University of Virginia Library

QUATRAINS.

“FOR THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY.”

Ay, every day the rain doth fall,
And every day doth rise:
'T is thus the heavens incessant call,
And thus the earth replies.

THE MAST.

The winds that once my playmates were
No more my voice responsive hear,
Nor know me, naked now and dumb,
When o'er my wandering way they come.

A STONE'S THROW.

Lo, Death another pebble far doth fling
Into the midmost sea,
To leave of Life an ever-widening ring
Upon Eternity.

LOVE'S AUTOGRAPH.

Once only did he pass my way.
“When wilt thou come again?
Ah, leave some token of thy stay!”
He wrote (and vanished) “Pain.”

RENEWAL.

Each Hagar month beholds her waning moon
Upon the desert night,
Like Ishmael, a famished wanderer, swoon
From darkness into light.

PREJUDICE.

A leaf may hide the largest star
From Love's uplifted eye;
A mote of prejudice out-bar
A world of Charity.

THE BUBBLE.

Why should I stay? Nor seed nor fruit have I.
But, sprung at once to beauty's perfect round,
Nor loss, nor gain, nor change in me is found,—
A life-complete in death-complete to die.

O'ERSPENT.

My soul is as a fainting noonday star,
And thou, the absent night;
Haste, that thy healing shadow from afar
May touch me into light.

IMAGINATION.

Here Fancy far outdoes the deed;
So hath Eternity the need
Of telling more than Time has taught
To fill the boundaries of Thought.

RUIN.

A power beyond Perfection's dream is thine,—
A shadow that the dwindling shape outgrows
Of substance, like a vast horizon-line
Receding as the Fancy onward goes.

BECALMED.

The bar is crossed: but Death—the pilot—stands
In seeming doubt before the tranquil deep;
The fathom-line still trembling in his hands,
As when upon the treacherous shoals of sleep.

TO THE SPHINX.

Ah, not alone in Egypt's desert land
Thy dwelling-place apart!
But wheresoe'er the scorching passion-sand
Hath seared the human heart.

DISCREPANCY.

One dream the bird and blossom dreamed
Of Love, the whole night long;
Yet twain its revelation seemed,
In fragrance and in song.

POETRY.

A gleam of heaven; the passion of a Star
Held captive in the clasp of harmony:
A silence, shell-like breathing from afar
The rapture of the deep,—eternity.

SAP.

Strong as the sea, and silent as the grave,
It ebbs and flows unseen;
Flooding the earth—a fragrant tidal wave—
With mist of deepening green.

SLEEP.

What art thou, balmy sleep?
“Foam from the fragrant deep
Of silence, hither blown
From the hushed waves of tone.”

THE PYRAMIDS.

Amid the desert of a mystic land,
Like Sibyls waiting for a doom far-seen,
Apart in awful solitude they stand,
With Thought's unending caravan between.

FORMATION.

Whate'er we love becomes of us a part;
The centre of all tributary powers—
Our life is fed from Nature's throbbing heart,
And of her best the fibred growth is ours.

THE PROMONTORY.

Not all the range of sea-born liberty
Hath ever for one restless wave sufficed:
So pants the heart,—of all compulsion free,—
Self-driven to the Rock, its barrier, Christ.

STARS.

Behold, upon the field of Night,
Far-scattered seeds of golden light;
Nor one to wither, but anon
To bear the heaven-full harvest, Dawn.

WHISPER.

Close cleaving unto Silence, into sound
She ventures as a timorous child from land,
Still glancing, at each wary step, around,
Lest suddenly she lose her sister's hand.

THE SUN.

He prisons many a life indeed
Within the narrow cells of seed,
But cannot call them forth again
Without the sesame of rain.

THE SUNBEAM.

A ladder from the Land of Light,
I rest upon the sod,
Whence dewy angels of the Night
Climb back again to God.

ALTER EGO.

Thou art to me as is the sea
Unto the shell;
A life whereof I breathe, a love
Wherein I dwell.

REFLECTION.

Like stars that in the waves below
With heaven's reflected splendor glow,
The flowers, in all their glory bright,
Are shadows of a fairer light.

ESTRANGEMENT.

What kindly Absence hid, forsooth,
Thy Presence late hath shown;
That, like a garment worn in youth,
I am, alas, outgrown!

BEETHOVEN AND ANGELO.

One made the surging sea of tone
Subservient to his rod:
One, from the sterile womb of stone,
Raised children unto God.

THE SHADOW.

O shadow, in thy fleeting form I see
The friend of fortune that once clung to me.
In flattering light, thy constancy is shown;
In darkness, thou wilt leave me all alone.