Songs for a Little House | Page 7

to brew?These sparkling potions for your customers--?In each prescription your Physician writ?You poured your rich compassion and your wit!
FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET (1816)
"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."
I knew a scientist, an engineer,?Student of tensile strengths and calculus,?A man who loved a cantilever truss?And always wore a pencil on his ear.?My friend believed that poets all were queer,?And literary folk ridiculous;?But one night, when it chanced that three of us?Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.
Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!?His eager mind reached for it and took hold.?Ten years are by: I see him now and then,?And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,?He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:--?_Much have I travelled in the realms of gold_.
TWO O'CLOCK
Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime?And stars are changing patterns in the dark,?And watches tick, and over-puissant Time?Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,?The trains that roar and rattle in the night,?The very cats that prowl, all quiet find?And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:?Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.
So all things end: and what is left at last??Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,?A memory of easy days gone past,?A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore--?And in the darkened room I lean to know?How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
Ah very sweet! If news should come to you?Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,?That the great Manager had made me leave?To travel on some territory new;?And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,?I could not touch your hand again, nor heave?The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave?Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....
Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind?Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could?Remember rightly, and forget aright??Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,?Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite??Could you remember him as always kind?
THE WEDDED LOVER
I read in our old journals of the days?When our first love was April-sweet and new,?How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew?Despite the adverse time; and our amaze?At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise?That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue?The heaven arched us in, and all we knew?Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.
They said by now the path would be more steep,?The sunsets paler and less mild the air;?Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.?We will not tell the secret--let it keep.?I know not how I thought those days so fair?These being so much fairer, spent with you.
TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST
When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,?I used to strike a match, and hold the flame?Before your picture; and would breathless mark?The answering glimmer of the tiny spark?That brought to life the magic of your eyes,?Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.
Holding that mimic torch before your shrine?I used to light your eyes and make them mine;?Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,?Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;?Summon your lips from far across the sea?Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.
Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,?Lo--you were with me in the darkened room.
THE LAST SONNET
Suppose one knew that never more might one?Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now?These fourteen lines were all he could allow?To say his message, be forever done;?How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,?Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase?The windy trees, the beauty of his days,?Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.?How bitter then would be regret and pang?For former rhymes he dallied to refine,?For every verse that was not crystalline....?And if belike this last one feebly rang,?Honour and pride would cast it to the floor?Facing the judge with what was done before.
THE WAR
IRONY
Anton Lang, the _Christus_ of Oberammergau, has not been called upon to fight in the German army.
NEWS ITEM.
So War hath still some ruth? some sense of shame??The Crown of Thorns hath reverence even now??For when the summons to that village came,?They spared the Christ of Oberammergau.
Enlist the actors of that sacred mime--?Paul, Peter, Pilate--Judas too, I trow;?Spurn Christ of Galilee, but (O sublime!)?Revere the Christ of Oberammergau.
TO A FRENCH BABY
Marcel Gaillard, Baby number 6 in _Life's_ fund for French war-orphans
What unsaid messages arise?Behind your clear and wondering eyes,?O grave and tiny citizen??And who, of wise and valiant men,?Can answer those mute questionings??I think the captains and the kings?Might well kneel in humility?Before you on your mother's knee,?As knelt, beside a stable door,?Other great men, long before.
In you, poor little lad, one sees?All children and all mothers' knees:?All voices inarticulate?That cry against the hymns of hate;?All homes, by Thames or Rhine or Seine,?Where cradles will not rock again.
AFTER HEARING GERMAN MUSIC
What pang of beauty is in all these songs,?Flooding the heart with painful bliss within--?Was this the folk to which