Chapter I: Front Matter

SYLVIA

NEW YORK
PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMXII

COPYRIGHT, 1912
BY ADELINE ADAMS

DEDICATION

TO ELEANOR

Oft has the Old World traveler seen,
In ashes of Pompeii pressed,
Immortal, beautiful, serene,
A maiden’s shoulder and young breast.

Yet whoso sees aye walks apart,
At footfall of the passer-by;
With something welling in his heart,
Because she too, she too, should die;

And oft thereafter, that same day,
As people fresh from dreams will do,
In dream-continuance, he will say,
“The others--nay, but not she too!”

Oh, if those hostile tongues of fire
A tale so tender-true might bring,
May not perchance a loving lyre
Likewise its dear remembrance sing?

And if the constant lava hold
The body’s fairness--ah, no less
These singing leaves would fain unfold
To tell the spirit’s loveliness!

CONTENTS

PAGE
Dedication ix

A MOTHER’S HEART

Ad te, Domine 3

Love’s Memorial 4

Loveliness 5

O Rose-Tree 7

Remembering Thee 8

Ballad 10

Not Here, but Risen 13

A Little Brother’s Thought 14

The Soul’s Opportunity 15

SYLVAN LEAVES

The Sylvan Sparkle 19

The Sylvan Magazine 20

Riding Song 23

A Sylvan Saying 24

The Wanderer 28

O Busy Pine 29

Some One is Coming 30

The Dryad 32

SEVEN SONNETS

In His Own Image 37

Revelation 38

Like as a Father 39

Companionship at Twilight 40

The Changed Garden 41

Ascutney 42

To-day 43

LYRICS FROM SYLVIA’S MASQUE TO-MORROW LAND

Closed Eyes 47

Call o’ the Rain 49

Call o’ the Wee People 51

The Silver Knight 54

Slumber Song 55

Travel Song 56

Chipmunk Ahoy 57

Lady Robin 58

Song Sparrow 60

Hermit Thrush 61

Poplar Tree 62

THE IVORY PORTRAIT AND OTHER VERSES

The Ivory Portrait 65

Betsinda 79

To Sylvia’s Eyes 81

The Fairer Flower 82

Vision of Childhood 83

They that Mourn 84

Of Little Things 85

The Blue Mantle 87

ENVOY

Sylvan Voices 93

A MOTHER’S HEART

AD TE, DOMINE

She stood before the olden maze
Each soul must tread alone;
She knew these were the unseen ways
That lead to things unknown:

She knew hers was a road apart,
No one of us had trod;
Then unafraid, and strong of heart,
A little girl sought God.

LOVE’S MEMORIAL

Whether my Love be near,
Or whether, the vision gone,
My faltering feet shall fear
The road that stretches on;

Whether with throngs I pace
The street, the busy mart,
Or hide me for a space
In my most secret heart;

Matins, in one shrin’d room;
At pensive evensong;
In gladness as in gloom;
Or brief my task, or long;

Lord, order now my days,
That all my living shall,
In living, loving ways,
Build Love’s Memorial!

LOVELINESS

Duty was ne’er so sweetly dight
For me, blue sky was ne’er so near,
And Beauty ne’er has bloomed so bright
As now, in this my sorrowing year.

Fair daffodils, and singing brooks,
And children, rosy from their play
Have never given me starrier looks
Than now, on this my saddest day.

The Godward hymn of hermit thrush
Now thrills, beyond my past belief;
Lovely the lilac, leaf and flush,
In this the Springtime of my grief.

Gray things are golden now and grand;
No blight is here that may not bless;
And tasks low-lying ’neath my hand
Transfigured are to holiness.

Now that her wing must mourning go,--
O miracle,--my struggling soul
Is grown more swift and strong to know
Which thing is stain, which aureole.

Since thou didst see the thorns entwirled,
O Mary, o’er that shining Head,
Hath not each rose-heart in the world
For thee, a deeper fragrance shed?

O ROSE-TREE

O rose-tree, like a person, thou
Whose pulsing presence at my gate
Oft startles me to wonder now
If thou be one for whom I wait,

The Westwind flings thy shade a-dance
Oft, oft across my echoing floor,
And all my heart cries out, “Perchance--”
And leaps to open wide the door!

What if, we being unaware
That miracles once more might be,
An angel-shape were standing there,
And no one, no one turned to see--

What if a little golden head
Looked lonely ’gainst the far blue sky,
And shining steps, uncomforted
And all unwatched, went wandering by!

O Rose-tree, that is why I start,
Whene’er thy shadows flit and pass
To dance a moment on my heart,
Then vanish through the window glass.

REMEMBERING THEE

Remembering thee, my life’s clear song,
Psalm of my soul, my heart’s full roundelay,
Remembering thee, alway!

Ever with love I list, when cometh Spring,
All birds that sing;
But when yon sparrowy one, with chant divine,
Brings her small spray, her secret nest to twine,
Beside my door, and lingers long
As fearing hurt or wrong,
I pine, I pine,
Remembering thee!

Remembering thee, my life’s fair flower,
Thou lily of my soul, rose of my heart,
Remembering thee, apart!

No less I love all blossoms of the earth
Where thou hadst birth;
But when I see the orange wreath adorn
Pure foreheads even as thine, mine own firstborn,
In that brave consecrated hour
Of ring and marriage bower,
I mourn, I mourn,
Remembering thee!

Remembering thee, my roundelay, my psalm,
My rose that was, my lily wholly star--
Nay, but how sadder far

Were thy forgetting! Days, how darker yet,
Could I forget!
What sobbing moonlights, what heartbreaking dawns
Would then steal far, over these lovely lawns
That now await, in dayspring’s balm,
At noon, at curfew calm,
A footfall like the fawn’s,
Remembering thee!

BALLAD

A wind went wailing through the wood,
Went wailing without tears,
As one who in that same hour should
Face hostile ghosts of years:

And if a wind may clasp the trees,
Nor bring them gift of rain,
In change for their sweet listening ease,
Where shall I ease my pain?

Therefore it was my flowers I sought,
For look or word from them;
The evening’s tears a broidery wrought
On my sad garment’s hem;

But like the wind, I could not weep--
No tears came to my eyes,
Save in some strange and snatchèd sleep
My soul they might surprise.

O all ye kindred growing things,
If roses, or if rue,
Show me the blessed sign that brings
To earth, the holy dew!

Or pale in pall of purity,
Or glowing from your moss,
Ye make no sign at all to me
Of sorrow, or the cross?

And will ye not by any spell
That’s in your bud or leaf,
A sorrowing soul a moment tell
What ye may know of grief?

All silent, all so calm to see,
And radiant, dry-eyed!
Nay, now, one turning spake to me,
And of the Crucified.

Of the four flowerets she bore,
One westward waned, one east;
And one, sky-pointing, looked her lore
Of the Ascension feast.

And even as she looked, I heard--
(Nay, who spake, if not she?)
As to the wind, one only word,
Saying, Gethsemane.

Far in the deep and shadowy wood,
Hark, hark, the tender rain:
O Wind, for thee and me it could
Perchance bring ease again!

NOT HERE, BUT RISEN

“Not here, but risen,” so reply
The Shining Ones, still standing by
The holy place where God was laid,
And holy women, unafraid,
Seek Him whom men did crucify.

So are the nestlings I could spy
Once in this nest, now bare, awry,
And very silent in the shade!--
Not here, but risen.

Home of my heart, where often I
Shall list her footsteps, sometimes nigh,
Yet sometimes--oh, how far they fade!--
Will not the music once they made
Send back in echo, one soft sigh,
“Not here, but risen?”

A LITTLE BROTHER’S THOUGHT

Oh, she who was so good and glad
Would never take from us the cheer,
The lovely pleasantness we had
While she was here.

And it would hurt her heart to know
That no one sings here any more;
We must not all too stilly go
By her dear door.

Since it would grieve her overmuch
To think of us as otherwise
Than valiant, let us then be such,
And lift our eyes.

But oh, we know that she will guess
How sorrowful and strange we are,
Around the fire, with one chair less,
And one child far!

THE SOUL’S OPPORTUNITY

Father, when from the deeps thy children call,
In grief resigning all,
We touch once more thy hand, O Infinite,
And haply take from it,
To wear, a little space, Infinity,
Which as a wing shall be:

For Grief shall rise on exaltation’s wing,
When in her throbbing Spring,
No less than Joy. O’er daily things of earth,
Grief soars aloft at birth;
The stricken heart, quickened with heavenly power,
Rebounds from earth’s dark hour.

But when the changing year is fully sped,
With Spring and Summer fled,
With gold and purple of October heaths
Hidden in silver wreaths;
When the white snow-drift shall dissolve its snows
Into the Whitsun rose;

When once again from the flush bough is heard
The oriole’s promised word;
When once again gay garlands are begun,
Blithe tasks for all save one;
When festal footsteps to the dance are pressed
Once more, save those loved best;

Ah, then Grief’s pinion, from that ether far,
Droops, as a falling star
To earth. The soul shall doff her wings, those days,
Yet not her glory rays,
To walk, with children of the earth, their road,
To dwell in their abode;

Days dark and difficult to share with them,
Trailing her starry hem
In lowlier confines, realms less seeming-fair
Than those of upper air.
And if to earth returning Summer’s feet
May bring a message sweet,

No less, O Soul, may thy returning pace
Hallow this dwelling-place
With something of the love and light that glow
Where lately thou didst go;
O Soul, in thy returning, thou shalt see
Glad opportunity!

SYLVAN LEAVES

THE SYLVAN SPARKLE

“Let not the immemorial May-Day mirth
Of jocund Pan desert the needy earth--”
Is there a rumour of it?

Behold now Sylvia’s eyebrow, firm and fine,
Lift up at will its merry mountain line,
For that’s the humour of it--

And sweetly risen, lo, that line shall then
Return to lovely gravity again,
As ’twere in choosing of it,

The while a sylvan sparkle, underneath,
Flashes unbidden from the eyelid’s sheath,
In plain refusing of it!

THE SYLVAN MAGAZINE

Sylvia Brown-Eyes, Sylvia Blue-Eyes,
Editresses wise (not too wise)
Will offer shortly, in the sweet o’ the year,
The promised literary treat o’ the year,
Something quite new and unforeseen,
The Sylvan Magazine!

The bright romance, the timely article
Will there be found, without a particle
Of overweening would-be-greatness,
Or yet of prune-and-prism sedateness;
Halfway ’twixt saucy and serene
Is the Sylvan Magazine!

The pine boughs, in their style seigniorial,
Will chant for us an editorial;
Our printer’s devil is a rabbit
Far-noted for his clerkly habit;
The hermit thrush will be our dean,
In the Sylvan Magazine.

Out of the pens of babes and sucklings
Is food for thought and pensive chucklings;
Our essays on “Advice to Mothers”
Are widely known; then there are others,
As, “When Should Parents Intervene?”
In the Sylvan Magazine.

We print a serial, thrilling, forceful,
On “Janet Olyphant,” resourceful
Heroine of rides on trolleys;
A ballad called “Louise’s Follies;”
“The Porter Diamond” sheds a sheen
On the Sylvan Magazine.

Also, we serve for your refection.
In continuity collection,
R. P.’s “Adventures of a Cowboy:”
We have a “Poem on a Plowboy,”
And there’ll be limericks on the green,
In the Sylvan Magazine.

Our hand-wrought types, our ample marges
Are given you at lowest charges
Consistent with our great initial
Expense--something quite sacrificial!
It offers lines to read between,
The Sylvan Magazine!

We sell no copies; we’ve consented
One fair copy may be rented,
Weekly, for a dime and nickel;
We wish no clients false or fickle,
Or who have hands at all unclean,
For the Sylvan Magazine.

The proceeds go to help a movement
Now on foot, our own improvement,
Often mentioned to the heedful
As something lacking, yet most needful:
A fact we hope you will not glean
From the Sylvan Magazine.

RIDING SONG

I

(THE TWO SYLVIAS)

As we ride and we ride on our high, high horses
To Windsor town, where the Merry Wives dwell,
The maiden-fern spangles the banks where our course is,
And squirrel-scamps scamper, to wish us well;

The jewel-bird, out of the elm he’s adorning,
Flings down for our favor his jewels of song,
As we ride far and fast in the dews of the morning,
And Blow-Me-Down runs to the river along.

II

(THE TWO MOTHERS)

As they ride and they ride on their proud, proud ponies
By Beaver’s ways, or by Blow-Me-Down,
Our hearts beat rejoicing since neither alone is,
And blue eyes ride close to the eyes of brown:

Paired and abreast, twin angels are winging
By cardinal’s flag or by partridge hen,
And safe in the sunset, with chatter and singing,
Twin angels on horseback ride homeward again!

A SYLVAN SAYING

I

Gentles, if it be fit for you
To sport in simple way,
Read me this riddle, Eyes-of-Blue,
Brown-Eyes, and Eyes-of-Gray:

“What is the bravest sight on earth
For girl or boy or man,
In magic, wit, or work, or worth,
Come answer, you who can!”

II

Cried Brown-Eyes quick, “Of course, of course,
I know the very thing--
It is my marvel Goldie-horse,
Just watch him on the wing!

“His golden mail-coat splashes
All the highroad with its glow,
And where his fine foot flashes,
There the lightnings come and go;

“For a sky-thing you’d mistake him,
Since he stole the stars for eyes;
It was Heaven and earth to make him,
With his nostril wide and wise;

“His nostril is a red, red rose,
And very proud his crest;
Of all brave shows this brave world knows,
I count a horse the best!”

III

“Not so,” sweet Eyes-of-Gray replied,
“The bravest sight, for me,
Who dwell these wonder-hills beside,
Is oh, the far-off sea!

“And how could any horse at all,
With rider or without,
Compare with waves that rise and fall,
And pace with mighty shout?

“Behold, the breakers toss their manes
At call of Lady Moon,
Who, though she waxes, though she wanes,
Still guides them, night and noon:

“And when her moonbeams all come forth
To lead the waves a dance,
A lordlier pageant, south or north,
I know will never chance!”

IV

“If you, Brown-Eyes, a realm would give
Your horse to have and hold,
If you, Gray-Eyes, would love and live
Beside the ocean old,

“Then Eyes-of-Blue, lift up your voice!
Of all brave shows there are--
Would steed or statue be your choice,
Or brook or hill or star?