Poems of Progress | Page 4

painful joy,

To voice the phases of his joyful pain,
He rings the changes on the
poet's strain.
Yet not in epic, epigram or verse
Can Love the passion
of his heart rehearse.
All speech, all language, is inadequate,
There
are no words with Love commensurate.
THE LAND BETWEEN
Between the little Here and larger Yonder,
There is a realm (or so one day I read)
Where faithful spirits
love-enchained may wander,
Till some remembering soul from earth has fled.
Then, reunited, they
go forth afar,
From sphere to 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