Songs, Merry and Sad | Page 8

mirth, these many thousand years?Is black with blood and blotted out with tears.
Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,?And wept beside the streams of Babylon,?Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen?Into a wider wilderness of men?
Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,?Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,?And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficed?For all the hate that grew from love of Christ!
Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry,?Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die,?Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem,?There being no sword that wills to succor them, --
And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee,?And all thy people lift their eyes to thee,?When, for the darkness' horror over them,?Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them.
Trifles
What shall I bring you, sweet??A posy prankt with every April hue:?The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,?Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?
Or shall I bring you, sweet,?Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset,?Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet,?That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget?
What shall I bring you, sweet??Was ever trifle yet so held amiss?As not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss,?And merit dalliance at a long, long kiss?
Sunburnt Boys
Down on the Lumbee river?Where the eddies ripple cool?Your boat, I know, glides stealthily?About some shady pool.?The summer's heats have lulled asleep?The fish-hawk's chattering noise,?And all the swamp lies hushed about?You sunburnt boys.
You see the minnow's waves that rock?The cradled lily leaves.?From a far field some farmer's song,?Singing among his sheaves,?Comes mellow to you where you sit,?Each man with boatman's poise,?There, in the shimmering water lights,?You sunburnt boys.
I know your haunts: each gnarly bole?That guards the waterside,?Each tuft of flags and rushes where?The river reptiles hide,?Each dimpling nook wherein the bass?His eager life employs?Until he dies -- the captive of?You sunburnt boys.
You will not -- will you? -- soon forget?When I was one of you,?Nor love me less that time has borne?My craft to currents new;?Nor shall I ever cease to share?Your hardships and your joys,?Robust, rough-spoken, gentle-hearted?Sunburnt boys!
Gray Days
A soaking sedge,?A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,
Low clouds and rain,?And loneliness and languor worse than pain.
Mottled with moss,?Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.
Shrill streaks of light?Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,
And low between,?The sombre cedar and the ivy green.
Upon the stone?Of each in turn who called this land his own
The gray rain beats?And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,
And at my eaves?A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.
An Invalid
I care not what his name for God may be,?Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell,?The alphabet whereby he strives to spell?His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee,?Since, with his grave before him, he can see?White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell?Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell,?Seems but the waiting tongue of liberty.
For names and knowledge, idle breed of breath,?And cant and creed, the progeny of strife,?Thronging the safe, companioned streets of life,?Shrink trembling from the cold, clear eye of death,?And learn too late why dying lips can smile:?That goodness is the only creed worth while.
A Caged Mocking-Bird
I pass a cobbler's shop along the street?And pause a moment at the door-step, where,?In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,?The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,?Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,?And twitter where the autumn hedges run,?Join all the months of music into one.
I shut my eyes: the shy wood-thrush is there,?And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;?Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere?A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;?From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;?And when the oriole sets his full heart free?Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.
The vision-bringer hangs upon a nail?Before a dusty window, looking dim?On marts where trade goes hot with box and bale;?The sad-eyed passers have no time for him.?His captor sits, with beaded face and grim,?Plying a listless awl, as in a dream?Of pastures winding by a shady stream.
Gray bird, what spirit bides with thee unseen??For now, when every songster finds his love?And makes his nest where woods are deep and green,?Free as the winds, thy song should mock the dove.?If I were thou, my grief in moans should move?At thinking -- otherwhere, by others' art?Charmed and forgetful -- of mine own sweetheart.
But I, who weep when fortune seems unkind?To prison me within a space of walls,?When far-off grottoes hold my loves enshrined?And every love is cruel when it calls;?Who sulk for hills and fern-fledged waterfalls, --?I blush to offer sorrow unto thee,?Master of fate, scorner of destiny!
Dawn
The hills again reach skyward with a smile.?Again, with waking life along its way,?The landscape marches westward mile on mile?And time throbs white into another day.
Though eager life must wait on livelihood,?And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,?Lacking