Oldalképek
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

"Long ages since he mixed the clay, Whose sense of symmetry was such, The labor of a single day

Immortal grew beneath his touch.

"For dreaming while his fingers went
Around this slender neck of mine,
The form of her he loved was blent
With every matchless curve and line.

"Her loveliness to me he gave

Who gave unto herself his heart,
That love and beauty from the grave
Might rise and live again in art."

And hearing from thy lips this tale
Of love and skill, of art and grace,
Thou seem'st to me no more the frail
Memento of an older race:

But in thy form divinely wrought
And figured o'er with fret and scroll,
I dream, by happy chance was caught,
And dwelleth now, that maiden's soul.

HAMLIN GARLAND

DO YOU FEAR THE WIND?

Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?

Go face them and fight them,

Be savage again.

Go hungry and cold like the wolf,

Go wade like the crane;

The palms of your hands will thicken,

The skin of your cheek will tan,

You'll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,

But you'll walk like a man!

IN THE GRASS

O to lie in long grasses!

5

10

O to dream of the plain!

15

Where the west wind sings as it passes

A weird and unceasing refrain;

Where the rank grass wallows and tosses,

And the plains' ring dazzles the eye;
Where hardly a silver cloud bosses
The flashing steel arch of the sky.

To watch the gay gulls as they flutter
Like snowflakes and fall down the sky,
To swoop on the deeps of the hollows,
Where the crow's-foot tosses awry,

20

25

5

10

And gnats in the lee of the thickets
Are swirling like waltzers in glee

To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets,
And the song of the lark and the bee.

O far-off plains of my west land!
O lands of the winds and the free,
Swift deer my mist-clad plain!
From my bed in the heart of the forest,
From the clasp and the girdle of pain
Your light through my darkness passes;
To your meadows in dreaming I fly
To plunge in the deeps of your grasses,
To bask in the light of your sky!

15

20

CLINTON SCOLLARD

DUSK

Her feet along the dewy hills

Are lighter than blown thistledown;
She bears the glamour of one star

Upon her violet crown

With her soft touch of mothering,

How soothing to the sense she seems!
She holds within her gentle hand

The quiet gift of dreams.

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

THE WILD RIDE

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses;

All night, from their stalls, the importunate tramping and 5 neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle,

Straight, grim, and abreast, go the weatherworn, galloping legion,

With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;

10

There are shapes by the way, there are things that 15 appal or entice us:

What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,

All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses; All night, from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the stormwind; We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.

Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

20

25

SANCTUARY

High above hate I dwell:

O storms! farewell.

Though at my sill your daggered thunders play,

5 Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day,

To me they sound more small

Than a young fay's footfall;

Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low

In Long Ago,

10 And winnowed into silence on that wind

Which takes wars like a dust, and leaves but love

behind.

Hither Felicity

Doth climb up to me,

15 And bank me in with turf and marjoram

Such as bees lip, or the new-weaned lamb;
With golden barberry wreath,

And bluets thick beneath;

One grosbeak, too, mid apple-buds a guest 20 With bud-red breast,

Is singing, singing! All the hells that rage
Float less than April fog beneath our hermitage.

25

ERNEST MCGAFFEY

"MARK!"

The heavy mists have crept away,

Heavily swims the sun,

And dim in mystic cloudlands gray
The stars fade one by one;

« ElőzőTovább »