A Child of the People And Other Poems. By James Chapman Woods |
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 | A Child of the People |  |
105
APOLOGIA.
O linked with cycling forms of change,—
Tides, tempests, seasons, shadow, shine,—
O body-bridled to the range
Of death and that, why hold it strange
No nobler songs are thine?
Tides, tempests, seasons, shadow, shine,—
O body-bridled to the range
Of death and that, why hold it strange
No nobler songs are thine?
We may not utter what we could;
Voiceless our fieriest thoughts must wait,
May-be, for nature's millionth mood:
And if it comes in time, why good;
Oftener it cometh late.
Voiceless our fieriest thoughts must wait,
May-be, for nature's millionth mood:
And if it comes in time, why good;
Oftener it cometh late.
This song the sun drew; that the rain:
One blossomed in a field of flowers:
You the blank void of a bare plain
Voiced with its yearning; fairer grain
Ripens in fairer hours.
One blossomed in a field of flowers:
You the blank void of a bare plain
Voiced with its yearning; fairer grain
Ripens in fairer hours.
Alas! more oft the frolic day
Unfriends our spirit-preludings,
And thought must burn itself away,
And frustrate life's melodious lay
Shriek on the snapping strings.
Unfriends our spirit-preludings,
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And frustrate life's melodious lay
Shriek on the snapping strings.
Or, if the music match the time,
Nature's next mask so soon is on,
That, like enough, we clang the chime,
Trip here or stumble, lest the rhyme
End not ere this be gone.
Nature's next mask so soon is on,
That, like enough, we clang the chime,
Trip here or stumble, lest the rhyme
End not ere this be gone.
Last Spring my heart for songs found room
Of life, that somewhere might be more,
Born of wild lilies round a tomb:—
Fell one sad hour of dripping gloom;—
My songs fell dead before.
Of life, that somewhere might be more,
Born of wild lilies round a tomb:—
Fell one sad hour of dripping gloom;—
My songs fell dead before.
Oh, could we lift the last disguise
And see the very face a breath,
Whose, whose would be the changeless eyes?
In ours what sudden sharp surprise,
Full face with Truth or Death!
And see the very face a breath,
Whose, whose would be the changeless eyes?
In ours what sudden sharp surprise,
Full face with Truth or Death!
Dying, have done; or, freed with fire
From taint of change, our songs be born
One with the universal choir,—
Voiced with the heart o' the world's desire
Like Memnon with the morn!
From taint of change, our songs be born
One with the universal choir,—
Voiced with the heart o' the world's desire
Like Memnon with the morn!
| A Child of the People | |