Chapter I: Front Matter

_This edition is limited to Five Hundred copies of which this is Number_

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For permission to reprint most of the poems in this volume thanks are made to the various magazines and periodicals in which they first appeared.

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

TO MY GOOD FRIEND

W. T. H. HOWE

Friend, for the sake of loves we hold in common,
The love of books, of paintings, rhyme and fiction;
And for the sake of that divine affliction,
The love of art, passing the love of woman;--
By which all life's made nobler, superhuman,
Lifting the soul above, and, without friction
Of Time, that puts failure in his prediction,--
Works to some end through hearts that dreams illumine:
To you I pour this Cup of Dreams--a striver,
And dreamer too in this sad world,--unwitting
Of that you do, the help that still assureth,--
Lifts up the heart, struck down by that dark driver,
Despair, who, on Life's pack-horse--effort--sitting,
Rides down Ambition through whom Art endureth.

THRENODY IN MAY

(In memory of Madison Cawein.)

Again the earth, miraculous with May,
Unfolds its vernal arras. Yesteryear
We strolled together 'neath the greening trees,
And heard the robin tune its flute note clear,
And watched above the white cloud squadrons veer.
And saw their shifting shadows drift away
Adown the Hudson, as ships seek the seas.
The scene is still the same. The violet
Unlids its virgin eye; its amber ore
The dandelion shows, and yet, and yet,
He comes no more, no more!

He of the open and the generous heart,
The soul that sensed all flowerful loveliness,
The nature as the nature of a child;
Who found some rapture in the wind's caress.
Beauty in humble weed and mint and cress.
And sang, with his incomparable art,
The magic wonder of the wood and wild.
The little people of the reeds and grass
Murmur their blithe, companionable lore,
The rills renew their minstrelsy. Alas,
He comes no more, no more!

And yet it seems as though he needs must come,
Albeit he has cast off mortality,
Such was his passion for the bourgeoning time,
Such to his spirit was the ecstasy
The hills and valleys chorus when set free,
No music mute, no lyric instinct dumb,
But keyed to utterance of immortal rhyme.
Ah, haply in some other fairer spring
He sees bright tides sweep over slope and shore,
But here how vain is ell my visioning!
He comes no more, no more!

Poet and friend, wherever you may fare
Enwrapt in dreams, I love to think of you
Wandering amid the meads of asphodel,
Holding high converse with the exalted few
Who sought and found below the elusive clue
To beauty, and in that diviner air
Bowing in worship still to its sweet spell.
Why sorrow, then, though fate unkindly lays
Upon our questioning hearts this burden sore,
And though through all our length of hastening days
He comes no more, no more!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.