Anthology of Massachusetts Poets | Page 8

all that lives!?How can we magnify thine awful name?Save by its chanting: Light! and Light! and Light!?An exhalation from far sky retreats,?It grows in silence, as 'twere self-create,?Suffusing all the dusky web of night.?But one lone corner it invades not yet,?Where low above a black and rimy crag?Hangs the old moon, thin as a battered shield,?The holy, useless shield of long-past wars,?Dinted and frosty, on the crystal dark.?But lo! the east,--let none forget the east,?Pathway ordained of old where He should tread.?Through some sweet magic common in the skies,?The rosy banners are with saffron tinct;?The saffron grows to gold, the gold is fire,?And led by silence more majestical?Than clash of conquering arms, He comes! He comes!?He holds His spear benignant, sceptrewise,?And strikes out flame from the adoring hills.
ALICE BROWN
BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE
BURNT are the petals of life as a rose fallen and?crumbled to dust.
Blackened the heart of the past is, ashes that must?Forever be sifted, more precious than sunbeams that?open the budding to-morrow.?Once was a passion completed,-too perfect, the?Gods have not broken to borrowBlackened?the heart of the past is, ashes that must?Forever be sifted. O, loving to-morrow?The rose of the past is, Life-Eternity's dust.
ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT
FOUR FOUNTAINS AFTER RESPIGHI
FRESH mists of Roman dawn;?For water search the cattle;?Faintly on damp air sounds the shepherd's horn?Above fountain Giulia's prattle.
Triton, joyous and loud?Of Naiads summons troops;?A frenziedly leaping and mingling crowd,?Dancing, pursuing groups.
At high noon the trumpets peal,?Neptune's chariot passes by;?Trains of sirens, tritons, Trevi's jets heal?Then trumpets' echoes sigh.
Tolling bell and sunset,?Twittering birds and calm;?Medici's fountain, shimmering net,?Into the night brings balm.
JESSICA CARR
IN THE TROLLEY CAR
THE swart Italian in the trolley car,?Hoarded his children in his arms and breast;?The mother, all unheeding, sat afar,?Her splendid eyes were vague, her lips compressed.
One Raphael-boy slipped from his father's knee,?Climbed to her side, and gently stroked her cheek,?She turned away, and would not hear his plea,?She turned away, and would not even speak.
With trembling lips the child crept back again?To the warm shelter of his father's breast;?We looked indignant pity, for till then?We thought that mother-love bore every test.
We rose to go, the father-mother said,?In deep, low tones, "Don't t'inka hard you bet?The younges' was too-seeck, and he is dead,?She will be alla right, when she forget."
When she forgets! "Great-Heart," hold closer yet?Thy precious brood and let it feel no lack!?Until her soul shall wake, but not forget,?When the warm tides of love come surging back.
RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY
IN IRISH RAIN
THE great world stretched its arms to me and held me to its breast, They say I've song-birds in my throat, and give me of their best; But sure, not all their gold can buy, can take me back again To little Mag o' Monagan's a-singing in the rain.
The silver-slanting Irish rain, all warm and sweet that fills The little brackened lowland pools, and drifts across the hills; That turns the hill-grass cool and wet to dusty childish feet, And hangs above the valley-roofs, filmed blue with burning peat.
And oh the kindly neighbor-folk that called the young ones in, Down fragrant yellow-tapered paths that thread the prickly whin; The hot, sweet smell of oaten-cake, the kettle purring soft, The dear-remembered Irish speech-- they call to me how oft!
They mind me just a slip o' girl in tattered kirtle blue,?But oh they loved me for myself, and not for what I do!?And never one but had a joy to pass the time of day?With little Mag o' Monagan's a-laughing down the way.
There's fifty roofs to shelter me where one was set before, But make me free to that again-- I'll not be wanting more,?But sure I know not tears nor gold can turn the years again To little Mag o' Monagan's a-singing in the rain.
MARTHA HASKELL CLARK
CRETONNE TROPICS
THE cretonne in your willow chair?Shows through a zone of rosy air,?A tree of parrots, agate-eyed,?With blue-green crests and plumes of pride?And beaks most formidably curved.?I hear the river, silver-nerved,?To their shrill protests make reply,?And the palm forest stir and sigh.
Curious, the spell that colors cast,?Binding the fancy coweb-fast,?And you would smile if you could know?I like your cretonne parrots so!?But I have seen them sail toward night?Superbly homeward, the last light?Lifting them like a purple sea?Scorned and made use of arrogantly;?And I have heard them cry aloud?From out a tall palm's emerald cloud;?And I brought home a brilliant feather,?Lost like a flake of sunset weather.
Here in the north the sea is white?And mother-of-pearl in morning light,?Quite lovely, but there is a glare?That daunts me.?Now the willow chair?Suggests a more perplexing sea,?Till my heart aches with memory?And parrots dye the air around,?And I forget the pallid Sound.?GRACE HAZARD
TO HILDA OF HER ROSES
ENOUGH has been said about roses?To fill thirty thick volumes;?There are as many songs about roses?As there are roses in the world?That includes Mexico . . .