Chapter II

The walls that guard King Love’s fair home
Are tall and strong; yet cannot hold
From those who by the gateway roam
Some share of hoarded gold.

So youth and maiden wandering near
In straying beams of light are caught.
Their eyes serene know not the tear
Through fuller loving wrought.

It lasts for just a little while;
It is love’s playtime, one brief hour
With tender sighing to beguile--
A bud before the flower;

It is a time before the rose
Attains its fairest form complete;
Before the subtle fragrance knows
How rare it is, and sweet.

THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS.

Here’s the path our feet shall press
To the land of happiness;
There are guide-posts by the way
That we may not go astray;
Spots there are where we may rest,
Of King Happiness the guest;
Basking in the sunshine’s glow,
While the joyous pilgrims go
Ever onward to the gates
Where the Queen of Joy awaits
Those recruits her king shall gain
On the way to his domain.

Such a joyous army this!
Banners leaping for a kiss
From the winds that sweep along
Beating songs that well belong
To a road whose glory lies
Always under sunny skies.

By this road no toll gate stands
With its ever-barring hands,
Yet of every passing soul
There is asked a certain toll.
It is this--that we shall share,
As we tread the thoroughfare,
All we have with those who lose
What they gain, or who refuse
To accept what is bestowed
By the master of the road.

What a simple engineer
Marked this path! It is so clear
That to miss it is to turn
And its cooling shadows spurn.

Any road our feet may press
Is a road to happiness,
And that land is anywhere
That we turn away from care
To the army of a king
Who is ever journeying
To the city, by whose gates,
His fair queen of Joy awaits.

GUARDING SHADOWS.

Grim watchmen are the jealous trees
Above their moon-born shadows--Thus
May foolish men guard mysteries
Which they have made mysterious.

ART’S LESSON.

O glorious marble statue,
What gain I looking at you?
Your beauty is so old,
You are a form so cold
I can not understand you
Nor feel for him who planned you.
I easier lessons seek
Than those in chiseled Greek.

I turn to you my fragrant;
Bedewed and straggling vagrant,
You are a simple flower,
And scarce live out the hour
Here in the garden by-way
(That still is Nature’s highway!)
Yet utter from the grass
Lessons from Phidias!

IN THE SHADOW.

I would not have thee otherwise,
O cloudy skies;
I would not change the night to day
Nor drive away
The shadows that are hanging o’er
My hearth and door.

There is some good that lurketh where
The lightnings flare;
There is a peace that bideth in
The fiercest din;
A vernal light doth look upon
Fields winter-won.

If God were not the Overheart,
Nor had a part
In all the wounds that hurt us so!
But He doth know
And doth in patience see and bless
In gentleness.

How sturdy and how great, O earth!
Within thy girth
Thou wieldst what passion and what pain
O’er man’s domain;
And yet within thy shadows blest
Is perfect rest.

Turn not unto the light too long
Friend, with thy song!
Thou hast not need to look afar
For hill or star;
Here in the shadow rest is found
Deep and profound.

“LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.”

“Lead, kindly light,” I heard the glad bells ring,
And thought how God existeth everywhere.
’Twas in a city strange that, sweetest thing!
“Lead, kindly light,” I heard the glad bells ring,
And Summer stole into the early spring,
For where the kind light leadeth all is fair.
“Lead, kindly light,” I heard the glad bells ring,
And thought how God existeth everywhere.

SONG AND WORDS.