Poems of Progress | Page 4

sphere, where wondrous angels are.
Not many spirits in that realm are waiting;
Not many pause upon its shores to rest;?For only love, intense and unabating,
Can hold them from the longer, higher quest.?And after grief has wept itself to sleep,?Few hearts on earth their vital memories keep.
Should I pass on, across the mystic border,
Let thy love link me to that pallid land;?I would not seek the heavens of finer order
Until thy barque had left this coarser strand.?How desolate such journeyings would be,?Though straight to Him, were they not shared by thee.
Wert thou first called (dear God, how could I bear it?)
I should enchain thee with my love, I know.?Not great enough am I to free thy spirit
From all these tender ties, and bid thee go.?Nor would a soul, unselfish as thine own,?Forget so soon, and speed to heaven alone.
On earth we find no joy in ways diverging;
How could we find it in the worlds unseen??I know old memories from my bosom surging,
Would keep thee waiting in that Land Between,?Until together, side by side, we trod?A path of stars, in our great search for God.
LOVE'S MIRAGE
Midway upon the route, he paused athirst
And suddenly across the wastes of heat,?He saw cool waters gleaming, and a sweet?Green oasis upon his vision burst.?A tender dream, long in his bosom nursed,
Spread love's illusive verdure for his feet;?The barren sands changed into golden wheat;?The way grew glad that late had seemed accursed.
She shone, the woman wonder, on his soul;
The garden spot, for which men toil and wait;
The house of rest, that is each heart's demand;?But when, at last, he reached the gleaming goal,
He found, oh, cruel irony of fate,
But desert sun upon the desert sand.
THE NEED OF THE WORLD
I know the need of the world,
Though it would not have me know.?It would hide its sorrow deep,
Where only God may go.?Yet its secret it can not keep;?It tells it awake, or asleep,?It tells it to all who will heed,?And he who runs may read.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world,
When it boasts of its wealth the loudest,?When it flaunts it in all men's eyes,
When its mien is the gayest and proudest.?Oh! ever it lies--it lies,?For the sound of its laughter dies?In a sob and a smothered moan,?And it weeps when it sits alone.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When the earth shakes under the tread?Of men who march to the fight,
When rivers with blood are red?And there is no law but might,?And the wrong way seems the right;?When he who slaughters the most?Is all men's pride and boast.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When it babbles of gold and fame,?It is only to lead us astray
From the thing that it dare not name,?For this is the sad world's way.?Oh! poor blind world grown grey?With the need of a thing so near,?With the want of a thing so dear.
The need of the world I know.
The need of the world is love.
Deep under the pride of power,?Down under its lust of greed,
For the joys that last but an hour,?There lies forever its need.?For love is the law and the creed?And love is the unnamed goal?Of life, from man to the mole.
Love is the need of the world.
THE GULF STREAM
Skilled mariner, and counted sane and wise,
That was a curious thing which chanced to me,
So good a sailor on so fair a sea.?With favouring winds and blue unshadowed skies,?Led by the faithful beacon of Love's eyes,
Past reef and shoal, my life-boat bounded free?And fearless of all changes that might be?Under calm waves, where many a sunk rock lies.
A golden dawn; yet suddenly my barque
Strained at the sails, as in a cyclone's blast;
And battled with an unseen current's force,?For we had entered when the night was dark
That old tempestuous Gulf Stream of the Past.
But for love's eyes, I had not kept the course.
REMEMBERED
His art was loving; Eres set his sign
Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew
The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.?Love feeds love's thirst as wine feeds love of wine;?Nor is there any potion from the vine
Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew?Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew?Inebriated with that draught divine.
Yet in his sober moments, when the sun
Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,
And passion's sea had grown an ebbing tide,?From out the many, Memory singled one
Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all -
The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.
HELEN OF TROY?ON THE ISLE OF CRANAE
The world an abject vassal to her charms,?And kings competing for a single smile,?Yet love she knew not, till upon this isle?She gave surrender to abducting arms.?Not Theseus, who plucked her lips' first kiss,
Not Menelaus, lawful mate and spouse,?Such answering passion in her heart could rouse,?Or wake such tumult in