Songs, Merry and Sad [11]
sweet is life,
Even to the insect piper with his fife!
And must your troubled face still bear the blight
Of strength that runs itself to waste in strife?
For love's own heart should throb through all the light
Of such a night.
The Rattlesnake
Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,
Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,
Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate.
Is 't lure, or warning? Those small bells may sing
Like Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing,
To lead stark life where mailed death is king;
Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill,
Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill,
And life and death fight equal in her will.
The Prisoner
From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
He leaned against his window-bars to rest
And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.
It came with sundown noises from the moors,
Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.
He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
And certain scents stole up across the street
That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.
Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
And watched above the quiet tents of night.
Alas, that the old Mother should not know
How ached his heart to be entreated so,
Who heard her calling and who could not go!
Sonnet
To-day was but a dead day in my hands.
Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,
Mere idle winds above the faded grass.
And I, as though a captive held in bands,
Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands
Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass
And sink into his fabled sea of glass
With glory of farewell to many lands.
Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,
That I have suffered more than pain of toil,
Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,
And they who see new light on beaten ways!
The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars
And stares out into depth on depth of stars!
Folk Song
When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
At evenfall
And voices range
Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,
Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
Like migrant doves,
Wake and give wing
To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.
The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
The ancient charms
Of dew and dusk
Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,
And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
On new men's lips,
Some old song starts,
Made of the music of millennial hearts,
Whereto one listens as from long ago
And learns to know
That one day's tears
And love and life are as a thousand years',
And that some simple shepherd, singing of
His pain and love,
May haply find
His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.
"97": The Fast Mail
Where the rails converge to the station yard
She stands one moment, breathing hard,
And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,
She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,
And out, through the tracks that lead astray,
Cautiously, slowly she picks her way,
And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve,
When she swings her nose to the westward curve,
And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky,
With a bound of speed and a conquering cry.
The hazy horizon is all she sees,
Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees,
Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land,
Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand,
Nor the cots and hamlets that know no more
Than a shriek and a flash and a flying roar;
But, bearing her tidings, she trembles and throbs,
And laughs in her throat, and quivers and sobs;
And the fire in her heart is a red core of heat,
That drives like a passion through forest and street,
Till she sees the ships in their harbor at rest,
And sniffs at the trail to the end of her quest.
If I were the driver who handles
Even to the insect piper with his fife!
And must your troubled face still bear the blight
Of strength that runs itself to waste in strife?
For love's own heart should throb through all the light
Of such a night.
The Rattlesnake
Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,
Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,
Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate.
Is 't lure, or warning? Those small bells may sing
Like Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing,
To lead stark life where mailed death is king;
Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill,
Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill,
And life and death fight equal in her will.
The Prisoner
From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
He leaned against his window-bars to rest
And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.
It came with sundown noises from the moors,
Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.
He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
And certain scents stole up across the street
That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.
Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
And watched above the quiet tents of night.
Alas, that the old Mother should not know
How ached his heart to be entreated so,
Who heard her calling and who could not go!
Sonnet
To-day was but a dead day in my hands.
Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,
Mere idle winds above the faded grass.
And I, as though a captive held in bands,
Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands
Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass
And sink into his fabled sea of glass
With glory of farewell to many lands.
Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,
That I have suffered more than pain of toil,
Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,
And they who see new light on beaten ways!
The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars
And stares out into depth on depth of stars!
Folk Song
When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
At evenfall
And voices range
Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,
Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
Like migrant doves,
Wake and give wing
To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.
The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
The ancient charms
Of dew and dusk
Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,
And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
On new men's lips,
Some old song starts,
Made of the music of millennial hearts,
Whereto one listens as from long ago
And learns to know
That one day's tears
And love and life are as a thousand years',
And that some simple shepherd, singing of
His pain and love,
May haply find
His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.
"97": The Fast Mail
Where the rails converge to the station yard
She stands one moment, breathing hard,
And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,
She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,
And out, through the tracks that lead astray,
Cautiously, slowly she picks her way,
And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve,
When she swings her nose to the westward curve,
And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky,
With a bound of speed and a conquering cry.
The hazy horizon is all she sees,
Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees,
Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land,
Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand,
Nor the cots and hamlets that know no more
Than a shriek and a flash and a flying roar;
But, bearing her tidings, she trembles and throbs,
And laughs in her throat, and quivers and sobs;
And the fire in her heart is a red core of heat,
That drives like a passion through forest and street,
Till she sees the ships in their harbor at rest,
And sniffs at the trail to the end of her quest.
If I were the driver who handles