University of Virginia Library

APPENDIX III.
UNPUBLISHED POEMS OF THE CONNOR MANUSCRIPT

THE TREE

Thou art the blessed Tree
Whose fruit proclaimeth thee,
O Mother mine!
For never laden bough
Such burden bore as thou,
O Love Divine.

MY STEWARDSHIP

Lord, what Thou lendest me is Thine;
Nor less beneath Thy care,
For that Thy bounty makes it mine
Love's heritage to share.

DREAMS

Our dreams but tell the thoughts of those
Around us; e'en as water shows
The images upon it thrown
In lights and shadows not its own.

THE ACORN

Of myriads, but one hath found
The sesame that opes the ground,
And shows the hidden treasury
Of all the wealth that makes a tree.

(THE MESSAGE OF THE GRASS)

Give me Thyself to see
In what is least to me:
That as I pass
Each blade of grass
That points above
May cry aloud, “O Love,
The light is Thine alone,
The shadows all my own.”

THE TREE

To me the trembling Adam fled in shame
From God's avenging eye;
To me the Christ, a sinless victim, came
For Adam's guilt to die.

TO THE NEW MOON

Thou lookest on the lonely place,
To find no more the sleeping face,
Nor kiss again the crescent brow—
Thy fairer counterpart till now.

SEPARATION

To leave what most we love, in loneliness,
To know our absence in some heart will make
E'en love itself a sorrow for our sake—
Ah, whose the weight of heavier distress?

LINES

As the petals fall away
Briefer grows the autumn day;
When the blossoms come again,
Longer will the light remain.

EGLANTINE

SECOND CHILDHOOD

Since such alone can of Thy kingdom be,
A little child Thou comest unto me;
Then whatsoe'er of second birth the pain,
Make me, O Lord, a little child again.

MATURITY

Talk not of childhood's thoughtless joy!
I would not be again a boy
For all that boyhood brings;
The callow fledgling in the nest
Is not of birds supremely blest
As he that soars and sings.

DOMUS AUREA

Behold the living “House of Prayer”
Above the waves uplifted; where
The Bird of heaven, no more to roam,
Henceforth forever hath His home
Within the maiden heart that heard
And mothered God's Eternal Word.

AN ALIEN

I saw in heaven, the hovering wings beneath,
A Shade unbanished by the Light above:
What is thy name? “The messenger of Love—
The friend of all who passed yon portal—Death.”

WHEAT

Christlike falls the golden grain;
Christlike doth it rise again;
Christlike, as our daily food,
One with us in flesh and blood.

THE SWORD OF SIMEON

Blest be the sword that cleft her heart in twain!
Else had the “pondered word” forever lain
Within the temple of her soul concealed,
Whose wound the thoughts of many a heart revealed:
Yea, to the source from whence the waters flow
The spear that smites the fountain-Rock must go.

BONDAGE

Cries Death, “O Man, thy liberty,
What boots it! Low thou bowest the knee
Subservient to masters three—
Thy conquerors—Pain, Age, and Me.

COBWEB

A fairy canopy it seems,
By magic fingers spread;
Whence, suddenly, our vanished dreams
At flush of morning, fled.

“OMNIPOTENCE IN BONDS”

Thou that couldst ne'er be bound
Canst nevermore be free:
So close about Thee wound
Is our humanity.
As well desert Thy Father's throne
As Mary's Motherhood disown.

THE ORIGIN OF TEARS

When Eve, the twilight heavens to view,
Her eyes, like twin-born violets blue,
Upraised—the angel of the Dew
Bestowed his blessing, ere he knew.

TO A SON IN CHRIST

Ye Angels, lo, an angel unto you,
His Guardians, I commend.
Behold him, white in baptismal dew,
Nor blush to call him friend.

LEAR'S FOOL

A bird that twitters where storm-treachery
Hath fanged the oak, whose nest-supporting limb,
Death-smitten, droops compassionate for him
As for its own unsceptered majesty.

MORNING-GLORIES

ALFRED TENNYSON

The voice that late with music thrilled
The world, in silence now is stilled.
Or is our loss the larger gain
Of worlds new-wakened to his strain?

TENNYSON

'Twas fit that with the falling year
He too should fall;
That he, when Nature heeds, should hear
The homeward call;
That leaves autumnal o'er his bier
Bespread the pall,
For in their funeral train appear
The thoughts of all.

TOO LATE

Sighed a poet when his fame
After fifty winters came
And the Editors were asking for his rhyme:
Alas, I've lost my chance
As a hero of romance,
For I've lived just thirty years beyond the time!

SIGNIFICANCE

Nothing is vain: a stifled sigh
Life's passion pang betrays:
One glance of Love's prophetic eye
Eternity surveys.

SOLICITUDE

No mother minds so tenderly
Her babe, to mirror back its smiles,
As moves the never-resting sea
About a slumbering isle.

BEYOND

TOMORROW

Upon thy face alone no trace
Of Time, no touch of sorrow;
No shade of night upon the light
That floods thy soul, sweet Morrow.

GARNERED

The tints that fly the autumn leaves,
The leaves that fly the tree,
Anon the Wizard Winter weaves
In blossoms yet to be.

EXTORTION

Amid the stores of Opulence,
If Courtesy is scant,
'Twere cruel to exact from thence
What would increase the want.

LONELINESS

Dead in the desert! with the great white moon
Above him and around him wastes of sand,
The seed of endless centuries, so soon
Escaped the struggles of a nerveless hand.

TO A DEAD THRUSH

Though Silence shuts the gate of Song,
I keep thereof the key,
And hear thee warbling still among
The groves of Memory.

THE PHANTOM WRAITH

ATTAR OF ROSES

SELF-SACRIFICE

Lo, all I have is Thine—
My wealth, my poverty.
Ne'er canst thou, Lord, resign
Of Self so much to me:
For, giving Thou hast more;
But I, henceforth, am poor.

THE MORNING STAR

The latest beacon spark
Upon the western way
To guide thro' shallowing dark
The silver sails of Day.

DESMOS

I am Thy captive; break Thou not my chain;
Beyond my dungeon all is death to me.
Here must my soul, Love's prisoner, remain;
Bondage alone is life and liberty.

BLIND

THE WRAITH

WHERE ARMIES MET

I heard the distant summons loud
To battle, from the crested Cloud,
The vaunting trumpet of the Gale,
The rattling musketry of Hail,
The sobbing of the Rain, and lo!
The silence of the shrouding Snow.

CHRIST THE MENDICANT

TRANSMISSION

'Tis one by one we come and go;
'Tis one by one we stand or fall;
'Tis one by one the All we know,
And one by one He comes to all.

THE GLEANER

Lo, silence, like a roving bee
Upon her daily round,
To fill the hive of memory
Despoils each blossom-sound,
And winters, as the past devours
Whate'er the present yields,
The promise of immortal flowers
For time's unfallowed fields.

MY SERVANT

If what unto the least I do,
I do it unto thee,
Then in the least, O Lord, I view
Thy service unto me.

DIVORCE

Time was when Faith and Reason trod
With wedded hands the ways of God,
But now, Love's sacrament denied,
What God hath joined doth Man divide.

SNOWDROPS

As a blossom of the light
Drifted downward through the night,
From the darkness far below
Came her counterpart of snow.

SACRIFICE

The dusky mother of the rosy morn
Dies at its birth, contented to depart;
As sorrow from the precincts of the heart
When, flushed with tears, the man-child joy is born.

SUCCESSORS

UNFETTERED

The winds are wailing, and I cannot sleep;
What would ye, wandering sisters? Free to go
Where'er ye list, and yet no happier so
Than in the limits of Life's dungeon-keep?

MOLOKAI

The heaven's clean space above it and around
The one expanse whereon no stain can be;
Soothing all else within an Eden bound
Of tropic life but snow-clad leprosy.

RESTORATION

The light may cleave our kindred shades
And banish us apart,
But distance in the darkness fades
And we are heart to heart.

THE MATERNITY

One through Mother Mary, we
With Thy warm humanity;
And through Thee, her only Son,
With our heavenly Father one;
Motherless the world above,
Earth had closer claims of love.

LIFE-SONG

Breathe it must for ecstacy,
Or a stifled blossom die:
Aching silence overgrown
Brings to birth the living tone
Sap-like, evermore to be
One with full-blown memory.

THE RIVER

How calm the silent sister of the sea!
No ripple on her ever-moving breast;
The glass of Time and of Eternity—
Unending motion in unending rest.

THE PASSION

O Night, thou never canst forget
The agony and the bloody sweat
Whereof the mere remembrance yet
Again makes all thy garments wet.

AN ECHO

“Keats! Keats!”
From yonder bush
The startled thrush
This name repeats;
As if he heard
My thought, and fain
Would greet again
His brother-bird.

APRIL

For many a flower that sleeps
The zephyrs sigh in vain,
Till April, Christ-like, weeps
And Lazarus lives again.

THE WIZARD

Spring-like Prospero through all the land
Now waves again his magic wand,
From Winter's long captivity
To set the April-blossoms free.

ON THE HEIGHTS

THE WAY-SIDE TREE

The loiterers in my shade of old
Themselves are shadows now;
Their bodies, mingled with the mold,
Upbreathe to many a bough
The leaves o'ershadowing today
Some fellow-pilgrim on the way
That leads him to the vision blest,
The Holy Sepulchre of Rest.

WORSHIPPERS

The gift of utterance is ours,
Love's service to proclaim;
But in the fragrance of the flowers
There breathes a purer flame.
Abiding in their place of birth,
They cleave unto the sod,
In reverence, nearer unto earth;
In lowliness, to God.

LIGHT IN DARKNESS

I saw thee once in waking light—
A darkness now to me,
Since 'tis alone in dreams of night
That I may gaze on thee.

TWO EPITAPHS

“Love lingers here where Life has fled.”
Where, Death, thy victory?
“Life lingers here where Love is dead.”
Then hail, O Death, to thee!

HARVEST

The powers of heaven plant the weed
That man uproots to set his seed:
So doth the God Incarnate plan
Through Man to feed his fellow-man.

NUNC ET SEMPER

DEFLOWERED

A MEDITATION

'Tis Nothingness that sunders me,
O God, from thine Eternity,
Wherein, a being yet to be,
I dwelt forever one with Thee,
Till twixt Thee and thy living Thought
This veil of Nothingness was wrought—
A gulf thy Love alone could span—
The mystery that made me Man.

FAREWELL!

“Farewell!” The fading day
Still whispers, “Fare thee well.
I go the darkened way
Whence none returns to tell
Of those that thither stray
What fate befell.”

THE WRECK

DELUSION

Thy presence woke me to the pain
Of sympathies apart:
Thy absence bids me dream again
That we are one in heart.

THE HOUR

“Why weepest thou, O twilight gray,
In unavailing sorrow?”
“Alas, I've lost a yesterday
And ne'er shall find a morrow.

UNDER THE TREES

As oft in wandering distress,
Today in solemn thankfulness,
Unto your God and mine
I come with winnowings of prayer,
O sinless suppliants, to share
Your mysteries divine.

TIME'S MEZZOTINT

'Tis in the shadows that we trace
The light of Love's remembered face:
'Tis in the register of Pain
That Life's immortal deeds remain.

THE LARK'S FIAT

How vast the ocean of the dark!
How small the compass of the lark
Whose “Fiat” from the void of night
Awakes the new-created light.

MATER DEI

As Faith, a pilgrim, seeks the tomb
Where once in Death's eclipsing gloom
Her Hope o'erclouded lay;
So Love unto the blessed womb
Where slept her Life's unbudded bloom
Would lowly reverence pay.

THE CHRIST-LIKE SPRING

Wherever thou dost come,
The birds and fountains dumb
Break forth in song;
While groping blossoms blind
Their sight and fragrance find
To hail the throng,
Exulting everywhere,
Of palsied limbs and bare,
Reclothed and strong.

AN EASTER LILY

In vain to seal the sepulchre
The Pilate Death commands;
For, lo, again his prisoner
Within the garden stands.

SLEEP

Another Mary seemest thou to me—
A rainbow span,
Twixt life and death a miracle, as she
Twixt God and Man.

AFTER BEDTIME

BLESSED VIRGIN

Why is the B. V. clad in Blue?

Because when comes no cloud between
My heart and Heaven above
Then wears the firmament serene
The livery of Love.

A MIRACLE

For each hen-turkey slain today
To celebrate Thanksgiving,
Full many a gobbler, strange to say,
Is made among the living.

RESTITUTION

“Did you restore that mangy sow
You stole from Pat McCarthy?”
“Indade I did, and have her now;
And she is fat and hearty.”

POST MORTEM

“When I am dead,” the poet said,
“The world shall read my verses.”
“Then better pray on earth to stay,”
Said one, “and curb the curses.”

SUI GENERIS

He: “I'm not of Adam's lineage bred,
And pedigree will show it.”
She: “Ah, pity 'tis the old man's dead.
'Twould please him so to know it.”

THE EPITAPH

Not dead, but sleeping. So it read.
Said Pat, when he was shown it,
“I would, bedad, if I was dead,
Be man enough to own it.”

ODE TO A PASSION

He slandered me; and I “with eyes of fire,”
Like Collins' Anger, rose and struck the liar.
“You do me wrong,” he muttered with surprise.
“Then,” said I, “thus do I Apollo-gize.”