The Poems of Henry Van Dyke | Page 9

light, low light, glory of eventide!?Love far away, far up,--up,--love divine!?Little love, too, for ever, ever near,?Warm love, earth love, tender love of mine,?In the leafy dark where you hide,?You are mine,--mine,--mine!_
Ah, my belov��d, do you feel with me?The hidden virtue of that melody,?The rapture and the purity of love,?The heavenly joy that can not find the word??Then, while we wait again to hear the bird,?Come very near to me, and do not move,--?Now, hermit of the woodland, fill anew?The cool, green cup of air with harmony,?And we will drink the wine of love with you.
May, 1908.
TURN O' THE TIDE
The tide flows in to the harbour,--?The bold tide, the gold tide, the flood o' the sunlit sea,-- And the little ships riding at anchor,?Are swinging and slanting their prows to the ocean, panting To lift their wings to the wide wild air,?And venture a voyage they know not where,--?To fly away and be free!
The tide runs out of the harbour,--?The low tide, the slow tide, the ebb o' the moonlit bay,-- And the little ships rocking at anchor,?Are rounding and turning their bows to the landward, yearning To breathe the breath of the sun-warmed strand,?To rest in the lee of the high hill land,--?To hold their haven and stay!
My heart goes round with the vessels,--?My wild heart, my child heart, in love with the sea and the land,-- And the turn o' the tide passes through it,?In rising and falling with mystical currents, calling?At morn, to range where the far waves foam,?At night, to a harbour in love's true home,?With the hearts that understand!
Seal Harbour, August 12, 1911.
SIERRA MADRE
O Mother mountains! billowing far to the snow-lands,?Robed in a?rial amethyst, silver, and blue,?Why do ye look so proudly down on the lowlands??What have their groves and gardens to do with you?
Theirs is the languorous charm of the orange and myrtle,?Theirs are the fruitage and fragrance of Eden of old,-- Broad-boughed oaks in the meadows fair and fertile,?Dark-leaved orchards gleaming with globes of gold.
You, in your solitude standing, lofty and lonely,?Bear neither garden nor grove on your barren breasts;?Rough is the rock-loving growth of your canyons, and only Storm-battered pines and fir-trees cling to your crests.
Why are ye throned so high, and arrayed in splendour?Richer than all the fields at your feet can claim??What is your right, ye rugged peaks, to the tender?Queenly promise and pride of the mother-name?
Answered the mountains, dim in the distance dreaming:?"Ours are the forests that treasure the riches of rain; Ours are the secret springs and the rivulets gleaming?Silverly down through the manifold bloom of the plain.
"Vain were the toiling of men in the dust of the dry land, Vain were the ploughing and planting in waterless fields, Save for the life-giving currents we send from the sky-land, Save for the fruit our embrace with the storm-cloud yields."
O mother mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you!?Rightly you reign o'er the vale that your bounty fills-- Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright stars above you,-- I murmur your name and lift up mine eyes to the hills.
Pasadena, March, 1913.
THE GRAND CANYON
DAYBREAK
What makes the lingering Night so cling to thee??Thou vast, profound, primeval hiding-place?Of ancient secrets,--gray and ghostly gulf?Cleft in the green of this high forest land,?And crowded in the dark with giant forms!?Art thou a grave, a prison, or a shrine?
A stillness deeper than the dearth of sound?Broods over thee: a living silence breathes?Perpetual incense from thy dim abyss.?The morning-stars that sang above the bower?Of Eden, passing over thee, are dumb?With trembling bright amazement; and the Dawn?Steals through the glimmering pines with naked feet,?Her hand upon her lips, to look on thee!?She peers into thy depths with silent prayer?For light, more light, to part thy purple veil.?O Earth, swift-rolling Earth, reveal, reveal,--?Turn to the East, and show upon thy breast?The mightiest marvel in the realm of Time!
'Tis done,--the morning miracle of light,--?The resurrection of the world of hues?That die with dark, and daily rise again?With every rising of the splendid Sun!
Be still, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath?To see the solar flood of radiance leap?Across the chasm, and crown the western rim?Of alabaster with a far-away?Rampart of pearl, and flowing down by walls?Of changeful opal, deepen into gold?Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmaline,?Crimson of garnet, green and gray of jade,?Purple of amethyst, and ruby red,?Beryl, and sard, and royal porphyry;?Until the cataract of colour breaks?Upon the blackness of the granite floor.
How far below! And all between is cleft?And carved into a hundred curving miles?Of unimagined architecture! Tombs,?Temples, and colonnades are neighboured there?By fortresses that Titans might defend,?And amphitheatres where Gods might strive.?Cathedrals, buttressed with unnumbered tiers?Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky?A single spire of marble pure as snow;?And huge a?rial palaces arise?Like mountains built of unconsuming flame.?Along the weathered walls, or standing deep?In riven