University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

[I
Cut loose! Hoist sail! Leave the familiar shores]

Cut loose! Hoist sail! Leave the familiar shores
Of life! Drive out on love's enormous wind
Far from the safe small pieties and blind
Tangles of conscience! O set wide the doors
And throw the strong arms open utterly!
Go forth reckless with faith and unresigned,
Thus only seeking shall you surely find
The peril and rapture of true liberty!
Thus only shall divine discoveries
Stretch the vague margins of the conscious soul
And fire the peaks of more inclusive skies;
Thus may we burst the self-created bond
Of sordid fears and hear life's surges roll
On shores of truth that always lie beyond!

[II
Would I were hopeful as the tender leaves]

Would I were hopeful as the tender leaves,
Would I were faithful as the myriad grass,
Kindling conviction in the ways I pass;
Would I believed as every flower believes!
The pale wheat springs and flowers, the golden sheaves
Serve in their turn—the Earth's religion brings
Proof of the power and miracle of things,
That none are infidel and no thing grieves.
No thing in nature grieves and all things die;
Yea! from their burial Life is born anew:
O faithful grass of graves!—perchance when I
Change to the earth's desire, my soul shall take
Thy lesson of faith and joy and still renew
My journey onward for the journey's sake!

[III
The earth is glad of travail and labouring]

The earth is glad of travail and labouring:
The flower the whole sun's kiss is spent upon,
The leaves light, as of sea depths smitten with sun
And musical with incessant murmuring,—
Bound as a girdle, the strong sea's silver ring,
Where thro' and thro' the deep, clear hair of night
Stars tread the chattering tides and swollen with light
Moon walks beneath the slow dawn's fervent wing,—
Earth, sea,—to them the large, fresh, passionate deed
Of life is glad and wise—how wise is faith!
Life's harvest flowers, death sows the exhaustless seed:
We probe the intention till the soul has won
Vista,—awake at last! Yea! journeying on
Equal and wise and free with life and death!

[IV
How long the impassive feet of Time have trod]

How long the impassive feet of Time have trod
The myriads and their monuments to dust!
How long the frailest, loveliest leaves have trust!
How long life urges in the reeking sod!
The flower is witless of a master's rod,
The sunlight warms the unjust with the just,
The he-bird, joyous in his vernal lust,
Carols in native ignorance of God.
And, when the travesty of God's control
And human reason leave us at the last
Naked before the all-receptive Soul,
Incurious of the ends of life and death,
Numb with the monstrous effort of our past,
We pray the bird for joy, the flower for faith.

[V
Most lone and loveliest star, in glimmering spheres]

Most lone and loveliest star, in glimmering spheres
Of twilight hung, as tho' the lids of night,
In one liquescent utterance large as light,
Let fall the delicate silver of her tears;
Monotonous music mute to mortal ears,
Vibrant as birds that cry across the bright
Silence and thro' the distance tense and white,
Where loud as life the incessant dawn appears.
Thou art, O star, how like a conscious soul
Leaving the shadowy shores of life to blend
Deep in the lustre of its native sea!
Or like, in heaven, the pure and liquid toll
Of one unechoing bell to mark the end
Of God's rule and man's infidelity!

[VI
Most lone and loveliest star, in glimmering spheres]

Most lone and loveliest star, in glimmering spheres
Has flowed, and murmuring, teased thine ignorance!
How many a derelict from the winds of chance
Has signaled some unguessed eternity!
The passion and pulse and power of all the sea
Fills the thin foam with fierce significance,
And thro' the sea-moods, to the deeper glance,
Pierces the same intention utterly.
Still, from life's shores to sea-ward, can the soul,
Glimmering in dawn, spread out a wider pool
Of light and vision till shadows flow to flame,
As one by one we dare include the whole
Of human change within our scope, nor school
Our hearts to virtue more than sin and shame.

[VII
Mine is the bellowing, all-receiving sea]

Mine is the bellowing, all-receiving sea,
Mine the long beaches blurred with drifted foam,
Mine the blind earth, the human lights of home,
The midnight shuddering, deepening endlessly.
Mine is the world to-night! Yea! Mine shall be
Vistas and vaster worlds, a certain dower,
When after faith, free love and conscious power,
Soul dares desire its own infinity.
Naught can be asked or given for all is ours:
Ours of all space the cold incessant miles,
Ours of all time the full, unstinting hours;
And ours the sea beyond, that round the warm
Shores of our being whiles will sleep and whiles
Breathe thro' the soul the epic voice of storm.

VIII
THE POET

He comes last of the long processional,
Last of the perfect lovers, doomed as they
To live ever more lonely day by day
By all rejected and condemned by all.
Hands stretch to hold him, passionate voices call,
Bright lips beseech him,—yet he cannot stay.
Treading in the large night his outward way
He learns how much the crowns are spiritual.
His heaven is godless since his faith is whole;
No thing but finds in him a perfect love,
No flower, no star but buds within his soul.
Labor and sleep, the warmth of home belong
To all but him,—he feels instead thereof
His heart's blood smelted to the ore of song.