Songs Ysame

OH, happy valley at the mountain's feet,
If half your happiness you could but know!
Though over you a shadow always falls,
And far above you rise those heights of snow,
So far, your yearning love you may not speak
With rosy flush like some high sister peak,
Yet you may clasp its feet in fond embrace,
And gaze up in its face.

And sometimes down its slopes a wind will come
And bring a sudden, noiseless sweep of snow,
Like a soft greeting from those summits sent
To comfort you below.

What more? Love may not ask too great a boon.
Enough to be so near, though cast so low.
Think that a sea had rolled between you twain
If careless fortune had decreed it so,
And you could only lie and look across
To distant cloudy heights and know your loss,
And see some favored valley, fair and sweet,
Heap flowers at its feet.

BY some strange alchemy that turns to gold
The light that drops from gray and leaden skies,
Though heavy mists the outer world enfold,
'Tis always sunshine where Napoleon lies.
No more an exile by an alien sea,
Forgetful of the banishment and bane;
Now lies he there, in kingly dignity,
His tomb a Mecca shrine beside the Seine.
And there the pilgrim hears the story told,
How Paris placed above her hero, dead,
A window that should turn to yellow gold
The light that on his resting place is shed.
So on him falls, though summers wane,
The sunshine of that amber pane.

By some strange miracle, maybe divine,
The sunlight falls upon the buried past
And turns its water into sparkling wine,
And gilds the coin its coffers have amassed.
Could it have been those long-lost halcyon days
Trailed not a cloud across our April sky?
Faltered we not along those untried ways?
Grew we not weary as the days went by?
Ah, yes! But unreturning feet forget
Rough places trodden in the long ago,
Rememb'ring only paths with flowers beset,
While pressing onward, wearily and slow.
For Memory's windows but retain
The sunshine of an amber pane.

The little white, wind-blown anemone
By one round dewdrop may be fully filled,
And by some light-winged, passing honey-bee
Its cup of crystal water may be spilled.
So does the child heart hold its happiness:
A drop will fill it to its rosy rim.
It is not that these later days bring less,
That joy so rarely rises to the brim;
It is because the heart has deeper grown.
A fuller knowledge must its thirst assuage.
Perhaps we would not deem those pleasures flown
As bright as those which star the present age,
Had not upon them long years lain
The sunshine of an amber pane.

The dust of dim forgetfulness piles fast
Upon the chains that thralled us yesterday.
So will it be when this day, too, is past,
And in its arms we've seen it bear away
The cares that brooded in the tired brain;
The work that weighted down the weary hand;
The high hopes that we struggled to attain;
The problems that we could not understand.
Washed of its stain, bereft of any sting,
Seen through the window of the Memory,
Perchance, a gentler grace to it may cling
Than we may now think possible to see.
For skies will gleam, though gray with rain,
Like sunshine through that amber pane.

We may not stand on Patmos, and look through
The star-hinged portals where the great pearls gleam.
No brush that unveiled beauty ever drew,
Save one, that caught its shadow in a dream.
So lest we falter, faithless and afraid,
The Merciful, remembering we are dust,
Reveals not heaven for which our hearts have prayed,
But by a token teaches us to trust;
And day by day allows us to look through
The window of the Memory, broad and vast,
(Till jasper minarets rise into view)
Upon the happy heaven of the past;
And gives, till purer light we gain,
The sunshine of that amber pane.

SOMETIMES my needle stops with half-drawn thread
(Not often though, each moment's waste means bread,
And missing stitches leave the little mouths unfed).
I look down on the dingy court below:
A tuft of grass is all it has to show,—
A broken pump, where thirsty children go.
Above, there shines a bit of sky, so small
That it might be a passing blue-bird's wing.
One tree leans up against the high brick wall,
And there the sparrows twitter of the spring,
Until they waken in my heart a cry
Of hunger, that no bread can satisfy.

Always before, when Maytime took her way
Across the fields, I followed close. To-day
I can but dream of all her bright array.
My work drops down. Across the sill I lean,
And long with bitter longing, for unseen
Rain-freshened paths, where budding woods grow green.
The water trickles from the pump below
Upon the stones. With eyes half shut, I hear
It falling in a pool where rushes grow,
And feel a cooling presence drawing near.
And now the sparrows chirp again. No, hark!—
A singing as of some far meadow lark.

It is the same old miracle applied
Unto myself, that on the mountain-side
The few small loaves and fishes multiplied.
Behold, how strange and sweet the mystery!
The birds, the broken pump, the gnarled tree,
Have brought the fullness of the spring to me.
For in the leaves that rustle by the wall
All forests find a tongue. And so that grass
Can, with its struggling tuft of green, recall
Wide, bloom-filled meadows where the cattle pass.
How it can be, but dimly I divine.
These crumbs, God given, make the whole loaf mine.

THERE will be distant journeyings enough
To reach that Land beyond the ether's sea,
To satisfy the veriest roaming heart,—
Let me stay home with thee!

There will be new companionships enough
In that bright spirit-life. Why should we flee
So soon to alien hearts and stranger scenes?
I would stay home with thee.

The heart grows homesick, thinking of the change
When these familiar things no more shall be;
When e'en the thought of them, perchance, shall fade,—
Let me stay home with thee.

I would imprint upon my mind each scene,
Each meadow path, and stream, and orchard-tree,
Beloved since childhood, holy with our hopes,
Sweet with the thoughts of thee.

And each dear household place, let me learn all
By heart, where I am wont thy form to see.
Who knows what things shall pass? If I may share
A hearth in heaven with thee?

GOD keep us from the sordid mood
That shrinks to self-infinitude,
That sees no thing as good or grand,
That answers not the hour's demand,
And throws o'er Heaven's splendors furled
The shadow of our little world.

HERE in the dark I lie, and watch the stars
That through the soft gloom shine like tear-bright eyes
Behind a mourner's veil. The darkness seems
Almost a vapor, palpable and dense,
In which my room's familiar outlines melt,
And all seems one black pall that folds me round.
Only a mirror glimmers through the dusk,
And on the wall a dim, uncertain square
Shows where a portrait hangs. Ah, even so
Beloved faces fade into the past
And naught remains except a space of light
To show us where they were.
How still it seems!
The busy clock, whose tell-tale talk was drowned
By Day's uproarious voices, calls aloud,
Undaunted by the dark, the flight of time,
And through the halls its tones ring drearily.
The breeze on tiptoe seems to tread, as though
It were afraid to rouse the drowsy leaves.
The long, dim street is quiet. Nothing breaks
The dream of Night, asleep on Nature's breast.
Hark! Some one passes. On the pavement stones
Each stealthy step gives back a muffled sound,
Till the last foot-fall seems in distance drowned.
So Death might pass, bent on his mission dread,
Adown the silent street, and none might know
What hour he passed or what he bore away.
Ah, sadder thought! So Life goes, unawares,
Noiseless and swift and resolutely on,
While the dumb world lies folded in the gloom,
Unconscious and uncaring in its sleep.
And towards the west, the stars, all silently
Like golden sands in God's great hour-glass, glide
And fall into the nether crystal globe.

MORE than the compass to the mariner,
Wast thou, Felipa, to his dauntless soul.
Through adverse winds that threatened wreck, and nights
Of rayless gloom, thou pointed ever to
The North Star of his great ambition. He
Who once has lost an Eden, or has gained
A paradise by Eve's sweet influence,
Alone can know how strong a spell lies in
The witchery of a woman's beckoning hand.
And thou didst draw him, tide-like, higher still,
Felipa, whispering the lessons learned
From thy courageous father, till the flood
Of his ambition burst all barriers
And swept him onward to his longed-for goal.

Before the jewels of a Spanish queen
Built fleets to waft him on his untried way,
Thou gavest thy wealth of wifely sympathy
To build the lofty purpose of his soul.
And now the centuries have cycled by,
Till thou art all-forgotten by the throng
That lauds the great Pathfinder of the deep.
It matters not in that infinitude
Of space, where thou dost guide thy spirit-bark
To undiscovered lands, supremely fair.
If to this little planet thou couldst turn
And voyage, wraithlike, to its cloud-hung rim,
Thou wouldst not care for praise. And if, perchance,
Some hand held out to thee a laurel bough,
Thou wouldst not claim one leaf, but fondly turn
To lay thy tribute, also, at his feet.

'TWIXT creek and bay
We whisper to our white sails "stay!
Oh, Life, a little while delay!
'Twixt creek and bay."

So loath to go
From these calm shallows that we know,
We fain would stay the year's swift flow,
Nor onward go

To banks more wide,
Where seaward drawings of the tide
Impel to deeper depths untried,
Where Life grows wide.

'Twixt creek and bay—
The morning deepens into day,
And richer freight we bear, alway,
When in the bay.

HOW can we know when youth is gone,—
When age has surely come at last?
There is no marked meridian
Through which we sail, and feel when past.

A keener air our faces strike,
A chiller current swifter run;
They meet and glide like tide with tide,
Our youth and age, when youth is done.

CANST tell me, thou inconstant heart,
What like unto thou art?
A gypsy wandering up and down
Through April's green and Autumn's brown,
Until the year is spent;
And then, when hills are white with snow,
And brooks, ice-bound, have ceased to flow,
No place to pitch his tent.

UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands
Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands
Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp
The treasures that he fain would closer clasp.
None can escape. Each year demands its toll,
Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal,
Halting and blind, of all but life bereft,
And death claims that—the only boon that's left.

ON through the cloisters of eternity
The years, like monks, in slow procession pass,
Telling their rosary beads, the golden days,
With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights.
Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pass,
Nor will they pause until their vesper rings
A solemn curfew at the sunset hour,
When all the fires of life are buried low,
And all the worlds drop down upon their knees,
To say a last mass ere the death of Time.

HE was a king one time,
And they wrapped the ermine around him,
And the bells rang out when they crowned him,
Rang with a joyful chime.

And he sat on a throne!
The wealth that a world could offer
Was heaped in the New Year's coffer,
For the world was his own.

He was a spendthrift though,
And the coins of his lavish giving
Were the golden moments of living,—
Coins that he squandered so.

He is a beggar now.
In the night and the storm he lingers,
No gold in his prodigal fingers,—
King with the uncrowned brow.

Nothing to call his own!
His fortune scattered behind him;
Death empty-handed shall find him,—
A New Year takes his throne.

CHILDHOOD flits by with flowers in both its hands,—
We know not why it leaves, nor when it goes;
But suddenly we miss some subtle grace,
As perfume passes from a fading rose;
We scarce divine, yet somehow faintly feel
In the soft air a far-blown breath of snows.

Straying afar, unheeded and alone
Upon life's highway 'mid the busy throng,
Swept in its eager, restless race along
To the great future, unexplored, unknown,
The little child is lost. And when with haste
The wanderer's footsteps through the streets are traced,
They find a man with features pale and stern,
But the lost child will nevermore return.

DO you know why Time flies by so slow
When we are sad and old?
Why he turns and waits as if loath to go
On his journey cold?
Because from our coffers of hope and youth,
Where we kept life's gold,
He has stolen our treasures all, in sooth,
From their sacred hold.
He who came with a gift in hand
Was a robber bold.
He whose greeting was smooth and bland
Was a wolf in the fold.
And this is the reason that he goes by,
When we're worn and old,
So slowly, because he can scarcely fly
With his weight of gold.

'TIS the time when holly berries
Grow red as the Yule-log's glow,
And hearth and hall are decked by all
With the green of the mistletoe.
Time when the joy of giving
Is felt at each fireside,
And wings seek rest in the old home nest,
For the time is Christmas-tide.

Though only a carol singer
With nothing of gold in store,
And little to bring as an offering,
I stand outside your door.
Open! This blessed morning
Peace be to thee and thine!
Here to you all I gaily call
A greeting from me and mine.

Haply it may awaken
Some joy that so long ago,
On the frosty dawn of a Christmas gone,
You found in your stocking toe.
Though but an old, old carol,
It bears love's myrrh and gold,
And the frankincense of a joy intense
That the angel hosts foretold.

Listen! The heralds proclaim Him!
Follow! A star leads the way!
Oh, joy, in the City of David
The Christ-child reigns to-day!

I greet you this blessed morning.
Peace be to thee and thine!
To the dear ones here be Christmas cheer,
And the love of me and mine.

THE world swings slowly back and forth,
From dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn,
And we forget the hand that rocks,
But, cradle-like, the world swings on.

A little while to stir and fret,
Or sob with trembling lip
Because the sunbeams we would grasp
Through helpless fingers slip.

A little while to moan, and start
From fevered dreams, and weep,
For still the cradle sways and swings
Until we fall asleep.

The broad earth's pillow is so soft
To weary heads, and who can tell
But through that sleep sound lullabies
Of the white angel, Israfel?

HOW must they sing, those angel choirs,
Who breathe Heaven's pure, sweet air!
They need but waft it from their lips
To make it music rare.

Here on these chill, damp plains below,
Where stifling vapors rise,
We draw the heavy air of earth,
And breathe it out in sighs.

UP the steep heights whereon God's citadel
Is set, the prayers of mortals to that bourne,
For ages toiling, in the adamant,
Across the sky a glittering path have worn.

WITHIN the pauses of the anthem falls a hush,
And the deep organ's solemn voice goes on alone
In a low undertone,
As rain comes sometimes with a sudden sweeping rush,
And then is still, save that it slowly drips and falls
From leaves at intervals.
So memory sings alone
Between the busy hours when comes a lull,
And naught is audible
But its low undertone.
So darkness drops between the days, an interlude
When night's low sighing stirs the sleepy solitude.
So, when the little cycle of this life is rounded,
Before the spirit enters into life unbounded,
It waits to hear, with bated breath,
The solemn interlude of death.

OH, dreary day, that had so late a dawn!
Oh, dreary day, so long, though early gone!
Fold thy gray mantle round thy form and go
To find the lost sun, while Night comes on,
Across the plain, with silent step and slow.

I weary of thy dark, unsmiling mood,
I weary of thy dull disquietude,
And thy complaining voice that tells of pain,
Not with the tempest's trumpet, but subdued
In broken sentences of falling rain.

Now, soft as household spirit, comes the Night
And draws the curtains, fanning still more bright
The cheerful fire, while for her gentle sake
The tapers burst in bloom with yellow light,
Like evening primroses just kissed awake.

THE Spring steals through the city streets,
Silent and shrinking, half afraid,
As if there came, from woods and fields,
Some timid, bashful, country maid.

The lofty houses coldly frown,
And coldly stares the stony street;
But here and there from out a cleft
There springs a flower to kiss her feet.

And here and there a crocus smiles
A friendly greeting, or a spray
Of blooming lilacs, fresh and sweet,
Leans down and nods across her way.

Till, reassured, she smiles and sings,
And on she passes, glad and fleet,
And little children at their play
Look up to catch her glances sweet.

Is it her robe's soft fluttering
That gently fans the passer by?
He only feels the freshened air,
Nor knows the gracious presence nigh.

But some sweet influence he feels,
That charms care's gloomy shade away,
And pours into his wakened heart
The golden gladness of the May.

So, like an angel visitant,
She glides among the haunts of men,
And faint hearts bound, and sad eyes smile,
Because the Spring has come again.

SHE came with garments scant and poor and thin,
And white feet gleaming bare;
With pallid smiles where April tears had been,
And snowflakes on her hair.

Oh, never—Winter thought—such gentle look
In all the land was seen!
From his gray locks the diadem he took
And crowned her as his queen.

And now, in silken robes and gems arrayed,
Fair Spring reigns in his stead.
Upon his throne she sits, the beggar maid—
"Cophetua" is dead.

WHEN I go through the meadows brown,
Where stand the tall weeds, sere and dead,
Think you I find no beauty there,
Since Summer through the fields has fled?

The edges of the frozen stream,
Whose quiet waters late were crossed
By shadows of the bending fern,
Are fair with fringes of the frost.

Wherever cowslips crowded thick,
Or banks of buttercups would be,
A host of airy forms in white,
Like ghosts of flowers returned, I see.

It may be clustered flakes of snow,
Or frozen dew still glistening there,
But still it seems as if there came
A rare, strange odor through the air.

ACROSS the stubble fields the lazy breezes pass,
From Autumn orchards sloping southward in the sun,
Where dropping from the low-hung branches, one by one,
The apples hide in tangles of the wind-blown grass.
A warm, sweet scent of mellow fruit fills all the air,
And faintly over hills and hollows comes the cry
Of some shrill bluejay, and his mate's far-off reply.
Like Ruth, the winds will go a-gleaning, by and by,
And garner in the leaves till all the woods are bare.

But now my boyhood's love has come again to me,
October—in her royal red and gold arrayed!
She comes with glowing cheeks, my dusky Indian maid,
And all the world seems bright because so bright is she.
Unto her lips the wild grapes hold their spicy wine.
Persimmons, sweet and golden with an early frost,
Drop at her feet; and where the narrow creek has crossed
The woods, and in the ferns and flag its way has lost,
Blood-red the corals of the dog-wood berries shine.

And thus she comes, my Love I loved when I was young!
We wander for a little while across the hills,
And, as of old, her sunny presence warms and fills
My heart. But like a lute with one string left unstrung,
When I would sing again the song of other years,
Something is lost. The harmony is incomplete.
And though the same old melody I still repeat,
One alto note of joy is gone that made it sweet,
And something trembles in the Autumn haze like tears.

A    TINY bird flits through the twilight brown,
When sunset dreams make all the garden fair,
Whose soft notes fall into the quiet air
Like olive leaves on waters smooth dropped down.
Emblems of rest, when floods of care do cease,
Into my heart, as well, they fall and float,
An olive leaf each faint and dreamy note—
I recognize their sign, and feel at peace.

DARKNESS and silence, such as only fall
At midnight, wrap the sleeping hamlets all;
No life in all the dim world seems to be.
Then suddenly,
Across the hills, far off and faint, I hear
Sound through the dark, as through a dream, the call
(How strange it seems!) of some bold chanticleer.

(Half in my sleep I hear that clarion ring,
With distant calls, like echoes, answering;
And, as at war's alarum, soldiers leap
From guarded sleep
And seize their arms, and hasten from their tents,
So, at this sound, my drowsy senses spring,
Alert to man the mind's dark battlements.)

To tell night's mid-hour tolls no startled bell;
Only thy voice is heard, brave sentinel,
Who, like the ancient watchman on the towers,
Calls forth the hours,
And to the wistful questioners, who see
No gleam through pain's long vigil, dost foretell
"The morning cometh," oft and cheerily.

How canst thou know when, weary with his race,
The Day turns back, his pathway to retrace?
Canst thou the maiden Dawn's light footsteps hear,
Approaching near?
Or dost thou stand in converse with the skies,
And know what time she leaves her hiding-place
By joyful flashes of their starry eyes?

Thou art a prophet, like to those of old,
Who in the darkness sat, but firm and bold
Looked with undaunted eyes towards the dim
Horizon's rim,
And thrilled with faith of waiting ages born,
That soon from out the Night's strong prisonhold,
Should burst the golden glory of the Morn.

JUST outside of the noisy town,
Half through thicket and wood revealed,
Hemmed about by a wall of stone,
Wide it lieth, the Potter's Field.

Brambles wander across the grass,
Vines creep over the broken wall,
Bindweeds blossom, and here and there
Stands a waif of the forest tall.

There no columns of gleaming white
Mark the dust that is sacred still;
Swings the gate on its rusty hinge—
All may enter and roam at will.

Who should hinder the ruthless hand,
Who protect from a vagrant's tread?
Guard the urns of the rich and great—
No one cares for the pauper dead!

Outlawed felon and sinless child
All find room in the Potter's Field.
There lies a Judas who sold his Lord,
Here a Mary, His pity healed.

Who could know of the shame and sin
Safely under the sod concealed?
Weary burdens of want and grief,
Laid away in the Potter's Field.

Who could guess?—for as swift and light
O'er it the feet of the seasons go;
Summer hides it with grace of flowers,
Winter spreads it with folds of snow.

Rains weep over the lonely mound,
Sunlight lingers, and swift shades pass;
Tender hands of the gentle wind
Smooth the knots of the tangled grass.

What though hallowed by Death alone,
Rest unbroken the sod doth yield;
Peace is here, for His constant watch
God doth set o'er the Potter's Field.

WELL he knew that his clothes were poor:
He was common, he humbly thought;
Child as he was, he could understand
Why he was slighted and never sought.

Yet could he help it,—his mother gone,—
Help the weight of his father's shame?
Hardest sentence of childish law:
Blaming innocence not to blame.

It was hard when the children played
All together, to be left out,—
Stand aside, with a stinging sense
That 'twas he that they laughed about.

Thoughtless children, they felt no wrong,—
Pushed him out of the ring at play.
No one heard how his voice was choked,
No one cared when he stole away.

No one saw how he crept at last
Through the gate and the grasses deep,
Past the wall to a lonely grave
Where his mother was laid asleep.

Could she feel in her narrow bed,
Wee, cold hands, as they groped about—
Feel the tears that were dropped because
Even her grave had left him out?

I HAVE no part with all the great, proud world:
It cares not how I live, nor when I die;
But every lily smiling in the field,
And every tiny sparrow darting by,
Claims kinship with me, mortal though they be,—
The One who cares for them doth care for me.

THE wild bee clings to it
Most fond and long.
The wild bird sings to it
Its sweetest song.
The wild breeze brings to it
A life more strong.

So all things lend to thee
Some charm, some grace.
The world's a friend to thee,
In love's embrace.
All hearts do bend to thee,
In thy queen's place.

IF I should look for the time o' day
On the rose's dial red,
I would think it was just the sunrise hour,
From the flush of its petals spread.

And if I would tell by the lily-bell,
I would think it was calm, white noon;
And the violet's blue would tell by its hue
Of the evening coming soon.

But when I would know by my lady's face,
I am all perplexed the while;
For it's always starlight by her eyes,
And sunlight by her smile.

THERE may be hearts that lie so deep
'Neath griefs and cares that weigh like drifted snow,
That love seems chilled in endless sleep,
And budding hopes may never dare to grow.
Yet under all, some memory
Trails its arbutus flowers of tender thought,—
All buried in the snow maybe,
Still with the sweetest fragrance fraught.