The earth seems a desolate mother,—
Betrayed like the princess of old,
The ermine stripped from her shoulders,
And her bosom all naked and cold.
But a joy looks out from her sadness,
For she feels with a glad unrest
The throb of the unborn summer
Under her bare, brown breast.
The queen sat in her balcony,
The Loveliest of Spain;
Beneath rode all the chivalry,
And roses fell like rain
To crown the gallant gentlemen
The gonfalon who bore:
A woman’s favor fell for one,—
Gil, the Toreador.
Beneath the royal canopy,
To see the red bull slain,
They sat, like loyal lovers,...
Turn out more ale, turn up the light;
I will not go to bed to-night.
Of all the foes that man should dread
The first and worst one is a bed.
Friends I have had both old and young,
And ale we drank and songs we sung:
Enough you know when this is said,
That, one and all,—they died in bed.
In bed they died and I ’ll not go...
Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer;
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter;
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the metre.
Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing;
...
O earth! thou hast not any wind that blows
Which is not music; every weed of thine
Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine;
And every humble hedgerow flower that grows,
And every little brown bird that doth sing,
Hath something greater than itself, and bears
A living Word to every living thing,
Albeit it hold the Message unawares.
...
By the waters of Life we sat together,
Hand in hand in the golden days
Of the beautiful early summer weather,
When skies were purple and breath was praise,
When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds,
And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran
Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards,
And trees with voices æolian.
Summer is fading; the broad leaves that grew
So freshly green, when June was young, are falling;
And, all the whisper-haunted forest through,
The restless birds in saddened tones are calling,
From rustling hazel copse and tangled dell,
“Farewell, sweet Summer,
Fragrant, fruity Summer,
Sweet, farewell!”
Here,
with my beer
I sit,
While golden moments flit:
Alas!
They pass
Unheeded by:
And, as they fly,
I,
Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here
My beer.
O, finer far
Than fame, or riches, are
The graceful smoke-wreaths of this free cigar!
Why
Should I
Weep,...
Jubilant the music through the fields a-ringing,—
Carol, warble, whistle, pipe,—endless ways of singing,
Oriole, bobolink, melody of thrushes,
Rustling trees, hum of bees, sudden little hushes,
Broken suddenly again—
Carol, whistle, rustle, humming,
In reiterate refrain,
Thither, hither, going, coming,
While...
Ah, june is here, but where is May?—
That lovely, shadowy thing,
Fair promiser of fairer day,
That made my fancy stretch her wing,
In hope-begetting spring.
The spaces vague, the luminous veil,
The drift of bloom and scent,
Those dreamy longings setting sail,
That knew not, asked not, where they went,—
Ah...
