Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Her Portrait

 
Were I an artist, Lydia, I
Would paint you as you merit,
Not as my eyes, but dreams, descry;
Not in the flesh, but spirit.
 
 
The canvas I would paint you on
Should be a bit of heaven;
My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn
And night and starry even.
 
 
Your form and features to express,
Likewise your soul's chaste whiteness,
I'd take the primal essences
Of darkness and of brightness.
 
 
I'd take pure night to paint your hair;
Stars for your eyes; and morning
To paint your skin—the rosy air
That is your limbs' adorning.
 
 
To paint the love-bows of your lips,
I'd mix, for colors, kisses;
And for your breasts and finger-tips,
Sweet odors and soft blisses.
 
 
And to complete the picture well,
I'd temper all with woman,—
Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell,
To show you still are human.
 

A Song for Yule

I

 
Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way,
And the bells peal out, 'Tis Christmas Day;
The world is better then by half,
For joy, for joy;
In a little while you will see it laugh—
For a song's to sing and a glass to quaff,
My boy, my boy.
So here's to the man who never says nay!—
Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas-Day!
 

II

 
Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow,
And homes are hung with mistletoe;
Old Earth is not half bad, I wis—
What cheer! what cheer!
How it ever seemed sad the wonder is—
With a gift to give and a girl to kiss,
My dear, my dear.
So here's to the girl who never says no!
Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe!
 

III

 
No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong
When the soul of a man walks out with song;
Wherever they go, glad hand in hand,
And glove in glove,
The round of the land is rainbow-spanned,
And the meaning of life they understand
Is love, is love.
Let the heart be open, the soul be strong,
And life will be glad as a Christmas song.
 

The Puritans' Christmas

 
Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew naught of holiday?—
 
 
A log-church in the clearing
'Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.
 
 
No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.
 
 
They deemed it joy sufficient,—
Nor would Christ take it ill,—
That service to Himself and God
Employed their spirits still.
 
 
And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And souls made strong to shape a World,
And tame a solitude.
 
 
A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.
 
 
A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.
 
 
With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.
 
 
For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.
 
 
For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.
 
 
Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And lacking these—how otherwise
For us had been this day!
 

Spring

(After the German of Goethe, Faust, II)

 
When on the mountain tops ray-crowned Apollo
Turns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart,
Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats follow
Glad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.
 
 
Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains;
And slope and vale and meadowland grow green;
While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains,
Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.
 
 
With measured stride, deliberate and steady,
The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep,
But shelter for th' assembled herd is ready
In many hollows that the walled rocks heap:
 
 
The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places,
In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse!
Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces,
Tree, crowding tree, lifts high its heavy boughs.
 
 
Old forests, where the gnarly oak stands regnant
Bristling with twigs that still repullulate,
And, swoln with spring, with sappy sweetness pregnant,
The maple blushes with its leafy weight.
 
 
And, mother-like, in cirques of quiet shadows,
Milk flows, warm milk, that keeps all things alive;
Fruit is not far, th' abundance of the meadows,
And honey oozes from the hollow hive.
 

Lines

 
Within the world of every man's desire
Three things have power to lift his soul above,
Through dreams, religion, and ecstatic fire,
The star-like shapes of Beauty, Truth, and Love.
 
 
I never hoped that, this side far-off Heaven,
These three,—whom all exalted souls pursue,—
I e'er should see; until to me 't was given,
Lady, to meet the three, made one, in you.
 

When Ships put out to Sea

I

 
It's "Sweet, good-bye," when pennants fly
And ships put out to sea;
It's a loving kiss, and a tear or two
In an eye of brown or an eye of blue;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
 

II

 
It's "Friend or foe?" when signals blow
And ships sight ships at sea;
It's clear for action, and man the guns,
As the battle nears or the battle runs;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
 

III

 
It's deck to deck, and wrath and wreck
When ships meet ships at sea;
It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,
And hull and turret a roaring hell;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
 

IV

 
It's doom and death, and pause a breath
When ships go down at sea;
It's hate is over and love begins,
And war is cruel whoever wins;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
 

The "Kentucky"

(Battleship, launched March 24, 1898.)

I

 
Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
In the battle's dread eclipse,
When she opens iron lips,
When our ships confront the ships
Of the foe,
May each word of steel she utters carry woe!
Here's to her!
 

II

 
Here's to her, who, like a knight
Mailed of old,
From far sea to sea the Right
Shall uphold.
May she always deal defeat,—
When contending navies meet,
And the battle's screaming sleet
Blinds and stuns,—
With the red, terrific thunder of her guns.
Here's to her!
 

III

 
Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
Like a beacon, like a star,
May she lead our squadrons far,—
When the hurricane of war
Shakes the world,—
With her pennant in the vanward broad unfurled.
Here's to her!
 

Quatrains

I

Moths and Fireflies

 
Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells
I know her tricks—These are not moths at all,
Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles
Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.
 

II

Autumn Wild-Flowers

 
Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.
 

III

The Wind in the Pines

 
When winds go organing through the pines
On hill and headland, darkly gleaming,
Meseems I hear sonorous lines
Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming.
 

IV

Opportunity

 
Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss
As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise;
Only when he hath passed her is it his
To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.
 

V

Dreams

 
They mock the present and they haunt the past,
And in the future there is naught agleam
With hope, the soul desires, that at last
The heart pursuing does not find a dream.
 

VI

The Stars

 
These—the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,
In which he reads his blessing or his curse—
Are syllables with which God speaks His name
In the vast utterance of the universe.
 

VII

Beauty

 
High as a star, yet lowly as a flower,
Unknown she takes her unassuming place
At Earth's proud masquerade—the appointed hour
Strikes, and, behold, the marvel of her face.
 

Processional

 
Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.
 
 
There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.
 
 
There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.
 
 
There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.
 
 
There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.
 
 
Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.
 
 
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:—
 
 
He has read how good and evil,—
In creation's wild upheaval,—
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.
 
 
He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.
 
 
Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.
 
 
These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed them all at last?
We shall pass as they have past.
 
 
Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?
 
 
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.