Afterwhiles

  I caught, for a second, across the crowd—
  Just for a second, and barely that—
  A face, pox-pitted and evil-browed,
  Hid in the shade of a slouch-rim'd hat—
  With small gray eyes, of a look as keen
  As the long, sharp nose that grew between.

  And I said: 'Tis a sketch of Nature's own,
  Drawn i' the dark o' the moon, I swear,
  On a tatter of Fate that the winds have blown
  Hither and thither and everywhere—
  With its keen little sinister eyes of gray,
  And nose like the beak of a bird of prey!

        1
  The kind of a man for you and me!
  He faces the world unflinchingly,
  And smites, as long as the wrong resists,
  With a knuckled faith and force like fists:
  He lives the life he is preaching of,
  And loves where most is the need of love;
  His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears,
  And his face sublime through the blind man's tears;
  The light shines out where the clouds were dim,
  And the widow's prayer goes up for him;
  The latch is clicked at the hovel door
  And the sick man sees the sun once more,
  And out o'er the barren fields he sees
  Springing blossoms and waving trees,
  Feeling as only the dying may,
  That God's own servant has come that way,
  Smoothing the path as it still winds on
  Through the golden gate where his loved have gone.

        2
  The kind of a man for me and you!
  However little of worth we do
  He credits full, and abides in trust
  That time will teach us how more is just.
  He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds
  Of querulous and uneasy minds,
  And sympathizing, he shares the pain
  Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain;
  And knowing this, as we grasp his hand
  We are surely coming to understand!
  He looks on sin with pitying eyes—
  E'en as the Lord, since Paradise—,
  Else, should we read, Though our sins should glow
  As scarlet, they shall be white as snow—?
  And feeling still, with a grief half glad,
  That the bad are as good as the good are bad,
  He strikes straight out for the Right— and he
  Is the kind of a man for you and me!

  Like a drift of faded blossoms
  Caught in a slanting rain,
  His fingers glimpsed down the strings of his harp
  In a tremulous refrain:

  Patter and tinkle, and drip and drip!
  Ah! But the chords were rainy sweet!
  And I closed my eyes and I bit my lip,
  As he played there in the street.

  Patter, and drip, and tinkle!
  And there was the little bed
  In the corner of the garret,
  And the rafters overhead!

  And there was the little window—
  Tinkle, and drip, and drip—!
  The rain above, and a mother's love,
  And God's companionship!

  Wasn't it pleasant, O brother mine,
  In those old days of the lost sunshine
  Of youth— when the Saturday's chores were through,
  And the "Sunday's wood" in the kitchen too,
  And we went visiting, "me and you,"
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's?

  It all comes back so clear to-day!
  Though I am as bald as you are gray—
  Out by the barn-lot, and down the lane,
  We patter along in the dust again,
  As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

  We cross the pasture, and through the wood
  Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood,
  Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry,
  And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing" sky
  And lolled and circled, as we went by
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

  And then in the dust of the road again;
  And the teams we met, and the countrymen;
  And the long highway, with sunshine spread
  As thick as butter on country bread,
  Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

  Why, I see her now in the open door,
  Where the little gourds grew up the sides and o'er
  The clapboard roof—! And her face— ah, me!
  Wasn't it good for a boy to see—
  And wasn't it good for a boy to be
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's?

  The jelly— the Jam and the marmalade,
  And the cherry and quince "preserves'' she made!
  And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,
  With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare—!
  And the more we ate was the more to spare,
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

  And the old spring-house in the cool green gloom
  Of the willow-trees—, and the cooler room
  Where the swinging-shelves and the crocks were kept—
  Where the cream in a golden languor slept
  While the waters gurgled and laughed and wept—
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

  And O my brother, so far away,
  This is to tell you she waits to-day
  To welcome us—: Aunt Mary fell
  Asleep this morning, whispering— "Tell
  The boys to come!" And all is well
  Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

  Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the vales—
  The stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales;
  The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails,
  And all your words were sweeter than the notes of nightingales.

  Illileo Legardi, in the garden there alone,
  With your figure carved of fervor, as the Psyche carved of stone,
  There came to me no murmur of the fountain's undertone
  So mystically, musically mellow as your own.

  You whispered low, Illileo— so low the leaves were mute,
  And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit;
  And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute:
  And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit.

  Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss,
  What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this—?
  Let them reeling reach to win me— even Heaven I would miss,
  Grasping earthward—! I would cling here, though I clung by just a kiss.

  And blossoms should grow odorless— and lilies all aghast—
  And I said the stars should slacken in their paces through the vast,
  Ere yet my loyalty should fail enduring to the last—.
  So vowed I. It is written. It is changeless as the past.

  IIlileo Legardi, in the shade your palace throws
  Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porticos,
  A moan goes with the music that may vex the high repose
  Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson of a rose.

  They rode right out of the morning sun—
  A glimmering, glittering cavalcade
  Of knights and ladies and every one
  In princely sheen arrayed;
  And the king of them all, O he rode ahead,
  With a helmet of gold, and a plume of red
  That spurted about in the breeze and bled
  In the bloom of the everglade.

  And they rode high over the dewy lawn,
  With brave, glad banners of every hue
  That rolled in ripples, as they rode on
  In splendor, two and two;
  And the tinkling links of the golden reins
  Of the steeds they rode rang such refrains
  As the castanets in a dream of Spain's
  Intensest gold and blue.

  And they rode and rode; and the steeds they neighed
  And pranced, and the sun on their glossy hides
  Flickered and lightened and glanced and played
  Like the moon on rippling tides;

  And their manes were silken, and thick and strong,
  And their tails were flossy, and fetlock-long,
  And jostled in time to the teeming throng,
  And their knightly song besides.

  Clank of scabbard and jingle of spur,
  And the fluttering sash of the queen went wild
  In the wind, and the proud king glanced at her
  As one at a wilful child—,
  And as knight and lady away they flew,
  And the banners flapped, and the falcon too,
  And the lances flashed and the bugle blew,
  He kissed his hand and smiled.

  And then, like a slanting sunlit shower,
  The pageant glittered across the plain,
  And the turf spun back, and the wildweed flower
  Was only a crimson stain.
  And a dreamer's eyes they are downward cast,
  As he blends these words with the wailing blast:
  "It is the King of the Year rides past!"
  And Autumn is here again.

  "O I am weary!" she sighed, as her billowy
  Hair she unloosed in a torrent of gold
  That rippled and fell o'er a figure as willowy,
  Graceful and fair as a goddess of old:
  Over her jewels she flung herself drearily,
  Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast,
  Crushed with her fingers the lily that wearily
  Clung in her hair like a dove in its nest—.
  And naught but her shadowy form in the mirror
  To kneel in dumb agony down and weep near her!

  "Weary—?" Of what? Could we fathom the mystery—?
  Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears
  And wash with their dews one white face from her history,
  Set like a gem in the red rust of years?
  Nothing will rest her— unless he who died of her
  Strayed from his grave, and in place of the groom,
  Tipping her face, kneeling there by the side of her,
  Drained the old kiss to the dregs of his doom—.
  And naught but that shadowy form in the mirror
  To heel in dumb agony down and weep near her!

  Time is so long when a man is dead!
  Some one sews; and the room is made
  Very clean; and the light is shed
  Soft through the window-shade.

  Yesterday I thought: "I know
  Just how the bells will sound, and how
  The friends will talk, and the sermon go,
  And the hearse-horse bow and bow!"

  This is to-day; and I have no thing
  To think of— nothing whatever to do
  But to hear the throb of the pulse of a wing
  That wants to fly back to you.

  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear;
  There is ever a something sings alway:
  There's the song of the lark when the skies are clear,
  And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray.
  The sunshine showers across the grain,
  And the bluebird trills in the orchard tree;
  And in and out, when the eaves dip rain,
  The swallows are twittering ceaselessly.

  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,
  Be the skies above or dark or fair,
  There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—
  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear
  There is ever a song somewhere!

  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,
  In the midnight black, or the mid-day blue:
  The robin pipes when the sun is here,
  And the cricket chirrups the whole night through.
  The buds may blow, and the fruit may grow,
  And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sear;
  But whether the sun, or the rain, or the snow,
  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,
  Be the skies above or dark or fair,
  There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—
  There is ever a song somewhere, my dear—
  There is ever a song somewhere!

  If from your own the dimpled hands had slipped,
  And ne'er would nestle in your palm again;
  If the white feet into the grave had tripped—"

  When Bessie died—
  We braided the brown hair, and tied
  It just as her own little hands
  Had fastened back the silken strands
  A thousand times— the crimson bit
  Of ribbon woven into it
  That she had worn with childish pride—
  Smoothed down the dainty bow— and cried
  When Bessie died.

  When Bessie died—
  We drew the nursery blinds aside,
  And as the morning in the room
  Burst like a primrose into bloom,
  Her pet canary's cage we hung
  Where she might hear him when he sung—
  And yet not any note he tried,
  Though she lay listening folded-eyed.

  When Bessie died—
  We writhed in prayer unsatisfied:
  We begged of God, and He did smile
  In silence on us all the while;
  And we did see Him, through our tears,
  Enfolding that fair form of hers,
  She laughing back against His love
  The kisses had nothing of—
  And death to us He still denied,
  When Bessie died—
  When Bessie died.

  The landscape, like the awed face of a child,
  Grew curiously blurred; a hush of death
  Fell on the fields, and in the darkened wild
  The zephyr held its breath.

  No wavering glamour-work of light and shade
  Dappled the shivering surface of the brook;
  The frightened ripples in their ambuscade
  Of willows thrilled and shook.

  The sullen day grew darker, and anon
  Dim flashes of pent anger lit the sky;
  With rumbling wheels of wrath came rolling on
  The storm's artillery.

  The cloud above put on its blackest frown,
  And then, as with a vengeful cry of pain,
  The lightning snatched it, ripped and flung it down
  In ravelled shreds of rain:

  While I, transfigured by some wondrous art,
  Bowed with the thirsty lilies to the sod,
  My empty soul brimmed over, and my heart
  Drenched with the love of God.

  There! Little girl; don't cry!
  They have broken your doll, I know;
  And your tea-set blue,
  And your play-house too,
  Are things of the long ago;
  But childish troubles will soon pass by—.
  There! Little girl; don't cry!

  There! Little girl; don't cry!
  They have broken your slate, I know;
  And the glad, wild ways
  Of your school-girl days
  Are things of the long ago;
  But life and love will soon come by—.
  There! Little girl; don't cry!

  There! Little girl; don't cry!
  They have broken your heart, I know;
  And the rainbow gleams
  Of your youthful dreams
  Are things of the long ago;
  But heaven holds all for which you sigh—.
  There! Little girl; don't cry!

  I want to sing something— but this is all—
  I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull
  As though they were damp, and the echoes fall
  Limp and unlovable.

  Words will not say what I yearn to say—
  They will not walk as I want them to,
  But they stumble and fall in the path of the way
  Of my telling my love for you.

  Simply take what the scrawl is worth—
  Knowing I love you as sun the sod
  On the ripening side of the great round earth
  That swings in the smile of God.

  I cannot say, and I will not say
  That he is dead—. He is just away!

  With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand
  He has wandered into an unknown land,

  And left us dreaming how very fair
  It needs must be, since he lingers there.

  And you— O you, who the wildest yearn
  For the old-time step and the glad return—,

  Think of him faring on, as dear
  In the love of There as the love of Here;

  And loyal still, as he gave the blows
  Of his warrior-strength to his country's foes—.

  Mild and gentle, as he was brave—,
  When the sweetest love of his life he gave

  To simple things—: Where the violets grew
  Blue as the eyes they were likened to,

  The touches of his hands have strayed
  As reverently as his lips have prayed:

  When the little brown thrush that harshly chirred
  Was dear to him as the mocking-bird;

  And he pitied as much as a man in pain
  A writhing honey-bee wet with rain—.

  Think of him still as the same, I say:
  He is not dead— he is just away!

  Who bides his time, and day by day
  Faces defeat full patiently,
  And lifts a mirthful roundelay,
  However poor his fortunes be—,
  He will not fail in any qualm
  Of poverty— the paltry dime
  It will grow golden in his palm,
  Who bides his time.

  Who bides his time— he tastes the sweet
  Of honey in the saltest tear;
  And though he fares with slowest feet,
  Joy runs to meet him, drawing near;
  The birds are heralds of his cause;
  And like a never-ending rhyme,
  The roadsides bloom in his applause,
  Who bides his time.

  Who bides his time, and fevers not
  In the hot race that none achieves,
  Shall wear cool-wreathen laurel, wrought
  With crimson berries in the leaves;
  And he shall reign a goodly king,
  And sway his hand o'er every clime,
  With peace writ on his signet-ring,
  Who bides his time.

  A troth, and a grief, and a blessing,
  Disguised them and came this way—,
  And one was a promise, and one was a doubt,
  And one was a rainy day.

  And they met betimes with this maiden,
  And the promise it spake and lied,
  And the doubt it gibbered and hugged itself,
  And the rainy day— she died.

  Ay, thou varlet! Laugh away!
  All the world's a holiday!
  Laugh away, and roar and shout
  Till thy hoarse tongue lolleth out!
  Bloat thy cheeks, and bulge thine eyes
  Unto bursting; pelt thy thighs
  With thy swollen palms, and roar
  As thou never hast before!
  Lustier! Wilt thou! Peal on peal!
  Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel—
  Wrestle with thy loins, and then
  Wheeze thee whiles, and whoop again!

        1
  Once, in a dream, I saw a man,
  With haggard face and tangled hair,
  And eyes that nursed as wild a care
  As gaunt Starvation ever can;
  And in his hand he held a wand
  Whose magic touch gave life and thought
  Unto a form his fancy wrought
  And robed with coloring so grand,
  It seemed the reflex of some child
  Of Heaven, fair and undefiled—
  A face of purity and love—
  To woo him into worlds above:
  And as I gazed with dazzled eyes,
  A gleaming smile lit up his lips
  As his bright soul from its eclipse
  Went flashing into Paradise.
  Then tardy Fame came through the door
  And found a picture— nothing more.

        2
  And once I saw a man alone,
  In abject poverty, with hand
  Uplifted o'er a block of stone
  That took a shape at his command
  And smiled upon him, fair and good—
  A perfect work of womanhood,
  Save that the eyes might never weep,
  Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep,
  Nor hair that fell from crown to wrist,
  Be brushed away, caressed and kissed.
  And as in awe I gazed on her,
  I saw the sculptor's chisel fall—
  I saw him sink, without a moan,
  Sink life less at the feet of stone,
  And lie there like a worshipper.
  Fame crossed the threshold of the hall,
  And found a statue— that was all.

        3
  And once I saw a man who drew
  A gloom about him like cloak,
  And wandered aimlessly. The few
  Who spoke of him at all, but spoke
  Disparagingly of a mind
  The Fates had faultily designed:
  Too indolent for modern times—
  Too fanciful, and full of whims—
  For talking to himself in rhymes,
  And scrawling never-heard-of hymns,
  The idle life to which he clung
  Was worthless as the songs he sung!
  I saw him, in my vision, filled
  With rapture o'er a spray of bloom
  The wind threw in his lonely room;
  And of the sweet perfume it spilled
  He drank to drunkenness, and flung
  His long hair back, and laughed and sung
  And clapped his hands as children do
  At fairy tales they listen to,
  While from his flying quill there dripped
  Such music on his manuscript
  That he who listens to the words
  May close his eyes and dream the birds
  Are twittering on every hand
  A language he can understand.
  He journeyed on through life unknown,
  Without one friend to call his own;
  He tired. No kindly hand to press
  The cooling touch of tenderness
  Upon his burning brow, nor lift
  To his parched lips God's freest gift—
  No sympathetic sob or sigh
  Of trembling lips— no sorrowing eye
  Looked out through tears to see him die.
  And Fame her greenest laurels brought
  To crown a head that heeded not.

  And this is Fame! A thing indeed,
  That only comes when least the need:
  The wisest minds of every age
  The book of life from page to page
  Have searched in vain; each lesson conned
  Will promise it the page beyond—
  Until the last, when dusk of night
  Falls over it, and reason's light
  Is smothered by that unknown friend
  Who signs his nom de plume, The End.

  The ripest peach is highest on the tree—
  And so her love, beyond the reach of me,
  Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes bow
  Her heart down to me where I worship now!

  She looms aloft where every eye may see
  The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
  Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!
  I may not reach here from the orchard grass.

  I drink the sunshine showered past her lips
  As roses drain the dewdrop as it drips.
  The ripest peach is highest on the tree,
  And so mine eyes gaze upward eagerly.

  Why— why do I not turn away in wrath
  And pluck some heart here hanging in my path—?
  Lover's lower boughs bend with them— but, ah me!
  The ripest peach is highest on the tree!

  The afternoon of summer folds
  Its warm arms round the marigolds,

  And with its gleaming fingers, pets
  The watered pinks and violets

  That from the casement vases spill,
  Over the cottage window-sill,

  Their fragrance down the garden walks
  Where droop the dry-mouthed hollyhocks.

  How vividly the sunshine scrawls
  The grape-vine shadows on the walls!

  How like a truant swings the breeze
  In high boughs of the apple-trees!

  The slender "free-stone" lifts aloof,
  Full languidly above the roof,

  A hoard of fruitage, stamped with gold
  And precious mintings manifold.

  High up, through curled green leaves, a pear
  Hangs hot with ripeness here and there.

  Beneath the sagging trellisings,
  In lush, lack-lustre clusterings,

  Great torpid grapes, all fattened through
  With moon and sunshine, shade and dew,

  Until their swollen girths express
  But forms of limp deliciousness—

  Drugged to an indolence divine
  With heaven's own sacramental wine.

  They meet to say farewell: Their way
  Of saying this is hard to say—.
  He holds her hand an Instant, wholly
  Distressed— and she unclasps it slowly,

  He lends his gaze evasively
  Over the printed page that she
  Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder
  Glimpsed from the lace-mists that infold her.

  The clock, beneath its crystal cup,
  Discreetly clicks— "Quick! Act! Speak up!"
  A tension circles both her slender
  Wrists— and her raised eyes flash in splendor,

  Even as he feels his dazzled own—.
  Then blindingly, round either thrown,
  They feel a stress of arms that ever
  Strain tremblingly— and "Never! Never!"

  Is whispered brokenly, with half
  A sob, like a belated laugh—,
  While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes—,
  Sweet as the dew's lip to the rose's.

  John McKeen, in his rusty dress,
  His loosened collar, and swarthy throat,
  His face unshaven, and none the less,
  His hearty laugh and his wholesomeness,
  And the wealth of a workman's vote!

  Bring him, O Memory, here once more,
  And tilt him back in his Windsor chair
  By the kitchen stove, when the day is o'er
  And the light of the hearth is across the floor,
  And the crickets everywhere!

  And let their voices be gladly blent
  With a watery jingle of pans and spoons,
  And a motherly chirrup of sweet content,
  And neighborly gossip and merriment,
  And old-time fiddle-tunes!

  Tick the clock with a wooden sound,
  And fill the hearing with childish glee
  Of rhyming riddle, or story found
  In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-bound
  Old book of the Used-to-be!

  John McKeen of the Past! Ah John,
  To have grown ambitious in worldly ways—!
  To have rolled your shirt-sleeves down, to don
  A broadcloth suit, and forgetful, gone
  Out on election days!

  John ah, John! Did it prove your worth
  To yield you the office you still maintain—?
  To fill your pockets, but leave the dearth
  Of all the happier things on earth
  To the hunger of heart and brain?

  Under the dusk of your villa trees,
  Edging the drives where your blooded span
  Paw the pebbles and wait your ease—,
  Where are the children about your knees,
  And the mirth, and the happy man?

  The blinds of your mansion are battened to;
  Your faded wife is a close recluse;
  And your "finished" daughters will doubtless do
  Dutifully all that is willed of you,
  And marry as you shall choose—!

  But O for the old-home voices, blent
  With the watery jingle of pans and spoons,
  And the motherly chirrup of glad content,
  And neighborly gossip and merriment,
  And the old-time fiddle-tunes!

  "He shall sleep unscathed of thieves
  Who loves Allah and believes."
  Thus heard one who shared the tent,
  In the far-off Orient,
  Of the Bedouin ben Ahrzz—
  Nobler never loved the stars
  Through the palm-leaves nigh the dim
  Dawn his courser neighed to him!

  He said: "Let the sands be swarmed
  With such thieves as I, and thou
  Shalt at morning rise unharmed,
  Light as eyelash to the brow
  Of thy camel amber-eyed,
  Ever munching either side,
  Striding still, with nestled knees,
  Through the midnight's oases."

  "Who can rob thee an thou hast
  More than this that thou hast cast
  At my feet— this dust of gold?
  Simply this and that, all told!
  Hast thou not a treasure of
  Such a thing as men call love?"

  "Can the dusky band I lead
  Rob thee of thy daily need
  Of a whiter soul, or steal
  What thy lordly prayers reveal?
  Who could be enriched of thee
  By such hoard of poverty
  As thy niggard hand pretends
  To dole me— thy worst of friends?
  Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless
  One indeed who blesses thee:
  Robbing thee, I dispossess
  But myself—. Pray thou for me!"

  He shall sleep unscathed of thieves
  Who loves Allah and believes.

        1
  The air falls chill;
  The whippoorwill
  Pipes lonesomely behind the Hill:
  The dusk grows dense,
  The silence tense;
  And lo, the katydids commence.

        2
  Through shadowy rifts
  Of woodland lifts
  The low, slow moon, and upward drifts,
  While left and right
  The fireflies' light
  Swirls eddying in the skirts of Night.

        3
  O Cloudland gray
  And level lay
  Thy mists across the face of Day!
  At foot and head,
  Above the dead
  O Dews, weep on uncomforted!

  "Rain and rain! And rain and rain!"
  Yesterday we muttered
  Grimly as the grim refrain
  That the thunders uttered:
  All the heavens under cloud—
  All the sunshine sleeping;
  All the grasses limply bowed
  With their weight of weeping.

  Sigh and sigh! And sigh and sigh!
  Never end of sighing;
  Rain and rain for our reply—
  Hopes half drowned and dying;
  Peering through the window-pane,
  Naught but endless raining—
  Endless sighing, and as vain,
  Endlessly complaining,

  Shine and shine! And shine and shine!
  Ah! To-day the splendor—!
  All this glory yours and mine—
  God! But God is tender!
  We to sigh instead of sing,
  Yesterday, in sorrow,
  While the Lord was fashioning
  This for our To-morrow!

  Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
  Purple, pink, and every hue,
  From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
  In dusky drops of dew,
  I praise you all, wherever found,
  And love you through and through—;
  But, Blossoms On The Trees,
  With your breath upon the breeze
  There's nothing all the world around
  As half as sweet as you!

  Could the rhymer only wring
  All the sweetness to the lees
  Of all the kisses clustering
  In juicy Used-to-bes,
  To dip his rhymes therein and sing
  The blossoms on the trees—,
  "O Blossoms on the Trees,"
  He would twitter, trill, and coo,
  "However sweet, such songs as these
  Are not as sweet as you—:
  For you are blooming melodies
  The eyes may listen to!"

  Last night— how deep the darkness was!
  And well I knew its depths, because
  I waded it from shore to shore,
  Thinking to reach the light no more.

  She would not even touch my hand—-.
  The winds rose and the cedars fanned
  The moon out, and the stars fled back
  In heaven and hid— and all was black!

  But ah! To-night a summons came,
  Signed with a tear-drop for a name,
  For as I wondering kissed it, lo
  A line beneath it told me so.

  And now— the moon hangs over me
  A disk of dazzling brilliancy,
  And every star-tip stabs my sights
  With splintered glitterings of light!

  Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,
  With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,
  Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,
  And a knot of red roses sown in under there
  Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

  Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground
  Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;
  And the gleam of a smile, O as fair and as faint
  And as sweet as the master of old used to paint
  Round the lips of their favorite saint!

  And that lace at her throat— and fluttering hands
  Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands,
  The flakes of their touches— first fluttering at
  The bow— then the roses— the hair and then that
  Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat.

  Ah, what artist on earth with a model like this,
  Holding not on his palette the tint of a kiss,
  Nor a pigment to hint of the hue of her hair
  Nor the gold of her smile— O what artist could dare
  To expect a result half so fair?

  Back from a two-years' sentence!
  And though it had been ten,
  You think, I were scarred no deeper
  In the eyes of my fellow-men.
  "My fellow-men—?" Sounds like a satire,
  You think— and I so allow,
  Here in my home since childhood,
  Yet more than a stranger now!

  Pardon—! Not wholly a stranger—,
  For I have a wife and child:
  That woman has wept for two long years,
  And yet last night she smiled—!
  Smiled, as I leapt from the platform
  Of the midnight train, and then—
  All that I knew was that smile of hers,
  And our babe in my arms again!

  Back from a two-years' sentence—
  But I've thought the whole thing through—,
  A hint of it came when the bars swung back
  And I looked straight up in the blue
  Of the blessed skies with my hat off!
  O-ho! I've a wife and child:
  That woman has wept for two long years,
  And yet last night she smiled!

  The stars are falling, and the sky
  Is like a field of faded flowers;
  The winds on weary wings go by;
  The moon hides, and the tempest lowers;
  And still through every clime and age
  I wander on a pilgrimage
  That all men know an idle quest,
  For that the goal I seek is— Rest!

  I hear the voice of summer streams,
  And following, I find the brink
  Of cooling springs, with childish dreams
  Returning as I bend to drink—
  But suddenly, with startled eyes,
  My face looks on its grim disguise
  Of long gray beard; and so, distressed,
  I hasten on, nor taste of rest.

  I come upon a merry group
  Of children in the dusky wood,
  Who answer back the owlet's whoop,
  That laughs as it had understood;
  And I would pause a little space,
  But that each happy blossom-face
  Is like to one His hands have blessed
  Who sent me forth in search of rest.

  Sometimes I fain would stay my feet
  In shady lanes, where huddled kine
  Couch in the grasses cool and sweet,
  And lift their patient eyes to mine;
  But I, for thoughts that ever then
  Go back to Bethlehem again,
  Must needs fare on my weary quest,
  And weep for very need of rest.

  Is there no end? I plead in vain:
  Lost worlds nor living answer me.
  Since Pontius Pilate's awful reign
  Have I not passed eternity?
  Have I not drunk the fetid breath
  Of every fevered phase of death,
  And come unscathed through every pest
  And scourge and plague that promised rest?

  Have I not seen the stars go out
  That shed their light o'er Galilee,
  And mighty kingdoms tossed about
  And crumbled clod-like in the sea?
  Dead ashes of dead ages blow
  And cover me like drifting snow,
  And time laughs on as 'twere a jest
  That I have any need of rest.

        1
  Would that the winds might only blow
  As they blew in the golden long ago—!
  Laden with odors of Orient isles
  Where ever and ever the sunshine smiles,
  And the bright sands blend with the shady trees,
  And the lotus blooms in the midst of these.

        2
  Warm winds won from the midland vales
  To where the tress of the Siren trails
  O'er the flossy tip of the mountain phlox
  And the bare limbs twined in the crested rocks,
  High above as the seagulls flap
  Their lopping wings at the thunder-clap.

        3
  Ah! That the winds might rise and blow
  The great surge up from the port below,
  Bloating the sad, lank, silken sails
  Of the Argo out with the swift, sweet gales
  That blew from Colchis when Jason had
  His love's full will and his heart was glad—
  When Medea's voice was soft and low.
  Ah! That the winds might rise and blow!

  Most tangible of all the gods that be,
  O Santa Claus— our own since Infancy!
  As first we scampered to thee— now, as then,
  Take us as children to thy heart again.

  Be wholly good to us, just as of old:
  As a pleased father, let thine arms infold
  Us, homed within the haven of thy love,
  And all the cheer and wholesomeness thereof.

  Thou lone reality, when O so long
  Life's unrealities have wrought us wrong:
  Ambition hath allured us—, fame likewise,
  And all that promised honor in men's eyes.

  Throughout the world's evasions, wiles, and shifts,
  Thou only bidest stable as thy gifts—:
  A grateful king re-ruleth from thy lap,
  Crowned with a little tinselled soldier-cap:

  A mighty general— a nation's pride—
  Thou givest again a rocking-horse to ride,
  And wildly glad he groweth as the grim
  Old jurist with the drum thou givest him:

  The sculptor's chisel, at thy mirth's command,
  Is as a whistle in his boyish hand;
  The painters model fadeth utterly,
  And there thou standest—, and he painteth thee—:

  Most like a winter pippin, sound and fine
  And tingling-red that ripe old face of thine,
  Set in thy frosty beard of cheek and chin
  As midst the snows the thaws of spring set in.

  Ho! Santa Claus— our own since Infancy—
  Most tangible of all the gods that be—!
  As first we scampered to thee— now, as then,
  Take us as children to thy heart again.