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Title: Hazel bloom
Author: Julia Carter Aldrich
Release date: June 12, 2025 [eBook #76279]
Language: English
Original publication: Buffalo, NY: Charles Wells Moulton, 1899
Credits: Jamie Brydone-Jack and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAZEL BLOOM ***
[Illustration: JULIA CARTER ALDRICH,
(PETRESIA PETERS.)]
HAZEL BLOOM,
BY
JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.
(PETRESIA PETERS.)
_Mother! O, holy music in the sound_
_Of that dear word—Mother! O, visions sweet_
_That crowd the mind and thickly cluster round,_
_To drive out tempting wiles, and leave replete_
_The soul’s most lofty plans, and purest thought!_
* * * * *
_Could man have known the part divine, repressed_
_Through youthful life, for noblest womanhood,_
_When she should pass to dear maternity—_
_Had he the Christ, in Mother, rightly known,_
_Kind Heaven had spared the pains of Calvary._
_Through her the first of Heavenly love is shown—_
_Through her, first glimpses caught of Christ, of God._
_B. F. Aldrich._
[Illustration]
BUFFALO:
CHARLES WELLS MOULTON,
1899.
COPYRIGHT BY
JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.
1899.
_In memory of that sainted one,
My Mother,
This volume is inscribed to the
Mothers—
The Home-makers of our land,
By one who has known
The breadth and depth
Of maternal hope and joy—
Whose soul has continually drank,
Thro’ all the years of
Motherhood,
From that well-spring of
Blessing—
Unfailing, filial devotion._
_J. C. A._
INDEX.
The Weaver 9
Mystery 11
In Childhood’s Years 14
In the City of Suffering 15
Heliotrope 18
Constancy 20
Estranged 22
My Inkstand 25
History of One Life 26
Evening 27
Rondeaux 29
Solace of the Flowers 30
Regret 32
Hazel Bloom 35
Life’s Shuttle 38
Springtime 40
For Insomnia 42
Mother 45
Eoline’s Dream 48
Our Own 52
Wounded Faith 55
Destiny 57
Unclaimed 60
Death 61
Night-Blooming Cereus 64
My Muse 66
We Never Know 68
A June in Childhood 70
Goldenrod 74
An Evening in June 75
Yosemite 77
Blight or Blessing 80
O, For a Rainy Day 82
The Great Poet 83
Love’s Riches 88
Complainings 90
Questionings 92
Persecuted 94
O, Kindly Speak 96
He is Risen 97
The Christ 99
Feed My Lambs 102
The Kingdom of Heaven 103
Supplication 106
The Portrait 107
Out in the Woods 109
Unforgiven 112
The Evening and the Morning 114
The Unseen 116
Painting 117
The Christian’s Armor 120
To My Friend 121
Hill-Crest Home 124
Lilies of the Valley 135
Pearly Shells 138
Courage 140
Trailing Arbutus 141
Encouragement 145
Faith 147
Nirvana 149
Heredity 150
Pebbles 152
Words 157
Mother 159
Hands 161
Endymion 163
Calypso—The Lover’s Pocket 167
What is Love 171
Sleighing 173
First Love 175
Man 176
Trust of Childhood 177
Alone 180
Night 183
Disappointment 185
Love’s Ideal 186
A Legend of the Lily 187
To James Newton Mathews 190
The Great Hereafter 191
Late October 195
On the Beach 198
Hidden 200
My Robins are Gone 202
Winterbloom 204
The Old Home 206
Thought 209
Columbus 212
HAZEL BLOOM
The Weaver.
With warm desire to please the captious ones,
Whose fervency the finished fabric suns,
With ardent conjurations she besought
The thronging sprites, that feed the loom of thought,
To gather shining woof, from climes afar—
From lands where all things bright and wondrous are—
To seek the dame whose tireless hand doth hold
The distaff yielding threads of fine spun gold,
And bring the gathered treasures in to her,
All sweet with far-fetched frankincense and myrrh:
Instead of quest in distant lands for woof
From near they brought, and with it sharp reproof.
“The glow and flame of thy desire
Is lit by an unholy fire.
We bring thee shreds for needs of life
With which its ways are ever rife;
Weave these as we shall bring them in
(None leads with Lotus-charm to sin)
And when the web falls from thy care,
Who needs takes self-apportioned share.
If one is girt by it for storm,
Or one lone home, made glad and warm—
If one bruised heart finds through it balm,
One groping soul, up-lifting psalm,
Then, thank thy God that thou hast wrought
The humble shreds that we have brought.”
Mystery.
All the earth’s history
Is mingled with mystery;
Thrid its long pathways thro’ Time’s gathered pages,
Struggle with theories,—delve as you will,
Wrapped in uncertainty, mystery still,
Baffling the lore of philosophy’s sages.
Wishes ungratified,
Longings unsatisfied;
Search is untiring and effort is eager,
Reaching for aye for the far, unattained,
Feeling the spirit to narrowness chained,—
All we may know, to the unknown is meager.
Yet, human pomposity,
Rich in verbosity,
Leads us afar, thro’ the limitless spaces,
Parting so boldly the cometal robes,
Shows us their bodies, as infantile globes,
Sportively seeking maturity’s places.
It measures Infinity,
Questions Divinity—Talks
of the universe at its inception;
Theory, feeling the pulse of the Earth,
Tells us how long since the planet had birth
And when we may look for its utter disruption.
Yet LIFE’S remote decimal—
The infinitesimal,
Puzzles the agnost for Nature’s great mother;
Never a blade without fertilized germ,—
Never a seed without blossoming term,—
Each is a subsequent unto the other.
* * * * *
Most wondrous, mysterious,
Throned and imperious,
Mind, in the beautiful temple of Being,
Rules o’er its realm with absolute sway
Till, broken and crumbling, the structure of clay,
Then swift on the wings of the silences fleeing.
Thought, strained to intensity,
Ranging immensity,
Asks for their home—for the spirit’s bright heaven;
A speck in the universe—our little earth,
’Mong millions, all grander and greater of girth—
Will God’s central glory to _this_ one be given?
Ah! Safely He has hidden it,
From earth-gaze forbidden it:
Humbled and weary the bold Thought, returning,
Nestles down closer to God’s written word;
By grief’s parching thirst its sweet fountains are stirred;
Its pages yield balm that will soothe the heart’s yearning.
There, Heaven comes near to us,—
Those who were dear to us,
Safe in its mansions—we’ll question not where,—
Live in the light of an Infinite Love!
Faith sweetly whispers—“They beckon above,—
The loved ones, who’ve left us, are waiting us there.”
The hidden earth-histories—
The sought-after mysteries
Are veiled, but in blessing;—we seek for them ever;
Wisdom hath woven this mystical bond,
Binding the soul to God’s greater Beyond,
Enlarging, enriching, thro’ constant endeavor.
In Childhood’s Years.
In childhood’s years, what dreamy days
In spring’s soft airs or autumn’s haze!
How golden bright the sunset skies
Where just beyond our heaven lies!
Each dawn the sun has merry plays
With Rosy-mist, who veils his rays
To shield us from his glory blaze,
While she paints morn such lovely dyes
In Childhood’s years.
We tread but joy-lit, sunny ways,
Nor dream of dread, that is decay’s:—
No sorrow comes but quickly flies—
No love is known that cools and dies—
No crafty selfishness betrays
In childhood’s years.
In the City of Suffering.[1]
In the city of suffering souls grow large,
And money-greed languishing lies;
’Neath the hurrying feet, of God’s messengers there,
That pompous, old Selfishness dies:
Ambition, so eagerly climbing to heights
Where glory, alone, is the prize,
Forgets his wild dreams at the shriek of distress
And goes where Humanity cries.
In the city of suffering, sympathies blend
As valley rills, blend in a stream;
The high, and the low, all forgetful of rank,
Are thrilled by calamity’s scream.
There Wealth’s jeweled hand and the toil-hardened palm,
Have neither a preference in claim,
But agony ardently stretching them forth,
Makes common appeal, in His name.
In the city of suffering hearts grow warm—
Aye, flame in the darkness of woe;
The spark God gave, from His infinite love,
Neath the hot breath of pain is aglow.
There, swift to the rescue, goes valorous strength,
Surprising the world with his deeds—
There, Courage will struggle with death for a life,
While yielding his own up, if needs.
In the city of Suffering, Avarice hides
In the gloomy old vault with his gold,
Nor dares to meet Charity’s love-lighted face,
His own is so pitiless and cold;
There, cowardice, envy—all drosses of soul
In the crucial test are consumed—
Dark altars, once glowing with brotherly love,
In the shadow of sorrow, relumed.
The city of Suffering is Heaven’s wide door
For victims its horrors enthrall;
E’en martyrs have sung when the fagots blazed high—
So ever He heareth our call;
And those who, with fellow-love prompting their deeds,
Fought there, with the mounting flame fiends,
Have wrought in the plan, for ennobling the world,
With God’s own, mysterious means.
In the city of Suffering souls break the bonds
That indolent selfishness forged in the womb,
And lives, that were dwarfed by their mammon-cut groove,
Find growth in Love’s labor, and sunshine in gloom.
When raven-winged Sorrow sweeps over the land,
An angel attends where its shadow may fall,
And, out from its darkness, brings heavenly light,
And faith, in the Wisdom, that’s over us all.
[1] “There was a puff—a muffled roar, and the tower was literally rent by
an explosion. A moment later the flames burst out thro’ every rent and
fissure, and the men, away up there, in mid air, fighting the fire, were
cut off from the world below, by an outpour of smoke and flame, soon to
become a mighty conflagration.”
Heliotrope.
There’s a charm in its fragrance bewitchingly sweet—
A something that binds with a magical spell;
E’en silence, thro’ this, to the heart can repeat
The message that’s sent in its purple fringed cell.
’Tis an odorous breath, from the heavenly heights—
An angel hand, beckoning to the bloom scented fields,
Where the soul in its freedom may taste the delights
That the garden of Paradise yields.
Like childhood’s sweet dreams of the holy and true,
That float thro’ Life’s dusk in the ether of Thought,
Or morn’s rosy blush, melting into the blue,
With tint of the beryl and amethyst caught.
’Tis an exquisite messenger, given the heart,
That winsomely speaks to the spirit, alone,
And whatever sentiment sent, will impart—
Will tell it so sweetly, in language its own.
When souls must needs pass thro’ Grief’s wordless abyss,
Then heart unto heart, through it, uttereth speech—
The sympathy, seeking expression through this,
Is told with a tenderness words never reach.
If you’ve aught that’s too sacred for words to express,
Too tender to breathe in a wish or a hope,
’Twill be fittingly draped in the delicate dress,
And borne in the perfume of HELIOTROPE.
Constancy.
The Fates have decreed thou canst never be mine,
Yet, constant, my soul turneth ever to thine
With love that outreaches Time’s cruel decree.
Too holy the passion with others to name—
Thoughts deepest and purest feed ever the flame,
That burns on the altar, kept sacred to thee.
As ocean in silence embosoms the light
That beams from the gems in the crown of the night,
Yet dimming its purity never,
So thou, in my bosom a presence shalt be,
As stars shining down in the depths of the sea—
Unsullied thy brightness forever.
Like a verdure-girt spring in the wide desert plains—
Like the stroke, bringing freedom, by the riving of chains,
Aye, Life’s every essence of pleasure
Had been love’s requital, that long ago morn;
Still ever I’ll count, (yet this rose has its thorn)
Having loved, though I lost, as a treasure.
* * * * *
Tho’ hopes were all blighted that haloed my youth,
And withered the flowers I deemed rooted in truth,—
Tho’ sunshine will brighten no morrow,
Yet never accusing’s deep bitterness stirs
The heart, that would only pour joy into her’s,
And the tenderest soothing for sorrow.
Her spirit dwelt ever in dreamy ideal,
While mine was so earthy and chained to the real,
With the heavens all brazen above me:—
All nature to hers echoed hymnings divine,
While doubts of a future, stirred ever in mine—
No marvel she never could love me.
But somehow, with Destiny’s mystical skein,
My love has entangled my infidel brain
And bound it with hope, to a heaven;
I dream of a sphere, we may find beyond this
Where—blessed fruition! life’s coveted bliss
To the purified soul will be given.
Estranged.
O, to be near to you!—Oh, to be dear to you!—
To feel in my heart, that your heart is my own.
All days have been dreary—my soul is aweary,
And still, must I walk in this dark way alone?
O, fond was my dreaming, when hope’s star was beaming,
When fancy’s bright web like a mantle of gold,
Lay over life’s losses—its trials and crosses,
And hid them, in splendors, of fold upon fold.
I thought then to follow (Oh, heartless and hollow!)
Where Fashion’s throng led, and to kneel where it knelt—
Thought Love’s nectared chalice was found in a palace—
In princely halls only, true happiness dwelt.
But Fashion’s vile brew, is of wormwood and rue—
It prays where the virtues are trampled and dead—
The bane we thought gladness, has led to this madness;
Dissipation came in, and the Peace-angel fled.
No wandering emotion e’er sullied devotion,
But anger’s hot lava my reason o’erran;
In the coolness of pride, (that love’s fervor belied)
The sorrows and pangs of estrangement began.
Be rashness forgiven, bring back to us heaven—
Our Eden-like home, with its love-lighted skies;
Tho’ parted forever, affection dies never—
’Tis knit into life with indissoluble ties.
The rills that have mingled, can never be singled—
They’ll flow on as one in their course to the sea;
By love, early plighted, our souls were united,
And ever—forever united must be.
Entwining each thought—with tenderness fraught—
Is loving, enduring remembrance of thee,
And, deep in your heart, in its holiest part,
I know there’s a hidden affection for me.
Shall life be all nighted—Love’s flame ne’er be lighted,
While I—by its altar with ashes o’er strewn—
Must ever remember thro’ constant December,
The balmy bright days and the roses of June?
O, desert, Sahara!—Oh, waters of Marah!
I tread the hot sands—press the fount with my lips—
In sorrow, go roaming, thro’ the shadowy gloaming
That falls, o’er a life, with love’s sun in eclipse.
My Inkstand.
This new one is thought both convenient and nice—
The atmosphere forcing the ink to the brim;
I question the worth of this modern device,
For seldom great thoughts on the surface will swim,
But something like whales, when they find themselves sought,
Down, swiftly from sight, in the depths they will sink—
At the bottom, the angled for ideas are caught,
And only by multiplied thrusts in the ink.
1855.
History of One Life.
Its morning dawned thro’ penury’s narrow pane—
A noon of wealth, with glory’s laurel crown—
Human weakness—one mistake—a felon’s stain—
The evening gloomed with all his fellow’s frown.
Evening.
Vermillion and gold
In beauty unfold
On the light, floating clouds of the West;
The low, crooning sound
Of all Nature around
Is lulling the world into rest.
Like a rover of Sin
The zephyr steals in
’Mong roses and carnations rare—
In ecstatic bliss
Gives each one a kiss,
Then scatters their sweets on the air.
In the shadowy hush
The linnet and thrush
Have gone to their nests in the grove;
The blue pimpernell
To the lilly’s wee bell
Is whispering his story of love.
Blest hour of delight
That verges the night,
What beauties and glories are thine,
When the great car of day
With its din rolls away,
And silence seems Presence divine.
Now the sparkle of dew
And the rich violet hue
Of the fast purpling clouds of the West,
Hint of time’s rapid flight
And of life’s coming night
That shall lull into heavenly rest.
Rondeaux.
A brilliant thought leaps out and glows,
Or scatters fragrance like the rose,
Nor needs an artizan’s design
To plan and shape to make it shine,—
Not all is brilliance in rondeaux.
The labored effort plainly shows
The mind has passed thro’ mighty throes
To give the world, with stamp divine,
A brilliant thought.
The music wins which sweetly flows,
Not that which falls like stunning blows,
And ease and grace, with sense combine,
To clothe with elegance the line,
Where Genius gives, in verse or prose,
A brilliant thought.
Solace of the Flowers.
Oft a deep, unspoken anguish
In the secret soul is stirred,
And the wounded heart, though yearning
For a kindly, loving word,
Opens not its sacred portal,
For the arts of friendly healing—
Only God is told the sorrow,
Through a mute-lipped, sad appealing.
“I am with you”—seems responded,
From the hush of Nature’s bowers,
And the spirit feels God nearer
Where He’s strewn the earth with flowers;
Nature’s language, rich with blessing,
For its unobtrusive words,
Speaks through softly murm’ring streamlets,
And the low, sweet trill of birds.
E’en a tiny, bruised allyssum,
Or a trampled mignonette,
Teach the heart, by sweet example,
That ’tis better to forget.
Like the touch of seraph pinions,
Or a faintly whispered hope,
Is the charm of perfume floating
From a hidden heliotrope.
Ah! there’s soothing for the spirit
Where the humid coolness lingers,
Where the breezes touch us gently
With their dainty, fairy fingers,—
Where the woodland nymphs are gliding,
Noiseless, o’er the mosses bright,
Spreading Sylva’s vestal altar
With a cloth of violets white.
All these tiny, fragrant flowers
Speak to us in tender tone,
Gently winning us from sorrow
With a language all their own;
Little beauties, sent in blessing,—
In our pathway angels strew them,
That we hear, when joy is shrouded,
Loving voices whisper through them.
Regret.
“—if only it never had been
All the world had been brighter and then—”
Will a hope never throb, but it comes back a sob,
From the echoing halls of the soul?
Do the joy-bells stirred, by a low thrilling word,
Forever resound with a funeral toll?
Will the roses we grasp, like the bite of an asp,
Give back to our sense but the stinging of pain?
Can there float a perfume, from the lillies’ white bloom,
That blends with enchantment Tofana’s slow bane?
Where but flowers were sown, has a thistle seed blown,
To root in their soil, a vile bramble to grow?
Doth each lovliest vine, ’round a hyssop entwine?
And out from sweet fountains must bitterness flow?
Does there lurk in each joy, a vile fiend to destroy
All the pleasure and blessing it brought,
With the stings of regret, as with thorns thickly set,
That will pierce, as it turns, every retrospect thought?
Ay, there’s never a spot, where this demon is not;
Like a serpent he creeps in this Eden of ours,
Where its pleasures are purest, its treasures securest,
And blights with his poison its loveliest flowers.
But we’ll act for the right, as God gives us the light,
Nor complain that the end from our vision is veiled;
’Twas in blessing and love, that the Father above,
Secured us from loss that prevision entailed.
In mercy, dear Father, still veil from our sight,
The dawn of a joy, or a grief’s brooding night,
That we faint not, expecting the gathering gloom,
Nor cease in the strife that ennobles the life,—
That we cloud not our joys with a shadowy tomb,
Nor a heart ever miss the delectable bliss,
Of a sweet, unexpected delight.
Hazel Bloom.
When paths that in summer were fringed with lush grass,
Are raspy with frost-whitened blades as you pass,
When the arbor’s denuded of clusters and leaves,
And the Ivy’s bare vines are entwining the eaves,
When the bright tinted sumach has changed to a brown
And the wind-shaken forest drops summer wealth down—
The autumn’s rich robings of crimson and gold
In the path of the years, to be trampled as mould—
When the beauty of purple-hued asters is shed,
And the glory of goldenrod faded and dead,
When the song-birds, we loved for their jubilant tune,
Have gone where they find a perennial June,
When clouds that were downy on the summer’s bright blue,
Have draped all the skies in a somberly hue,
When the orchard has yielded its riches of fruit,
And its life-feeding myst’ry is hid in the root—
The Aftermath gathered—the last sheaves of grain—
When Nature seems all in a funeral train,
Then Hazel buds burst thro’ their scales into bloom,
And glow like the stars that rob midnight of gloom.
When brooklets, unfettered, went leaping in glee,
O’er rocks and thro’ woodlands, adown to the sea—
When the bloom-time of Spring, in its glory, was here,
And earth all resounding with music and cheer,
When asphodels loaded with fragrance the air
And vied with the roses in loveliness rare,
Witch-Hazel, from Nature, seemed standing apart,
The wee, golden buds were asleep in its heart,
And sunshine and shower besought it, in vain,
To star, with its bloom, Flora’s garlanded fane.
Oh, marvel of beauty—bright blossoms of gold!
They show us the life leafless branches enfold.
’Tis the flower of hope with this lesson of cheer—
’Tis the season of rest, not “The death of the year,”
When, Nature, reposing in the bosom of God,
Feels the throb of His heart ’neath her snow-mantled sod—
At the soul of All-life with new life is imbued—
At the Fountain of Beauty, enriched and renewed.
* * * * *
Aye, symbol of Hope and the star gleam of Faith,
That give to Life’s autumn a glow—
A spirit revealed, while the seeming of Death
Lies palled in the brown leaves below.
A mission it has that was given of Him
Who gave it its blossoming time;
Thus blooming alone—desolation around,
Defying the glittering rime,
It speaks to the soul—’tis an oracle sweet,
His token, His promise and bond
That, tho’ passing thro’ change that leads down thro’ the tomb,
There’s a beautiful Springtime beyond.
Life’s Shuttle.
The Shuttle went flying
With sympathy sighing,
While it shot all the gold weft with threadings of woe.
There was murmured complaining,
The Shuttle arraigning—
That grief, with the joy, was unwound in the throw.
A whispered regretting:—
“No blessing forgetting,
God knoweth thy needs—it is His to bestow:—
From LOVE I’m receiving
The woof I am weaving.”
The Shuttle’s reproof was subduing and low,
And, blent with Time’s beating,
I heard it repeating
The lesson it taught in love’s tenderest flow.
Aye, softly it chanted this simple refrain—
“’Tis wisdom that mingles the sorrow and pain.
The sunlight, that gilds, with its glory the earth,
Would blight with its blaze, but for clouds and the rain,
And lives would be arid and smitten with dearth
If beamed on forever with joy and mirth—
_In blessing I weave in the sorrow and pain_.”
Springtime.
When meadows are strewn with the buttercup’s gold,
There’s gladness for childhood that song never told;
The laugh of a child, bubbling up from the heart,
Is linked with the spring, a most beautiful part.
A bevy of children—sweet far away dream!—
They trip o’er the sward, lit with dandelion gleam—
We’ll join in their sports with a heartiness true;
Our own vanished springtime, with them, we’ll renew.
The woods, (that are reached by a romp thro’ the lane
Where the grass is made velvet by sunshine and rain)
Have infinite beauty, in blossom outspread—
Delights for the gods in the fragrance they shed.
Come, drink in the perfume of blossoming trees—
Take lessons of patience from murmuring bees,
And listen to brooklets—they’ll sing you a song
As, wild in their glee, they go leaping along.
Come, watch the wild birds as they cheerily dart—
Their music, with sunshine, take into your heart—
Let the gladness of childhood thrill you, and be gay,
Thus keeping your soul in perpetual May.
When Nature is robing her forests anew,
And heaven spreads over her loveliest blue—
When earth is aglow with spring’s ravishing bloom,
Ingratitude only sits shrouded in gloom.
For Insomnia.
When Somnus is giddy and flies from my pillow,
And care’s elfin throngs come to vex me—
When mem’ry, perverse, all the sweet things forgetting,
Will mention but those that perplex me,
I ask that monotony’s rigid insistence
Shall drive out the gibberous crew;
They flee from his presence—will hie back to elfland,
Where their Night shade and astrofell grew—
Ask thought for a theme that’s subduing in power—
The sea, with its billows all hushed to a calm—
Not mantled with darkness, but lit with the sunset,
When Day, unto Evening, is chanting her psalm.
All life’s petty griefs in the grandeur evanish,
The spirit is freed from its thrall,
And unto the faint heart a trustfulnesss whispers,
“Be brave—there’s a God over all.”
* * * * *
In fancy I launch on the shimmering sea
That’s lighting with glory its waters for me;
Like a sprite of the ocean the boat seems to glide,
As lightly the oars dip the opaline tide,
Till out in expanses, afar from the shore,
Away from life’s din and tumultuous roar
Where, gently I’m rocked on the breast of the deep,
While symphonic waves woo the Lethe of Sleep.
A broad, shining pathway is westward unrolled—
I watch the bright wavelets, with tresses of gold,
Run out in wild play to the visual rim
Where the sky bends to kiss them in distance so dim,
Till thought is enchanted—anxiety flees,
And weariness slips into somnolent ease;
The silences seem to have rhythmical beat—
’Tis footfalls of wakefulness, now in retreat.
Forgetfulness softly creeps into the mind,
Suspecting no trace of resistance to find,
But wakefulness turns back, commands and forbids—
Yet, Slumber steals past her and touches the lids;
Then Morpheus bears me away in his arms
To his realm that’s swept of all fears and alarms
Where, lulled with his stupors, of poppy and rose,
I dreamily, dreamily sink to repose.
Mother.
When evening falls softly, with far away dreaming,
Oft steals o’er my spirit a rapturous seeming—
I feel the light touch of her hand as of old,
When bending above me with good night caresses,
She lovingly pushed back the long heavy tresses,
And smoothed out the tangles of gold.
Touch memory’s harp in the silence of even,
And loved ones will leave e’en the raptures of heaven,
And come to us then when the gates are ajar:
With mother’s face, ever most central and tender,
They light all the Past with a rosy-hued splendor
And the soul’s secret chamber’s unbar.
From hidden recesses they bring out its treasures—
Among them are shining youth’s dream-lighted pleasures,
When mother-love blent with, and hallowed them all;
The haunts that the years with their sunsets have gilded,
The castles of beauty that child-fancy builded,
All come in the gloaming at memory’s call.
’Twas down by the river, where bluebells were sweetest
And swift-footed hours forever ran fleetest,
Enthralled by the charm, that I loved most to roam—
To watch where the sunshine and ripple wove wimples,
Like smiles, on a rosy face, dancing with dimples,
Forgetful of duty till mother called home.
Right-angled with the river-bank’s water-worn ledges
The forest and farm knit their raveled-out edges,
In a brambled rail-fence. From the pasture’s green field,
Thro’ the edge of the woodland, a path, fringed with mosses
And bushy green tangles with clematis flosses,
Half the charms of the deep wood revealed.
When sunset was tinting each shadowy hollow
’Twas gladness, the kine, from the pasture, to follow
And dream, as I wandered, of fairy and gnome—
To loiter ’mong ferns, with great trees spreading over,
And breathe the perfume of wild roses and clover
Enrapt, until mother called home.
I’m lingering now on the banks of the River—
The sunset of Time on its ripples a-quiver—
How peaceful the flowing—no turmoil or foam—
A luminous mist o’er the landscape is falling—
The evening has come, I hear a voice calling,—
’Tis mother’s voice calling me home.
Eoline’s Dream.
One long day of toil was ending,
And my head was hot with pain
When a thought, akin to envy,
Racing thro’ my throbbing brain,
Muttered to my fevered fancy
“Only wealth has power to please—
Rocking in the lap of riches
Life were fair as summer seas.”
Wealth for me would bridge the ocean,
Open Europe’s storied lore,
Rome and Greece, with art and beauty,
Each would open wide her door;
These my hungering soul had longed for—
Oft they seemed within my clasp,
But like gold beneath the rainbow
They escaped my eager grasp.
How I spurned the homely hangings
That in poverty were wrought,
E’en the couch, whose dingy plushings
Now in weariness I sought.
“Common things,” I said, repining,
“Ne’er for me can blessing hold”;
But the Sun, just then declining,
Flooded all with molten gold.
And a benison, descending
On the wings of closing day,
Soothed and hushed my wild complaining—
Drove the evil sprite away—
Brought before me _my_ possessions,
Richest in the long array,
Wealth of home, where all my dear ones
Make it bright with love, alway.
Lightly drooped the shining fringes
Of the evening’s twilight hour,
While the playful, roving zephyr
Gently kissed each folding flower;
Softly gliding into dreamland
On the sunset’s gilded car,
Soon for me, his golden splendor
Wrapped all objects, near and far.
In his grand effulgent shimmer
“Common things,” grew strangely bright;
And my home became a palace
All resplendent in the light;
E’en the russet garb of labor,
If unstained by deed of shame,
There outshone imperial purple,
With its throne and titled name.
Sweeter than the grand exotics,
Were my lillies, pure and white—
All was beauty—all about me
Whispered to me—“Life is bright,”
And its sweetest flowers are blooming
In the toil-worn paths of earth,
And its purest gems will sparkle
On the brow of honest worth.
Diamonds, oft, are but the tear-drops
Avarice wrings from orphaned trust,
And his gorgeous, gilded trappings
Steal their hues from hearts he’s crushed.
More I saw in raptured dreaming—
Seraphs holding crowns of gold,
Beckoning up the shining pathway
Where the gates of Rest unfold.
Some whose wealth did bow them earthward
Sought for this to enter in,
Others, wearing robes of priesthood,
Thought that these absolved from sin;
But no easier passed the portal,
Those in purple, cowl, or gown;—
He who bore life’s burden’s bravely,
Won the race and wore the crown.
* * * * *
Then a touch of dimpled fingers
Woke my heart with mother-joy—
Golden head upon my bosom—
Tired, sleepy, baby boy
Poured a wealth of love and kisses
On the lips that had complained.
He (sweet angel!—God had sent him)
Quick the demon, Envy, chained.
Our Own.
Not all we name as friends, the soul receives as such,
Nor ever those whose lip-born love weaves smoothest claim;
Those only who, to ours, give genial spirit touch
Can light that hidden shrine with friendship’s holy flame.
’Tis by this sign the friends God made for us are known;
Dear ones! We count their names as precious gems which lie
Within the hearts most sacred place—its very own—
A circlet bright that’s bound by sympathy’s silken tie.
There’s still another bond for which no word is found—
A gift of His, so high the minds extremest reach
Doth fail to find it name, or ontologic bound,
Tho’ undefined—beyond the subtlest grasp of speech,
This wondrous, unseen realm, to spirit sense, remains,
And o’er its lines the soul, to kindred soul, conveys
Joy’s glad, exultant flash, or sorrow’s woeful pains,
Which, thro’ this gift divine, love’s tenderness allays.
* * * * *
’Tis sweet in twilight’s hush, when noisy day has fled
And evening’s azure glows with beauty’s single star—
When roses, gemmed with dew, their richest fragrance shed,
To feel the silence thrill with signals from afar
Feel the thought-lines warmly pulsing with a message from OUR OWN—
To know the call of dear ones, as we know the breath of flowers,
And catch love’s fond impulsion, thro’ this mystic Psychephone,
Trembling on the stillness of the dreamy, evening hours.
Thro’ distance, o’er these subtile, sentient threads of mind,
We feel, by finest sense, our answering heart-beats throb
Till every fluttering, white-winged joy doth find
Response, and every grief a sympathetic sob.
O, blessed bond! It links us to the Life Divine!
Thro’ this our prayers may reach the holy Fount of Love—
The league of kinship which these spirit cords entwine,
By fervent sway of soul, is felt in realms above.
Wounded Faith.
Mine open enemy hath no power to wound—
His poison shafts fall hurtless to the ground;
He may wreak a treach’rous lynx-like deed
And yet will never cause my heart to bleed.
If he should glare on me in hottest hate,
With tiger fierceness, plan the direst fate,
With claws distended, lusting for the roon,
I’d smile and do him kindness over soon,
Or, give a sure nepenthe for his wrath
By silent, strewing favors in his path.
But when those to whom my heart is bound in trust,
With aim concealed, make unexpected thrust,—
When those I’d counted friends, as friends had served,
Whose joy and weal my strongest effort nerved—
If THEY shall stab and gaze with hungry eyes
To catch my wince of pain, ’neath friendship’s guise,
Then, a wound is made, that all the quivering senses feel—
A wound, that only trusted friends could deal;
And, saddest hurt of all, the heart will find,
The same stab struck its faith in human kind.
“Destiny.”
She freighted a thistle-down once with a wish,
And gave to the breeze with her breath;
The Fates were to hold its invisible leash
And, if to be granted ere death,
Bring back, at her will, to her out-reaching hand
This wealth-laden embassy sent.
Unheeding her will and its pleading command,
Up, up toward the zenith it went,
Till will, it would seem, at the last had controlled,
When, earthward it came, like a fairy rigged sail—
Came straight toward the hand that was eager to hold
The zephyr-tossed feather, whose course should unveil
What Destiny held, in the Future concealed—
Life’s weightiest questions decide.
Almost within grasp and it wavered and reeled,
Then, mounting again the etherial tide,
It floated—was lost in the depths of the blue.
That thistle down, swayed by a pulse of the air,
Had wrecked her heart’s hopes on the rocks of despair,
As billows of ocean rich argosies strew.
Now listless and faithless she sits on the shore
Where Time’s restless surge casts its wrack at her feet;
She sees not the sunshine—hears only the roar
Of dark, sullen waves as they ceaselessly beat.
In Fate-ridden weakness she shrinks from all strife—
Lets Destiny’s elves to her fancy repeat
The early “decrees” that have shadowed her life—
No effort essays that might wreak a defeat—
Just waits for the stroke of pale Atropos’ knife.
* * * * *
A faith in the hidden controllings of FATE,
Enchains, with its might, even Reason and Will:
In wreakless inaction her devotees wait
For the slow-turning grind of her mill—Let
circumstance bind them with torturing gyves,
Pass doors that would open to Industry’s keys
And when, with his braided pangs, Poverty drives,
Receive all his lashings as “Fortune’s decrees.”
E’en tho’ Opportunity’s latch-string is out,
They, shelterless, wait for events to compel,
And deem themselves goaded by Destiny’s knout
While held in the toils of her mystical spell.
Credulity, Sloth and their following throngs
Forever are weaving entangling snares—
’Tis not till a victim is bound with their thongs,
To thwart his endeavor that Destiny dares.
Bring WILL to the front—strike Destiny down,
And throttle the Fate that would hinder success—
You’ll find that dame Fortune will put off her frown
And yield, for past sufferings, an ampleredress.
Unclaimed.
Just beyond the reach of thought,
Just beyond the grasp of mind
Is a sense of Presence—fraught
With blessing—felt, yet undefined.
At times it seems a wondrous power—
A strength, awaiting _Faith’s_ command—
For trusting soul, a proffered dower,
That’s held by Love’s omniscient hand.
Is it the gift, reserved of God
For those whom Faith brings nearest Him?—
The power that smote the rock?—the rod
That rives the fountain’s brim,
That all His thirsty souls may drink?
“O, ye of little faith,” He cries—
So many faithless Peters sink,
_And the proffered power dies_.
Death.
When thou, O Death, art come to be the old man’s guest
Who, bowed beneath the heavy weight of toil and years,
So longeth for thy rest,
Or to the weary mother, looking through her tears,
To the bright celestial shore
Where her loved have gone before,
Then, truly, thou art blest.
To them the ties that bound are broken, all,
And they will stretch glad hands of welcome unto thee
Who comes to break their thrall—
To slip the leash of weary life and set them free;
They, impatient, wait release
To pass the golden gates of Peace
And gladly list thy call.
But, in Love’s young home, where Life is one bright, pulsing sea
Of joy and hope, thy summons hath heart-breaking sound,
Like cruel Fate’s decree;
As tho’ alone, by stealth, she had thy gyves unbound,
When thou hadst to this Eden crept
And wrought, while guardian angels slept,
What Envy’s dream might be.
We feel the surging depth of Sorrow’s stifled cry,
Yet in thy presence, helpless, dumb with grief, we stand
And silent question—Why?—
Why budding life is frozen by thine icy hand,
Why yielded to thy devastating claim
Are all the loveliest of earth,—
E’en God’s sweetest, dearest gift of birth—
A mother-love,
Which is for life’s most holy joys, the precious name.
While cloud-depths veil in gloom the steely form of truth,
The heart, athrob with grief, still questions why:—
Ah, why Love’s brightly burning flame
Is ever smothered by thy breath,—
Its altar, dark and cold, whereon dead ashes lie;—
Oh! why are love, and hope, and youth,
All left within thy grasp, O, Death?
Night-Blooming Cereus.
Birth of darkness! bloom of night!
Bringing me such rare delight;
Floating charm, thy rich perfume
Stirs the lagging, weary brain,
Hushes all the thoughts of gloom,
Soothes or dulls the pangs of pain.
This floral wonder, glistening white,
Scorning Day’s broad, glaring light,
In the sacred stillness now
Beams in beauty on my sight,
As the star on evening’s brow
Beams upon a moonless night.
Like a rainbow on the skies,
Looked for, yet a glad surprise—
Like a meteor’s flash and gleam
Crossing midnight’s sullen gloom,
Like the fairy forms of dream
Is this wondrous, starry bloom.
Tell me lovely, mystic flower,
Why you gem this gruesome hour?
Were the jasper gates ajar?
Did the Night, from angel’s crown,
Pluck for us its brightest star,
And cast the gleaming jewel down?
O, thou, pearly, radiant flower!
Why give Night such wealth of dower?
Why with anthers, dipped in gold,
’Round a carpel, rosy red,
Wait in darkness to unfold,
And thy queenly beauty spread?
Now a sentient presence seeming—
Ah! it whispers, or I’m dreaming:
“An evangel I’m to thee,
With this message from the Past;
How e’er full life’s joys may be,
Like my bloom they may not last.
Throngs are gone—the voices stilled
That once these halls with gladness filled;
Here, with thee, I stand alone
Where, before Night’s ebon throne,
Silence holy, waits to bear
From thy heart its inmost cry,
Wrought into such fervent prayer
As doth bring God’s presence nigh.”
My Muse.
She wanders on, at her sweet will,
Thro’ gloomy vales or paths of pleasure,
Nor asks the world if grave, or gay,
Shall be her theme and measure.
She scorns the stilty, stiff Rondeau
That artizans must fashion,
But loves the brooklets romping flow
And Nature’s gush of passion.
Tho’ common use has smoothly worn
The Sonnet’s polished fetter,
She wonders how its chains are borne
When freedom’s range is better.
The triolet she never tries—
She’d lose in such endeavor
The glory of the sunset skies,
The music of the river.
My muse is not a Hellenese
With bright, Olympian halo,
But that strong, helpful one, that feels
The heart-throbs of her fellow.
She lifts me from the slough, Despond—
Bids Nature hush my sighing
By crooning for me sweetest song,
While in her bosom lying.
The violets, the Spring first kissed,
To us, are sweet as heather—
We climb the hills, thro’ shining mist,
In Autumn’s golden weather.
When, Lotus-drugged, Ambition sleeps,
She whispers—“Come up higher”—
Thro’ starry fields of azure deeps
I’m led and feasted by her.
She breaks the locks which golden keys
Could only open to me,
And kindly joins her gift, with Art’s,
Earth’s grandest views to show me.
While those who sing for fame and crown
Must bide the Poet’s tether,
Dear Muse and I will wander down
Thro’ Freedom’s vale, together.
’Tis sweet to us, the path we tread—
All Nature’s song is ours,
Her wildest scenes, the stars o’erhead
And all her fragrant flowers.
We Never Know.
Ah, me! we never know
What cold, wild winds may blow
Across the springtime’s balmy promise, sweet—
By what untimely frost
The fruit germs may be lost,
And rosy petals beaten down with sleet.
The eyes that glow tonight
With childhood’s loving light,
To-morrow may, with pallid lids be veiled—
The bounding pulse be stilled,
Life’s crimson current chilled,
And rich, red lips with Death’s cold kisses paled.
We never know the fate
So near, until too late;
Tho’ oft the black-winged demon’s shadow falls
In heavy gloom upon the heart—
A thousand dreads upstart,
Yet onward, all, until the shock appalls.
Warm love anticipates,
With open arms awaits,
’Till hissing wires the stunning message brings.
Oh, God! the wild despair
That hushes e’en the voice of prayer,
And makes the soul forget all offerings.
Such sudden, crushing grief!
Hope, rising, scouts belief,
But falls down, prone, before the sorrow-flashing wires.
Hear Sympathy’s whispered tone,
Oh, ye, who sit alone,
With but the light of memory’s altar fires.
A June in Childhood.
I stood in the flush of an evening in June
When leafage and blossom and fragrance triune,
Crown this, of the months, the most queenly and fair;
The clover and roses had poured on the air
A nectar I drank with enjoyment rare;
Baptized in this flood of ecstatic delight
My child eyes were blessed with miraculous sight.
O, gladly I’d yield up the wisdom of years,
If gazing out now, thro’ the mist of my tears,
I could think as I tho’t in that beautiful dream,
That the gates were ajar, and the shimmer and gleam
Of golden-paved streets on that silvery stream,
“The River of Life”—shining thro’ in the west,
Gave us a bright glimpse of the home of the blest.
I saw, as I gazed with my dream-lighted eyes,
A broad, gilded stairway let down from the skies,
And angels came out with their robings of white,
All ’broidered and shining with flosses of light,
And bound on each brow with a coronet bright,
Was a veil of soft gossamer, fold upon fold,
With amethyst border, and flutings of gold.
And spread on the sky, to my glorified view,
Was a foam crested ocean, pavillioned with blue;
Bright islands of azure thro’ cloud-rifts were seen,
Then sunk, like Atlantis, in billowy sheen:
While ships, that I fancied from shores evergreen,
Afloat on its bosom, at anchor would ride,
Or cut with their prows thro’ the rose-tinted tide.
Some angels sailed far, where the cloud-waves grew dark,
In boats that were graceful as gondolier’s barque,
And those I tho’t sailing far over the seas
To watch over missions and little Burmese;
Then others swept down, where the glory-crowned trees
Hid them on the stairs, but I knew from that band
Some went to each household, all over the land,
Where children would whisper “I lay me to sleep,
Send angels dear Father, my spirit to keep
Thro’ midnight and darkness, to guard me from harm,
To give me sweet dreams, and to shield from alarm—
To watch me till morning dawns, rosy and warm,
Or, dying before, let them bear me above
To the bosom of Jesus, on pinions of love.”
* * * * *
These memories float in on the fragrance to night,
While sunset is veiling in glory the light,
And seasons, repeating in cyclical rune,
Bring forward in beauty, rose-garlanded June;
All earth seems an altar with flowers o’erstrewn—
’Tis Nature’s thank offering—my heart is in tune
With her grand _De Profundis_, now rolling in praise;
Send angels, dear Father, a grown-up child prays,
And a rose-wreathed June for my sunset of days.
Goldenrod.
O, Goldenrod, bright goldenrod!
It fringes all the wayside hedges,
And makes the forest mantle rich
With lovely tasseled edges.
It lights with sunshine of its own
Each dark, neglected dingle,
And links itself with memories of
The cheery, old-time ingle.
Despite the summer’s burning drought,
It blooms profuse and bright as ever,
And where spring fountains rippled forth
With laughter to the river,
It kisses now their parching lips
To woo their music mellow,
And wreaths our dying flowers with
An aureole of yellow.
It gaily lifts its nodding plumes
Above decay’s inceptive traces,
And hides beneath its cloth-of-gold
The season’s fading graces.
Bright goldenrod! ’tis autumn’s crown
And summer’s sunset glory—
Each blooming-time is new with joy
As Love’s old charming story.
An Evening in June.
Glory won ’gainst beauty’s brush in painting sunset skies,
But paling now, upon the hills in rosy languor lies:
All breathing life, with her, seems panting for a cooling breeze,
For winds have stopped ’mid ocean isles, to toss the gleaming spray
And spicy odors rich, along the golden path of day;
And motionless, awaiting Beauty’s Star, stand all the trees,
While Erse, from her stores, besprinkles earth with gems,
From mantling robes of green, to flower-broidered hems.
But mortals, restless aye, will burden all life’s golden hours
With low complainings, forgetting bounty’s blessing showers,
Impatient, beg the _one_ withheld for other days and needs,
Nor see the plan inwoven, that the world’s wide hunger feeds;
Nor ken the flashes on the sultry air, above the plain,
Are the wings of ripening angels, sweeping o’er the grain.
Yosemite.
With humbled heart, subdued and awed I look on thee,
Thou time-defying granite pile; with senses rapt
Behold thee, grand and world-renowned—YOSEMITE—
Thy spray-enwreathing stream—
Thy rock-walled vale and sunset clouds, all glory capped
With evanescent gleam.
Aye, gaze and wondering gaze, until the centuries swing
Their massive doors ajar, and glimpses give when Earth was young;
But farthest grasp of human thought but weakling reasons bring
To solve thy problem vast;
In vain the Present asks the voiceless silences that hung
Their mysteries o’er the Past—
The far, dim Past, that wrapped our sphere in shoreless sea—
The mantling gloom, that swathed its infancy in mist,
While yet our central orb did wait Omnipotent decree
To bless the world with Light—
Ere Day’s first, smiling morn with rosy beams had kissed
Away the brooding night.
What engine wrought in Nature’s great completing plan
To ope for thee thy chasm’s broad, abysmal deeps?
Was it the glacier’s ponderous plow, that smoothed for man
The verdant, fertile plain,
Or, rolling waters that thro’ circling eons, wore thy steeps
With solemn, sad refrain?—
Or from Earth’s central fires, did fierce, volcanic throes
Expel, in molten mass, the elemental rock,
That o’er the wilds to mountain majesty arose,
And while yet warm with throbbing strain,
Did earthquake rend with pole-disturbing shock,
Thy mighty walls amain?
O, puny mind! be still and catch the chant sublime,
Of Nature’s psalm, that here is poured in never ending praise;
Accept the truth that God, by His right hand, did raise
These templed rocks, to stand thro’ an eternity of time,
An altar place of worship, where
All nations come, and every heart an offering lays
Of mingled praise and prayer.
Blight, or Blessing.
“But saddest is the tho’t of joys
That never yet were tasted.”—John Hay.
And yet the heart will never turn,
Tho’ all its wealth beside were wasted—
’Twill never cease to plead and yearn
For joys it covets, yet untasted:
And at its secret altar kneeling,
Whereon the life an offering lies,
The soul will lift its one appealing
For joy that Wisdom still denies.
It watches for the longed-for beaming
With hidden, cherished, fond delight,
As tho’ the hoping, wishing, dreaming
Could make the shadowed pathway bright;
As tho’ from out some shining mist,
By radiant bow of promise kissed,
That joy might come, to bless it yet
And soothe the pain of long regret.
Tho’ at our feet fall blessing showers,
All worthless in our grasp they seem,
De-gloried, as are withered flowers,
If still denied the soul’s fond dream.
For lack of it—that single joy,—
The life is robbed of sweet employ;
Each cup seems blent with Upas drips,
Each day seems gloomed with cold eclipse.
Sweet sleep will sometimes give the boon,—
Possession’s own supreme delight,—
Oh, sad that Day dissolves so soon
The bright, warm vision—gift of Night!
Brief joy! The rapturous dream diffused,
Swims round the soul like golden mist,
And life a moment seems suffused
With dawn’s own rose and amethyst.
And shall it be,—this sorest need—
To us, eternal, haunting loss?
Or will this spirit-hunger lead
Up, from this life-enduring cross,
With sentience large, evolved by this,
(When change the mortal veil shall rift,)
To take our own supremest bliss
From God’s infinitudes of gift?
O, For a Rainy Day.
BY REQUEST.
These days are hot, and dry, and dreary;
The burning sun seems never weary
The vine lies limp on the thirsty earth—
The grass grows sere in the long, long dearth—
The days are dusty, hot and dreary.
The sky is cloudless, brassy, dreary,
The wind seems ever languid, weary
But hope still clings to the gifts of the Past—
We trust that the rain will come at last
And the days be damp and cheery.
O, clouds sweep o’er, veil the sun’s hot shining!
With copious rains, come, hush all repining,
Swell the shrunken grains of the sun-burnt lands,
With new, green grass clothe the arid sands,
Then the days will be bright and cheery.
August, 1895.
The Great Poet.
Upon Parnassian heights he walked and gazed below;—
From wing of Jove’s high soaring bird he plucked his pen;
Attuned to poet soul, his lofty numbers flow—
His stately verse ne’er stoops to common needs of men.
The earth-born, toiling throng, he saw, but from afar;
No interlinking brotherhood bound him to them;
For them no warmth his glory shed—a cold, bright star,
On which they gazed as on a costly, dazzling gem.
To those who nearest reach his altitude of thought
He bends himself to speak, but yet, with lofty mien;
Of these, but few, familiar comradship, have sought;
They stand, his far, dim height and earth’s green vales, between,
To take his gift, which often falls like vivid lightning flashes,
And crystalize, and link for comprehension’s reach—
They trace his subtle thread, entangled with the shining meshes
Of universal lore, and weave in wefts of wondrous speech.
Sometimes, it seems, an idea vast, his measure strains,
When he doth crush the whole, as quartz is crushed for gold,
And then, reject and cleanse, until there’s naught remains
Of quartz or dross. The massive idea we behold
Upon his page, aglow in shining, golden grains.
Then alchemistic souls, in study’s crucial heat,
Must fuse and integrate—must clothe, and warm,
And breathe into it soul, when lo, with life replete,
The world will praise for breadth and depth, embracing form.
* * * * *
In this bright world of ours God placed some humble ones
With loving hearts, o’erwelling with sweet tenderness;
They soothe the wounds of war, they cheer earth’s toiling sons
And where grief broods these faithful ones are there to bless;
And e’en when fiends come forth with pestilential breath
To pour their reeking poisons on the stagnant air,
Forgetting self, they wrestle long with Death,
And, with devotion’s strength, the black-winged demon, dare.
Tho’ humble these, their elder Brother sits enthroned
At God’s right hand; His golden words, impressive, deep,
Still speak to us in sweet monition, gentle toned,
“_If ye love me feed my lambs,—aye feed my sheep_.”
O, many sheep have need of thee. Go feed them “In His Name,”
Or seek that shelterless, that lone one that has strayed,
Nor deem thy labor lost because, unknown to fame,
For whoso lifts the cup, by which there’s _one_ soul’s thirst allayed,
The same shall eat of hidden manna. He is blest of God.
Tho’, but faintly we can echo the loving Shepherd’s call,
We’ll find in Duty’s obscure ways, His sweetest blessings fall—
In these same, lowly paths, earth’s sainted ones have trod.
It may be grand to tread Olympian heights and breathe
Ambrosial airs,—to win high praise ’mong those whose souls
Are lit with Heaven’s fire; but sweeter far to wreathe
A simple worded song, whose swelling music rolls
A tidal wave of feeling, thrilling into life
A long chained serfdom. Greater mastery of the art
Is his, who lifts to light, from savagery and strife,
Earth’s darkened isles—whose pen can touch the world’s great heart
With philanthropic fire,—whose verse has, throbbing thro’ the whole,
In sympathy with man, a loving, human soul.
Love’s Riches.
Rich blessings are scattered around us—
Why heedlessly trample them down
And ask for the millionaire’s coffers,
Or sigh for a kingdom and crown?
We’ve ever the sunshine of loving,
Unmixed with the drosses of gold—
Its pleasures are not in wealth’s giving
Or e’en in its power to withhold.
The jewels, whose splendors we covet,
Gain much of their sparkle and glow
From the flutter and tumult of bosoms
Where heart-aches are throbbing below;
In palaces, often, is hidden
A skeleton presence of dread,
That quenches the flame on Love’s altar
While hope in the darkness lies dead.
A queen may be rich in dominions,
Have crown and a scepter and throne,
Yet all of the riches of loving
To her be forever unknown;
Far greater the kingdom for woman
Where love is the power—her throne
In a heart of unswerving devotion,
Its measureless realms her own.
Thro’ the tapestried halls of the mansion
The ghost of dead honor may glide—
A sense of life’s holiest joys departed
In the lordliest castle abide.
Tho’ the chalice wealth drains should be golden,
No sweeter to him is the draught
Than the cup with the sparkle of water,
That humble contentment has quaffed.
Earth’s mines, and her jewel-strewn caverns,
With the station that title confers,
All poured at her feet, would not purchase
The treasure a mother counts hers.
Ay, hid in your home you will find them—
Love’s riches—vast treasures untold;
More precious than worldly possessions,
Though counted, by millions, in gold.
* * * * *
Then let not the demon of envy
E’er enter the soul to enthrall;
The Father is tenderly watching—
Is keeping a record of all.
Rewards we have missed in our earth-life
We’ll find in that mansion above,
All decked with the beauties of Heaven
And lighted with Infinite Love.
Complainings.
Never a dove came to nestle by me,
But green-eyed Envy was there to see—
Soiling its plumage of spotless white,
Making it vile as a raven of night.
Never a rose in my garden was born,
But was surrounded by many a thorn.
Never a sweet but was mingled with gall—
And freedom, forever, is shadowed by thrall;—
Fruit, that looked luscious while hanging in view,
Is blighted ere ripe, by a blistering dew;
Gold, that we gather and count as a joy,
Has little of pleasure and much of alloy;
Jealously burns, in her caustical fire,
My tenderest hope, with malevolent ire—
Ashes, of all, she has strewn in my path,
And mocks at my pain with demoniac laugh.
But hush thy complaining, my heart, and be still—
If Heaven, our measure, with blessings should fill,
How soon would the soul with satiety cloy,
And life would be robbed of delightsome employ,—
Incentive would sleep, and all motive would die,
If needs of our nature should utter no cry;
But lacking the goal our ambition would gain
Arouses our powers—gives strength to attain.
Our grandest achievements have birth in the throes
Of Penury’s labor; and multiplied woes
But nerve us to action—resist and endure,
And highest endeavor gives aid to secure
Success to the valiant in the struggle for right—
Though failure may sometimes descend like a blight—
Oft failure is blessing, that’s sent in disguise
To turn us from groveling to gaze on the skies.
Then learn through each trial, my soul, to rejoice,
And e’en from the cloud will Compassion’s own voice
Be heard thro’ the gloom, in response to your cry,
“Fear not the tempest, my child, it is I.”
Questionings.
When the pallid lids have fallen
O’er the eyes in dreamless sleep—
Eyes that wake no more with watching
Nor in loneliness will weep,
Will a touch of pity soften—
Warm that unimpassioned gaze?
For a moment will affection
Hallow all their clouded days?
When the heart, no longer beating,
All its painful throbbings o’er—
When it stirs life’s crimson current
With its hopes and fears no more,
Will another heart feel sorrow
For the stillness resting there?
Will it for a whole tomorrow
Wear a saddened shade of care?
When the weary hands are folded
For that long unbroken rest,
And the spirit wings in freedom
To its home among the blest,
Will one tender feeling waken
In that heart a fond regret,
That will last thro’ summer’s blooming—
That will never quite forget?
When the lips are cold and silent—
Hushed for aye their gentle speech,
With love’s whispers dying on them,
Will their mute appealing reach
To the rock-girt fount of feeling?
Will Remorse with stinging rod,
Smite and bring the welling tear-drops
To bedew the new-laid sod?
Persecuted.
Alone, alone I tread the shore
Where surges beat forevermore
With deaf’ning, hollow wail;
The sky, o’ercast with angry frown,
Doth drop the loaded clouds, low down,
To beat me with their hail.
And, helpless here upon the strand
With no out-reaching friendly hand,
I face the roaring sea.
With reverent love my soul is stirred,
And seeking TRUTH within Thy word
I come, dear Lord, to Thee.
Aye, take my hand in thine Oh, God!
And lead me, where Thine own have trod,
By waters, pure and sweet.
O, send thy Comforter to calm
The aching heart with holy balm,
And keep me at thy feet!
Nature’s gift had been more kind
If a pulpy, plastic mind,
To fit, with ease, their mold;
Then self-assumed, “straight orthodox”
Had gathered me, with petted flocks,
Within the church’s fold.
O, loving Christ! Am I not thine?
And Thy disciples, truly mine,
Each my sister or my brother,
By the heritage of heaven—
By the new commandment given,
That we all love one another?
O, help me Lord with thee to pray!—
“Forgive them Father,” Thou didst say,
“They know not what they do.”
May sheltering love, dear Lord, be mine—
O, keep my life thine, only thine,
My soul to conscience true!
O, Kindly Speak.
The chiding word that chills the flow
Of warm child-feeling, ere it gush
In sparkling jets, to catch the glow
And tinge of Life’s bright morning flush,
Is the human thunder-bolt—its path
Is marked by dwarfed and shrunken minds,
Souls scarred, as trees by lightning scath,
Which show, like them, the spoiler’s lines.
He Is Risen.
Crown of all our joys supernal
Is the hope of life eternal;
Burst in bloom ye lillies white!
Wreathe the altar and the cross,—
Dawn is born of brooding night,
Heaven’s joy of earthly loss,—
He is Risen!
In the starry fields of Heaven
Mansions bright, to us, are given:
Triumph o’er the grave He won
In the resurrection morn—
Life eternal is begun,
Hope to all the world is born,
He is Risen!
He hath passed thro’ Heaven’s portal,
We, thro’ Him have life immortal—
Death is met with faith and trust—
The tomb is lighted by His love;
Earth may claim the crumbling dust—
Souls will dwell with Christ above.
He is Risen!
Think not thou art left forsaken
Tho’ by sorrow’s tempest shaken;
From His son, God veiled his face—
Heaven’s light was e’en withdrawn,
But the cruel cross made place
For the glorious Easter dawn—
He is Risen!
The Christ.
In olive-crowned Gethsemane,
Alone the Savior sought the power
That wrought through him at Galilee,
To stay the tide of that dark hour.
With grief bowed soul he prayed, but grace
Was His, to say: “Thy will be done.”
From Christ the Father veiled his face
And gave the world His only Son.
Tho’ His displeasure hid the day,
Spread brooding terror o’er the land,
Tho’ yielding hate its earth-born sway,
O’er-ruling Love in wisdom planned;
While human might did glut its greed
With nod of law to sanction crime,
A good, by higher law decreed,
Went forth, encircling earth and time.
Far-reaching, ’twas to win the world—
Their cruel deeds of blinded rage—
Their mocking taunts like hell-brands hurled,
Still echo from the sacred page;
That bitter cup—the crown of thorn
Upon His suffering, sinless brow—
That wail, adown the ages borne—
Are loving worship winning now.
O! blot the hard, blasphemous creed,
“A sacrifice for wrath of God;”
And teach the world ’twas human deed
That stained with blood Golgotha’s sod.
The reeling earth and darkened sun
Proclaimed aloud Jehovah’s frown;
Yet taught us that His holy one
Had by life’s cross won Heaven’s crown.
That tho’ he passed thro’ death—the tomb
To calm a world in maddened strife,
From out its broken bars of gloom
A joy would beam to beacon life,
And bless for us that morning light
That points the glory path he trod
From persecution, death and night,
Through Resurrection, up to God.
’Tis through His bearing mortal woes
We feel the throb of Love Divine!
Though wrung with agonizing throes,
His words with God-like mercy shine;
They wake the world to faith and hope—
E’en from old Memnon’s music trill,
They turn the dusky Ethiope
To catch their soul-impassioned thrill.
“Forgive—they know not what they do!”—
O, holy prayer! In every tongue
Its tender pleading pulses thro’,
As when from Calvary’s cross it rung!—
O, arms of Love’s infinitude!
They still reach down to earth from Heaven
To bind in one great brotherhood,
Through Him, the rescued world—forgiven.
Feed My Lambs.
Jesus said, with tender pleading,
“If ye love me, feed my lambs”;
Thro’ His word He’s interceding—
Feed my lambs, my precious lambs;
(Chorus)—If ye love me, feed my lambs,
Feed my lambs, my precious lambs—
If ye love me feed my lambs.
From the hedges and the highways,
Bring the lambs all safely in;
Seek the wanderers in the byways,
Save them from the blight of sin.
If ye love me, etc.
Find each little son and daughter,
Bring them in with tender care;
Lead them to the crystal water,
In the pastures green and fair:—
If ye love me, etc.
The Kingdom of Heaven.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as in Heaven.”
O, the kingdom of Heaven will come!—
When His will shall be done
Upon earth, as above,
And victory won
Through a union of love,
Then, the kingdom of Heaven will come.
Our Christian Endeavor
Has linked, and forever,
The lands of all climes
Where the Savior is known.
O, bright is the morning
That brings us the dawning
Of the day that’s to band,
In one army, HIS OWN!
O, the kingdom of heaven will come!
When Christians, uniting,
The common foe fighting
Forget every difference
Of doctrine and creed,
And, hushing their pleading
For selfish succeeding,
Beg Heaven’s best gift
For humanity’s need,
Then the kingdom of Heaven will come.
When fervent in action
They trample on faction,
Intolerance, arrogance,
Tread them all down,
And put forth endeavor,
Through loving work ever,
For the saving of souls
With no thought of the crown,
Then, the kingdom of Heaven will come.
When earnest endeavor—
Most powerful lever—
Is thrust under sin
By all Christendom’s might,
Its walls will soon crumble—
The structure must tumble
When hotly assailed
By the legions of Right,
Aye, the kingdom of heaven will come.
When Christians are one,
Like the Father and Son,
And sects of all names
At one altar can kneel,
In God’s love believing,
For heaven achieving,
This creed and this purpose
Inspiring their zeal,
Then the kingdom of heaven will come.
Supplication.
O, thou Savior, Brother, mine,
God’s own love and tenderness,
Sent of Him with power divine—
Sent to soothe, sustain and bless:—
Light of Life! Oh blessed Word,
Be my help! Dear Savior come!
Hear my spirit’s pleading, Lord—
Pleading tho’ my lips are dumb.
Groping now in sorrow’s night
Guide, oh, guide me, Lord, I pray,
Quicken Thou my spirit’s sight
That I walk in wisdom’s way—
Be Thou, Lord, a presence nigh—
Thou canst still the angry sea,
Thou hast known Gethsemane—
O, Compassion, hear my cry!
Deep in agony of soul
Mother-love cries up to Thee—
Fiends have bound him to the bowl—
O, break his chains and set him free!
The Portrait.
O, arms of protection, now folded so still!—
Alone in the world, so wide and so chill!
O, eyes that would glow in a worshipful gaze!—
They’ll bless me no more with their love-beaming rays!
O, heart of devotion! thy warm throbbings o’er
Can give me asylum from sorrow no more.
* * * * *
O, veil it!—this lifeless creation of art—
The perfect is sacredly shrined in my heart!
Not silent, compassionless, framed in with gold,
Nor mantled with shadows of coffin and mould,
But youthful and strong and warm with the fire
That glows in a soul lit with noble desire.
Ay, thought gropeth not thro’ the darkness and gloom
Where the mortal is held in the bonds of the tomb.
PROGRESSION is stamped by the hand of God’s love;
The life coming after to this is _above_!
Our faith reaches up to the realms of bliss,
The sphere He has fashioned—the Home beyond this.
The deeds that gave blessing in the pathways of earth
Give impress and form to the Heavenly birth.
That face, beaming ever with the glorified light
Won here, in defending convictions of Right,
My soul, in its holy of holies, where free
From earth’s thronging distractions in spirit I see.
This portrait I gaze on—the glorified one—
And that is, to this, as a star, to the sun.
Out in the Woods.
Glad haunts of the summer!—the dim forest aisles,
Where Sylva receives us with welcoming smiles—
Gives couch of soft mosses, embowered with vines,
And smoothes from the forehead, care’s deep written lines.
Refreshing, she brings, for the world-weary brain
And soothes, with her silence, its fever and pain!—
Bids Somnus pour sweets from which restfulness flows,
And, hushing her realm into holiest calm,
She lulls the sick soul into gentle repose,
While winds, with the leafage, are chanting a psalm
That charms with its rythm. Rev’ry’s doorways unclose—
We slip to forgetfulness—sleep that is balm.
* * * * *
The musical tinkle of the murmuring stream
Gave warp, for the web, of a beautiful dream,
And woof for the weaving, the slumber-god chose
From fragrance of violets, and queenly wild-rose.
The sunshine that sifted thro’ the crowns of the trees,
Made threadings of gold with the shadows of these!
The breeze, touching lightly, with cool finger tips
Was the kiss of an angel on the tired spirit’s lips.
O, the eider-down couches of slumberous ease,
And the tapestried halls that the millionaires please,
Can never, such rest, on the weary bestow,
As we find in this palace, where the luxuries grow.
Majestical forest!—Asylum of REST,
Where the crowd-jostled soul is ineffably blest—
Where primeval old trees, in their grandeur and might,
Guard Solitude’s shrine, from the vandal-world’s sight;
Where spice-bearing shrubs, and the sweet-scented ferns
Float odors as rich as when frankincense burns,
And the praise-breathing song of the thrush, from the boughs,
Wakes worship unknown thro’ the low-muttered vows.
“First temples of God!”—and still nearest His throne,
Where the spirit may drink, at the fountain, alone,
Receiving His blessing through the still, small voice,
While Nature’s true Acolytes whisper—rejoice.
Unforgiven.
Ah! that “Past”—that bitter parting,
Long ago, yet vivid seems—
Oft in midnight’s black arms folded
I have lived it o’er in dreams;
As a presence it has shadowed
Every path of life I’ve tried—
If I joined the festive circle
It was stalking by my side.
If I sat at hush of even
With a sense of love and trust,
It would come and stand before me,
Hissing out the word—unjust;
It has stretched its ghostly fingers
For all blessings to destroy,
And has poured its gall and wormwood
In each lifted cup of joy.
Had you winged a sweet forgiveness,
Sent it o’er the “silent line,”
It had proved a benediction
Falling on your life and mine.
Through the years that phantom presence,
Like a black bird o’er my door,
Seemed to say, by silent glowering,
“I will leave thee nevermore.”
_You_ can drive this haunting demon,
Send in place a snowy dove—
Only breathe the longed for blessing,
Not youth’s fervent tale of love,
And on friendship’s sacred altar
Light a pure and holy flame,
That may burn before the angels
Without blanch or blush of shame.
The Evening and the Morning.
“At Evening time it shall be light.”—Bible.
“The evening twilight of this life meets the morning twilight
of the next and they kiss each other.”—L. H. F.
When Life’s evening twilight gathers
Darkling shadows from the tomb,
Then a bright celestial morning
Kisses back the gathering gloom;
Robed in beauty’s bright adorning
This aurora—dawning glory,
Kisses back the gathering gloom.
When the crimson tide is throbbing
With the hopes that wildly mount,
And the sensuous soul is drinking
From enjoyment’s sparkling fount,
Then the thoughts will turn with shrinking
From the coming of life’s gloaming—
Death seems then a Stygian fount.
But when life’s weary day is closing—
When the lengthening shadows fall,
Sweetly singing angel voices
Come with blessing in their call!
The departing soul rejoices
With prevision, of Elysian,
Gladly welcoming the call.
As the spirit fetters loosen
And the soul gains greater height,
It will see the evening shadows
Meet and kiss the dawning light;
And, dispelling all the shadows,
This supernal life eternal,
Opens into morning light.
Aye, the golden gates swing open!
To reveal the splendors bright;
From His throne the glory streaming
Haloes Death with holy light;
Angels voicing their rejoicing—
Heaven’s mansions brightly gleaming,
Flood Life’s evening time with light.
The Unseen.
Do you feel my spirit with you—
Feel my kiss upon your lips?
Doth your heart throb with the message
That the messenger outstrips?
Ay, I know your thought, responding,
Know this soul-touch is of thine,
That you send me tender soothing
O’er love’s subtile, unseen line.
Soul to soul can tell its sorrow,
Sympathy response impart—
Joy can flash o’er lines of distance,
Touch and thrill a kindred heart.
Loneliness! I scarcely know it;
Loved ones in my spirit’s reach
Know my call and give me answer—
Silence pulses with their speech.
We have glimpse of joys, thro’ this one,
That await the soul above,
Where unbroken, sweet communion
Flows thro’ sympathy and love.
Painting.
O, beauteous Art! with heart o’erfilled with joy I stand
And offer up to God its silent, grateful praise
That He, in blessing, hath endowed a human hand
With gifts so near divine;
Thro’ these creations, warmed to life in Genius’ blaze,
Doth inspiration shine.
Here, oriental scenes are brought within my reach;
The beauty of the castled Rhine, in softened hues,
With fine, bewitching charm o’er-mastering speech,
My raptured gaze enchains;
I roam in dream the land whose purple vintage strews
With wealth its hills and plains.
And thus I dream and drink the blest enchantment in,
That flows from art, with full, ineffable delight;
Forgetting earth is cursed with sorrow, death and sin,
I taste supernal bliss,
And, in this ecstacy of joy, a world of light,
It seems, hath dropped to this.
Yet not with those I’d join who throng Art’s crowded hall,
Whose motive is to prove themselves profound in art
By use of bulky words, but which, in strident fall,
Each hearer doth impress
With lack of gift to grasp what colors may impart,
Or canvass may express.
Nor go with her whose hand, with long and tedious drill
Has learned to daub with paint—whose tongue, with flippant ease,
Can toss artistic nomenclature round at will,
Yet nothing knows of art—
Of art’s true self, whose secret power to hold and please
Is soul, in every part.
I’d put the shoes from off my feet, and then, alone
Before the work, would feel I stood on holy ground—
That there a spirit with its God had talked, and by His own
Had been informed, inspired—
Aye, minds should be, before they range this sacred bound,
In thoughtfullness attired.
And thus prepared, Perception’s polished plates receive
The artist’s dream, that seems with pulsing life aglow,
And o’er it Fancy’s magic fingers silent weave
Her draperies so real—
We seethe dimpling lake—we hear the streamlets liquid flow,
And shadowed coolness feel.
The Christian’s Armor.
_For the Band of Hope._
Firmly stand, unyielding wrestle,
All ye noble, earnest, youth,—
You are soldiers—God is calling,
Gird yourselves about with truth.
Wear the helmet of Salvation—
Let your feet with peace be shod,
Turn the fiery darts of evil
With the shield of “Faith in God.”
Arm you with the Spirit’s weapon,
’Tis God’s blessed, holy word,—
With the breast-plate of the righteous
You shall conquer Satan’s horde.
Then with earnest supplication
Hold the way to Heaven’s throne;
By the spirit’s true devotion
God will know and bless his own.
To My Friend,
MRS. ANNA PRICHARD.
And is time old? How swift he runs!
His months like birds of passage fly.
How slow he rolled a year of suns
When we were children, you and I,
How far away the spring time seemed
When winter wore his angry frown—
An age, when apple blossoms gleamed
Ere they would drop their fruitage down.
Then childhood’s eager heart was waiting
For expectations to unfold,
And churlish time seemed years belating
The wished-for blessings to withhold;
Then Fancy’s fingers held the brush
And painted all the future bright;
Its clouds but showed the rosy flush
Each dawn had woven with its light.
Impatient then, our youthful feet
To climb the distant sun clad hills
Where Pleasure, from her vintage sweet,
For each, a golden chalice fills—To
stand beneath the shining arch,
By rainbow-tinted promise spanned:—
What fine advance, in Life’s grand march,
Our strong, young courage planned.
But ah! in life’s late afternoon,
No worldly wealth, no laurels won—
I grieve that time has fled so soon
With so much planned, left all undone;
The barren years, like surf-worn sand,
With glints of sun and shadow flecked,
Are strewn with fragments as the strand
And show where Hope’s rich cargoes wrecked.
No mould of sloth lies o’er the years—
No waste of dissipation’s fire
Is smoldering in regrets and tears,
Yet youth’s fond dream—intense desire
A cruel fate has still denied;
Or, was it Heaven’s kind decree
That set that cherished wish aside
To bring a richer gift to me?
There’s naught in God’s infinitude
Of gifts for us, like home and wife,
And happy, blessed motherhood,
The crowning gift of woman’s life.
These gifts transmute to dear delight
Each humble task, all toil and care,
And keep home’s sacred altar bright
With love’s sweet offerings there.
All these, and one more gift is mine
That stirs with joy my brooding thought—
A friendship rare and true as thine,
A chain—all precious links—inwrought
With sacred trust. Oh hush, my heart,
No more in bitterness complain:
Thou wouldst not with thy treasures part
Youth’s wildest dream of power to gain.
Hill-Crest Home.
TO MRS. A. FOSKETT POTTER.
The picture, you rave over there on the wall,
Is weak by the one hung in memory’s hall.
While that one is held by the fetters of art
To rules of perspective—can only give part,
The other has range over hill-top and dell,
From the vaulted blue sky to the depths of the well—
Can even give sense of refreshing from this—
Show stars gleaming thro’ from its seeming abyss.
It has other delights, never reached with a brush,
The ravishment held in the notes of a thrush
(The sweetest voiced bird of the singing-bird throng)
Reverberant groves all a-thrill with its song.
Then the river, that knit a bright edge on the farm,
Enmantled with vapor—etherial charm!
As if dawn and the dew, meeting, playfully kissed
When the sun peeping over dissolved them in mist;
Like a gauzy, white chrisom cloth lightly it lies
O’er the rosy-faced morning, new-born of the skies.
Now, mellow and sweet as the music of dream,
Or a softly touched lute, comes the song of the stream;
Enchanted I listen, ay, listen and gaze
Till sound seems enwreathed with this luminous haze
That’s woven for nymphs, of the sunshine and spray;
And veiled in these light robes they mingle in play
Till on bloom scented breezes they’re floated away.
I promised to tell of my humble old home,
But my pen wanders off where my feet used to roam,
So the home of my childhood I picture for you
Must cover the rambles “my infancy knew.”
Come, stand ’neath that maple with me, if you will:
The manse, looking south from the brow of the hill,
Has the River, the valley, “The Island” in view—
(O! if mem’ry’s bright search-light could give it to you,
And you, with my childhood’s own vision, could see
The love-lighted beauty, that glowed there for me!)
While eastward the valley-farms glint thro’ the trees,
Whose grandeur had saved them to the thither-most shore,
And hills, as a back ground of beauty for these,
A richly-robed forest in stateliness bore;
And this, to my child fancy, held up the skies
Where the dawn, stealing in thro’ their bright rosy dyes,
Peeped in at my window to waken me when
The sun-gleams, aflash in the dew-spangled glen,
Out rivaled Golconda in jewels and gold—
When lambkins went frolicking down from the fold
To nip the soft grass or to drink from the brook—Ah,
there was a spot, just beyond where they drank,
Where the brook cut the hill for its opposite bank,
And nestled above was a shadowy nook
With a rustic root-bench which a wind-warring tree
Had thrown out to anchor its hold on the hill:
There, glad as the laughter of innocent glee,
Came the musical tinkle and play of the rill,
A melody sweet, to that ærie of mine,
Where, safe from intrusion as cliff dweller, I
Heard, fresh from her lips, Nature’s message divine,
Told sweetly, thro’ beauties, of earth and the sky.
An old fallen tree made a foot-bridge across
That led to this hiding—this sanctum of mine.
Bright fern fringes bordered its soft rug of moss—
A wild grape had thatched with a clambering vine
That hid for my coming bright sparkles of dew.
O, bower of beauty, so temptingly cool!
’Twas the home of the fairies and they only knew
The hours spent there that were stolen from school.
The brook-bordered fields of that moderate farm
Had each, for my heart, individual charm.—
The skies that bent over had glories unknown
To all other lands, even Italy’s own.
More golden its sunsets than any since seen:—
Its shadowy woodland, so rich in its green,
Had springs purling down in a dusky ravine:
There oft at the fount, where the waters distilled,
My leaf-fashioned cup I have held to be filled.
O, nectar twould be if again I could drink
Of the sparkles that fell there like pearls from its brink,
As it tinkled down sweetly from its rock-basined source
To join with its peers in their river-ward course.
In those shadowy depths, hid away from the world,
Most delicate forms of the fronds were uncurled:
Spring-beauties, anemonies, clematis white,
With violets, bluebells and maiden-hair fern,—
There were some of them ever to keep the spot bright,
To waft me good-bye and to greet my return.
Then the hillside, our play-ground—I never can tell
Its riches of beauty in bower and dell.
The sunrise would kiss with its first ruddy glow
Then slip to the river that murmured below
And lighting its ripples with flashes of gold
It made all the valley a joy to behold.
That River! It ever kept time with my heart,—
Grew into my soul, of my life was a part.
It echoed my laughter, was sad when I wept—
When drowsy it lulled me with song till I slept.—
’Twas playmate and teacher, companion and friend,
From the “deep-hole” that mirrored the trees at “the bend”
To that spot of enchantment, where the willows bent low
To whisper their love. There the river went slow
As if hushing its wonted, wild, rollicking flow
To linger and listen—the story, so sweet,
’Twould have all the zephyr-swayed branches repeat.
But the loveliest view from the home on the hill—
The one that could ever enrapture and thrill,
Was a calm summer eve with the stars beaming thro’
From the unclouded depths of the fathomless blue,—
“The city of God” filling vastness above,
Each mansion aglow with the light of His love.
Enhancing the beauty a broad, rising moon,
That followed a day with a languorous noon—
A day that in going left the sun-door ajar,
When a breeze, that was born of a rain-cloud afar,
Had stolen thro, softly, with the great evening star,
And whispered a vow to the languishing flowers
To bring them, ere morning, refreshing in showers.
Then the murmur of waters—the ripple in view,
The robings of Nature, aglitter with dew,
The sway of the trees, and the rose-petals strewn—
The kiss of the breeze, that has breath of the June.
Just sit in our group on the balcony there
And dream of this scene, inexpressibly fair
(Remember this gable looks square at the noon):
How the gateways of glory thrown wide by the moon
Could pour their white floods on the beautiful scene—
What charm in the mingling of shadow and sheen!
The river went north in its tortuous trend
And wound thro’ the valley with many a bend.
This lake-like expanse, deep and smoothe, as you see,
Lying right in the pathway, ’tween Luna and me,
On an evening like this seemed a great burnished glass.
The Island shore here, had a margin of grass—
The round little cove cutting into its edge
Grew ferns on its banks and was dotted with sedge.
In the far-reaching shadows of lofty old trees
This part of the Island was hid from the noon;
Its quiet invited to slumberous ease;
Here the River flowed gently as Afton or Doon.
Kind Nature had woven a pleachy thick screen
Of forest and vines that were standing between,
And made this remote from the town and its mills.
The zephyr-stirred leaves with their mystical chant—
That soft, lulling murmur, that muffles and stills—
Hushed the tumult and jar of the noisy “old plant”
And made this a spot ever calm and serene,
Fit temple for worship, embosomed in green.
Here, the river seemed charmed by some mythical lore—
It loitered along, seemed reluctant to pass,
While eddying wavelets crept up on the shore
And kissed, with their cool lips, the velvety grass.
On, slowly it flows until reaching a place
Where a glimpse may be caught of the swift running “Race;”
There it breaks into foam with a current so wild—
They rush to the meeting like mother and child.
With a plaint in its story that the mother-stream thrills,
Race babbles and tells how it toiled at the mills—Was
prisonned and held, by the strength of the flume—
Was power that wrought on the spindle and loom.
Received in her bosom with loving embrace
They mingle their songs, then, the River and Race,
Delighting us all with their musical tones,
While silver-capped ripples go dancing o’er stones.
* * * * *
Aye, “Hill-crest” had beauty beyond all compare,
But words can ne’er picture how wondrously fair
For one whose misfortune ’tis not to have seen
That river—that hillside—the trees in their green—
Heard the music of waters, o’er pebbles at play,
Or, lapping ’mong rocks and then swirling away—
The brook leaping down to be lost in the stream
As womanhood merges our girl-hood’s young dream—If
her childhood’s bare feet have ne’er pressed that cool sod
Where first I loved Nature, thro’ Nature her God.
[Illustration: HILL-CREST HOME.]
Lillies of the Valley.
O, pearly, waxen, lilly bells!
Glad the tale your coming tells—
Blithest time, of all the year,
Happy, blooming spring is here
With lillies-of-the-valley.
Shining like the precious gem,
Divers bring from ocean’s floor;
God in blessing scattered them
Blooming by the humblest door;
Springing in some sheltered nook,
Peeping by a mouldering wall,
Nodding by a babbling brook,
Purest, sweetest flowers of all,
Are lillies-of-the-valley.
Hidden from life’s cares and frets
Is the loved embowered spot
Sacred to our floral pets—
Lillies and forget-me-not;
Tho’ the poet’s fondest dream
Wreaths about the violet,
With the morning’s dew agleam,
Lovlier and sweeter yet
Are lillies-of-the-valley.
Roses fade and fall apart—
Lose their beauty with their bloom,
In the lillies perfect heart
Lingers long its sweet perfume;
Mem’ries dear we’ll ne’er forget,
With their tender thrills of bliss,
Hover round the mignonette,
Yet, a charm supreme to this,
Have lillies-of-the-valley.
Queens of color, tall and proud
Bloom among the asphodels,
But of all that lauded crowd
None so loved as lilly bells!
Pansy bright with dreamy eyes
Seems acquaint with mystic lore,
Whispers “hope” when sorrow sighs,
Yet, we love the lillies more,
Sweet lillies-of-the-valley.
They will breathe the tender thought
Sympathy would fain reveal,
But, with love’s fond message fraught,
Half their charm is to conceal.
Lillies of the Valley.
Rosebud boldly tells the tale
Cupid sent it to confess—
With the fragrance they exhale
Lillies whisper,—“You may guess.”
Pearly Shells.
All the rainbow hues are hiding
In the pearly shells of white,
But their beauties are depending
On the mystic powers of light;—
Going, coming, like the blushes
On a modest maiden’s cheek,
As her heart-throb quick confesses
What her lips would never speak.
Husband, there’s a heart that’s loving
With devotion pure and deep;
If you’d know its fullest blessing,
If the treasure you would keep,
You must flash the light upon it,
Beaming out from loving eyes;
Then, as shell, reflecting sunlight,
It will glow with lovely dyes.
All within and all about it
Soon will catch the won’drous charm,
By reflection and absorption
Home will aye be bright and warm;
But if left alone in darkness,
Through a life of gloom and night,
Like the sea-shell, pure and pearly,
It will be but cold and white.
Courage.
Now with zeal that will not falter
Rally once again for Right,
Trusting ever and believing
God is all supreme in might.
Let us work—give earnest effort,
Ere the day in darkness set,
Work with faith and love untiring—
He will crown our labors yet.
Though allies of rum are legion,
Fear no evil may betray,
For He’s given angels o’er us
Charge to keep us in the way.
We shall “tread upon the adder,”
If our faith be strong in God;
Aye, “the dragon we shall trample”
If with “Gospel Peace” we’re shod.
Trailing Arbutus.
_Emblematic Flower of Michigan W. C. T. U._
In Flora’s dominion no flower’s so fitting
To symbol our union of labor and love;
Not tender and petted, a hot-house exotic,
It lives when the tempest is raging above.
Sweet forest-born flower! ’Twas Michigan’s dower
When Nature apportioned her gifts that are rare—
So lovely, yet lowly! Affection, that’s holy,
Seems blent with its fragrance and breathing a prayer
That the loved may be borne in the arms of His care.
Its coming we hail as a promise of blessing—
That chains shall be riven, a glory be born;
Its delicate hue is a hint of our mission—
The soft, rosy blush that first tinges the morn,
When hope is awakening and gloom is receding—
A pressage of light that shall gladden the world,
When darkness has fled and the cloud-rack is lifted
And day’s golden banners on the hills are unfurled.
It needs not the florist, with art and punctilio
Nor asks for the smiles of the sun-lighted skies,
But richest and brightest, ’tis found in seclusion,
In depths of the woodland where dark shadow lies;
Far up on the highlands, or creeping on lowlands,
’Mong towering oaks or ’neath whispering pines,
The shell-tinted bloom of our sweet, trailing laurel
The lowliest objects with beauty entwines.
’Tis Purity’s emblem—Priscilla’s loved flower!
Oft springing in fenlands where dark, sodden mould
Grows vile-odored herbage, e’en poison-fed night-shade,
Yet, pure there, its waxen, sweet blossoms unfold.
Thus white-ribbon bands, thro’ the moral morasses,
Tho’ threading the paths which the vilest are in,
With purity throned in the soul of all action,
May labor ’mid evils, unsullied by sin.
Ah! truly, no flower in Flora’s dominion,
Can symbol the virtues and graces like this—
’Tis faith and endurance in winter’s wild tempest,
While gentleness tenderly speaks in the kiss
That comes in its fragrance, on fairy winged zephyr
And hope, in the buds swelling under the snow,
Is whispering of joys when the full opened blossoms
Shall herald the summer, with roseate glow.
We’ll gather it in, from our own native woodlands,
And wreathe, with its beauty, our altar of prayer;
The holiest thought, with its ambient odor,
Is stirred, as with incense, afloat on the air.
We love it!—we love it! our sweet trailing laurel,
And make it our emblem in labor for God—
For home, with its blessings and love-lighted altar,
And land of our birth, with its trial-tracked sod.
Encouragement.
What wealth of enjoyment a sentence may hold
That flows in a rill of encouraging words!
The heart’s weary wings with new strength will unfold,
While quick resolution all feebleness girds.
The sunset may brighten—outrival the dawning,
If sympathy’s warm touch the drooping life thrills;
Tho’ autumn has put out her gold-tassled awning
And mantled with haze all the woodlands and hills—
Tho’ the vintage hath yielded the first of its wines—
Tho’ shadows lie eastward in wavering lines,
And evening has whispered the low uttered warning—
“The glories of Day have all drifted afar”—
The spirit will rally encouraged by love.
E’en twilight may deepen, if only this star
Shall gleam with its vestal light brightly above,
We’ll work thro’ life’s gloaming, till angels unbar
The orient gates of Eternity’s morning.
Faith.
O, by and by the sun will shine again—
Will throw glad light on hill, and field, and plain;
The earth will smile ’neath Plenty’s joyous reign,
And we shall know that “God remembers the world.”
Aye, by and by the clouds will roll away
And then a greater boon, a golden day
Will seem, because we’ve known a gloomy May
When Doubt, o’er brooding, shadowed all our world.
Let Hope’s bright sunshine gladden every hour,
E’en tho’ the skies with angry tempests lower;
Believe, beyond, above, a higher Power
Doth watch and guard, with loving, care the world.
Shrink not nor e’er, with dread, thy part delay;
With faith and courage meet each coming day—
Let duties well performed pave all thy way,
Thus make a royal pathway thro’ the world.
Tho’ sorrows should be thick along thy path,
Remember none are sent to thee in wrath;
Love fires the bolt that makes the lightning scath—
A law that gives a brighter, better world.
With frowning face Calamity may come,
Ay, strike a hemisphere with terror dumb,
But let no boding fear thy faith benumb,
For He who made, in wisdom rules the world.
Tho’ skies and seas their floods together roll—
Tho’ earth should pass, a shriveled scroll,
His care is over each immortal soul—
He’ll gather us to His eternal world.
Nirvana.
Possession blest of that Celestial sphere
Beyond the reach of hope and fear;
Salvation’s port—Elysian shore
Where souls remain, forevermore,
In blissful calm, disturbed by naught
Evolved by ranging, restless Thought,
And where Eternal arms of Peace
Enfolding, give secure release
From chains that bind, to Death and Sin—
A severance from the What-has-been—
An end of seeming endless range;
No farther transmigrating change,
But REST of soul, that’s sweet, supreme,
Beyond, the touch of Life’s wild dream:
A draught that quenches all desire—
Extinguishes Ambition’s fire,
And leave, an essence, pure, divine,
That shall with Brama ever shine,
Quiescent in that blest repose
To which the wise Guatama rose.
Heredity.
Thro’ your Eden creeps the Serpent
Luring to the paths of sin:
In your own, weak self-indulgence
Life accursing crimes begin:
Aye, you blight your own with evils
Yielding to the tempter’s sway,
Hushing conscience, Sin imputing
To Eve’s early, shadowed day.
Science swings her torch above you
From her lofty templed heights—
Paths, by which the Race climb upward,
By command of God she lights;
Can you, with His laws before you,
Violate your sacred trust?
Dare you taint the soul you’re moulding
For Eternity, with lust?
Holy is your mission, mother,
Lives confided to your care—
Shall they, of your dissipations
Foulest scars forever bear?
Hush the voice of self-indulgence—
Thrust the serpent from your heart,
That he lure not to partaking
Of the sins you may impart.
While the fires of Being kindle
At your own life’s flame and glow
And the mother love is springing
From this holy interflow—
While the crimson tide is pulsing
Thro’ but one heart, for the two,
Stain not thou, with sin, the fountain
That the new life passes through.
Pebbles.
Pebbles, thrown upon the shore
By a storm-stirred wild commotion,
Tell of tumult, crash and roar,
When wild furies lashed the ocean.
Pebbles, gathered from the shore
When the waves were only sighing,
Tell of balmy evening strolls
When the sunset fires were dying.
Pebbles—some of brightest hue—
That were snatched by dimpled fingers
When the waves came rolling in—
Loving thought around them lingers.
Pebbles, in life’s pathway lie
That the careless roughly tread,
While another passing by
Finds them gems that lustre shed.
Pebbles—scan them—cast away
Wave-worn, rounded bits of stone,
But if one hath lighting ray,
Keep the treasure as thine own.
* * * * *
When the heart is sorrow-laden
Seek the spirit’s shrine of prayer,
Jesus there will meet and bless you
And you’ll leave your burdens there.
* * * * *
As the blessed, healing mentha
Holds for mortal pains nepentha,
So hath sympathy the art
To soothe the bruises of the heart.
* * * * *
From each act, however small,
Some result must ever fall;
Drop a pebble in the wave
Distant shores its ripples lave.
* * * * *
Give gladness to childhood! ’twill brighten life’s years;
Pour hydromel for it, unmingled with tears,
So fondly, caressingly, memory clings
To youth’s every joy, forgetting its stings.
* * * * *
Experience teaches some lessons of worth—
That wealth is not always of lordliest birth,
That duty makes labor, tho’ humble, sublime—
That crucial trial gives strength to the soul:—
There’s no royal road to Life’s coveted goal,
Earth’s throngs must all pass the same doorway of Time.
* * * * *
If Heaven’s light beam on your tears,
Hope’s bright bow will span the cloud,
While God’s own promise, calming fears,
Will lift the soul by sorrow bowed.
* * * * *
Mystery deep, thy doors unbar,
And let us look within!—
Thought goes ranging far—afar,
On webs our fancies spin.
* * * * *
The life I live is not my own—
’Tis subterfuge and dross,
The yearning soul makes hidden moan,
With secret sense of loss.
* * * * *
O, dear Savior, I am weary—
Let me rest my soul with Thee!
Mansions bright, Thou art preparing—
Wilt thou, Jesus, welcome me?
* * * * *
For the bright, warm joys, once cherished,
There’s a withered rose and a brown, sere leaf;
Ah! dear were the hopes that perished,
Yet there’s wealth of life, in the golden sheaf.
* * * * *
When a gleam of the sun, thro’ a rift in the storm,
Throws a light on our path, that was shadowed before,
We look to the cloud, for the beautiful form
Of the bow, that is promise to us, evermore.
* * * * *
The rose is girt with thorns about,
The berries sweet, with briars—
Thus Fate doth ever hedge us from
Our heart’s supreme desires.
* * * * *
Tossing, rolling, restless sea,
Picture thou of Life to me—Shadow-clouds
now floating o’er,
Foam and drift-wood on the shore:—
Depths of dark and billowy waves,
Wrecking hopes and hollowing graves—
Breaking on the beach in moans,
Seem thy cavern’s echoed groans.
Prosperous winds, and thou wilt bear,
On thy heaving bosom fair,
Snowy sails, with treasures laden
From the distant, sun-kissed Aden,—
Costly fabrics—richest stores,
For their own, dear, home-lit shores,
Where Love’s altars brightly burn,
While she waits their glad return.
* * * * *
In all this beauteous world of ours
What gift, of Love, so sweet as flowers!
* * * * *
O, sweet is the fountain of soothing
That ever is found in His Word—
Drink deeply when heart-wounds are bleeding
And the peace of the spirit is stirred.
Words.
O, words may be loving and mellow in tone,
Sweet as the dew on the flowers of Hermon,
Gently imparting a blessing their own,
Precious with promise, as Olivet’s sermon.
Words may be careless, and cruel and coarse—
Be tauntingly hurled, or so bitterly spoken,
Resistless as lightning’s destroying force,
They scar with their scathing the heart they have broken.
Words may have edge that is keener than steel—
May pierce with their points like the swift-flying arrow;
They hurt with these stings while the victim will feel,
Then tear through the heart like a torturing harrow.
Words may be venomed with malice and spite,
May wither with scorn, with contempt and derision—
Be dreaded like adders when coiling to bite
Or hiss out their poison in whispered suspicion.
Aye, words may be vile as a basilisk’s breath—
A falsehood the germ—an ovum of evil,
Impregnate with calumny’s virus innate,
Then heated and hovered by envy and hate;
Thus “brooded by serpents,” like the monster medieval,
Come forth with his powers of blasting with death.
But words that are warmed in the sunlight of love
Will soothe with their feeling a brother’s affliction;
’Tis the Spirit from heaven that comes like a dove,
So gently descending in sweet benediction.
’Tis blessed receiving what kindness imparts,
How trifling so ever the token,
Thrice blessed, the giving of solace to hearts
That words of injustice have blighted and broken.
There’s comfort and balm for life’s various smarts
In words of true sympathy, tenderly spoken.
Mother.
Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, come to me now,
With a touch of thy hand sweep the care from my brow;
Oh, come, on the wings of the silences come,
Dear mother, my own, as you reigned in our home.
Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, come now at eve.
I sit in the gloaming, in loneliness grieve;
The world is so selfish, so cold and unkind,
Sweet solace for pain in thy love I would find.
Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, hear me, I pray!
In the silence of night, blot the sorrows of day;
And point me away from the earth and its care.
To the beautiful dwelling—that mansion so fair,
Where mother, mine, mother mine, waiteth for me,
With loved ones who’re watching my barque on life’s sea—
Who’ll stretch out their welcoming hands from the shore,
When I reach the glad haven, all buffetings o’er.
Hands.
There are hands we fondly cherish
Not alone for form and grace,
But the loving deeds that mold them,
Place them next a sainted face.
They can soothe as if with magic,
When the fever-furies rage;
Their caresses, unobstrusive,
E’en a heartache can assuage.
Hands can emphasize a welcome,
Far beyond the gifts of speech,
And their language, plain and truthful,
Doubt did never yet impeach.
Aye! there’s feeling warm and tender,
Ever pulsing in the palm,
In whose kindly, silent pressure
Sorrow finds a healing balm.
Love’s sweet mysteries course their fingers,
For their lightest touch of tips
Has the secret gift of thrilling,
Like affection’s clinging lips.
They can knit with mystic flosses
Such a net about the heart—
Earth has naught so near a heaven
As this thraldom doth impart.
Hands have heart-beats throbbing through them
And the lightning flash of thought;
’Tis by such that grand impulsions
Into living deeds are wrought.
Hands may be a sculptor’s pattern,
Tipped with smooth, shell-tinted nails,
Yet convey a touch, repulsive
As of scaly serpent trails.
If the soul is gross and selfish,
There’s no art the trait conceals,
But the hand in mold or clasping,
To the sentient heart reveals.
Idle hands are limp and nerveless,
Lack expression, fervor, grasp—
They receive nor give sensation,
Simply lie within your clasp.
Hands may flash a wealth of jewels,
Yet display a pauper soul—
God inscribes these outspread tablets
From the spirit’s hidden scroll.
Endymion.
When the noble son of Zeus
Asked the gift of youth immortal,
Little wot he of the ages
Stretching onward from life’s portal;
Tho’ he walked with gods, he wearied,
Wished for rest, intense and deep,—
Asked another gift of Zeus;
That of everlasting sleep.
And his thoughtless wish was granted;
Glad he hushed his soul’s repining
In the winged god’s misty vapors
And, on Latmos’ height reclining,
Laid down all earth’s cares and trials—
All its wearying heat and strife,
Yet within his dormant being,
Held the essences of life.
Fair Selene, robed in beauty,
Wandering forth in loneliness,
Bent above the youth admiring—
Touched him with a light caress;
And her gazing woke his spirit
To a dream’s ecstatic bliss,
As her lips, with tender fondness,
Snatched from his that holy kiss.
And her heart’s new, quickened pulsing
Thrilled along love’s unseen wires,—
Stirred in him responsive passion,—
Lit his soul’s electric fires.
Then the roused, enrapt Endymion,
Shaking off the slumbrous air,
Cried,—“Ye gods, take back your giving,
All life’s perils I will dare;
Wake my soul to keenest feeling,
Let its sense of pleasure reign,
Tho’ my path were paved with spear-points
I would count the waking gain.”
Glad he left the heights so longed for,
Sought the lowland’s balmy air,
Leading her, the loved Selene,
Thro’ the flowery valleys fair,
Where the paths all flash with diamonds
From the jewelled crown of Night,—
Where the lake upon his bosom
Rocks the sleeping lillies white,
And his lullaby in whispers
Floating thro’ the leafy dell,
Mingling with perfume and zephyr
Wove a sweet entrancing spell.
And ’twas there at Sylva’s altar,
With the gazing stars above,
Soul to soul, by mute impulsion,
That they pledged eternal love;
Ay, ’twas then the spheric paean,
Through the great expanses spread,
When in Beauty’s listening stillness,
Peace and Purity were wed.
And tonight I see them roaming
Thro’ the flowery paths of eld—
Thro’ the valley, by the lakelet,
Where their nuptial feast was held;
Where the moon-beams dance with shadows,
In the hushed, half-hidden glen,
Shunning Mammon’s crowded cities
And the busy walks of men.
But linger not too long, Selene,—
Hasten from thy lover’s side,
Or, in fleecy cloud-wrought vesture
From the gaze of Eos hide;
Else like darkly mantled Pleiad,
Wailing robes of forfeit glory,
Thou wilt find thy charms are stolen
By the jealous, fair Aurora.
Hasten, hasten, for she cometh,—
Venus bright doth herald now,
All Jove’s pageantry attends her,
Erse’s gems bedeck her brow,
And her royal robes are ’broidered
Rich with rose and amethyst;—
Hasten, but with thine Endymion
Keep the holy evening tryst.
Calypso—The Lover’s Pocket.
Erastes saw with vain regret
A hedge of guards was thickly set
Around the fair one he would woo;
For Flora’s aid he quick applied—
“Be art of yours with Love’s allied
And Cupid’s throng shall kneel to you.”
Then Flora wrought that mystic flower
And graced with it Love’s Sylvan bower,
And there a wildling still it grows;
The hue she gave was pearly white,
But Love would add one more delight
And mingled in a blush of rose.
T’was given such an artless guise
That e’en suspicion’s prying eyes
Doth no intriguing plan suppose:
And there within, securely hid,
Beneath the blossom’s fringy lid
The lover’s missive finds repose.
* * * * *
“Wilt thou, dear maid, thy wealth resign
And drink with me love’s ruby wine—
In weal or woe my fortune’s share?”
She wrote and hid—“I will be thine—
With love’s devotion ever mine
There’s naught but I could dare.”
A closely folded plan for flight
(That marked the nearest moonless night,)
The Orchid in its heart concealed.
While vigilance unconscious slept,
Two dusky steeds thro’ darkness swept
Across an unfrequented field
And brought the lovers quickly where
A waiting priest, with pledge and prayer,
The sacred bonds of wedlock sealed.
Paternal pride aroused, irate,
With bluster came, a moment late,—
The holy rite had joined their hands,
The vows were made, the pledges given
That bound the twain as one in heaven,
Despite his wrath and stern commands.
“How could you thus,” he cried in rage,
“Defy my will, disgrace my age!
I’ll disinherit and disown—And
you shall have eternal scorn
For wedding with that lowly born—
Aye, you shall reap as you have sown.”
* * * * *
“O, woman! thou art gall and wine—
Deceit’s worst name, to me, is thine!
I thought her will succumbed to mine,
So cheerful, happy, she had seemed.
I felt within a conscious pride
In power to hold, subdue and guide—
That she was conquered, fondly dreamed.”
“Along the wood she walked with me,
Among the wild flowers, gay and free,
(I guarded her with watchful eye,)
With eager hand she plucked and smiled
As guileless as a happy child—
No love-lorn look—no sob or sigh.”
“Aye, woman’s ways and woman’s wiles
Are knitted in with looks and smiles
By which man’s wisdom oft is foiled.
She’ll seem so gently yielding _will_
While scheming for her own way, still—
With sweet deceits will blind us, till
Our dearest hopes have been despoiled.”
“But, ’tis senseless nursing helpless wrath,—
Shall I strew thorns along her path
Whose only dower’s a father’s curse?—
Drive them out with want to roam?
I think I’ll take the couple home—
In truth, her parents did much worse.”
* * * * *
Calypso, still with winning grace,
Adorns the ferny, sedgey place
By purling brook or shaded dell,
And only Cupid knows its art
Of hiding in its fragrant heart
The secret, sweet, that Love would tell.
What Is Love?
Not the fierce-destroying power
Of the hot sirocco’s breath,
Withering every tender flower,
Strewing all its path with death
Or helpless, silent sorrow.
’Tis a strength that holds each feeling
But a slave to do its will—
Every wish, abjectly kneeling,
Waits its mandate to fulfill
Or creeps, by stealth, in shadow.
’Tis Life’s sacred, golden chalice,
From as rich a vintage filled
For the cottage, as the palace—
Sweetest draughts have been distilled
With want upon the lever.
’Tis a tender, true devotion,
Never soiled by thoughts of pelf,
But with gladsome, sweet emotion
To its altar bringing _self_,
A sacrificial offering.—
Joy’s bell whose silver ringing
Down the ages has been borne
Ever since in Eden, singing,
Wedded love hailed rosy morn—
Still the tones fall sweet as ever.
’Tis the Horeb of the spirit,
Where no coarse-shod thought may tread,
The part divine, which souls inherit
From love’s holy Fountain-Head,
Influent with our being.
Sleighing.
Hear the bells, distant bells!
How the merry music swells,
As the steed, with noble speed,
Nearer, nearer, nearer comes,
Strength doth wing his flying feet;
Onward, onward, onward going,
With a strong and rythmic beat;
Youth, with health and beauty glowing,
Blends a rippling, laughter peal
With the ringing hoofs of steel—
How the mingling music hums!
Hear the bells, joyous bells!
Love’s sweet tale their music tells,
As they go o’er glistening snow;
Wildly, wildly, rushing by,
Fainter grow the hoof-beats now,
Fainter, fainter, fainter growing;
Venus shines on evening’s brow,
Moonlight floods o’er earth are flowing;
O, the reckless wild delights
Of a sparkling, winter night’s
Sleighing, ’neath a moonlit sky!
Ho, the bells, merry bells!
Rapture in their music dwells;
Raptures sweet, in bliss repeat,
Gliding, gliding, o’er the snow.
Every pulse with pleasure thrills;
To the heart new joys revealing.
As when springtime, bird-note trills
Stir the sweetest fount of feeling,
Welling with all tender thought,
From the dulcet music caught,
Blending all in joyous flow!
* * * * *
Hark, the bells—homeward bells!
Something now their music quells,
For they go, tinkling—so—
Tinkle—tinkle—seem to wait;
Why that steed such lagging feet,
When returning, homeward going?
(’Mong the furs their faces meet)—
Ah! that nag is very knowing,
Stepping lightly o’er the snow—
Have their whispers, soft and low,
Changed his mood and changed his gait?
First Love.
Tender and true as the starlight of heaven,
Sweet as the heart of a bud when it opes,
Swift as the flash of the cloud-leaping levin,
Rich as the springtime in promise and hopes,
Pure as the gleam of the dew on the flowers
Is love’s first awakening in youth’s dreamy hours.
It sings in the heart like a forest-hid rill—
Runs over its rim like a rock-basined spring;
Strong, it o’erpowers cold reason with will,
Impulsively binding two lives with a ring.
It goes where it listeth, unreined as the wind,
So reckless, ’tis said, that the love god is blind.
Joyful, yet trembling like a zephyr-kissed rose,
Flushing and paling like skies of the dawn,
Silent, lest speech shall the secret disclose,
Wayward and shy as a mountain-bred fawn,
Flying the bosom where yearning to rest,
Hushing the tenderness, thrilling the heart,
Palpitant tempests disturbing the breast;
Enjoying—enduring the sweet and the smart
That comes of the wounding with Cupid’s first dart.
Man.
O, grand and worshipful that being MAN,
As fashioned by a maiden’s dream-lit mind!
To her, his soul has nobleness enshrined—
’Tis pure—Love’s altar-place, where God began,
’Neath Eden’s flow’ry groves, the household plan.
In rose-mist wreathed, by sweet enchantment blind,
How oft she’s worshiped, wedded, but to find
The real, no more her dream, than piping Pan.
Some “noble deeds” bear cold ambition’s stain,
And chaff is found among Love’s golden grain.
’Tis well the rose-mist lifts and clearer beams
Show man’s real self, e’en tho’ it give her pain,
Else, so idolatrous, she might, it seems,
Forget her God, if he were all she dreams.
Trust of Childhood.
An angel comes down from the realms of light,
To guard me in slumber, thro’ hours of the night;
Her presence is gentle, I feel she is there,
As soon as I’ve uttered my evening prayer;
So tenderly watching she stays in my room
Till darkness has folded his mantle of gloom.
I’ve felt on my forehead her soft finger tips
And the touch of her kiss, lightly pressed on my lips,
To waken me gently, ere leaving my bed,
When morning’s bright beauties o’er earth had been spread.
Forbearing to open my earth-gazing eyes
To look on the guardian sent from the skies,
I’ve listened and heard, e’en the rustle of wings;
And then at the casement, where mocking bird swings,
A sweeping of roses and jasmines I’ve heard,
And knew that their beauty and perfume were stirred
By her gossamer robes, as she hastened away,
To the rose-tinted gateway that opens to day;
(For Heaven, I know, is but little beyond,
Where glories of morn, in its borders have dawned);
And then by the holiness left in the room,
Afloat, like the fragrance from violet bloom,
I knew that a presence had surely been there,
Had left with me blessing, and wafted my prayer
To the throne of the Father for guidance and care.
* * * * *
O, trust of my childhood! bright halo of youth!
Come, veil for tonight the stern visage of truth;
With faith that’s elysian, I’d drift down the stream
To imagery islands, with beauty agleam,
And hear, as I heard in the far away years,
(Ere fancy’s young dream had been melted in tears),
A strain from a harp, floating over to me,
From a cloud-bannered sky, bending down to the sea,
Where golden-crowned angels could plainly be seen
With robings of white, in the glimmering sheen.
Then Heaven was near, and the curtain of blue
So thin, that at sunset the glory shone through;
Those silken illusions, inflated with joy,
Phylosophy’s hand has been swift to destroy;
And reason’s keen steel, that’s so cruelly cold,
Has cut thro’ the shimmer of heavenly gold,
And left but the hard-featured science of light
That will not be veiled for a dream of tonight.
Alone.
“Laugh and the world laughs with you;
Weep and you weep alone.”
In her soul’s secret temple she’s standing alone:
Her being’s real self, in the silence will bow;
O’er that altar, once glowing, cold ashes are strown—
Where sunshine once flooded, the shadows fall now.
Away from the world, and alone with her God,
She kneels in this consecrate place and may weep;
This temple, by coarse sandaled grossness, untrod,
Is never unbarred till the world is asleep.
She leaves there her grief, with its shadowy stole,
Concealing her anguish, with trembling and fear;—Must
laugh, tho’ it lines a black scath on her soul,
For the world will not _pay_ for the sigh and the tear.
Aye, leaves there her sackcloth and shuts to the door;
She puts on the mask for the frivolous world
Her frail barque is launched ’mid its tumult and roar—
Unhelmed, thro’ its mammon-cut channels ’tis hurled.
The laugh, the world echoes, grows empty and hard
When the jingle of gold is the mirth-stirring power;
The soul is, by Avarice, shrivelled and scarred
When it barters for pottage, a heavenly dower.
God fits us, thro’ suffering, for Sympathy’s needs;
’Tis warring with wrong that will win for the Right;
Oft Sorrow’s lone path, to His ripe vineyard, leads—
Christ gave us, through Gethsame, heavenly light.
Go work in His vineyard wherever ’tis needed
And earnestly work for the sake of the need;
Be Fame’s fickle promise forever unheeded,
Unknown, in thy labor, the miser’s low greed.
Night.
Thro’ azure paths fair Venus comes with golden bars
To close the gates of Day. The twilight’s dusky stole
Is lightly spangled o’er with heaven’s brightest stars;
Soon Night will bring her countless ones whose ceaseless roll
Thro’ boundless depths of space, repeat creation’s song.
Thus canopied by God’s omnipotence, outspread,
The earth doth lull and soothe her surging, restless throng
With brooding calm. Sleep’s poppied sweets for toil are shed.
When strife is hushed to rest, by Nature’s drowsy hum
And barter’s dins are stilled—its flaunting ensigns furled,
When, drugged with Somnus’ wines, earth’s noisy crowds are dumb
And stillness spreads her slumber-robe, so softly o’er the world,
’Tis joy to watch Night’s queenly orb, climb up the eastern stair,
And pour her flood of silver light o’er hills and bowers,
That in the sacred silence gleam, so radiant and fair,
In glistening robes of green and dewy, fragrant flowers.
All hail, blest hour of cool repose, when Labor’s chains
That bind the mind, thro’ all the day, to weary tasks
Are loosed! Ay, now, the soul, in freedom from their pains,
May drink from founts of pure supernal joy. It basks
In glories which the night o’er earth and sky hath strown.
Compassion sweet, the dewy coolness doth impart
And dreamy perfumes, by the balmy breezes blown,
Are evening’s sweet acopic, when she folds us to her heart.
Disappointment.
We plant sometimes a tender flower—
Watch and wait through sun and shower;
Mark its tiny leaflets, green,
Then, the upward shoot between,—
Springing, springing, tendrils clinging,
Hopes like cherubs round it winging
Whispering of the blooming time.
Watch the buds burst thro’ their sheathing,
Beauty’s promise, round them wreathing,
Dream of fragrance they enfold,
Lovely blooms, almost, behold,
Reach an eager hand for grasping—
Find the tendrils all unclasping—
Withered, ere the blooming time.
Love’s Ideal.
Was there ever a love like the love of my dream?
Love, holy, unselfish, devoted and pure,
Unfailing and sweet as the flow of a stream
Whose source is a spring, that God made to endure.
A love that is LOVE, with no blending of dross;
Where soul, unto soul, giveth strength of its own—
A love that knows never of languor or loss,
Or silently grieves that its _spirit_ has flown.
A love with its possibles nobly fulfilled,
Where heart unto heart is e’er loyal and true,
Where blessing for each, is thro’ kindness distilled—
A rodomel never embittered with rue.
A love that the angels, rejoicing to see,
Would guard in life’s paths from the harpies that roam;
Peace, Happiness, Charity,—loveliest three—
Would make, for such lovers, a Heaven of Home.
A Legend of the Lily.
Abroad, June moon was brightly beaming
In the depths of heaven’s blue,
While the asphodels were bending
With the clinging beads of dew,
When the silver rays in silence,
Glinting thro’ the swaying trees,
Saw a modest flower turning
To a roving, balmy breeze.—
Heard the zephyr softly whisper:
“Ah! my Lily, charming, sweet—
Sure the god of love has led us
In this bowery place to meet;
Richest odors I will bring you
From the islands of the sea;
Aye, your beauty has enchained me—
Will you give your heart to me?”
With a touch exquisite, subtile,
Then he turned to his, her face;
In her blush of deeper crimson,
That she faltered, he could trace.
“I have sought you—will you trust me?
Faithful as the stars I’ll be—
With your fragrant breathings, answer,
Will you give your love to me?”
Frail the flower, tranced enraptured
By the lover’s soft caress,
To his tender wooing answered,
With impulsive rashness,—“yes.”
Then, exultant, zephyr gloried
In the treasure he had won—
Deftly stole her sparkling jewels,
Sharing with the rising sun.
Brushed the spangles from her tresses
With his playful finger tips,
Bolder grew with his caresses—
Gathering sweetness from her lips;
Robbed her beauty of the freshness
That was hers in early morn—
Left her ’neath the sun of noonday,
Burning like the gaze of scorn.
Drooping as in heat of censure
Evening found her in the dust,
Lifted her with tearful pity
From the blight of trampled trust;
But the tender flush of loving
From her face was blanched and gone,
Yet a beauty, born of trial,
Met the radiant glow of dawn.
Now for her the moon is shining
With a calm and holy light;
Dew-like gems of rarest beauty
Sparkles on her brow at night;
With her white face turned toward heaven
In her vestal robe she stands,
As a priestess, at an altar,
Lifting consecrated hands.
Chastest forms of beauty round her—
Stars that gem the vaulted blue
Join with her in silent warning,—
“Let thy love be pure and true—
Trusting e’en the black-browed storm-cloud,
With its leaping lightning-blaze,
Rather than the rover’s whisper,
Neath the moon’s enchanting gaze.”
To James Newton Mathews.[2]
Must write a sonnet!—ere the Poet’s rank,
With its devouring hopes, I dare to claim—
Ere I with them may seek a place or name—
Ere I may taste Castalia’s fount, where drank
The bards of eld, or find the flowery bank
Of clear Penneus, flashing back the flame
Of sunset fires. Thro’ moorlands, low and dank,
Alone, must grope, unlit by torch of fame.
Tho’ Poesy should stir my soul to song
That flowed like liquid tenderness along,
Or, wild and glad as leaping forest rills—
Tho’ Nature’s music thro’ my being thrills
And Imagery, with all her fairy throng,
My dreamy world of thought and vision fills,—
Alas! I’m doomed—this stanza is a line too long.
[2] “You must write a Sonnet to gain a Poet’s diploma.”—J. N. M.
The Great Hereafter.
Will the wrongs of life be righted,
Fruited there the hopes here blighted,
In the great hereafter?
Will the darkened lives be lighted
And dissevered souls united
In the great hereafter?
Will this wearing, wild commotion
Sink to rest and sweet emotion
Calm all strife hereafter?
Will love’s slighted, fond devotion
Reach beyond life’s tossing ocean
To the great hereafter?
Will the vows here lightly broken
With repentant tears be spoken
In the great hereafter?
The wounded one accept the token
Of the heart’s remorse unspoken
In the great hereafter?
Gladly from its idols turning
Will the soul forget its yearning
In the great hereafter?
Thro’ a quickened sense discerning
That the labors we’ve been spurning
Keep love’s holy incense burning
In the great hereafter?
Shall we find that hopes deceiving
Helped us on to grand achieving
In the great hereafter?
And be blest with glad receiving
What is now but faith, believing
In the great hereafter?
Will the soul that’s drunk the vial
Of a bitter self-denial
Feel the loss hereafter?
Or, thro’ sacrifice and trial,
Will it triumph o’er Belial,
In the great hereafter?
Will the bands by dogmas riven
Scathed and scarred by anger levin,
Make a peaceful, joyous Heaven
In the great hereafter?
For the good for which they’ve striven
Will their errors be forgiven
In the great hereafter?
There, with pomp, his work resuming
Will the bigot, still presuming,
God’s prerogative assuming
In the great hereafter,
Sit as judge, his brother dooming,
And with creed-lit torch reluming
Fires of torture “unconsuming,”
Through the great hereafter?
Will the Wrong, the Right assailing,
Wring from suffering helpless wailing
In the great hereafter?—
Conquered Good, with banners trailing,
Seeking streams for Hope’s regaling,
Be mirage-lured, till faint and failing,
Faith becomes a phantom, sailing
Through the great hereafter?
Or, shall our spirit eyes beholding
God’s mysterious plans unfolding
In the great hereafter,
See His strength the Right upholding
And his love the weak enfolding
In the great hereafter?
Struggling here with opposition,
Gives, perchance, the strong volition
Some may need for angel mission,
In the great hereafter;
And the ills of life’s condition,
To the tried may bring fruition
Of a joyous, sweet elysian
In the great hereafter.
What has seemed Fate’s unfair dealing,
May unveil, a joy revealing
In the great hereafter:
Though denying our appealing,
Made in agony of feeling,
God may still, with love’s own healing,
_Higher destiny, be sealing_
For the Great Hereafter.
Late October.
The night was black—the dismal rain
First dripped from sullen, inky clouds,
And then was dashed against the pane,
By winds that shrieked like demon crowds;
When, on the midnight’s ebon breast,
The storm, a moment, lulled to rest,
I heard this low, half stifled moan
With sorrow braided in the tone—
“Who cares for me? Who, who?”
The lurid lightning’s fitful glare
Lit all the far, horizon’s rim—
It showed the walnut, stripped and bare,
And clutching one great, leafless limb
Sat something weird, of dusky form;
Defenceless, in the pelting storm,
She faced alone that angry sky—
October’s voice seemed in the cry,
“Who cares for me? Who, Who?”
With rush and wrench an angered fiend
The loosened shutters clanged and swung,
His single stroke the grove had preened
And wide its deadened branches flung,
And from the wide, o’er-hanging eaves
He tore the crimson ivy leaves
And wildly whirled them on the blast—
The phantom murmured, as they passed,
“Who cares for me? Who, Who?”
The maples writhed as, tempest torn,
Their branches beat the gables high,
And, in the storm’s dark bosom borne,
Mad thunders bellowed thro’ the sky.
She spurned the spruce, with stately form,
Whose robes of green might shield and warm,
And yet, like sobbing on the gale,
Was monotoned that dismal wail,
“Who cares for me? Who, Who?”
Again the leaping lightnings glared,
The wind swept down the clinging vines,
In twisting gusts the trees were bared,
It rocked and tossed the rasping pines;
Unmoved, amid the tempest there,
And as the wraith of grim despair,
Still clutched the limb, that dusky form,
Repeating to the driving storm,
“Who cares for me? Who, who?”
The arbor gleamed with tangled vines,
Where, erstwhile, hung, ’mid emerald sheen,
The clustering wealth of unpressed wines;
And charms of scarlet, gold and green,
With opulence of fruit and grain,
Poured riches for October’s reign;
Now, conquered, robbed, usurped her throne,
Her sorrow welling in the moan,
“Who cares for me? Who, who?”
* * * * *
The morning sun is mocking cold—
The vanquished queen stands, pale, forlorn,
Her gauzy veil of dream and gold,
And royal robes, all rent and torn,
With bannered glories, trampled down,
To bring her victor’s sparkling crown.
She feebly smiles and passes on
To join the old October’s, gone—
November wails—“Who cares.”
On the Beach.
O, tell me, rolling, tossing billow,
Where thy place of rest may be!—
Who shall find, and who peruse them,
Were these lines consigned to thee!
Will the wild winds catch and carry,
’Mid the waves tumultuous roar,
Leaving them where golden glory
Flames along the sunset shore?
Pillowed on thy throbbing bosom
_Where_ will this wee, waifling drift?
Will an eager hand stretch for it,
Thinking some strange tale to lift—
A record brief of direst peril
In a storm-wrecked sinking ship—
The moment when all hope had left them—
The tale ne’er told by human lip?
Or, will thy rolling, rocking cradle
Hold the casket unrevealed,
Till thy wrenching, prying fingers
Hath its secrets all unsealed?—
Dropping then the worthless trifle
Where wealth’s storm-wrecked treasures lie,
In thy mystic, wave-worn caverns,
Hidden aye, from mortal eye.
Hidden.
Oft the heart is full of weeping
When no tears escape the lids;
Bravely will stands guard o’er feeling
And the tell-tale flow forbids,
And for love of those who love us
Every sign of sorrow hides,
Counterfeiting joy and gladness
Where in secret, grief abides.
Though we try to gild with sunshine
Thorny paths we needs must tread,
Hiding, ’neath a show of courage,
That we go with shrinking dread—
Tho’ we hush the sob of mourning
For the strong true love we knew,
Yet affection’s sacred altar
With forget-me-nots we strew.
Every sentient heart holds hidden,
From the gaze of prying eyes,
All its sorrows. E’en its raptures
From such sharing it denies.
Love of some and dread of others
Shut the heart with bolts and bars;
We shrink to wound our loving dear ones—
We dread the sympathy that jars.
But, when night is darkly brooding
Over earth with raven wings,
Feeling may, with unseen fingers,
Sweep the spirit’s trembling strings.
Then, within its secret chamber,
May the heart’s own words be said—
There alone, with Love’s one taper,
All its bitter tears may shed.
My Robins Are Gone.
My robins are gone—
The last one has flown;
With a pang in my breast
I look into the nest
And know I’m forever alone.
The night will come in thro’ the crimsoning west,
Repeating that lesson of pain—
“The robin that once has flown out of the nest
Seeks never its shelter again.”
My robins are gone, etc.
O, glad was my heart with its fullness of love
When fondly I cared for them all,
But now I’m alone, in the shadowy grove,
And they are too far for recall.
My robins are gone, etc.
The world was so wide, and the skies were so blue,
They tempted my darlings away;
In the bright, dewy morning so buoyant they flew,
Nor dreamed of the noon-heat of day.
My robins are gone, etc.
I’ll stay by the lonely, embowered, old nest—
Some stars will beam down thro’ the night;
I’ll hush my heart’s cry with a “God knoweth best,”
And wait for the dawn of the light.
Tho’ my robins are gone,
Tho’ the last one has flown,
They’ll think of the tree
That is sheltering me,—
They’ll be to me ever my own.
Winterbloom.
Oh! beautiful winterbloom, why did you tarry?
O, why in Spring’s glory of budding and bloom,
Were hidden your jewels, wee, golden and starry,
To open them now, in November’s chill gloom?
The crocuses first heard the warm breezes calling,
The dandelions glowed in their emerald sea
And lilies, sun-kissed, in the lakelets were lolling—
All Flora’s enchantments were beckoning thee.
When June, in soft airs, swung her rose-freighted censer,
And dew gems were set with the buttercup’s gold—The
annual bloom, growing brighter and denser—
Why still, from the summer, your beauty withhold?
“When Spring in her gladness poured beauty around you,
And joy bells rang with most musical tone,
When opulent Summer with riches had crowned you,
My coming had then been unheeded, unknown.
Now flowers of springtime and summer have left you,
The winter’s foreclosure has shadowed the home—
Of the last clinging leaves the cold winds have bereft you—
As a friend in Adversity, now I am come.”
The Old Home.
The empty hammock, in the grove,
The playful breeze is swinging—
Wild birds, of varied note and plume,
In Babel jargon singing,
Come boldly near my silent door,
And e’en the woodland thrushes
Pour forth for me, their floods of song,
In sweet, melodious gushes.
And nearer still, the squirrels come,
Among the walnuts leaping,
And gather in their winter stores
Without the toil of reaping.—
The tennis plot is overgrown
With long, untrodden grasses—
Above it hangs, from unpruned boughs,
Their foliage wealth in masses.
The lichens lengthen on the trees—
They blotch, with gray, the fences
And prove decadence is of years,
Whatever our pretenses;
The storm-worn roof and gables all
Suggest inceptive mosses—
The ample house, with silent rooms,
Hope’s argosy and losses.
The shrubs that once bore stately bloom
Are now a bushy tangle,
Where tribes of beetles, thro’ the spring,
O’er blighted beauty wrangle;
And goldenrod, with kindly grace,
Hides, with her shining tassels,
Neglected spots, where once was built,
Young Fancy’s airy castles.
The bell, that called the dinner hour
With deep, revibrant clanging,
Is woven round with maple boughs,
Its stranded rope, down-hanging,
Has won a morning-glory bloom
To twine its frayed out fringes,
And trumpet vine creeps o’er the gate
To hide its broken hinges.
Now silence reigns where once was heard
The ring of childish laughter;—
They’ll come no more—“our little boys”—
In all the years hereafter;
Yet winds oft join with listless mood
To cheat me with the seeming—
A dimpled hand tugs at the latch—
But ah! ’twas only dreaming.
They’re out upon the field of Life
Where blades of strength are clashing,
Where true and false contend for aye
With thought’s bright spear-points flashing,
And we must hush love’s hunger-cry
And still the selfish yearning—
Must hide the heart’s fond worship, tho’
Its altar fires are burning.
But mother-love can make her strong
To check her own heart’s throbbing,
And bid them go with steady voice
While _self’s_ in secret, sobbing;
Then she will whisper broken words
Alone with God in prayer,
And find that heavenly blessing falls
For every cross we bear.
Thought.
Backward, backward Thought has traveled,
Back into the dim unknown,
When the spheres in cosmic star-dust
Circled His eternal throne—
Back where cosmogonic darkness,
Wrought upon by Spirit light,
Yielded elemental centers
And protoplastic satellite.
Back, where first creative forces,
By impulsion from “The Cause,”
Start the universe in motion,
Guided by unerring laws—
Hurl the spheric fiery masses
Thro’ abysmal depths of space—
Meting out to each an orbit
With defined, unchanging place.
Thought, from thence, fares down the aeons
Thro’ the long chaotic night,
While His omnipresent agents
(Each a vast deific might)
Fashion to His will and purpose
Thro’ infinitude of spheres;
In our own group change evolving
Till Earth’s infant life appears—
Till creation felt Time’s fullness,
Surging thro’ unmeasured night,
That should rend the swathe of vapors
With command—“Let there be Light—”
Felt the rolling, tossing tumult
Of the fierce, internal sweep
When the thunder-toned volcanos
Lifted lands from shoreless deep.
Then, from formless void emerging,
Earth spread wide her fields and hills,
Woke the untrod glooms with music
Of her new-born leaping rills;—
Then the firmament, in grandeur,
Lit its unveiled depths of blue
With the moon in full-orbed beauty
And the young stars beaming through.
And the sunshine thrilled earth’s bosom,
Quickened germ-imprisoned life—
Soon the hillsides and the valleys
Were with floral beauty rife;—Forests
robed the mountain ranges,
Bound their sun-crooned brows with green,
While the mighty, sea-fed rivers
Rolled in majesty between.
* * * * *
Farther on in Life’s gradations
He who tuned the spheric roll,
Back in Nature’s barred Arcana,
Gave and clothed the human soul.
Hush, oh thought, nor dare to question
_How_ creative laws adjust!
Canst thou comprehend Jehovah
Or the elemental “dust?”
Here, oh spirit, rest with child-faith;
Covet not forbidden things.
LIFE, the vainly sought for secret,
Proof, to us, of Godhood brings—
Of the Infinite, beyond us—
Far beyond the grasp of mind;—
Kneeling, trusting, here we worship
God—Jehovah, Undefined.
Columbus.
O’er the stormy, pathless seas,
Nobly proud, the Genoese
To a shadowed realm sailed;
With a will to brave and bear,
Sought he chance to do and dare,
’Mid the perils he must share
That Earth’s grandeur be unveiled.
Pilgrims sailed to lighted shores,
Hope and Home with open doors,
But thro’ dusky deeps, unknown,
Boldly this explorer plowed,
Facing danger’s darkling crowd
And Fate’s looming, gestant cloud,
From the waste of waters blown.
Heaven gave to him a soul
Finely fashioned to control
With a wondrous spirit might—
That should sweep of doubt and fear,
Broad and bright, a pathway clear—
By it lift a hemisphere
Into Freedom’s joyous light.
Purpose, daring were sublime—
His the crowning deeds of Time;
Life, for others’ gain, was spent
Opening Earth’s great treasure-doors—
Half a world with Bounty’s stores—
Mountains, rich in precious ores—
Caves with sparkling gems besprent.
Justice gave unquestioned claim
To the highest niche of Fame,
But what recompense was Spain’s?
She, thro’ craven sons of lust,
Honor stabbed, with feigned distrust—
Trampled his great soul in dust,
Scorned and loaded him with chains.
Now she comes to steal his bones:
Earth revile! In thunder tones
Tell the tale of wrong and shame;
Write this edict out in flame—
In the hemisphere he gave,
(Which he begged might be his grave)
She, of Greed, the wasted slave,
Shall have nevermore a name.
Transcriber’s note
Poem titles were originally printed in a stylized, “Gothic”-variety
typeface (think New York Times masthead). Fonts which are a reasonable
approximation of this, and which this ebook will display if you have
them installed, include Old English Text MT, Chomsky, Cloister Black,
Old London.
The following probable printer errors were corrected.
Page 47, “i ngering” changed to “lingering” (I’m lingering now)
Page 89, “Indnite” changed to “Infinite” (lighted with Infinite love)
Page 98, “temptest” changed to “tempest” (by sorrow’s tempest shaken)
Page 104, “Chrstians” changed to “Christians” (When Christians are one)
Page 149, “Queiscent” changed to “Quiescent” (Quiescent in that blest
repose)
Page 178, “prsence” changed to “presence” (I knew that a presence had
surely been there)
Page 191, “herafter” changed to “hereafter” (beyond life’s tossing
ocean / To the great hereafter)
Page 197, “Wtih bannerd” changed to “With bannered” (With bannered
glories)
Page 198, “rollng” changed to “rolling” (thy rolling, rocking cradle)
Page 200, “shrniking” changed to “shrinking” (That we go with shrinking
dread)
Page 209, “satelite” changed to “satellite” (And protoplastic satellite)
Page 209, “unchangnig” changed to “unchanging” (With defined, unchanging
place.)
Page 210, “Lfited” changed to “Lifted” (Lifted lands from shoreless
deep.)
Page 211, “migthy” changed to “mighty” (mighty, sea-fed rivers)
Punctuation, hyphenation, and word spacing errors were amended without
further note.
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