Poems
Hope
Ah me! what battles I have
fought!
I would I knew the rune that lays
The swarming shades of weary days
That take the lonely House of Thought!
A restless rabble, unsubdued;
A wild and haggard multitude;
Distorted shapes that spring from tears,
And torments born of wedded fears.
Sometimes, amid the
changing rout,
A rainbowed figure glides about,
And from her brightness, like the day,
The whimpling shadows slink away.
I know that lyre of seven
strings;
The seven colors of her wings;
The seven blossoms of her crown; -
There violets twine for amethyst;
Small lilies white as silk-weed down;
There myrtle sprays her locks have kissed;
And pansies that are beryl blue;
And varied roses, rich of hue;
With iridescent loving eyes
Of buds that bloom in Paradise.
Come often, thou eternal
child!
New-string thy lyre and sing to me.
Thy voice ecstatic, fresh and wild,
Enthralls each dark-browed fantasy.
Beyond the walls she bids
me peer
To see a Future, dim and dear;
Sweet faces shining through
the mist
Like children waiting to be kissed;
lovely land that knows not pain;
Atlantis land beyond Life's main,
Where we who love may love again -
Ah me! is this beyond the plan
Of God's beneficence to man?
Beneath the Pines
If there be solace for the
unquiet mind
In fragrant beds beneath the healing Pines,
Curtained by waving canopy of Vines,
Where one may rest apart from all his kind,
And hear no discourse but the moving wind,
Gossip of birds, and insect minstrelsy,
And not one murmur from that restless sea
Of vexing human uproar left behind:
Here let me rest upon the rugged floor,
And, dreaming, watch the heavenly argosy,
Making for port upon some unknown shore,
That noiseless scuds across the tranquil sky.
Here let me rest until I pine again
For human sounds to bring me joy and pain
The Rainbow
We are akin, dear soul,
Akin as are the rainbow in the sky,
The runnel on the knoll:
We are akin in spirit you and I
Ah! How serene and bright
You stand with shining feet
And lustrous arch complete
Of rounded life upon the cloudy height!
You catch the light of Heaven and repeat
All its transcendent splendor in your face
And beautify a place
With radiance of a glory and a grace.
Thus is your life, O
soul!
But I am like the stream
That hurries down the knoll-
As changeful as a dream,
As restless and as wild
As an impatient child:
Yet, thankful dear, if in some tranquil space,
I may reflect the radiance of your face.
Bloodroot
A countless multitude they
stand,
A Milky Way on either hand,
Ere yet the earliest Ferns unfold
Or meadow Cowslips count their gold.
White are my dreams, but
whiter still
The Bloodroot on the lonely hill;
Lovely and pure my visions rise,
To fade before my yearning eyes;
But on that day I thought I trod
'Mid the embodied dreams of God.
Though frail those flowers, though brief their sway,
They sanctified one perfect day;
And, though the summer may forget,
In my rapt soul they blossom yet.