Afterwhiles | Page 9

from crown to wrist,?Be brushed away, caressed and kissed.?And as in awe I gazed on her,?I saw the sculptor's chisel fall--?I saw him sink, without a moan,?Sink life less at the feet of stone,?And lie there like a worshipper.?Fame crossed the threshold of the hall,?And found a statue-- that was all.
3?And once I saw a man who drew?A gloom about him like cloak,?And wandered aimlessly. The few?Who spoke of him at all, but spoke?Disparagingly of a mind?The Fates had faultily designed:?Too indolent for modern times--?Too fanciful, and full of whims--?For talking to himself in rhymes,?And scrawling never-heard-of hymns,?The idle life to which he clung?Was worthless as the songs he sung!?I saw him, in my vision, filled?With rapture o'er a spray of bloom?The wind threw in his lonely room;?And of the sweet perfume it spilled?He drank to drunkenness, and flung?His long hair back, and laughed and sung?And clapped his hands as children do?At fairy tales they listen to,?While from his flying quill there dripped?Such music on his manuscript?That he who listens to the words?May close his eyes and dream the birds?Are twittering on every hand?A language he can understand.?He journeyed on through life unknown,?Without one friend to call his own;?He tired. No kindly hand to press?The cooling touch of tenderness?Upon his burning brow, nor lift?To his parched lips God's freest gift--?No sympathetic sob or sigh?Of trembling lips-- no sorrowing eye?Looked out through tears to see him die.?And Fame her greenest laurels brought?To crown a head that heeded not.
And this is Fame! A thing indeed,?That only comes when least the need:?The wisest minds of every age?The book of life from page to page?Have searched in vain; each lesson conned?Will promise it the page beyond--?Until the last, when dusk of night?Falls over it, and reason's light?Is smothered by that unknown friend?Who signs his nom de plume, The End.
The Ripest Peach
The ripest peach is highest on the tree--?And so her love, beyond the reach of me,?Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes bow?Her heart down to me where I worship now!
She looms aloft where every eye may see?The ripest peach is highest on the tree.?Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!?I may not reach here from the orchard grass.
I drink the sunshine showered past her lips?As roses drain the dewdrop as it drips.?The ripest peach is highest on the tree,?And so mine eyes gaze upward eagerly.
Why-- why do I not turn away in wrath?And pluck some heart here hanging in my path--??Lover's lower boughs bend with them-- but, ah me!?The ripest peach is highest on the tree!
A Fruit Piece
The afternoon of summer folds?Its warm arms round the marigolds,
And with its gleaming fingers, pets?The watered pinks and violets
That from the casement vases spill,?Over the cottage window-sill,
Their fragrance down the garden walks?Where droop the dry-mouthed hollyhocks.
How vividly the sunshine scrawls?The grape-vine shadows on the walls!
How like a truant swings the breeze?In high boughs of the apple-trees!
The slender "free-stone" lifts aloof,?Full languidly above the roof,
A hoard of fruitage, stamped with gold?And precious mintings manifold.
High up, through curled green leaves, a pear?Hangs hot with ripeness here and there.
Beneath the sagging trellisings,?In lush, lack-lustre clusterings,
Great torpid grapes, all fattened through?With moon and sunshine, shade and dew,
Until their swollen girths express?But forms of limp deliciousness--
Drugged to an indolence divine?With heaven's own sacramental wine.
Their Sweet Sorrow
They meet to say farewell: Their way?Of saying this is hard to say--.?He holds her hand an Instant, wholly?Distressed-- and she unclasps it slowly,
He lends his gaze evasively?Over the printed page that she?Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder?Glimpsed from the lace-mists that infold her.
The clock, beneath its crystal cup,?Discreetly clicks-- "Quick! Act! Speak up!"?A tension circles both her slender?Wrists-- and her raised eyes flash in splendor,
Even as he feels his dazzled own--.?Then blindingly, round either thrown,?They feel a stress of arms that ever?Strain tremblingly-- and "Never! Never!"
Is whispered brokenly, with half?A sob, like a belated laugh--,?While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes--,?Sweet as the dew's lip to the rose's.
John McKeen
John McKeen, in his rusty dress,?His loosened collar, and swarthy throat,?His face unshaven, and none the less,?His hearty laugh and his wholesomeness,?And the wealth of a workman's vote!
Bring him, O Memory, here once more,?And tilt him back in his Windsor chair?By the kitchen stove, when the day is o'er?And the light of the hearth is across the floor,?And the crickets everywhere!
And let their voices be gladly blent?With a watery jingle of pans and spoons,?And a motherly chirrup of sweet content,?And neighborly gossip and merriment,?And old-time fiddle-tunes!
Tick the clock with a wooden sound,?And fill the hearing with childish glee?Of rhyming riddle, or story found?In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-bound?Old book of the Used-to-be!
John McKeen of the Past! Ah John,?To have grown ambitious in worldly ways--!?To have rolled your shirt-sleeves down, to don?A broadcloth suit, and forgetful, gone?Out on election days!
John ah, John! Did it prove your worth?To yield you