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The Snowflake, and Other Poems

Chapter 97: IV.
By Arthur Weir
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Poetry

About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that move between personified seasons, pastoral and maritime scenes, and intimate meditations on love, art, childhood, and mortality. Several pieces dramatize the months and the New Year, while others present sonnets, ballads, and occasional tributes addressing friends, places, and performances. Imagery ranges from snow and rivers to gardens, brooks, and the seaside, with tones shifting from playful and romantic to solemn and contemplative. Short forms such as quatrains and songs sit alongside longer narrative and dramatic lyrics, yielding a varied portrait of poetic feeling rooted in nature and personal reflection.

Say what you will,
 If love would have its fill,
 Though it may feed long on the one dear face,
 It never is content, save in embrace.
Say what you will,
 Though passion have its fill,
 It never is content, nor has delight,
 If love come not to sanctify the rite.
Harmonious flesh and spirit,
 These only shall inherit
 The joys of earth, and in the dread To Be
 Not death itself shall break that unity.
Woe to the narrow heart
 Would strive these twain to part;
 Look down the ages, through the world’s mad din,
 This is the one unpardonable sin.

IN CHURCH.

I never feel so near to God and heaven
 As when I kneel in worship at thy side,
 And hear thy humble prayer to be forgiven
 For sake of Him who for our saving died.
And though I do not mingle with thy prayer
 Plea of my own, but, silent, bow my head,
 So close our souls are knit, I seem to share
 The bounteous blessings God on thee doth shed.
I hear the choir their joyous praises singing,
 But not their voices soften my flint heart;
 Thine only in my inmost soul is ringing,
 Bidding peace enter, grief and sin depart.
And as the music through my pulse is stealing,
 The rampart of my pride a ruin falls,
 Even as of old the Jewish trumpets’ pealing
 Shook down of haughty Jericho the walls.

SUCCOR THE CHILDREN.

Wan hands that never grasped a flower,
 Ears stranger to the wild bird’s song,
 To rule, where shall they find the power?
 How wage life’s battle, right the wrong?
When the great hour of duty comes,
 How shall they meet the mighty toil,
 Whose blood is tainted by the slums,
 Whose ears know but the street’s turmoil?
Succor the children of the street,
 And teach them in the fields to play,
 Nor let them in the stifling heat
 Of crowded cities fade away;
That, when we drop the thread of life
 And, dreamless, sleep beneath the sod,
 They may be ready for the strife
 That brings this planet nearer God.

THE SUNSET LESSON.

I watched the sun one summer eve
 Sink slowly in the west,
 And the quiet sea and fleecy clouds
 In rosy robes were dressed.
I saw the evening glide away,
 Yet still the sea and sky,
 As faint the star-zoned twilight grew,
 Were full of majesty.
And as, upon the breezy hill,
 I turned to sky and sea,
 Methought that nature spake and bade
 My spirit guileless be,
That, as the deepening shades of age
 Close round me, like the night,
 The memory of my past might still
 Life’s evening gild with light.

AS FROM THE NECTAR-LADEN LILY.

As from the nectar-laden
 Lily the wild bee sips,
 A British queen, sweet maiden,
 Drained with her loving lips
 The poison that was filling
 Her husband’s veins with death,
 Her love with new life thrilling
 His heart with each drawn breath.
Not less thy love, sweet maiden,
 Nor less thy bravery,
 For when I came, o’erladen
 With poisoned hopes, to thee,
 With smiles and shy caresses
 The venom thou didst drain,
 And, healing my distresses,
 Didst give new life again.

MUMMY THOUGHTS.

Once those who sought for relics of the past
 Stumbled by chance on an Etrurian tomb,
 And saw a monarch sitting in the gloom,
 Sceptred and crowned. Their eager hearts beat fast,
 And on the masonry themselves they cast,
 To seize the wonder. As, throughout the room,
 The axe stroke rang, it knelled the monarch’s doom.
 He fell to dust, and left them all aghast.
So, oft while searching through the realms of mind,
 I have discovered many a kingly thought,
 In solitary grandeur throned and crowned,
 And striven to bear it forth, only to find
 That, when the first stroke of my pen did sound,
 It fell to dust, and lo! I had it not.

TO CERTAIN NATURE POETS.

Friends,—such I call ye, for it is not meet
 To hail ye brethren in the tuneful art,
 Since I but falter, though of earnest heart,—
 Friends, I have thought, reading your measures sweet,
 Your verses, though with many a charm replete,
 Were bettered did they some high thought impart,
 Or in man’s conscience plant a sudden dart.
 Why proffer roses when the world craves wheat?
Who paints a picture hath ill done his task,
 If he show not the soul in that he paints.
 Why give to mere description all your lays
 While what the eye beholds is but a mask
 To some grand truth the poet’s hand should raise,
 Revealing that for which man’s spirit faints.

THE PATRIARCH’S DEATH.

The birds that twitter in the budding trees
 And build their nests in some umbrageous grove,
 Through early summer guard the young they love,
 And fill the air with tuneful melodies.
 Then, as the fledgelings wake from dreamful ease,
 Eager throughout the unknown world to rove,
 The parents teach them their new strength to prove,
 And beat with fearless wings the summer breeze.
And then the nest sways empty on the bough.
 The parents, weary, although sweet the task,
 Take flight to other haunts, to rest from care.
 The fledgelings in the glowing sunbeams bask,
 Living their life. So is it everywhere,—
 The patriarch dies; he is but resting now.

OH, WERE IT NOT.

Oh, were it not for one fair face,
 One angel voice, one loving smile,
 The world would be a dreary place,
 And life to me not worth the while.
Methinks the sun shines but to show
 How wondrous fair the maiden is;
 Methinks the warm winds only blow
 That they may kiss her draperies.
I know the roses bloom that they
 May live an hour upon her breast;
 I know that I would willingly
 Share their brief life to share their nest.

FAREWELL.

When the heart speaks, the lips are still,
 And if I cannot say farewell,
 ’Tis that a thousand yearnings thrill
 My heart, and hold my lips in spell.
Let thine own heart the thoughts express
 My lips would speak. Yet why repine?
 I knew thee, and, at least, can bless
 Thy life, though sundered far from mine.

THE TIDE.

Twice in the day a mighty tide there rolls
 Throughout our city streets,
 A limitless, deep sea of human souls,
 Each wave, a heart that beats.
Ah, me! what various ships are drifting there,
 Upon that living sea;
 What guile and innocence, what joy, what care,
 What utter misery!
At morn it ebbs far from home’s golden shore
 Into the sea of life,
 Where its dark billows meet and foam and roar
 In never-ending strife.
At night it flows, far from the mart’s turmoil,
 Backward upon its way,
 Where wives and children bring sweet rest from toil,
 Till dawns another day.
From year to year ’tis thus these waters move,
 Life’s duties to fulfill;
 Obedient to the silvery moon of love,
 That rules them at its will.

MY COMRADE.

Could I have had you made a boy,
 And both be young through life,
 Methinks I might forgo the joy
 Of calling you my wife.
For sweet as is the kiss of love
 And all our converse staid,
 Still dearer to our hearts doth prove
 Some wayward escapade.
When from behind your glistening foil
 You dare me to the fray,
 From sober spousehood I recoil;
 It is “en garde” straightway.
And when we urge our light canoe
 Upon some sparkling tide,
 More prone am I to think of you
 As comrade than as bride.
Ah, were you but a youth, like me,
 Who could, unawed, recline
 By huge camp fire, beneath some tree,
 Upon a couch of pine;
And could you press through marsh and brake
 And thrive on hunter’s food,
 What sweet excursions we might make
 To nature’s solitude!
Yet if you were a youth, some maid
 Might lure you from my side,
 So I shall wish you still, comrade,
 My dainty, fair-haired bride.

MY GIFT.

I bring a gift that all may bring,
 So common ’tis to human kind;
 And yet it is so rare, a king
 His crown for it had well resigned.
It is a gift gold cannot buy,
 And one which never can be sold;
 A gift no mortal can deny,
 And one that fades not, nor grows old.
And while I would not have it spurned,
 Such is my heart’s perversity,
 Unless I know my gift returned,
 Life hath no joy in store for me.

HAMLIN’S MILL.

Brightly the sun that summer day
 Upon the charming scene was shining,
 And warm the thrifty village lay,
 Amid its silent fields reclining.
 The river, like a silver thread,
 Wound round the hazy, shimmering hill,
 Till, plunging o’er the dam, it fled
 In eddies down to Hamlin’s Mill.
Along the pathway, through the grove,
 Beneath the shady trees, we hurried.
 The birds were twittering above,
 While in and out the squirrels scurried.
 We took the narrow road which wound
 Through clearings that were smoking still;
 And soon our merry chat was drowned
 Amidst the noise at Hamlin’s Mill.
We stood within the sunlit room
 And watched the busy bobbins turning;
 Then gathered round a jangling loom,
 The flying shuttle’s secret learning.
 Across the mossy flume we crept,
 Whose leaky sides their burden spill,
 And stood beside the pond, where slept
 The giant power of Hamlin’s Mill.
Beside the ceaseless loom of fate
 We stand and watch what it is weaving.
 The warp is spun of love and hate,
 The woof of merriment and grieving.
 But far beyond earth’s noise and dust,
 There rules the one stupendous Will,
 The power in which His creatures trust,
 As in the mill-pond Hamlin’s Mill.

A BALLADE OF JOY.

Dear one, who wast chosen, ere time was made,
 The heart of my heart and my wife to be;
 Who cam’st, with the gifts of the gods arrayed,
 To lighten the labors of life for me;
 Ere yet I had looked on the face of thee,
 My soul dreamed dreams and awoke and said:
 “None other is worthier love than she,
 And earth shall be heaven when we are wed.”
But woe as a burden on man is laid,
 And the soul finds its vision not readily.
 Between us came many a mocking shade,
 That smiled with the smile of my fantasy,
 And I thought, can it be I have met with thee?
 Then the arrows of truth through the false were sped,
 And I heard thy soul murmuring cheeringly,
 “The earth shall be heaven when we are wed.”
Like streams in the hollows of hills that played,
 Though sundered by league upon league they be,
 That, slipping through tangles of sun and shade,
 Meet, mingle and flow to the shoreless sea,
 At last my soul met with the soul of thee,
 And woes fell from me as leaves fall dead
 When winds have wakened the sleeping tree,
 And earth became heaven when we were wed.

ENVOI.

And now, though years like the birds may flee,
 And death draw nigh us with noiseless tread,
 I reek not how soon may the summons be,
 For earth became heaven when we were wed.

REMEMBRANCE.

(From the German of Fredrich Matthison.)

I think of thee
 When through the brake
 The nightingales sweet music make.
 When dost thou think of me?
I think of thee
 By the shady well,
 Under the twilight’s glimmering spell.
 Where dost thou think of me?
I think of thee
 With pleasant pain,
 With yearning, while the hot tears rain.
 How dost thou think of me?
Oh, think of me
 Till in some star
 We meet again. However far,
 I think of none but thee.

THE GLOVE.

A narrow glen with winding sides,
 Bestrewn with rocks and gloomed with trees,
 Grey, rolling clouds, chased by the breeze,
 A stream, which through the valley glides.
Among the trees that climb the hill
 The eager squirrels scold the crows,
 And sharply sound the sudden blows
 Of some woodpecker’s greedy bill.
The blood root, crouching in the grass,
 From its protecting broad leaf peers;
 The horse tails shake aloft their spears,
 Like foemen, at us as we pass.
Here wandering with a friend I love,
 Our speech with sparrow-chatter drowned,
 He in the little valley found
 An early violet, I a glove.
The flower grew beside a stone,
 And shyly peered above the sod,
 While, distant from it not a rod,
 The dainty glove lay all alone.
Some child had drawn it from her hand
 To dabble in the sunny spring,
 And then, the thoughtless little thing,
 Had left it lying on the rand.
And as I saw the symbols there
 Of budding life and blossoming spring,
 Arose and from my heart took wing
 To heaven a brief and heartfelt prayer:
O little child, whoe’er thou art,
 And in whatever station set,
 Be modest, like the violet,
 And act in life an earnest part,
That, as the streamlet by the sun
 Is gently lifted to the skies,
 Thy soul may unto heaven arise
 Whene’er its earthly course is run.

THE MAGIC BOW.

(From the French of Charles Cros.)

Rippling low to her dainty feet,
 Tress with tress did mingle and meet,
 Yellow as ripening August wheat.
Her voice had an eerie melody,
 Like that of an angel or a fay.
 Beneath dusk lashes her eyes shone gray.
He by no rival swain set store,
 As valleys through, or mountains o’er,
 The maid upon his steed he bore.
For all the land had held not one
 That she in her pride would look upon
 To the day she met him, and was undone.
Love did her fond heart so enchain
 That when her lover smiled disdain,
 She to sicken and die was fain.
As she lay dying on his arm,
 She said, “Bind thy bow with my locks, to charm
 The maid to whom thy heart grows warm.”
One long, wild kiss, and the maid was dead.
 The shimmering aureole round her head
 He bound to his bow, as she had said.
Then as a blind man mournfully
 Sweeps his Cremona, so did he,
 And went forth, seeking charity.
And all were thrilled with ecstasy,
 For the dead lived within the lay,
 And with her songs all hearts did sway.
The king showered honors on his head;
 The dark-eyed queen, to honor dead,
 With him by moonlight swiftly fled.
But when, to please her, he essayed
 To play, no more the bow obeyed,
 But mournfully did him upbraid.
And at its plaint the sinful twain
 In mid-flight by remorse were slain,
 And the dead had her pledge again.
Her locks that to her dainty feet
 Rippling low, did mingle and meet,
 Yellow as ripening August wheat.

AT THE SEASIDE.

O sun, with thy ardent glance,
 Thou hast made my darling flush!
 But the swarthier tints enhance
 The charms of her modest blush.
 Thou hast lent thy warmth and light
 To the gleam of her melting eyes,
 Till a glance in their depths so bright
 Seems a peep into Paradise.
O sea, with thy great white arms,
 Thou hast stolen my love from me!
 Thou hast clasped to thy breast her charms;
 She has rested her head on thee.
 Thou hast tangled her silken hair,
 And kissed her face and her lips—
 Ah! Love, he is false! Beware
 Of that spoiler of men and ships!

THE ORPHANS.

Shall walls have pity and man’s heart have none?
 Shall walls protect and man refuse to aid?
 At Christmas, when our children are arrayed
 In furs, shall orphans crouch behind a stone
 To hide them from the storm? Is there not one
 Will see the outstretched hand of that frail maid,
 To whom the baby brother clings, afraid?
 Will no ear heed when hunger makes its moan?
No father’s arm about their forms is thrown
 To shield them from distress, no mother’s love
 Draws them within the shelter of her breast.
 Those tender souls must front the world alone;
 But, if Christ came not vainly from above,
 Some noble heart will aid them, thus distressed.

ALADDIN’S LAMP.

Aladdin’s lamp of Eastern tale,
 Which claimed my simple faith in youth,
 Its loss no longer I bewail,
 But hold it mine in very truth.
The geni waits but my command
 To raise me, and, as swift as thought,
 Bear me abroad, from land to land,
 Wherever I would fain be brought.
Amid the silent northern snows,
 Or where Egyptian deserts burn,
 Wherever man has been, he goes,
 And tells me all I wish to learn.
He tells me how the stars had birth,
 And how their wondrous cycles run,
 Or places me beyond the earth,
 Unharmed, upon the giant sun.
Through him I learn what Science knows,
 How this vast universe began;
 How life, from mean beginnings, rose
 High as God’s noblest creature, man.
On me dawns many a truth profound
 About the swinging earth I tread,
 That it is one vast burying ground,
 The living living through the dead,
That where once flowed the ocean’s tide,
 Now stand the homes of countless souls;
 That where once mountains rose in pride,
 Billow on foaming billow rolls.
The geni stems the flood of time,
 And bears me almost to its source;
 Then as we float, bids scenes sublime
 And sad and happy shore our course.
I see the tower of Babel rise,
 With busy builders everywhere,
 Up, ever up, towards the skies,
 Spearing the azure depths of air.
I hear a voice from out a cloud,
 And see the workmen making signs,—
 How humble God can make the proud!
 How easily mar man’s best designs!
I see the wild Light Tresses fall
 In cruel waves on fated Rome,
 And in an emperor’s audience hall
 I see the jackals make their home.
Sleek monks I see within their cells,
 And knights in burnished armor housed.
 I hear the chime of marriage bells
 For maids whom death hath long espoused.
I hear the poet’s stirring strain,
 That wins him immortality,
 And weep with such as found with pain
 Their idol but ignoble clay.
Writ by the fearless Luther pen,
 The words that stirred the world I see;
 I hear the tramp of arméd men,
 And know that thought, at last, is free.
The joys and hopes, the griefs and fears,
 Defeats and conquests of the race,
 Through all the swift, eventful years,
 The geni at my wish will trace.
And though he builds no palace vast
 For me, nor gives me queen for bride,
 While I am free to all the past,
 I ask from him no boon beside.

SONG.

When a maiden’s heart is tender,
 And her soul as pure as snow;
 When her eyes, with sunny splendor,
 Set her countenance aglow;
 When her every move discovers
 Newer graces without end,
 She can win a hundred lovers,—
 Yet may hunger for a friend.
Pearly teeth and curly tresses,
 Ruby lips, in smiles that part,
 These will lure a man’s caresses,
 Easily enslave his heart;
 Yet, when all is said and over,
 Even though souls in passion blend,
 She has only one more lover,
 And may hunger for a friend.
Blind I am not, no, nor callous;
 Beauty hath its charm for me.
 Yet would I, beyond life’s shallows,
 Push towards the depthless sea.
 Friendship’s true, and Love’s a rover,
 Love is selfish in the end.
 Choose thee, Sweet, whatever lover,
 Let me still remain thy friend.

QUATRAINS.

I.

The oyster turns into a gem
 The sand that chafes it long;
 My woes, can I not banish them,
 I round into a song.

II.

Fear less the villain than the fool.
 The villain may be read,
 But heaven itself can set no rule
 To judge an addled head.

III.

Nurse thou no sorrow, only learn
 All that it has to teach,
 And lo, a glorious gem shall burn
 Upon the brow of each.

IV.

The bard alone immortal is;
 In death he liveth still,
 And, godlike, with a word of his
 Makes deathless whom he will.

V.

Would they but speak who proved but weak
 To those who think self strong,
 How they would cry, continually,
 “Beware the first small wrong!”

VI.

To Felix Morris.

Twin arts are ours, to act and write,
 And yours, perhaps, the greater is;
 You bring the world before men’s sight,
 I can but proffer fantasies.

VII.

Flowers are earth’s resurrection, yet the rocks,
 Ere raised in blossoms, first shall fall to dust.
 Take comfort, then, O brother, when life mocks
 Thine aspirations, as perforce life must.

VIII.

Man loves the ideal and not the maid;
 Her he but garlands with hopes and dreams,
 And worships, not her in those wreaths arrayed,
 But the vision of fancy that then she seems.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Pronounced Mohavy.