Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Of Nature.

THE GUTTER—A CITY IDYL.

You are welcome, dusky cloud,
With your bosom swelling;
And your tears—their patter cheers
All my dusty dwelling:

And the gutter sudden wakes
In a thousand voices;
O, the song that rings along
Where the rill rejoices!

I am happy for the sight,
Joining your carouses,
Brook and I go laughing by
All the dripping houses.

You'll excuse us for the noise,
And our haste and flurry?
We must fly, for soon we die,
That is why we hurry.

I am here because I like
Just this sort of weather;
Brook takes me for company—
Down we go together.

Ha! this life's a merry one,
Though a thoughtless scorner
Cries, “The tomb is full of gloom,
Down upon the corner.”

What if all its life is brief—
Born of such a shower—
Running through a block or two,
Dying in an hour?

There is something still beyond—
Death is nothing surer—
Brook will flow, and ever grow
Softer, sweeter, purer,

Till the sun doth draw it hence,
T'wards its quenchless taper;
It will rise into the skies
As a silver vapor.

As it floateth in the air—
Merciful its slumber—
Then again is born the rain
Of that cloud of umber.

But the brook is growing still—
Is the rain abating!
In a breath will sudden death
Take it at the grating.

You would hardly know it now
For its faintest mutter—
A shriveled tongue that laps among
The cobbles in the gutter.

VESPERS.

The poppies nod their sleepy brows,
And reel adown the opiate air;
The somber lilies slowly rouse,
And fold transparent hands in prayer.

The climbing roses whisper soft
Sweet messages; the four-o'clocks
Are drowsy now—but far aloft
I see the watchmen-hollyhocks.

The Moslem-lilacs seem to call
On “Allah” through the red sunset;
They rise upon the turret-wall
Of every leafy minaret.

The stately tulips at this hour
Forget their pride. With good intent
The haughty dahlias yield their dower—
The dusky peony-queens relent.

A thousand lights are swung in view
From heaven's dome. I leave the fair
Meek violets kneeling in the dew;
It is the evening hour of prayer.

DUSK.

Smoldering in heat
Beyond the blue hill,
His mission complete,
At the Deity's feet,
When the evening is still,
The Sun, prone and lowly,
At Angelus kneeling;
But partly revealing,
Yet not hiding wholly
A shrine and Christ crucified,
Borne aloft tenderly,
With lovers side by side
Telling a rosary.

In the violet East,
All dripping with dew,
Above the long, high,
Purple mountains, that lie

By the vail of the night
And the valley of dreams,
Half dark and half light,
With a flood of bright beams,
The moon steals in view.
The murmur has ceased
In the field and the forest;
The bee and the bird
No longer are heard;
The flocks are not bleating;
My cares that were sorest—
My pains that were fleeting,
Are gone, or at rest;
As blessings entreating,
I linger repeating
My “Ave Maria”—so happy, so blest,
With cross on my forehead and cross on my breast.

THE BUTTERFLY.

Thou little beauty, wafted by
Upon the summer's gentle sigh;
What art thou? Tell me, pray!
A sunbeam wandering from the sky,
That earthward found its way?

A gorgeous flower, too rudely blown?
A beautiful bright birdling, flown
From some enchanted coast—
A winged mosaic, that hath known
More art than man can boast?

Spring's sudden flying brought to view
Thy form, among the moss that grew
Along the garden wall;
I saw thee as thou didst renew
The fleeces of thy pall.

And from the homely commonplace
Of thy crude life I now can trace
Thy fair and wondrous powers;
I learn the secret of the grace
That brightens my dull hours.

When folded in the noiseless gloom—
Lo! the shut portals of thy room
At last were opened wide—
Sunlight had cleft the sealéd tomb
Where beauty did abide.

May not the homely thought we find
Among the rudest of our kind
Yet serve an end complete,
If chance it be but choicely lined,
As was thy winding sheet?

For so a poem will forsake
Its little hiding cell, to wake
In life's delicious pain,
When sunshine of the heart shall break
The chrysalis of the brain.

IN THE DESERT.

I.
BEDOUIN IN AMBUSH.

Seven hawks, in dismal disarray,
Across a sky of slaty gray,
Now dusking with the dusking day.

The sun low down, and almost hid
Beneath a vapory, dull lid,
Over against a pyramid.

One cluster of incessant green,
Three slender palms that tower and lean—
A crouching sentinel between.

No hissing breath upon the lip—
No stir in poised knee and hip—
No quiver from the finger tip;

But, pointing from the fatal lair,
The lithe wrist glued about the bare,
Dull-gleaming rifle's livid glare.

And slow, with wearisome slow limb,
A caravan approaching him
With fringe of shadows long and slim.

II.
BEDOUIN ABROAD.

A sky of glimmering, cool steel,
But barely serving to reveal
The desert where the camels kneel.

An awkward buzzard on the wing;
Above one star in filmy ring;
While lower ranks are hovering

By pots of delicate, spiced flesh;
Abundant fruits in silken mesh;
And jars of oil, and olives fresh;

And costly vestments of the Kahn,
Despoiled with bloody mare and man—
The remnants of a caravan.

Against the sky-rim, silvery,
One motionless, tall cocoa-tree;
The pyramids in angles three.

And yonder, where the morning lowers,
The fleet-winged flying-horseman scours
T'ward Ghizeh and her shining towers.

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