University of Virginia Library

FOOTNOTES

A BOOK OF QUATRAINS

TO THE READER

Reader, you must take this verse
As you take to wife a maiden
With her faults and virtues laden—
Both for better and for worse.

DAY AND NIGHT

Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven
That from the East glad message brings:
Night is a stealthy, evil Raven,
Wrapped to the eyes in his black wings.

MAPLE LEAVES

October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers:
Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

A CHILD'S GRAVE

A little mound with chipped headstone,
The grass, ah me! uncut about the sward,
Summer by summer left alone
With one white lily keeping watch and ward.

PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST

This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile,
Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath.
This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while
Laughs in the teeth of Death.

GRACE AND STRENGTH

Manoah's son, in his blind rage malign
Tumbling the temple down upon his foes,
Did no such feat as yonder delicate vine
That day by day untired holds up a rose.

FROM THE SPANISH

To him that hath, we are told,
Shall be given. Yes, by the Cross!
To the rich man fate sends gold,
To the poor man loss on loss.

MASKS

Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise
And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes;
But when, unmasked gay Comedy appears,
How wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears!

COQUETTE

Or light or dark, or short or tall,
She sets a springe to snare them all;
All 's one to her—above her fan
She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.

EPITAPHS

Honest Iago. When his breath was fled
Doubtless these words were carven at his head.
Such lying epitaphs are like a rose
That in unlovely earth takes root and grows.

POPULARITY

Such kings of shreds have wooed and won her,
Such crafty knaves her laurel owned,
It has become almost an honor
Not to be crowned.

CIRCUMSTANCE

Linked to a clod, harassed, and sad
With sordid cares, she knew not life was sweet
Who should have moved in marble halls, and had
Kings and crown-princes at her feet.

SPENDTHRIFT

The fault's not mine, you understand:
God shaped my palm so I can hold
But little water in my hand
And not much gold.

THE TWO MASKS

I gave my heart its freedom to be gay
Or grave at will, when life was in its May;
So I have gone, a pilgrim through the years,
With more of laughter in my scrip than tears.

MYRTILLA

This is the difference, neither more nor less,
Between Medusa's and Myrtilla's face:
The former slays us with its awfulness,
The latter with its grace.

ON HER BLUSHING

Now the red wins upon her cheek;
Now white with crimson closes
In desperate struggle—so to speak,
A War of Roses.

ON A VOLUME OF ANONYMOUS POEMS ENTITLED “A MASQUE OF POETS”

Vain is the mask. Who cannot at desire
Name every Singer in the hidden choir?
That is a thin disguise which veils with care
The face, but lets the changeless heart lie bare.

THE DIFFERENCE

Some weep because they part,
And languish broken-hearted,
And others—O my heart!—
Because they never parted.

ON READING—

Great thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth
Lose half their preciousness, and ever must.
Unless the diamond with its own rich dust
Be cut and polished, it seems little worth.

THE ROSE

Fixed to her necklace, like another gem,
A rose she wore—the flower June made for her;
Fairer it looked than when upon the stem,
And must, indeed, have been much happier.

MOONRISE AT SEA

Up from the dark the moon begins to creep;
And now a pallid, haggard face lifts she
Above the water-line: thus from the deep
A drowned body rises solemnly.

ROMEO AND JULIET

From mask to mask, amid the masquerade,
Young Passion went with challenging, soft breath:
Art Love? he whispered; art thou Love, sweet maid?
Then Love, with glittering eyelids, I am Death.

HOSPITALITY

When friends are at your hearthside met,
Sweet courtesy has done its most
If you have made each guest forget
That he himself is not the host.

HUMAN IGNORANCE

What mortal knows
Whence come the tint and odor of the rose?
What probing deep
Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

FROM EASTERN SOURCES

MEMORIES

Two things there are with Memory will abide,
Whatever else befall, while life flows by:
That soft cold hand-touch at the altar side;
The thrill that shook you at your child's first cry.

EVIL EASIER THAN GOOD

Ere half the good I planned to do
Was done, the short-breathed day was through.
Had my intents been dark instead of fair
I had done all, and still had time to spare.

FIREFLIES

See where at intervals the firefly's spark
Glimmers, and melts into the fragrant dark;
Gilds a leaf's edge one happy instant, then
Leaves darkness all a mystery again!

PROBLEM

So closely knit are mind and brain,
Such web and woof are soul and clay,
How is it, being rent in twain,
One part shall live, and one decay?

ORIGINALITY

No bird has ever uttered note
That was not in some first bird's throat;
Since Eden's freshness and man's fall
No rose has been original.

KISMET

A glance, a word—and joy or pain
Befalls; what was no more shall be.
How slight the links are in the chain
That binds us to our destiny!

A HINT FROM HERRICK

No slightest golden rhyme he wrote
That held not something men must quote;
Thus by design or chance did he
Drop anchors to posterity.

PESSIMISTIC POETS

I little read those poets who have made
A noble art a pessimistic trade,
And trained their Pegasus to draw a hearse
Through endless avenues of drooping verse.

POINTS OF VIEW

Bonnet in hand, obsequious and discreet,
The butcher that served Shakespeare with his meat
Doubtless esteemed him little, as a man
Who knew not how the market prices ran.

THE GRAVE OF EDWIN BOOTH

In narrow space, with Booth, lie housed in death
Iago, Hamlet, Shylock, Lear, Macbeth.
If still they seem to walk the painted scene,
'T is but the ghosts of those that once have been.

QUITS

If my best wines mislike thy taste,
And my best service win thy frown,
Then tarry not, I bid thee haste;
There 's many another Inn in town.