Songs, Merry and Sad [4]
In simple, modest womanhood
Clad, as was meet, in white,
The fairest flower of all, she stood
Amid the softest light.
It had been worth a perilous quest
To see the court she drew, --
My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
My lily moist with dew;
Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
The gay throng let us be,
To see her turn at last and reach
Her white hands out to me.
Tommy Smith
When summer's languor drugs my veins
And fills with sleep the droning times,
Like sluggish dreams among my brains,
There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,
Idle as clouds that stray through heaven
And vague as if they were a myth,
But in these rhymes is always given
A health for old Bluebritches Smith.
Among my thoughts of what is good
In olden times and distant lands,
Is that do-nothing neighborhood
Where the old cider-hogshead stands
To welcome with its brimming gourd
The canny crowd of kin and kith
Who meet about the bibulous board
Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.
In years to come, when stealthy change
Hath stolen the cider-press away
And the gnarled orchards of the grange
Have fallen before a slow decay,
Were I so cunning, I would carve
From some time-scorning monolith
A sculpture that should well preserve
The fame of old Bluebritches Smith.
Before Bedtime
The cat sleeps in a chimney jam
With ashes in her fur,
An' Tige, from on the yuther side,
He keeps his eye on her.
The jar o' curds is on the hearth,
An' I'm the one to turn it.
I'll crawl in bed an' go to sleep
When maw begins to churn it.
Paw bends to read his almanax
An' study out the weather,
An' bud has got a gourd o' grease
To ile his harness leather.
Sis looks an' looks into the fire,
Half-squintin' through her lashes,
An' I jis watch my tater where
It shoots smoke through the ashes.
"If I Could Glimpse Him"
When in the Scorpion circles low
The sun with fainter, dreamier light,
And at a far-off hint of snow
The giddy swallows take to flight,
And droning insects sadly know
That cooler falls the autumn night;
When airs breathe drowsily and sweet,
Charming the woods to colors gay,
And distant pastures send the bleat
Of hungry lambs at break of day,
Old Hermes' wings grow on my feet,
And, good-by, home! I'm called away!
There on the hills should I behold,
Sitting upon an old gray stone
That humps its back up through the mold,
And piping in a monotone,
Pan, as he sat in days of old,
My joy would bid surprise begone!
Dear Pan! 'Tis he that calls me out;
He, lying in some hazel copse,
Where lazily he turns about
And munches each nut as it drops,
Well pleased to see me swamped in doubt
At sound of his much-changing stops.
If I could glimpse him by the vine
Where purple fox-grapes hang their store,
I'd tell him, in his leafy shrine,
How poets say he lives no more.
He'd laugh, and pluck a muscadine,
And fall to piping, as of yore!
Attraction
He who wills life wills its condition sweet,
Having made love its mother, joy its quest,
That its perpetual sequence might not rest
On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet;
For reason moves with cautious, careful feet,
Debating whether life or death were best,
And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest
In many a heart which life hath set to beat.
But I will cast my fate with love, and trust
Her honeyed heart that guides the pollened bee
And sets the happy wing-seeds fluttering free;
And I will bless the law which saith, Thou must!
And, wet with sea or shod with weary dust,
Will follow back and back and back to thee!
Love's Fashion
Oh, I can jest with Margaret
And laugh a gay good-night,
But when I take my Helen's hand
I dare not clasp it tight.
I dare not hold her dear white hand
More than a quivering space,
And I should bless a breeze that blew
Her hair into my face.
'T is Margaret I call sweet names:
Helen is too, too dear
For me to stammer little words
Of love into her ear.
So now, good-night,