Trees and Other Poems | Page 4

at His feet
Sit, waiting us, to their concealment bid,
All they,
our lovers, whom His Love hath hid.
Lo, comfort blooms on pain, and peace on strife,
And gain on loss.

What is the key to Everlasting Life?
A blood-stained Cross.
Trees
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing
breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Stars
(For the Rev. James J. Daly, S. J.)
Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant
strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends
down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Gay stars, little stars, you are little eyes,
Eyes of baby angels playing

in the skies.
Now and then a winged child turns his merry face

Down toward the spinning world -- what a funny place!
Jesus Christ came from the Cross (Christ receive my soul!)
In each
perfect hand and foot there was a bloody hole.
Four great iron spikes
there were, red and never dry,
Michael plucked them from the Cross
and set them in the sky.
Christ's Troop, Mary's Guard, God's own men,
Draw your swords and
strike at Hell and strike again.
Every steel-born spark that flies where
God's battles are,
Flashes past the face of God, and is a star.
Old Poets
(For Robert Cortez Holliday)
If I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of
impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.
I'd go where the old oaks gather,
Serene and good and strong,
And
they would not sigh and tremble
And vex me with a song.
The pleasantest sort of poet
Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an
old white beard and wrinkles
About his kind old eyes.
For these young flippertigibbets
A-rhyming their hours away
They
won't be still like honest men
And listen to what you say.
The young poet screams forever
About his sex and his soul;
But the
old man listens, and smokes his pipe,
And polishes its bowl.
There should be a club for poets
Who have come to seventy year.

They should sit in a great hall drinking
Red wine and golden beer.
They would shuffle in of an evening,
Each one to his cushioned seat,

And there would be mellow talking
And silence rich and sweet.

There is no peace to be taken
With poets who are young,
For they
worry about the wars to be fought
And the songs that must be sung.
But the old man knows that he's in his chair
And that God's on His
throne in the sky.
So he sits by the fire in comfort
And he lets the
world spin by.
Delicatessen
Why is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?

Why do we titter at his name
Who come to buy his curious wares?
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;

Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies,
And figs that ripened by the sea
In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,

Strange pungent meats from Germany,
And currants from a Grecian
hill.
He is the lord of goodly things
That make the poor man's table gay,

Yet of his worth no minstrel sings
And on his tomb there is no bay.
Perhaps he lives and dies unpraised,
This trafficker in humble sweets,

Because his little shops are raised
By thousands in the city streets.
Yet stars in greater numbers shine,
And violets in millions grow,

And they in many a golden line
Are sung, as every child must know.
Perhaps Fame thinks his worried eyes,
His wrinkled, shrewd, pathetic
face,
His shop, and all he sells and buys
Are desperately
commonplace.
Well, it is true he has no sword
To dangle at his booted knees.
He
leans across a slab of board,
And draws his knife and slices cheese.
He never heard of chivalry,
He longs for no heroic times;
He thinks

of pickles, olives, tea,
And dollars, nickles, cents and dimes.
His world has narrow walls, it seems;
By counters is his soul
confined;
His wares are all his hopes and dreams,
They are the
fabric of his mind.
Yet -- in a room above the store
There is a woman -- and a child

Pattered just now across the floor;
The shopman looked at him and
smiled.
For, once he thrilled with high romance
And tuned to love his eager
voice.
Like any cavalier of France
He wooed the maiden of his
choice.
And now deep in his weary heart
Are sacred flames that whitely burn.

He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn.
And when the long day's work is done,
(How slow the leaden minutes
ran!)
Home, with his wife and little son,
He is no huckster, but a
man!
And there are those who grasp his hand,
Who drink