Chapter M: W. R

Dear bird of mine, with strong and untried wing,
Ignorant yet of restless fluttering,
How long will you be so content to sing

For me alone? when will the world be stirred
By notes that even I have scarcely heard,
Since you are still only a mocking-bird?

My little Clytie with the constant eyes
Turned to me ever, though the true sunrise
Burns far above me in God’s holy skies,--

How can you know, my sweet unconscious one,
In the bright days for you but just begun,
That I am worthy to be held your sun?

My little loyal worshipper, the bloom
Of whose fair face makes bright the midnight gloom,
Turned ever steadily to my near room,

Knowing so well, with instinct fine and true,
The one glad door through which I come to you,
Caring for naught but what that hides from view,--

How long, dear one, how many precious years,
Will this fair chamber where I hush your tears
Be the one Mecca for your hopes and fears?

Not long, alas! not long; the mother heart
Knows well how quickly she will have to part
With all this wonder;--she who tries each art

To lure him on; the first to coax and praise
Each added grace; then first in sore amaze
To mourn that he has lost his baby ways!

“IF I COULD KNOW, LOVE.”

If I could know, love, that some single prayer
From my full heart’s supreme desires for thee,
With rich fulfillment would be granted me
By Him who gave us to each other,--where
Could I find truer wish than this: “O spare
My life to him!” For surely love should be
Love’s best interpreter; an argosy
Freighted with all earth’s joy, wert thou not there,--
Beside me always--how could I be glad
In aught of this? my own great speechless need,
Not only of the love I once have had,
But of thy presence, teaches me to read
The deep, unspoken prayer thy heart would add
To mine, if highest heaven could lean to heed!

THE DIFFERENCE.

One day I heard a little lady say,
“O morning-glory, would that I were you!
Twining around the porch that lovely way,
Where you will see my dear one coming through.
So fair you are, he’ll surely notice you,
And wait perhaps a moment, just to praise
The clinging prettiness of all your ways,
And tender tint of melting white and blue.
O morning-glory, would that I were you!”

I heard the little lady’s lover say,
“O rose-white daisy, dying in the dew,
Breathing your half-crushed, fainting life away
Under her footstep,--would that I were you!
For when how cruelly she wounded you,
She turns to see in pitying distress,
With murmured words of sorrowing tenderness
Close to her lips your bruised leaves she will press;--
O drooping daisy, would that I were you!”

INDIAN SUMMER.

Linger, O Day!
Let not thy purple haze
Fade utterly away!
The Indian Summer lays
Her tender touch upon the emerald hills;
Exquisite thrills
Of delicate gladness fill the blue-veined air.
More restful even than rest,
The passionate sweetness that is everywhere.
Soft splendors in the west
Touch with the charm of coming changefulness
The yielding hills.
O linger, Day!
Let not the dear
Delicious languor of thy dreamfulness
Vanish away!
Serene and clear,
The brooding stillness of the delicate air,
Dreamier than the dreamiest depths of sleep,
Falls softly everywhere.
Still let me keep
One little hour longer tryst with thee,
O Day of days!
Lean down to me,
In tender beauty of thy amethyst haze!
Upon the vine
Rich, clinging clusters of the ripening grape
Hang silent in the sun;
But in each one
Beats with full throb the quickening purple wine
Whose pulse shall round the perfect fruit to shape.
Too dreamy even to dream,
I hear the murmuring bee and gliding stream;
The singing silence of the afternoon
Lulling my drowsy senses till they swoon
Into still deeper rest;
While soul released from sense,
Passionate and intense,
With quick, exultant quiver in its wings,
Prophetic longing for diviner things,
Escapes the unthinking breast;--
Pierces rejoicing through the shining mist,
But shrinks before the keen, cold ether, kissed
By burning stars: delirious foretaste
Of joys the soul--(too eager in its haste
To grasp ere won by the diviner right
Of birth through death)--is far too weak to bear!
Bathed in earth’s lesser light,
Slipping down slowly through the shining air,
Once more it steals into the dreaming breast,
Praying again to be its patient guest;
And as my senses wake,
The beautiful glad soul again to take,
The twilight falls;--
A lonely wood-thrush calls
The Day away.
Thou needst not linger, Day!
My soul and I
Would hold high converse of diviner things
Than blossom underneath thy tender sky.
Unfold thy wings!
Wrap softly round thyself thy delicate haze,
And gliding down the slowly darkening ways,
Vanish away!

“LAST--AN AMETHYST.”

O thou in whom, not knowing, I believe,
If in these uttered phrases there is naught
Of that supreme, deep language of Thy thought
Men call religion--yet wilt Thou receive
The finished task; though I have dared to leave
Unseen, but not unfelt, though best unsought,
As Thou thyself to my own heart hast taught,
The solemn truths that so will strongest cleave
Unto men’s souls. My hand would fain forget
Its eager cunning, ere the fingers kissed
By one whose love Thou gavest me, should yet
Yield all to joy, uncaring if they list,--
Thy angels--from the heavenly parapet
Of precious stones: “the twelfth, an amethyst!”

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Transcriber’s note

Hyphenation in the Table of Contents was made consistent with hyphenation in the titles of the poems.