University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Son of a sire whose heart beat ever true
To God, to country, and the fireside love
To which returning, like a homing dove,
From each high duty done, he gladly flew,
Complete, yet touched by genius through and through,
The lofty qualities that made him great,
Loved in his home and priceless to the state,
By Heaven's grace are garnered up in you.
Be yours, we pray, the dauntless heart of youth,
The eye to see the humor of the game,
The scorn of lies, the large Batavian mirth;
And, past the happy, fruitful years of fame,
Of sport and work and battle for the truth,
A home not all unlike your home on earth.

ATAVISM

O beauteous daughter of a mighty race!
In thy fair features and thy radiant eyes—
Like bright clouds floating over brighter skies—
The shadows of a glorious past we trace.
Framed in the oval of thy perfect face
Flit the pale belles of bygone centuries;
A hint of lawgivers and jurists lies
In that pure brow where strength is wed with grace.
And looking on thy profile's symmetry
A world-famed face across my memory comes,—
'Neath the slouched hat a watching eagle's eye,
Where down the dusty line goes riding by,
With blare of trumpets and hoarse growl of drums,
Tecumseh Sherman marching to the sea.

TWILIGHT ON SANDUSKY MARSH

Low in the west the moon's slim crescent swings.
Across the marsh the vesper breezes bear
The sounds of gloaming; from far cornfields fare
The chittering blackbirds, whose ingathering brings
The silken flutter of a myriad wings.
The wild duck's cry floats down the thickening air
As of one hunted, full of fear and care.
Sad twilight comes with dubious whisperings.
How changed from that exultant world which lay
In the wide smile of noon! The evening's shiver
Means the day's death; its thronging whispers blend
With thoughts that haunt men when their lives must end.
Another dawn may gild a fairer day,
But this day, when it dies, is gone forever.

SORRENTO

The mirthful gods who ruled o'er Greater Greece
Created this fair land in some high mood
Of frolic joy; the smiling heavens brood
Over a scene soft-whelmed in jocund peace.
Gay clamors, odorous breathings never cease
From basking crag, lime grove, and olive wood;
Swart fishers sing from out the sparkling flood
Where once the syrens sang in luring ease.
The curved beach swarms with brown-skinned boys and girls
Dancing the tarantella on the sands,
Their limbs alive with music's jollity;
And ever, where the warm wave leaps and swirls
With glad embrace clasping the bowery lands,
Breaks the tumultuous laughter of the sea.

PÆSTUM

Two thousand years these temples have been old.
Yet were they not more lovely the first day,
When o'er yon hills the young light blushed and lay
Along the tapering columns, and eve's gold
Over the Tyrrhene sea in glory rolled.
By power of truth, by beauty's royal sway,
While men, and creeds, and kingdoms pass away,
Their gift to charm and awe they calmly hold.
Beauty and truth! by that high grace divine
They force the tribute of the vassal years;
Clouds gloom, the blue wave dimples, the stars shine
To make them fairer; even Time that tears
And shames all other things, here can but bless
And beautify this crumbling loveliness.

THANATOS ATHANATOS

(DEATHLESS DEATH)

At eve when the brief wintry day is sped,
I muse beside my fire's faint-flickering glare—
Conscious of wrinkling face and whitening hair—
Of those who, dying young, inherited
The immortal youthfulness of the early dead.
I think of Raphael's grand-seigneurial air;
Of Shelley and Keats, with laurels fresh and fair
Shining unwithered on each sacred head;
And soldier boys who snatched death's starry prize,
With sweet life radiant in their fearless eyes,
The dreams of love upon their beardless lips,
Bartering dull age for immortality;
Their memories hold in death's unyielding fee
The youth that thrilled them to the finger-tips.

NIGHT IN VENICE

Love, in this summer night, do you recall
Midnight, and Venice, and those skies of June
Thick-sown with stars, when from the still lagoon
We glided noiseless through the dim canal?
A sense of some belated festival
Hung round us, and our own hearts beat in tune
With passionate memories that the young moon
Lit up on dome and tower and palace wall.
We dreamed what ghosts of vanished loves made part
Of that sweet light and trembling, amorous air.
I felt—in those rich beams that kissed your hair,
Those breezes, warm with bygone lovers' sighs—
All the dead beauty of Venice in your eyes,
All the old loves of Venice in my heart.

PEACE

AFTER STUART MERRILL

Trembling of purple banners in the fight,
Wild neigh of horses in destruction's path,
Howling of trumpets answering yells of wrath,
Dim eyes where slowly fades the living light;
And on the plains, the ghastly heaped up death
O'er which the guns thunder their dull refrain;
And summer is shamed and autumn grieves in rain,
And carnage breathes abroad a hateful breath.
Back! O thou nightmare of the tired world's rest!
The Spring sees blooming at the mother's breast
Pink mouths of babes with cooing laughter rife;
While from the valley to the mountain springs,
Amid the rustle of zephyrs and of wings,
Sound, like young heart-beats, all the bells of Life.

LOVE'S DAWN

In wandering through waste places of the world,
I met my love and knew not she was mine.
But soon a light more tender, more divine,
Filled earth and heaven; richer cloud-curtains furled
The west at eve; a softer flush impearled
The gates of dawn; a note more pure and fine
Rang in the thrush's song; a rarer shine
Varnished the leaves by May's sweet sun uncurled.
To me, who loved but knew not, all the air
Trembled to shocks of far-off melodies,
As all the summer's rustling thrills the trees
When spring suns strike their boughs, asleep and bare.
And then, one blessed day, I saw arise
Love's morning, glorious, in her tranquil eyes.

HELEN'S STAR STONE

There was a red star stone, old poets feign,
Hung on the neck of Helen, the most fair
Of women, the world's wonder; gathering there,
Dripped ever one bright drop of blood; like rain
That ere it falls blows into mist again.
The crimson gout melted to roseate air,
And that divine white bosom, proudly bare,
Of all the woe it cost bore never a stain.
So you, serene and beauteous lady, rove
'Mid throngs of luckless ones who gaze and die.
And not a tremor of heartbreak, not a sigh
Nor strangling sob of strong men whelmed in love
Avails your calm heart by one beat to move
Or dims the cloudless heaven of your eye.

A CHALLENGE

The luminous pages of all story prove
High love hath ending in heroic woe;
Sharp-fanged and fell, dark death doth ever go
In waiting for the wandering feet of love.
And if that fate be shunned, love's footsteps move
Down the dull slope that leads to regions low
Where the thick pulse of ease and wont beats slow
As in some dusk and poppy-haunted grove.
Shall we accept, or shall we not defy,
Entrenched in our fast love, this augury?
Never shall I less than adore thee, Sweet!
No use, my queen, shall dim thy radiant crown.
And if, in envy, death shall strike me down,
Let his dart find me here, kissing thy feet!

LOVE AND MUSIC

I gazed upon my love while music smote
The soft night air into glad harmony;
Lapt on the ripples of a silver sea,
I heard the bright tones rapturous dance and float.
Hearing and sight were wed; each flattering note
Meant some perfection of my love to me.
Caressed by music, it was bliss to see
Her form, white-robed, the jewel at her throat,
Her glimmering hands, her dusky, perfumed hair,
Her low, clear brow, her deep, proud, dreaming eyes,
Bent kindly upon me, her worshiper;
The dulcet, delicate sounds that shook the air—
As if love's joy rained from the starlit skies—
Seemed all sweet, inarticulate thoughts of her.

OBEDIENCE

The lady of my love bids me not love her.
I can but bow obedient to her will;
And so, henceforth, I love her not; but still
I love the lustrous hair that glitters over
Her proud young head; I love the smiles that hover
About her mouth; the lights and shades that fill
Her star-bright eyes; the low, rich tones that thrill
Like thrush-songs gurgling from a vernal cover.
I love the fluttering dimples in her cheek;
Her cheek I love, its soft and tender bloom;
I love her sweet lips and the words they speak,
Words wise or witty, full of joy or doom.
I love her shoes, her gloves, her dainty dress;
And all they clasp, and cling to, and caress.

COMPENSATION

Pindar, the Theban, sang to Hieron
In Doric verse, rich as rough-hammered gold,
The Immortals deal to men, now as of old,
Two ill things for one good. These words, forth blown
From such a trumpet, through the ages groan
A note of misery. And yet I hold
That though they deal us evils manifold
We owe the High Powers gratitude alone.
For one good may be worth a thousand ills;
And all the sum of wretchedness that fills
The travailing earth, the sea, the arching blue
Cannot exceed the wealth of joy that lies
In sweet, low words, in smiles and loving eyes—
Cannot compare with love, if love be true.

ESTRELLA

My love is like a planet in the sky
Whereon a star-seer bends his reverent gaze,
Waiting for those bright moments when its rays
Flame out in beauty; then his raptured eye
May trace its light and shadow; he may try
To pluck in shreds its rainbow-tinted blaze;
But still unknown and vague the planet stays
Throned in the luminous blue, serene and high.
I, though I love and wonder, may not know.
Too lofty for me is that magic lore.
A sacred mystery folds evermore
The thoughts that make her deep eyes flash and glow,
The meaning of that slow smile's dazzling shine,
The sweet, proud lips no kisses can make mine.

INFINITE VARIETY

In my one love are many loves entwined;
Each hour makes me unfaithful to the last;
The beauty present dims the beauty past;
Of her worst rivals is her self combined.
When she is pale, in her dear cheek I find
The fairest shade on earth was ever cast;
And if she blush, that hue is not surpassed
In roses ruffled by the wanton wind.
Sometimes her sweet lips droop to a purpose sad;
Then all my soul in loving sympathy
Burns to dispel her sadness with a kiss;
And when they flash and curve in laughter glad,
Around the corners of her mouth I see
A swarm of hovering loves, sporting in bliss.

TO ONE ABSENT

Only a week ago, heaven bent so near
It bartered greetings with the jocund earth,
The sweet June day was lived with love and mirth,
A world of verdure laughed in summer cheer.
And when night came its charm was doubly dear;
Under that opulent moon joy knew no dearth;
All beautiful and gracious things had birth
In your eyes' cherishing light;—for you were here.
Now all that glow of life is vanished; lorn
The world lies under the cold gleam of morn.
Withered and shrinking in the spectral blue
Hangs the sad moon, a pale and shuddering ghost
Of all that glory in your absence lost—
Fading and waning, love, for lack of you.

SLEEP

I bless the power of this charmed summer night,
I bless its magic and its mystery,
Which in ecstatic visions brings to me
The worshiped presence of my soul's delight.
Mine eyes are sealed, but on my clearer sight
Her heaven-bright features shine more radiantly,
Her sweet voice with a richer melody
Enchants the dark, more luminous than light.
I miss the sense of daylight's haunting ills,
Bathed in this lambent tide of sleep and love;
I only see one dazzling image beam,
Shrined in a rosy universe of dream,
Fairer than Dian bending tranced above
The sleeping shepherd on the Latmian hills.

EUTHANASIA

Take from my hand, dear love, these opening flowers.
Afar from thee they grew, 'neath alien skies
Their stems sought light and life in humble wise,
Fed by the careless suns and vagrant showers.
But now their fate obeys the rule of ours.
They pass to airs made glorious by thine eyes.
Smit with swift joy, they breathe, in fragrant sighs,
Their souls out toward thee in their last glad hours,
Paying leal tribute to a brighter bloom.
Thus, and not other, is the giver's fate.
Through years unblest by thee, a cheerless path,
A checkered maze of common glare and gloom,
He came to know in rapture deep though late
How thou couldst brighten life and gentle death.

A PRAYER IN THESSALY

A lover prayed to Eros in this wise:—

ACCIDENTS

A vision seen by Plato the divine:
Two shuddering souls come forward, waiting doom
From Rhadamanthus in the nether gloom.
One is a slave—hunger has made him pine;
One is a king—his arms and jewels shine,
Making strange splendor in the dismal room.
“Hence!” cries the judge, “and strip them! Let them come
With nought to show if they be coarse or fine.”
Of garb and body they are swift bereft:
Such is hell's law—nothing but soul is left.
The slave, in virtue glorious, is held fit
For those blest isles of peace where just kings go.
The king, by vice deformed, is sent below
To herd with base slaves in the wailing pit.