By Georgia Douglas Johnson.
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Eyes like the violet—in them I see
All that is fair, that is holy to me!
Eyes that shed fragrance, so constant, so true,
Pure as a clear drop of morning dew.
Eyes like the violet, gently along
Lead me to vespers—to prayer and to song.
Eyes like the violet, let me I pray
Live within range of thy glances all day!
Through the land of tribulation,
O’er the river of despair,
When the taut heart snaps with tension,
Fame awaits you, smiling there.
After love has all been wasted,
After every song is sung;
Late—too late, the world will crown you,
Useless! Love and song are done.
I climbed the craggy hill of fame,
Heart-sore and wearily,
Stood on her gleaming goal at length,
And sighed in ecstasy.
“O God,” I cried, “what bliss”—when lo!
Came stealing like a pall,
The strains of Life’s Last Symphony,
In Prelude, to—the call.
Happy youth in joyous laughter,
Wafts me pensively alone
O’er the winding way, where sorrow
Claims the Mantled for her own.
I can hear their voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces,
Through a mist of falling tears!
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
The dreams of the dreamer
Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
To the soul’s hour-glass.
The songs of the singer
Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
’Till it ceases to beat.
The peerless boon of innocence,
The first in nature’s list,
Is fading, ere the rising sun
The world awake has kist.
The early dew upon the grass,
The purity of morn,
The glint that lies in virgin cheek,
Frail cobwebs—of the dawn.
My joy leaps with your ecstasy,
In sympathy divine;
The
