wave that reaches for the land
Sees not the towering rock that bars the way
Unto the longed-for play-ground of the strand,
Until, thrown back, it sees through tears of spray.

STRIVING.

It is not much that I can do.
My hands are weak.
The lines they draw seem never true;
The works I speak
Are not the ones I long to say,--
I speak not prayers I long to pray.

It is no coward spirit, no--
I try to learn
How others bravely strive and go
Rewards to earn,
And yet success is never mine--
I labor on a false design.

They are not much, these little things
That form my task,
Yet constant seeking never brings
What I would ask,
And of what use is life to one
Who never knew a victory won?

But this one thing I know, that He
Who guides the stars
Will look in charity on me
And see the scars
Which show that I have tried to trace
A path that weeds could not efface.

AN IDOLATER.

I read of pagan priests in idols hiding,
That with their own lips they might make reply
To prayers of worshippers in them confiding--
To vouchsafe or deny.

And all idolatry has not departed;
For yet I faith in one fair idol hold.
Unlike those of the heathen, hollow-hearted.
Voiceless, inert and cold;

But one who dwells, a queen, among the living.
Whose eyes light lip, my waiting eyes to greet
And speak, before the lips, sweet answer giving
From her soul’s judgment seat.

LOVE’S MIDAS TOUCH.

Your love has made life dear to me;
Until you came I did not know
How beautiful the world could be--
How full of joy its days could grow.

Once peace was not in anything,
But love has made life dear to me;
The winter has given way to spring,
And skies are fair and clear to me.

My heart is listening when you speak;
To hold your hand or touch your cheek,--
Since love has made life dear to me!
Sends flying love and fear through me.

Glad is the grass your feet have pressed,
Your eyes throw joy on all they see,
Around you there is gracious rest,
Your love has made life dear to me.

IN ETHER SPACES.

Somewhere in space there is a realm where lingers
Each word that ever fell from lips of man,
All music stirred to life by touch of fingers,
All sounds since time began.

Rumble of quaking earth and plains upturning
Creation morn; the sullen beat of rain,
The coo of dove with olive-leaf returning,
The stir of life again.

A Child’s soft treble in the temple, heeded
By doctors who about him listening drew;
“Father, forgive them,” on dark Calvary pleaded,
“They know not what they do.”

The songs are there which echoed through dim ages,
And chants of kneeling priests at pagan shrines,
The speech of prophets writ on history’s pages
In God-directed lines.

There dormant dwells the roar of battle royal,
The clash of arms amid war’s furnace flame,
Victorious cries of warriors brave and loyal,
A people’s loud acclaim;

With words that gladdened hearts of earliest lovers,
And curses since night’s robes trailed Eden’s sky,
While vague as half-remembered dreams there hovers
Each mother’s lullaby.

O sounds afar in ether spaces dwelling,
In mighty minstrelsy awake! Unite
In chords the story of the æons telling
Since stars first gemmed the night.

MY PADDLE GLEAMED.

My paddle gleamed, the light canoe
The river’s waters glided through
With scarce a sound to fret the air;
The sun shone bright, the morn was fair
And from the South soft breezes blew.

O’erhead the swallows darting flew,
Then dropt to earth to brush the dew
From off the tangled grasses there
My paddle gleamed!

In form as perfect, fresh and new
As when they first in Eden grew
God’s gifts, before, lay everywhere;
Behind, the city’s toil and care;
Content, I joy’s full measure knew--
My paddle gleamed!

FAITHLESS.

Ah, yes! Thy love was like the stars, but not
Like faithful stars which gleam with steadfast light,
But as a darting ærolite, swift shot
Across the blackness of a sombre night,
Fading as quickly, and as soon forgot.

GRAPE BLOOM.

I walk ’mid vines which rest upon
An arbor o’er a garden way
Where southern breezes come to play
And never-ending races run.

The dew drips from the clustering vines,
A swallow like a shuttle cleaves
The air above and vainly weaves
His fancies into unseen lines.

But stealing forth and dwelling there
Within the shadows of the walk,
A perfume comes as when gods talk
And their glad breathings fill the air.

Scarce seen among the vines the shapes
That hold and throw the rare perfume--
The tiny bits of early bloom
Presageful of the coming grapes.

And when they ripened grace the vine,
That sweetness shall return again,
Like hopes fulfilled to trustful men,
And have new life in autumn’s wine.

ILL-STARRED.

Oh, prayers and sympathetic tears
For each and every ill-starred knight
For whom ring no victorious cheers;
For those who, early in the fight,
Saw daylight turning into night
And yielded up to Fate their spears.

The dented shield, the pierced cuirass,
Sad story is it that they tell
Of brave young knights whose hopes, alas!
Bore meagre fruit; who fighting fell
Before the foe they could not quell;
Who found no wine within the glass.

For some there are but ill-equipped
To face the world; some weak of will
And some faint-hearted, feeble-lipped,
Fit but the lowest posts to fill,
Some shivering with the coward’s chill
And of the armor “courage” stripped.

Oh, you ’gainst whom the fates are set,
E’en though you’ve failed on every field
To gain fair honor’s banneret,
Let high above be held each shield,
Each one with purpose strong annealed,
And all shall win a victory yet.

THE SOLDIER HEART.

One day in careless wise I said:
“They were no heroes, they who bled
To save the Nation and to free the slave;
There is no honor now in being brave;”
And thought not how my father hearing me--
(He who had fought with Sherman to the sea,
True as a knight of storied chivalry),
Would feel the sting my words conveyed, as though
I deemed the venture of his life should go
A thing unworthy of remembrance. Then
His look of pain (soft are the hearts of men!)
Made me think deeply of the soldier’s part,
(As when on Memory’s day the quick tears start
To see the line each spring becoming less,
The slowing step, heads’ winter snowiness!)
And vowed I then that while my blood should run
I should not be a son
To speak a word not kindly of a soldier true;
To utter naught but praise of all who dared to do,
Whether in mail of gray or clad in honest blue!

He who cares not
That his sire fought;
He who shall think not proudly of the days
His father felt the blaze
Of war’s red furnace flame against his cheek,
Has but a coward’s heart, too poor and weak
To throw the blood through faltering limb--
Earth has no place for him!

While there is hearth and home to save,
’Tis something to be brave--
’Tis something to have ventured near to Death,
And felt his chilling breath!

AN UNWRITTEN LETTER.

She wrote a letter with her eyes,
Well-filled with words of bliss;
Then, like a prudent maid and wise,
She sealed it with a kiss.

MY LADY OF THE GOLDEN HEART.

My lady of the golden heart, she comes each day
Down by the lodge-gate that I keep; she comes demurely,
And her two hounds sedate do follow and obey
Her slightest wish, and they do love my lady surely.

She comes each day, my lady of the golden heart,
Sometimes a-riding or sometimes she comes a-walking;
The birds along the hedge they do not even start
When she comes by, sometimes to her big hounds a-talking.

“Good morrow” says my lady, (she whose heart is gold),
And gold out of her heart makes bright the gateway;
The sunshine of her face in winter time does hold
Green meadows and sweet flowers and makes a summer straightway.

My lady, she whose heart is gold, my lady goes
Each day into the village, bread and good wine bearing
To those that sick be, and my gentle lady knows
All of the village folk and for them she be caring.

Now as she comes each day, (gold is my lady’s heart),
Or goes away upon some errand Heaven has sent her,
The gates of my poor heart, they do fly far apart.
But there my lady fair and sweet, she will not enter.

DREAMS.

Like shadow-freighted ships which softly creep
Across some far-off ghostly main,
They haunt the chambers of the brain,
And kiss their fingers to the watchman, Sleep!

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

“_To the last I never recognized the hold I had over young
men._”--_Apologia pro Vita Sua._

No more the sun may know the strength it hath
To stir the bark in spring with quickening blood:
No more a storm controlleth its great wrath,
Or doleth out the measure of its flood!

There is a quality of lasting youth
That knoweth not the force that gave it birth;
Some souls God pointeth subtler ways of truth,
As highest tribute to their lasting worth.

He hath in souls like thine deposited
A quenchless flame as calm and strong as dawn;
Across the world thy potent fire is shed,
Born of the “kindly light” that leadeth on!

ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.

THE GREEK GIRL’S SONG.

To-day my lover lends his flocks;
He roams with them through fragrant meads,
And guides across the barren rocks;
With his own hands the lambs he feeds,
And soothes them when the winds are cold
Or terror comes among the fold.
They soon forget the night’s alarms
When folded in his shielding arms.

_So good and true to them is he
I know he will be kind to me._

My lover walks in paths of peace,
He would avoid the conflict’s noise
And bid the warring legions cease,
He is content with simple joys;
He fain would always journey through
Tall grasses shining in the dew
And tend his sheep and dream his dreams
Beside the quiet mountain streams;

_So faithful is his love of home
His heart I know can never roam._

THE SHEPHERD’S SONG.

As fair as the flocks that graze
There ’gainst the hill’s restful side;
As sweet as the breath of night
When across dim flowery ways
Pours a mellifluous tide,
Winging an odorous flight:

Thus is the maiden who sends
Songs to the shepherd who tends
Sheep by the streams, and who dies
In the delight of her eyes.

Down by the shore in the night
Rush the great breakers, nor cease
Oft till the dawn lights the crest;
And so is love in its might,
Stirring my soul from its peace,
Leaving the shepherd no rest.

Oh, if the sheep could but learn
For me the answer I yearn!
Come, my fair flock, we shall see
What is the answer for me!

WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY.

Swift as a meteor and as quickly gone
A train of cars darts swiftly through the night;
Scorning the wood and field it hurries on,
A thing of wrathful might.

There, from a farmer’s home a woman’s eyes,
Roused by the sudden jar and passing flare,
Follow the speeding phantom till it dies,--
An echo on the air.

Narrow the life that always has been hers
The evening brings a longing to her breast;
Deep in her heart some aspiration stirs
And mocks her soul’s unrest.

Her tasks are mean and endless as the days,
And sometimes love cannot repay all things;
An instrument that rudely touched obeys
Becomes discordant strings.

The train that followed in the headlight’s glare,
Bound for the city and a larger world,
Made emphasis of her poor life of care
As from her sight it whirled.

_Thus from all lonely hearts the great earth rolls,
Indifferent though one woman grieve and die,
Along its iron track are many souls
That watch the world go by._

RIGHTEOUS WRATH.

How splendid is the righteous wrath
Born in a good man’s soul!
Ignoble things fly from his path,
Loud thunders round him roll,--
Yet tenderness and love he hath.

Like some gigantic forest fire,
His mighty anger sweeps;
An eager flame of awful ire,
At every wrong it leaps,--
Still, lasting peace he doth desire.

Then, swift as flies the meteor’s spark,
His anger disappears;
Born for the hour it met its mark,--
He sootheth now love’s fears,
While wrong sits trembling in the dark!

SUNSET.

Two giants meet upon the hills
And one is day, the other night;
The trees draw near, the sky leans down
To watch their test of might.

I cannot see them struggling there,
But soon I know that one is dead,
For lo! the trees and hills and sky
Are suddenly splashed with red!

RONDEAU OF EVENTIDE.

At eventide when we are prest
By shadows and seek any rest
That twilight brings at waning day,
Ah, well with us if we can say
For aye we sought and found the best.

God’s hand all nature has caressed
Till beauty is his love confessed,
Till bud and bloom his love display
Through eventide.

Why should we not pursue our quest
For such good things as bear the test
The things worth loving bear alway?
“Full life, full life,” we sometimes pray,
_Full life to higher life addressed_,
Till eventide!

A PRINCE’S TREASURE.

[To His Royal Highness, Russell Fortune.]

Our little prince can’t understand
That this is one of many springs;
He thinks these days for him are planned,
And that for him the robin sings.

All wonder-eyed he walks afield
And makes an invoice of the joys
God strews around for little boys,
And thinks for him they’re first revealed.

It is a solemn thing to him!
He wonders if it’s alright to pull
The little wild flowers beautiful
That in the sea of grasses swim.

More gentle than the violet,
He studies o’er those eyes of blue--
Blue as his eyes are brown, and wet
As _his_, sometimes, are wet with dew!

Appreciative eyes are his!
Into his apron takes he all
The flowers that to his hand may fall--
The poorest weed so precious is!

His feet leave but the vaguest hints
Of steps along the shadows where
The knightly trees bend down and swear
Allegiance to their little prince.

O gentle, princely lad of ours,
May nature ever hold your heart,
And knowledge of her ways impart
Through lessons of the spring-time flowers;

May spring itself pass ever on
And never lead to summer’s dust,
But make your life an endless dawn,
With endless love, and faith, and trust!

DIEU VOUS GARDE.

May Allah in thy heart unfold
Perpetual-blooming roses;
May His sweet peace to thee increase
Until the evening closes.

And may tall palms before thee rise,
Hot sand to gardens turning;
May dates and wine be always thine,
Amid the desert’s burning.

Let enemies be put to flight,
Before thy spear uplifted,
And may thy way be as a day
From starry vistas drifted.

Oh, Allah watches through the night,
His trustful children viewing;
His love is deep, but he will keep
Renewing and renewing.

SWEETHEART TIME.

I.

It is a time before the rose
Has blossomed to its form complete;
Before the hidden fragrance knows
How rare it is, and sweet.

A time it is when hearts are light,
And shadows are a thing as far
Away as darkness from the sight
Of evening’s brightest star.

There is an undertone of song
Vague, like the mists of early day;
An undertone that steals along,
Forever far away.