Poetry

the melody
The silences repeat,
My song is but my longing heart
Pulsated with its beat.

It winds amid the dusky ways
Where far mysteries shine,
To find amid God’s trackless space,
One answering song to mine.

Souvenir

A little hour of sunshine,
A little while of joy,
We winnow in our harvesting
From all the world’s alloy.

None, none, are so benighted,
Who journey up life’s hill,
But have some treasured memory,
Which lives all vibrant still.

Illusions

Who hath not built his castles in the free and open air?
Who hath not dreamed his rosy dreams, more fair than all the fair?
Who hath not seen his castles fall, all scattered to the ground?
Who bears his dream unshattered, from the dream-land where they’re found?

Transpositions

Smiles do not always echo cheer,
Nor tear-drops measure grief,
For sorrow seeks a gilded mask,
And joy in tears, relief.

The Willow

When life is young, without a care,
Alone we walk, and free:
The world, a splendid merry round
Of rhythmic melody.

Before the end, grim sorrow calls
Into each mortal ear,
When friendship fades to memories,
And love lies in its bier.

Then, then it is that sympathy
Is holden close and dear;
Ah, then life’s consolation comes
Commingled with a tear.

Devastation

O love, you have shorn me, and rifled my heart,
You have torn down the shrine from the innermost part,
And through it now rushes a grief, sadly-wild,
That breaks as the plaint of a sorrowing child.

Springtide

All deep there stirs the throb of Spring,
Its vital pulse I’m answering,
Swift to its dominant I merge,
One with its undulating surge;
My heart awakes to virile tone
And breaks⁠—unanswered, and alone.

Gloamtide

The shades of the gloaming around me are stealing,
The lure of the dusk through the silences call,
While blossoming incense comes mutely appealing,
And choiring wood-voices, vespering, fall.
Immersed in the deep of my dim sylvan-bower,
Upborne on the breast of its emerald tide,
I drift with the gleam of the vanishing hour
Afar⁠—where my uttermost longings abide.

Pendulum

I have swung to the uttermost reaches of pain,
’Mid the echo of sighs, and a deluge of rain,
But ah! I rebound to the limits of bliss,
On the rapturous swing of an infinite kiss.

Deluge

A whisper at twilight, a sigh through the night,
A strain of soft music, a perfume so light,
Will sweep as a feather the bulwark of years,
To surges of rapture, or rivers of tears.

Retrospect

Love’s kisses spurned so long ago,
Dead as the years, that o’er them flow;⁠—
And now, my gilded treasuries
Would I might give⁠—for memories.

Glamour

O come while youth’s bright rosy veil
Beguiles your eyes and mine,
Let’s tread the asphodel of bliss,
And drink life’s magic wine:
Soon time will rend the gossamer,
To wisdom’s cruelty,
While we are blind, my love, be kind,
For soon, too soon, we see!

The Return

Again we meet⁠—a flashing glance,
And then, to scabbard, goes the lance,
While thoughts troop on in cavalcade
Adown the wide aisles time has made.

Back in the glow of yesterday,
With tender troth you rode away,
The sheen of rainbows in our eyes,
That swept the rim of other skies.

And now a writhing worm am I,
Beneath a doomed love’s lensing eye,
Let me but stagger, far from sight,
To hide my anguish, in the night.

Love’s Tendril

Sweeter far than lyric rune
Is my baby’s cooing tune;
Brighter than the butterflies
Are the gleams within her eyes;
Firmer than an iron band
Serves the zephyr of her hand;
Deeper than the ocean’s roll
Sounds her heart-beat in my soul.

My Little Dreams

I’m folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.

For time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art⁠—
I’m folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart.

Sonnet to the Mantled

And they shall rise and cast their mantles by,
Erect and strong and visioned, in the day
That rings the knell of Curfew o’er the sway
Of prejudice⁠—who reels with mortal cry
To lift no more her leprous, blinded eye,
Reft of the fetters, far more cursed than they
Which held dominion o’er human clay,
The spirit soars aloft where rainbows lie.

Like joyful exiles swift returning home⁠—
The rhythmic chanson of their eager feet,
While voices strange to ecstasy, long dumb,
Break forth in major rhapsodies, full sweet.
Into the very star-shine, lo! they come
Wearing the bays of victory complete!

Sonnet to Those Who See but Darkly

Their gaze uplifting from shoals of despair
Like phantoms groping enswathed from the light
Up from miasmic depths, children of night,
Surge to the piping of Hope’s dulcet lay,
Souled like the lily, whose splendors declare
God’s mazèd paradox⁠—purged of all blight,
Out from the quagmire, unsullied and fair.

Life holds her arms o’er the festering way,
Smiles, as their faith-sandalled rushes prevail,
Slowly the sun rides the marge of the day,
Wine to the lips sorely anguished and pale;
On, ever on, do the serried ranks sway
Charging the ultimate, rending the veil.

Brotherhood

Come, brothers all!
Shall we not wend
The blind-way of our prison-world
By sympathy entwined?
Shall we not make
The bleak way for each other’s sake
Less rugged and unkind?
O let each throbbing heart repeat
The faint note of another’s beat
To lift a chanson for the feet
That stumble down life’s checkered street.

Let Me Not Lose My Dream

Let me not lose my dream, e’en though I scan the veil with eyes unseeing through their glaze of tears,
Let me not falter, though the rungs of fortune perish as I fare above the tumult, praying purer air,
Let me not lose the vision, gird me, Powers that toss the worlds, I pray!
Hold me, and guard, lest anguish tear my dreams away!

Let Me Not Hate

Let me not hate, although the bruising world decries my peace,
Gives me no quarter, hounds me while I sleep;
Would snuff the candles of my soul and sear my inmost dreamings.

Let me not hate, though girt by vipers, green and hissing through the dark;
I