Dome of Many-Coloured Glass | Page 4

high sky of summer dropped down?Some rapturous ocean to woo.
Such a colour, such infinite light!?The heart of a fabulous gem,?Many-faceted, brilliant and rare.?Centre Stone of the earth's diadem!
. . . . .?Centre Stone of the Crown of the World,?"Sincerity" graved on your youth!?And your eyes hold the blue-bird flash,?The sapphire shaft, which is truth.
Petals
Life is a stream?On which we strew?Petal by petal the flower of our heart;?The end lost in dream,?They float past our view,?We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,?Crimsoned with joy,?We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;?Their widening scope,?Their distant employ,?We never shall know. And the stream as it flows?Sweeps them away,?Each one is gone?Ever beyond into infinite ways.?We alone stay?While years hurry on,?The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.
Venetian Glass
As one who sails upon a wide, blue sea?Far out of sight of land, his mind intent?Upon the sailing of his little boat,?On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course,?Hears suddenly, across the restless sea,?The rhythmic striking of some towered clock,?And wakes from thoughtless idleness to time:?Time, the slow pulse which beats eternity!?So through the vacancy of busy life?At intervals you cross my path and bring?The deep solemnity of passing years.?For you I have shed bitter tears, for you?I have relinquished that for which my heart?Cried out in selfish longing. And to-night?Having just left you, I can say: "'T is well.?Thank God that I have known a soul so true,?So nobly just, so worthy to be loved!"
Fatigue
Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,?Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,?Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,?Bow down my head lest I behold a star.
Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities?Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,?Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences?Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.
Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,?Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,?Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,?Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.
Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,?Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;?Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --?The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.
A Japanese Wood-Carving
High up above the open, welcoming door?It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.?Once, long ago, it was a waving tree?And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves?Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.?The winter snows had bent its branches down,?The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,?Summer had run like fire through its veins,?While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs,?And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups.?Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among?Its branches, breaking here and there a limb;?But every now and then broad sunlit days?Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves.?Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us?It does not speak of mossy forest ways,?Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch;?But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea!?An artist once, with patient, careful knife,?Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea.?Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back?By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue?And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light.?Among the flashing waves are two white birds?Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy?At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in,?Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up,?Their dripping feathers shining in the sun,?While the wet drops like little glints of light,?Fall pattering backward to the parent sea.?Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows,?Or skimming some white crest about to break,?The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop?And play with ocean in a summer mood.?Hanging above the high, wide open door,?It brings to us in quiet, firelit room,?The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes,?Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll,?And seabirds scream in wanton happiness.
A Little Song
When you, my Dear, are away, away,?How wearily goes the creeping day.?A year drags after morning, and night?Starts another year of candle light.?O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon!?Grant me, I beg of you, this boon.
Whirl round the earth as never sun?Has his diurnal journey run.?And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air?In a single flash, while your streaming hair?Catches the stars and pulls them down?To shine on some slumbering Chinese town.?O Kindly Sun! Understanding Moon!?Bring evening to crowd the footsteps of noon.
But when that long awaited day?Hangs ripe in the heavens, your voyaging stay.?Be morning, O Sun! with the lark in song,?Be afternoon for ages long.?And, Moon, let you and your lesser lights?Watch over a century of nights.
Behind a Wall
I own a solace shut within my heart,?A garden full of many a quaint delight?And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,?Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
Shining things?With powdered wings.
Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close?The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind?Jostles the half-ripe pears, and