Poems of Cheer | Page 6

singer's song.
And then? But why relate what then?
His smouldering heart flamed into fire -
He had his one supreme
desire,
And plunged into the world of men.
For years queen Folly held her sway.
With pleasures of the grosser kind
She fed his flesh and drugged his
mind,
Till, shamed, he sated, turned away.
He sought his boyhood's home.
That hour Triumphant should have been, in sooth,
Since he went
forth, an unknown youth,
And came back crowned with wealth and
power.
The clouds made day a gorgeous bed;
He saw the splendour of the sky
With unmoved heart and stolid eye;

He only knew the West was red.
Then suddenly a fresh young voice
Rose, bird-like, from some hidden place,
He did not even turn his
face -
It struck him simply as a noise.
He trod the old paths up and down.
Their rich-hued leaves by Fall winds whirled -
How dull they
were--how dull the world -
Dull even in the pulsing town.
O! worst of punishments, that brings

A blunting of all finer sense,
A loss of feelings keen, intense,
And
dulls us to the higher things.
O! penalty most dire, most sure,
Swift following after gross delights,
That we no more see beauteous
sights,
Or hear as hear the good and pure.
O! shape more hideous and more dread
Than Vengeance takes in creed-taught minds,
This certain doom that
blunts and blinds,
And strikes the holiest feelings dead.
UNREST
In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest
light of all lights was gilding
The world from zenith to outermost edge,
My soul grew sad and
longingly lonely!
I sighed for the season of sun and rose,
And I said, "In the Summer
and that time only
Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."
With bee and bird for her maids of honour
Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day
smiled down upon her
And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their
union and true love's pledges,
Beautiful roses bloomed day by day,
And rambled in gardens and hid

in hedges
Like royal children in sportive play.
My restless soul for a little season
Revelled in rapture of glow and bloom,
And then, like a subject who
harbours treason,
Grew full of rebellion and grey with gloom.
And I said, "I am sick of
the summer's blisses,
Of warmth and beauty, and nothing more.
The full fruition my sad
soul misses
That beauteous Fall-time holds in store!"
But now when the colours are almost blinding,
Burning and blending on bush and tree,
And the rarest fruits are mine
for the finding,
And the year is ripe as a year can be,
My soul complains in the same
old fashion;
Crying aloud in my troubled breast
Is the same old longing, the same
old passion.
O where is the treasure which men call rest?
"ARTIST'S LIFE"
Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote,
Mad with melody, rhythm--rife
From the very first to the final note.
Give me his "Artist's Life!"

It stirs my blood to my finger-ends,
Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest,
And all that is sweetest and
saddest blends
Together within my breast.
It brings back that night in the dim arcade,
In love's sweet morning and life's best prime,
When the great brass
orchestra played and played,
And set our thoughts to rhyme.
It brings back that Winter of mad delights,
Of leaping pulses and tripping feet,
And those languid moon-washed
Summer nights
When we heard the band in the street.
It brings back rapture and glee and glow,
It brings back passion and pain and strife,
And so of all the waltzes I
know,
Give me the "Artist's Life."
For it is so full of the dear old time -
So full of the dear old friends I knew.
And under its rhythm, and lilt,
and rhyme,
I am always finding--YOU.
NOTHING BUT STONES
I think I never passed so sad an hour,

Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night.
The edifice from
basement to the tower
Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light.
Up through broad aisles
the stylish crowd was thronging,
Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest.
"Here will I bring
my sorrow and my longing,"
I said, "and here find rest."
I heard the heavenly organ's voice of thunder,
It seemed to give me infinite relief.
I wept. Strange eyes looked on in
well-bred wonder.
I dried my tears: their gaze profaned my grief.
Wrapt in the costly
furs, and silks, and laces,
Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me.
I could not read, in all
those proud cold faces,
One thought of sympathy.
I watched them bowing and devoutly kneeling,
Heard their responses like sweet waters roll
But only the glorious
organ's sacred pealing
Seemed gushing from a full and fervent soul.
I listened to the man of
holy calling,
He spoke