Songs, Merry and Sad [1]
Like heaven's own smile, will bless
The harvest of your happy lives
With store of happiness.
May you, who, flankt about with flowers,
Will plight your faith to-day,
Hold, evermore enthroned, the love
Which you have crowned in May;
And Time will sleep upon his scythe,
The swallow rest his wing,
Seeing that you at autumntide
Still clasp the hands of spring.
To Melvin Gardner: Suicide
A flight of doves, with wanton wings,
Flash white against the sky.
In the leafy copse an oriole sings,
And a robin sings hard by.
Sun and shadow are out on the hills;
The swallow has followed the daffodils;
In leaf and blade, life throbs and thrills
Through the wild, warm heart of May.
To have seen the sun come back, to have seen
Children again at play,
To have heard the thrush where the woods are green
Welcome the new-born day,
To have felt the soft grass cool to the feet,
To have smelt earth's incense, heavenly sweet,
To have shared the laughter along the street,
And, then, to have died in May!
A thousand roses will blossom red,
A thousand hearts be gay,
For the summer lingers just ahead
And June is on her way;
The bee must bestir him to fill his cells,
The moon and the stars will weave new spells
Of love and the music of marriage bells --
And, oh, to be dead in May!
Away Down Home
'T will not be long before they hear
The bullbat on the hill,
And in the valley through the dusk
The pastoral whippoorwill.
A few more friendly suns will call
The bluets through the loam
And star the lanes with buttercups
Away down home.
"Knee-deep!" from reedy places
Will sing the river frogs.
The terrapins will sun themselves
On all the jutting logs.
The angler's cautious oar will leave
A trail of drifting foam
Along the shady currents
Away down home.
The mocking-bird will feel again
The glory of his wings,
And wanton through the balmy air
And sunshine while he sings,
With a new cadence in his call,
The glint-wing'd crow will roam
From field to newly-furrowed field
Away down home.
When dogwood blossoms mingle
With the maple's modest red,
And sweet arbutus wakes at last
From out her winter's bed,
'T would not seem strange at all to meet
A dryad or a gnome,
Or Pan or Psyche in the woods
Away down home.
Then come with me, thou weary heart!
Forget thy brooding ills,
Since God has come to walk among
His valleys and his hills!
The mart will never miss thee,
Nor the scholar's dusty tome,
And the Mother waits to bless thee,
Away down home.
For Jane's Birthday
If fate had held a careless knife
And clipped one line that drew,
Of all the myriad lines of life,
From Eden up to you;
If, in the wars and wastes of time,
One sire had met the sword,
One mother died before her prime
Or wed some other lord;
Or had some other age been blest,
Long past or yet to be,
And you had been the world's sweet guest
Before or after me:
I wonder how this rose would seem,
Or yonder hillside cot;
For, dear, I cannot even dream
A world where you are not!
Thus heaven forfends that I shall drink
The gall that might have been,
If aught had broken a single link
Along the lists of men;
And heaven forgives me, whom it loves,
For feigning such distress:
My heart is happiest when it proves
Its depth of happiness.
Enough to see you where you are,
Radiant with maiden mirth!
To bless whatever blessed star
Presided o'er your birth,
That, on this immemorial morn,
When heaven was bending low,
The gods were kind and you were born
Twenty sweet years ago!
A Secret
A little baby went to sleep
One night in his white bed,
And the moon came by to take a peep
At the little baby head.
A wind, as wandering winds will do,
Brought to the baby there
Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew
Out on some hill somewhere.
And wind and flower and pale moonbeam
About the baby's bed
Stirred and woke the funniest dream
In the little sleepy head.
He thought