Songs, Merry and Sad [6]
The easier task to do.
But, since from heaven he stoops to breathe
A flower to balmy air,
Surely our lives are not beneath
The kindness of his care;
And, as he guides the blade that gropes
Up from the barren sod,
So, from the ashes of our hopes,
Will beauty grow toward God.
Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life, --
We know but that thou art, --
Thou seest, through all our waste of strife,
One groping human heart,
Weary of words and broken sight,
But moved with deep accord
To worship where thy lilies light
The altar of its Lord.
A Christmas Hymn
Near where the shepherds watched by night
And heard the angels o'er them,
The wise men saw the starry light
Stand still at last before them.
No armored castle there to ward
His precious life from danger,
But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord
Lay in a lowly manger.
No booming bells proclaimed his birth,
No armies marshalled by,
No iron thunders shook the earth,
No rockets clomb the sky;
The temples builded in his name
Were shapeless granite then,
And all the choirs that sang his fame
Were later breeds of men.
But, while the world about him slept,
Nor cared that he was born,
One gentle face above him kept
Its mother watch till morn;
And, if his baby eyes could tell
What grace and glory were,
No roar of gun, no boom of bell
Were worth the look of her.
Now praise to God that ere his grace
Was scorned and he reviled
He looked into his mother's face,
A little helpless child;
And praise to God that ere men strove
About his tomb in war
One loved him with a mother's love,
Nor knew a creed therefor.
When I Go Home
When I go home, green, green will glow the grass,
Whereon the flight of sun and cloud will pass;
Long lines of wood-ducks through the deepening gloam
Will hold above the west, as wrought on brass,
And fragrant furrows will have delved the loam,
When I go home.
When I go home, the dogwood stars will dash
The solemn woods above the bearded ash,
The yellow-jasmine, whence its vine hath clomb,
Will blaze the valleys with its golden flash,
And every orchard flaunt its polychrome,
When I go home.
When I go home and stroll about the farm,
The thicket and the barnyard will be warm.
Jess will be there, and Nigger Bill, and Tom --
On whom time's chisel works no hint of harm --
And, oh, 'twill be a day to rest and roam,
When I go home!
Odessa
A horror of great darkness over them,
No cloud of fire to guide and cover them,
Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread,
They crouch on alien soil among their dead.
"Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,"
This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord,
Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand years
Is black with blood and blotted out with tears.
Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,
And wept beside the streams of Babylon,
Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen
Into a wider wilderness of men?
Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,
Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,
And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficed
For all the hate that grew from love of Christ!
Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry,
Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die,
Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem,
There being no sword that wills to succor them, --
And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee,
And all thy people lift their eyes to thee,
When, for the darkness' horror over them,
Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them.
Trifles
What shall I bring you, sweet?
A posy prankt with every April hue:
The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,
Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?
Or shall I bring you, sweet,
Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset,
Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet,
That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget?
What shall I bring you, sweet?
Was ever trifle yet so held amiss
As not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss,
And merit dalliance at a long,