Afterwhiles | Page 2

night?With lumps of ripeness and lush delight,?Till the stream, as it maunders on till dawn,?Is powdered and pelted and smiled upon.
Herr Weiser, with his wholesome face,?And the gentle blue of his eyes, and grace?Of unassuming honesty,?Be there to welcome you and me!?And what though the toil of the farm be stopped?And the tireless plans of the place be dropped,?While the prayerful master's knees are set?In beds of pansy and mignonette?And lily and aster and columbine,?Offered in love, as yours and mine--?
What, but a blessing of kindly thought,?Sweet as the breath of forget-me-not--!?What, but a spirit of lustrous love?White as the aster he bends above--!?What, but an odorous memory?Of the dear old man, made known to me?In days demanding a help like his--,?As sweet as the life of the lily is--?As sweet as the soul of a babe, bloom-wise?Born of a lily in paradise.
The Beautiful City
The Beautiful City! Forever?Its rapturous praises resound;?We fain would behold it-- but never?A glimpse of its dory is found:?We slacken our lips at the tender?White breasts of our mothers to hear?Of its marvellous beauty and splendor--;?We see-- but the gleam of a tear!
Yet never the story may tire us--?First graven in symbols of stone--?Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus?And parchment, and scattered and blown?By the winds of the tongues of all nations,?Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled?Down the rack of a hundred translations,?From the earliest lisp of the world.
We compass the earth and the ocean,?From the Orient's uttermost light,?To where the last ripple in motion?Lips hem of the skirt of the night--,?But the Beautiful City evades us--?No spire of it glints in the sun--?No glad-bannered battlement shades us?When all our Journey is done.
Where lies it? We question and listen;?We lean from the mountain, or mast,?And see but dull earth, or the glisten?Of seas inconceivably vast:?The dust of the one blurs our vision,?The glare of the other our brain,?Nor city nor island Elysian?In all of the land or the main!
We kneel in dim fanes where the thunders?Of organs tumultuous roll,?And the longing heart listens and wonders,?And the eyes look aloft from the soul:?But the chanson grows fainter and fainter,?Swoons wholly away and is dead;?AND our eyes only reach where the painter?Has dabbled a saint overhead.
The Beautiful City! O mortal,?Fare hopefully on in thy quest,?Pass down through the green grassy portal?That leads to the Valley of Rest;?There first passed the One who, in pity?Of all thy great yearning, awaits?To point out The Beautiful City,?And loosen the trump at the gates.
Lockerbie Street
Such a dear little street it is, nestled away?From the noise of the city and heat of the day,?In cool shady coverts of whispering trees,?With their leaves lifted up to shake hands with the breeze?Which in all its wide wanderings never may meet?With a resting-place fairer than Lockerbie street!
There is such a relief, from the clangor and din?Of the heart of the town, to go loitering in?Through the dim, narrow walks, with the sheltering shade?Of the trees waving over the long promenade,?And littering lightly the ways of our feet?With the gold of the sunshine of Lockerbie street.
And the nights that come down the dark pathways of dusk,?With the stars in their tresses, and odors of musk?In their moon-woven raiments, bespangled with dews,?And looped up with lilies for lovers to use?In the songs that they sing to the tinkle and beat?Of their sweet serenadings through Lockerbie street.
O my Lockerbie street! You are fair to be seen--?Be it noon of the day, or the rare and serene?Afternoon of the night-- you are one to my heart,?And I love you above all the phrases of art,?For no language could frame and no lips could repeat?My rhyme-haunted raptures of Lockerbie street.
Das Krist Kindel
I had fed the fire and stirred it, till the sparkles in delight Snapped their saucy little fingers at the chill December night; And in dressing-gown and slippers, I had tilted back "my throne--" The old split-bottomed rocker-- and was musing all alone.
I could hear the hungry Winter prowling round the outer door, And the tread of muffled footsteps on the white piazza floor; But the sounds came to me only as the murmur of a stream?That mingled with the current of a lazy-flowing dream.
Like a fragrant incense rising, curled the smoke of my cigar, With the lamplight gleaming through it like a mist-enfolded star--; And as I gazed, the vapor like a curtain rolled away,?With a sound of bells that tinkled, and the clatter of a sleigh.
And in a vision, painted like a picture in the air,?I saw the elfish figure, of a man with frosty hair--?A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared, And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ashes of his beard.
He poised himself grotesquely, in an attitude of mirth,?On a damask-covered hassock that was sitting on the hearth; And at