So let them pass, these songs of mine,
Into oblivion, nor repine;
Abandoned ruins of large schemes,
Dimmed lights adrift from nobler dreams,
Weak wings I sped on quests divine,
So let them pass, these songs of mine.
They soar, or sink ephemeral—
I care not greatly which befall!
For if no song I e'er had wrought,
Still have I loved and laughed and fought;
So let them pass, these songs of mine;
I sting too hot with life to whine!
Still shall I struggle, fail, aspire,
Lose God, and find Gods in the mire,
And drink dream-deep life's heady wine—
So let them pass, these songs of mine.
I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myself
Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin
And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds
Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank
And ugly there, I dare forgive myself
That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness.
God knows that yesterday I played the fool;
God knows that yesterday I played the knave;
But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er
With fog of futile sighs and vain regrets?
This is another day! And flushed Hope walks
Adown the sunward slopes with golden shoon.
This is another day; and its young strength
Is laid upon the quivering hills until,
Like Egypt's Memnon, they grow quick with song.
This is another day, and the bold world
Leaps up and grasps its light, and laughs, as leapt
Prometheus up and wrenched the fire from Zeus.
This is another day—are its eyes blurred
With maudlin grief for any wasted past?
A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt!
Let dust clasp dust; death, death—I am alive!
And out of all the dust and death of mine
Old selves I dare to lift a singing heart
And living faith; my spirit dares drink deep
Of the red mirth mantling in the cup of morn.
FLEET across the grasses
Flash the feet of Spring,
Piping, as he passes
Fleet across the grasses,
"Follow, lads and lasses!
Sing, world, sing!"
Fleet across the grasses
Flash the feet of Spring!
Idle winds deliver
Rumors through the town,
Tales of reeds that quiver,
Idle winds deliver,
Where the rapid river
Drags the willows down—
Idle winds deliver
Rumors through the town.
In the country places
By the silver brooks
April airs her graces;
In the country places
Wayward April paces,
Laughter in her looks;
In the country places
By the silver brooks.
Hints of alien glamor
Even reach the town;
Urban muses stammer
Hints of alien glamor,
But the city's clamor
Beats the voices down;
Hints of alien glamor
Even reach the town.
WHERE the singers of Saturn find tongue,
Where the Galaxy's lovers embrace,
Our world and its beauty are sung!
They lean from their casements to trace
If our planet still spins in its place;
Faith fables the thing that we are,
And Fantasy laughs and gives chase:
This earth, it is also a star!
Round the sun, that is fixed, and hung
For a lamp in the darkness of space
We are whirled, we are swirled, we are flung;
Singing and shining we race
And our light on the uplifted face
Of dreamer or prophet afar
May fall as a symbol of grace:
This earth, it is also a star!
Looking out where our planet is swung
Doubt loses his writhen grimace,
Dry hearts drink the gleams and are young;—
Where agony's boughs interlace
His Garden some Jesus may pace,
Lifting, the wan avatar,
His soul to this light as a vase!
This earth, it is also a star!
Great spirits in sorrowful case
Yearn to us through the vapors that bar:
Canst think of that, soul, and be base?—
This earth, it is also a star!
IT shifts and shifts from form to form,
It drifts and darkles, gleams and glows;
It is the passion of the storm,
The poignance of the rose;
Through changing shapes, through devious
ways,
By noon or night, through cloud or flame,
My heart has followed all my days
Something I cannot name.
In sunlight on some woman's hair,
Or starlight in some woman's eyne,
Or in low laughter smothered where
Her red lips wedded mine,
My heart hath known, and thrilled to know,
This unnamed presence that it sought;
And when my heart hath found it so,
"Love is the name," I thought.
Sometimes when sudden afterglows
In futile glory storm the skies
Within their transient gold and rose
The secret stirs and dies;
Or when the trampling morn walks o'er
The troubled seas, with feet of flame,
My awed heart whispers, "Ask no more,
For Beauty is the name!"
Or dreaming in old chapels where
The dim aisles pulse with murmurings
That part are music, part are prayer—
(Or rush of hidden wings)
Sometimes I lift a startled head
To some saint's carven countenance,
Half fancying that the lips have said,
All names mean God, perchance!"
THERE is a legend that the love of God
So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought
Her very maidenhood to holier stuff….
However that may be, the birth befell
Upon a night when all the Syrian stars
Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb
That rose in gradual splendor,
Paused,
Flooding the firmament with mystic light,
And dropped upon the breathing hills
A sudden music
Like a distillation from its gleams;
A rain of spirit and a dew of song!
THE soul of the Spring through its body of earth
Bursts in a bloom of fire,
And the crocuses come in a rainbow riot of mirth….
They flutter, they burn, they take wing, they
aspire….
Wings, motion and music and flame,
Flower, woman and laughter, and all these the
same!
She is light and first love and the youth of the
world,
She is sandaled with joy … she is lifted and
whirled,
She is flung, she is swirled, she is driven along
By the carnival winds that have torn her away
From the coronal bloom on the brow of the
May….
She is youth, she is foam, she is flame, she is
visible Song!
REACH over, my Undine, and clutch me a reed—
Nymph of mine idleness, notch me a pipe—
For I am fulfilled of the silence, and long
For to utter the sense of the silence in song.
Down-stream all the rapids are troubled with pebbles
That fetter and fret what the water would utter,
And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles;
It makes haste through the shallows, its soul is
aflutter;
But here all the sound is serene and outspread
In the murmurous moods of a slow-swirling pool;
Here all the sounds are unhurried and cool;
Every silence is kith to a sound; they are wed,
They are mated, are mingled, are tangled, are
bound;
Every hush is in love with a sound, every sound
By the law of its life to some silence is bound.
Then here will we hide; idle here and abide,
In the covert here, close by the waterside—
Here, where the slim flattered reeds are aquiver
With the exquisite hints of the reticent river,
Here, where the lips of this pool are the lips
Of all pools, let us listen and question and wait;
Let us hark to the whispers of love and of death,
Let us hark to the lispings of life and of fate—
In this place where pale silences flower into sound
Let us strive for some secret of all the profound
Deep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round!
There's as much of God hinted in one ripple's
plashes—
There's as much of Truth glints in yon
dragon-fly's flight—
There's as much Purpose gleams where yonder
trout flashes
As in—any book else!—could we read things
aright.
Then nymph of mine indolence, here let us hide,
Learn, listen, and question; idle here and abide
Where the rushes and lilies lean low to the tide.
"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet and they died."—POPE.
By Tigris, or the streams of Ind,
Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon,
Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned,
Setting tall towns against the dawn,
Which, when the proud Sun smote upon,
Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride;
Their names were … Ask oblivion! …
"They had no poet, and they died."
Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned,
That loll where fellow leopards fawn …
Their hearts are dust before the wind,
Their loves, that shook the world, are wan!
Passion is mighty … but, anon,
Strong Death has Romance for his bride;
Their legends … Ask oblivion! …