Songs, Merry and Sad | Page 6

quest?To see the court she drew, --?My rose, my gem, my royal crest,?My lily moist with dew;?Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each?The gay throng let us be,?To see her turn at last and reach?Her white hands out to me.
Tommy Smith
When summer's languor drugs my veins?And fills with sleep the droning times,?Like sluggish dreams among my brains,?There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,?Idle as clouds that stray through heaven?And vague as if they were a myth,?But in these rhymes is always given?A health for old Bluebritches Smith.
Among my thoughts of what is good?In olden times and distant lands,?Is that do-nothing neighborhood?Where the old cider-hogshead stands?To welcome with its brimming gourd?The canny crowd of kin and kith?Who meet about the bibulous board?Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.
In years to come, when stealthy change?Hath stolen the cider-press away?And the gnarled orchards of the grange?Have fallen before a slow decay,?Were I so cunning, I would carve?From some time-scorning monolith?A sculpture that should well preserve?The fame of old Bluebritches Smith.
Before Bedtime
The cat sleeps in a chimney jam?With ashes in her fur,?An' Tige, from on the yuther side,?He keeps his eye on her.
The jar o' curds is on the hearth,?An' I'm the one to turn it.?I'll crawl in bed an' go to sleep?When maw begins to churn it.
Paw bends to read his almanax?An' study out the weather,?An' bud has got a gourd o' grease?To ile his harness leather.
Sis looks an' looks into the fire,?Half-squintin' through her lashes,?An' I jis watch my tater where?It shoots smoke through the ashes.
"If I Could Glimpse Him"
When in the Scorpion circles low?The sun with fainter, dreamier light,?And at a far-off hint of snow?The giddy swallows take to flight,?And droning insects sadly know?That cooler falls the autumn night;
When airs breathe drowsily and sweet,?Charming the woods to colors gay,?And distant pastures send the bleat?Of hungry lambs at break of day,?Old Hermes' wings grow on my feet,?And, good-by, home! I'm called away!
There on the hills should I behold,?Sitting upon an old gray stone?That humps its back up through the mold,?And piping in a monotone,?Pan, as he sat in days of old,?My joy would bid surprise begone!
Dear Pan! 'Tis he that calls me out;?He, lying in some hazel copse,?Where lazily he turns about?And munches each nut as it drops,?Well pleased to see me swamped in doubt?At sound of his much-changing stops.
If I could glimpse him by the vine?Where purple fox-grapes hang their store,?I'd tell him, in his leafy shrine,?How poets say he lives no more.?He'd laugh, and pluck a muscadine,?And fall to piping, as of yore!
Attraction
He who wills life wills its condition sweet,?Having made love its mother, joy its quest,?That its perpetual sequence might not rest?On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet;
For reason moves with cautious, careful feet,?Debating whether life or death were best,?And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest?In many a heart which life hath set to beat.
But I will cast my fate with love, and trust?Her honeyed heart that guides the pollened bee?And sets the happy wing-seeds fluttering free;
And I will bless the law which saith, Thou must!?And, wet with sea or shod with weary dust,?Will follow back and back and back to thee!
Love's Fashion
Oh, I can jest with Margaret?And laugh a gay good-night,?But when I take my Helen's hand?I dare not clasp it tight.
I dare not hold her dear white hand?More than a quivering space,?And I should bless a breeze that blew?Her hair into my face.
'T is Margaret I call sweet names:?Helen is too, too dear?For me to stammer little words?Of love into her ear.
So now, good-night, fair Margaret,?And kiss me e'er we part!?But one dumb touch of Helen's hand,?And, oh, my heart, my heart!
Alcestis
Not long the living weep above their dead,?And you will grieve, Admetus, but not long.?The winter's silence in these desolate halls?Will break with April's laughter on your lips;?The bees among the flowers, the birds that mate,?The widowed year, grown gaunt with memory?And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come?With lotus comfort, feeding all your veins.?The vining brier will crawl across my grave,?And you will woo another in my stead.?Those tender, foolish names you called me by,?Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied,?The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed?Life's busy stir, and left us two alone,?Will you remember? or, when dawn creeps in,?And you bend o'er another's pillowed head,?Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face,?Until her low love-laughter welcomes you,?Will you, down-gazing at her waking eyes,?Forget?
So have I loved you, my Admetus,?I thank the cruel fates who clip my life?To lengthen yours, they tarry not for age?To dim my eye and blanch my cheek, but now?Take me, while my lips are sweet to you?And youth hides yet amid this hair of mine,?Brown in the shadow, golden in the light.?Bend down and kiss me, dying for your sake,?Not gratefully, but sadly, love's farewell;?And if the flowering year's