I. MEDITATION AND THE SEARCHING SPIRIT
II. LOCAL COLOR
III. PORTRAITS AND PERSONALITIES
The Dispossession-Gilbert Maxwell
Memory Recurrent-Gilbert Maxwell
Final Soliloquy of an Egotist-Ernest Hartsock
Seed and Stubble-Lola Pergament
The Dawn Fisherman-Arthur Crew Inman
Confederate Veteran-James E. Warren, Junior
Transient-Minnie Hite Moody
A Poor Unfortunate-Frank L. Stanton
Street Beggar-Anderson M. Scruggs
Portrait of a Girl-Janef Newman Preston
Tell Me, Old Woman-Minnie Hite Moody
Country Woman-Mildred Clark
Georgia Farmer-Ellis Atkisson McDonald
New Teacher-Mildred Clark
The Poet-James R. Barrick
Painting-Still Life-Constance Gay Morenus
Portrait in Glass-Lola Pergament
Grotesque March-Martha Hodgson Ellis
The Madness of Pierrot-Dolores Aguilar Dalton
The Death of Pierrot-Dolores Aguilar Dalton
Greek Professor-Mavis Garey
The Wedding of Polycrates-Randolph Shaffer, Junior
Helicon at the Corner of Peachtree and Third-Randolph
Shaffer, Junior
Titian's Man With a Falcon-Agnes Kendrick Gray
The Eyes of Raleigh-James E. Warren, Junior
Leonardo-Prophet of Wings-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Frate Francesco-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Sheba-James E. Warren, Junior
Philippa-Arthur Crew Inman
Sappho Departs-Marguerite Steedman
IV. CITIES
VI. NATURE
THE DISPOSSESSION
Even the speckled dove
Drowsing in the granite courthouse eaves,
Was better housed than old Mathilda Crooks,
That day the brethren, bound in Christian love,
Moved her with her bureaus and her books,
Her woodstove and her poor rush-bottomed chairs,
Out in the gutter with the drifted leaves.
Hazily I remember
The kitchen garden where her half-wit daughter
Stood pulling corn and crying-
She at the stone well, angrily drawing water,
And how in the dry gold sun of late September
The old house sagged-it seemed to my child eyes-
As though it might be trying
Somehow to reach them and apologise.
But nothing then could save Mathilda Crooks.
They tried her, proved her, publicly, insane;
(Indeed, they said, her looks
Were quite enough to make the matter plain)
And after that, her daughter being sent
Away, her sad possessions lost or scattered,
And she in the asylum-well, her brain
Did give at last, and finally nothing mattered
Outside the tall spiked walls. They gave her seed
And trowel and a garden patch to weed.
In time, she seemed content.
The city stored her house with worthless plunder
Until the roof caved in, and then it went
Eccentric too,
Open to rain and thunder;
And all the stars looked through.
-GILBERT MAXWELL.
The air is sharp with a smell of burning leaves;
It is a smell of fall, and something further .
Something so far the mind but half believes
The old event at all.
Yet I recall (and the day was long ago)
A day you swept the yards, and the slow
Smoke from the leaves you swept and piled for burning,
Strong in my nostrils, smarting in my eyes.
How strange your delicate hands on the rustic brush
Of the yard-broom, lightly turning
Now and again to catch a stronger hold!
You were a lady, but my grandsire said
Ladies were women too, and so you swept
The leaves and piled them, and the blue flames leapt
Into the wind, and the smoke was half of autumn.
It is a vague confusion in my head
This memory . . . it is as if I saw
That early afternoon, the first beginning
Of age in you.
Only today I watched you at your sewing,
The tension on your mouth, the thick hair thinning
With streaks of grey; the small hands, large and roughened,
Catching upon the silken stuff you held .
Only today I knew
The reason for my sadness when I smelled
The burning leaves-the reason why I turn
Sometimes (who love you dearly)
And leave the room, when through the opened blind
Drifts in the smell of smoke.
I am not wise enough to tell you clearly.
-GILBERT MAXWELL.
Now I have modeled my exultant days
In golden grooves of excellent routine;
I have fulfilled my final dreams of praise.
There is no barrier to rise between
My evening and the dreaming of the just.
I shall lie softly down, too brave to sing,
And try the cool expedient of dust,
While women weep and men pass, whispering.
Earth's glory will be gone when I am gone;
The futile world perhaps may still exist
To urge my name above oblivion.
But angels wait my immemorial tryst,
And God halts with his starry caravan
To praise the maker of a self-made man.
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
Bewildered now he lifts above the land
his face long martyred to the wind and frost;
years have availed no peace into his hand,
hours have been his timeless holocaust.
Denied by earth and her invisible store
that time will stake against the want of him,
he feels a fitful hunger that will bore
like spring entombed within the barren limb.
What dream deceived his flesh that he come to this?
What prayer beset his mind with such confusion?
Earth, that had once returned a lover's kiss,
is now his poverty and disillusion.
Into a wilderness and stubborn track
his fathers built the coffers of his need;
the tree that was a shelter broke a back,
starvation nourished in the planted seed.
And there were times when drouth unsexed the earth
and parched the womb that strove and could not yield,
but there were times when labor reaped its worth
as plentiful as grain upon a field.
Bewildered now he lifts his head, unknowing
all but the heartbreak of his meagre ration;
where stubble rots, the corn silk should be blowing
Its peace into his singular starvation.
Out of a heritage his plough lies rusted,
his field unfurrowed and given back to sheep,
and he, an alien to the land he trusted,
stands on a grave wherein he cannot sleep.
-LOLA PERGAMENT.
A lemon-yellow dawn seeps from the sea's
Far edge, upwards. A lighthouse eye winks shut.
Seagulls, silent, pass overhead. A ship's
High spars glint with pale sun. Across the calm
Expanse of ocean little winds ruffle
Exquisite 'shoals of jadite wavelets. Sails
Flutter with life. My dream-caught craft and I
Arouse our spell-bound selves. Day is again.
-ARTHUR CREW INMAN.
CONFEDERATE VETERAN
Alone there in the sun he grips his cane
Hearing the First Manassas rumbling back,
The galloping clang of cavalry passing again
Toward Vicksburg in the night, the whistling crack
Of guns at Kennesaw. But high and sweet
And always louder comes the alien sound
Of bugles blowing beautifully Retreat
Across his spirit's withered battleground.
Who once was splendid as a bayonet
Sits crumpled, silent, where the slow wind blows.
Only his soldier's heart is marching yet
Whose shoulders bend beneath his ghostly gun
Which weary hands at last must ground upon
Some lovelier Appomattox than he knows.
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.
TRANSIENT
He haunted us like some old legend sifting
Through cracks of years on an obscure tomorrow;
His thin bent shoulders seemed forever shifting
The unrelenting burden of a sorrow;
Even his voice crept eerily, like shadows,
And wore their darkness in its strange intoning,
And when we watched him in the evening meadows
It seemed the very crickets ceased their droning.
Nobody knew from whence he came; nobody
Knew what his name was or where he was going;
Like an aged wraith in garments gray and shoddy
He had appeared one night the wind was blowing,
And still another night, when trees were bending,
He slipped away, a tale without an ending.
-MINNIE HITE MOODY.
I
His hoss went dead an' his mule went lame;
He lost six cows in a poker game;
A harricane come on a summer's day,
An' carried the house whar' he lived away;
Then a airthquake come when that wuz gone,
An' swallered the lan' that the house stood on!
An' the tax collector, [He] come roun'
An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'!
An' the city marshall-he come in view
An' said he wanted his street tax, too!
II
Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cry
An' cuss the harricane sweepin' by?
Did he grieve that his ol' friends failed to call
When the airthquake come an' swallered all?
Never a word o' blame he said,
With all them troubles on top his head!
Not [him!]... He clumb to the top o' the hill-
Whar' standin' room wuz left him still,
An' barn' his head, here's what he said:
"I reckon it's time to git up an' git;
But, Lord, I hain't had the measles yit!"
-FRANK L. STANTON.
This is the depth, the, end of all despair:
That man for whom the planets toil and sing-
Inheritor of earth and sea and air-
Should come to be this starved, forsaken thing
Whose soft, obsequious words and pleading eye
Invoke the heedless masses of the street,
Hoping that in the crowds that pass him by,
Some fat-faced god may deign to let him eat.
Here is the deepest wrong, the darkest deed
That man must answer in some distant dawn:
That in this fecund earth there should be need
For such as these,-the beggars that pass on
Down dim-lit streets and byways of the night,
Asking of man what should be man's by right.
-ANDERSON M. SCRUGGS.
Hers is no wisdom won by bargains driven
With crabbed Time, the hard, tight-fisted churl-
A grain of gold for scores of long years given:
Time is confounded by this untried girl.
She has no need of years to make her wise,
Who sees the shaken leaf where no winds pass,
And feels upon her head the crushing skies,
And hears a soundless sighing in the grass.
Sharp in her own heart is the sword in Lear's,
Young Deirdre's sorrow, and far Deor's fate,
The woe of Hecuba, too old for tears,
The grief of Iseult when she came too late.
She is not Time's, nor ever will be his,
Because she knows the timeless verities.
-JANEF NEWMAN PRESTON.
TELL ME, OLD WOMAN
Tell me, old woman, drowsing in the sun,
Is peace a thing of loosely folded hands,
And eyes that gaze on nothing to be done,
And ears bedeafened to the old demands?
Is this the longed-for rest, that hour by hour
Moves the slow rockers on the silent floor?
Is there contentment in a potted flower,
A purring cat, a sunbeam-nothing more?
Tell me, old woman, when the light is hidden
What of the dreams you cannot put away?
What of the moon that climbs your sill unbidden,
And laughter throbbing from a yesterday
No dark can hide? O is it then you weep
For youth that flickers on the shores of sleep?
-MINNIE HITE MOODY.
COUNTRY WOMAN
Her house is on a low and marshy way
Where willows scatter dry leaves on the ground,
Where heifers low and half-wild horses neigh
And blaring horns and sirens do not sound.
Sometimes a heron, finding shelter late,
Rests here a little on his southward flight.
Unless a lonely screech owl seeks his mate
Or bullfrog drums his throaty call, at night
There is no noise-never a whistling train.
Here are the undertones of growing things:
A rabbit hopping down a pasture lane,
The sudden whir of flapping partridge wings.
They ask her if she is not frightened here:
How can she be afraid, and God so near?
-MILDRED CLARK.
His wrinkled hands lie spread upon his plow;
His path is slow upon the earth's cut brow.
The Georgia skies of pale quiescent blue
Slope gently down to meet the bolder hue
Of hills stained by rich blood of Cherokee;
He has no time for these. He cannot see
Beyond the furrows straight beneath his feet;
Nor think, but thinking, count each muffled beat
The mule's hoofs make upon the turning loam.
This is his destiny; here is his home.
There is no wind to break the line of sweat
That keeps his shirt and forehead salty wet.
Some sunset, he may dream of fairer lands,
Where no one wears white blisters on his hands;
Where bread is had, but not by sweat of brow,
And where not even mules are forced to plow.
-ELLIS ATKISSON MCDONALD.
I have come back to school again this Fall
To desks and blackboards, books and ringing bells,
Where muffled laughter echoes down the hall
And silence often points where mischief dwells.
Where anxious ones are crowding on the stair
The corridors repeat their joyous cries:
I tell myself I once was standing there:
Why should I fear to look into their eyes?
Their happy faces glow with expectation:
I have not seen such eager boys and girls.
Where are the rules I had in "education?"
(Lamar is pulling Arabella's curls.)
What will I be to them as they return
To learn from one who even yet must learn?
-MILDRED CLARK.
He sits in the twilight, all pensive and pale,
With the tune of his harp to each breath of the gale;
'Tis the music of heaven-his bosom is strung
To the spirit of poems and songs unsung;
His eye is aglow in its dream-like repose,
As his cheek steals the blush of the sunset's bright rose,
And the fires that quick to his bosom return
Shed a light on each shade of the myrtle-bound urn.
His songs like a flame, melt the ice of the heart,
And the proudest bow down at the shrine of his heart,
For the spectre he waves o'er the passions of men
Is wrought of his genius-the blade of his pen:
By the might of his ode he the foeman subdues,
And strong as an army the spell of his muse,
By every emotion that sleeps in the soul
He wakens to life with a regal control.
He wanders far out in the regions of night,
Soars up like a spirit to the portals of light,
He measures the songs of the infinite spheres,
And travels far back over the waste of the years;
And men of all nations bow down at his shrine,
His spirit to worship with rapture divine:
Sublime in each passion, exalted in thought,
His lore by the lips of archangels is taught.
In the wisdom of God he delighted to dwell,
As Nature his being invests with a spell;
His heart is all love, and all passion his soul,
His thoughts on the banners of sunset unroll;
And truth he inhales as an essence of God,
A Lesson imbibes from each bloom of the sod;
A reaper, the scythe to his spirit is given-
The earth is his harvest-his garner is Heaven.
-JAMES R. BARRICK
*This selection by Atlanta's first poet will be noted as an interesting
contrast to the work of present-day writers, whose poetry is largely
represented in this volume.
I have not seen a stiller thing than this,
A copper bowl that holds the ordered room
Imaged upon its side; near by, the bloom
Of stiff vermilion petals' artifice
Spreads painted symmetry that cannot break
Into sweet showers of wasted loveliness,-
Light vagrant-fingered winds dare not caress
The forms of timid rose these curtains take
Into full-bosomed life.
Even the dust
Lies richly still in mimic disarray,
Intangible, secure from mortal breath.
Life thus into a dark enchantment thrust
Holds stagnant waters for the heart's dismay,
A waiting pool whose surface shadows death.
-CONSTANCE GAY MORENUS.
She waits, waits constantly for the beautiful situation,
this lady, this elegant person, restrained, lovely woman.
She will not forfeit an inch from her ivory station
to measure the fact she is human.
She will not say to a gentleman's heart, "I adore you,"
If there are no stars or the rain is not raining enough.
At night in the garden she sighs lest "This old moonlight
bore you."
(The moon is not made of sufficiently romantic stuff.)
No second is right for the thing that should happen in it.
Time is a scene she will not decorate for herself,
and life is an ungainly cloak that can never befit
her hope laid in lavender on an emotional shelf.
This lady waits constantly for an impossible perfection.
She will not alter her quota of nothing. She bears
each moment until it has passed... then she makes her
selection
From futures long weary and winded from walking up stairs.
-LOLA PERGAMENT.
As I live, as I die!
Children, see what's passing by!
Hurry up and come.
Rum-ti-tum!
Here's a fat man beating on a monstrous drum!
Right foot, left foot, someone out of step!
Here comes the captain, hep, hep, hep!
Whoops, go the bugles to drown out the fife;
Here comes the major, large as life,
On a horse like a camel, like a llama, like a gnu,
With head wag-wagging and ribs sticking through.
Hey! Make way!
Here comes the general, plain as day,
Bottle-nosed, beetle-browed, knock-kneed, splay-footed
... hey!
Hurray!
And of course and of course,
The kingdom's own poet,
He's riding a horse,
Now wouldn't you know it!
He's all in a daze,
See how he sways,
Nobody's with him,
He keeps his own rhythm.
Boom! Boom! Make room!
Here comes a man with a beard like a broom.
Puff and wheeze,
Bent at the knees,
Pop-eyed, purple, verging on a sneeze!
Oh, wonder!
Here's a face full of thunder .
His big brass buttons have burst asunder!
The last of the lot . . . all of them gone;
Bumping, stumping, clumping along.
Clap if you must
Nothing's left but dust.
Dusty. dust-y dust-y
Dust.
-MARTHA HODGSON ELLIS.
Mask me with whimsey
bewilder me with beauty-
begged Pierrot of the starling.
Only you shall sing of me
in an age that is yet unawakened.
Only you shall be my prophet.
You shall be my symbol
dear dream of wistful wonders.
You shall be the flowering
of my songs yet unborn-
all the hungers of my senses
will I give you
to string among your feathers.
-DOLORES AGUILAR DALTON.
Now I can dance! Now I can dance! sang Pierrot as he watched
his new wooden legs being made.
Hush! smoothed a white voice - Hush!
Would Jenniren come? And Peterkin? Where was Harlequin
hiding in this mildewed noon?
Pierrette came through the walls.
Ah! my little Pierrette! It is not you! You have grown old!
mourned Pierrot wildly.
The walls wailed and crumbled into sighs.
Poor little Pierrette-soul that had withered sadly into wisdom!
Shadows came swiftly-Jenniren and Peterkin, Harlequin and
Columbina and a blessed coterie glided with them.
Dear shades! Tinsel your souls with youth and let them tinkle
only with laughter!
A new shadow paused outside -
Be gentle! warned the white voice - Be kind!
A little brown leaf blew in through the window and fell flat
on the coverlet.
Pierrot turned its face upward smiling.
I shall leave you my life so you can dance in the wind greenly.
Pierrot sighed into eternity and a little green leaf blew happily
out of the window.
-DOLORES AGUILAR DALTON.
They lie who tell me that no more
Will Greek be golden on your lips
Of song and garland, steed and ships
And sunlit temples... You explore
Remembered ways you loved before
That death nor darkness can eclipse.
You ventured farther, found it fair,
Remained. I know the gods are there!
-MAVIS GAREY.
THE WEDDING OF POLYCRATES*
Transcribed according to the Edmonds Text from the fragments of
Ibycus (6th century B. C.)
II
Remember now thy parents, Polycrates
in this day wherein you triumph,
yea, and in the days of your dominion
let you be patterned after them
for they were filled with lovingkindness
for their people
and did not buy
honor among men
at the price of sin
before the gods.
Buildings may decay
and time make an end
of this city
so mighty and rich
but they shall remain
always fresh and fragrant
beyond the memory of this one land.
Theirs it is to share beauty for ever
and thine too, Polycrates,
shall be a glory
even as their glory
in song
unfading.
-RANDOLPH SHAFFER, JUNIOR.
*Polycrates was a young noble who ruled in the 61st Olympiad.
HELICON AT THE CORNER OF PEACHTREE AND THIRD
The only Pan I've ever known
is this old man,
this blind, black man
who stands on the corner
beneath the tuilp tree.
And he will play
when spring returns
upon his pipes
beneath this tree.
I drop silver in his cup
not because he is blind,
or black, or old, or poor -
but as an offering consecrated
to an archaic god.
[Sentio rediit ab inferis Julianus . .*]
-RANDOLPH SHAFFER, JUNIOR.
*I feel that Julian has risen again . .
High on his hand Cornaro holds the bird,
Unhooded, belled, impatient for its prey,
Waiting the lossened jess, the falconer's word,
For flight into the blue Italian day.
O free him not, Cornaro, feet and breast,
Hold close the little warrior of the sky!
There on your fingers bid your tercel rest,
And calm again his fierce and questing eye.
Stir not, wild hunter, dreaming of the air,
Still on your Master's hand remain and brood;
You bring us from the far away a fair
And vanished age, a lost luxurious mood.
You bring us Venice on your folded wings,
Proud falcon, symbol of the Sport of Kings.
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
Dear Plymouth now is withered far away:
Some golden galleon heaving toward Guiana
Has stung his eyes already with the spray
Of lonelier seas. There is some green savannah
With scarlet flowers that England never saw
Until he dreamed them. Here black rivers tangle
The soul in mystic names, and parrots caw
And flash like yellow ghosts within the jungle.
Some old geographer who long has stared
By flickering lanterns over ancient charts
Might have looked so; his eyes might thus have blurred
Upon some fading circle till his heart's
Thin blood was drawn four thousand miles or more
To blossom into foam upon that shore.
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.
*From the painting, [Boyhood of Raleigh], by Millais.
Da Vinci would have loved them standing there
In leather coat and helmet, falcon-eyed-
These men who conquer clouds and ride the air
And yet are humble in their winged pride.
He would have sketched them as he watched them scan
The moods and menace of the sky, and plan
The perfect hour and moment of their flight-
Their eyes and mind alert, and face alight!
Always he sought to catch the spirit-find
The urge that drives the flesh, the force behind;
To him whose pencil singled out the soul,
The body was half-truth.., the spirit whole.
The painter's flame within him held its glow,
But strangely brighter, burned another fire;
The genius to create, the urge to know;
And science racked him with unslaked desire
To dream and make all unimagined things-
With fiercest passion and long travaillings
He agonized to build his body wings!
And they, the youngest of the pioneers,
Who soar the seas and continents and trace
A lunar pathway through uncharted space,
The knowledge they have found in their few years
Da Vinci sought through all his long dark life-
A soul with all its elements at strife,
A driven spirit never finding rest!
Almost he saw the fulness of the light...
Almost he grasped the secret springs of flight...
But always, to the end.., a baffled quest.
Gladly he would have left his canvas bare,
His paints forever dry, could he have flown!
If underneath his fashioning had grown
This motor roaring up the morning air!
He would have loved them, body, soul and mind,
This godlike gift of flight, as heritage
Of all the bitter years that lay behind-
Da Vinci, frustrate.., he who had in vain
A mind four hundred years beyond his age!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
*"The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world
with
amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the
nest whence he springs."-Leonardo Da Vinci, 1500.
FRATE FRANCESCO
A CANTICLE OF ASSISI IN THE SPRING
These are Assisi's hills you trod,
O little brown-girt Friend of God,
And this your loved and lofty town
Whose Castle and whose towers look down
On Umbria's plain below,
Strewn with the April snow
Of flowering plum and peach and pear,
And Umbrian blossoms scattered there.
These are the ancient gates through which you went,
Your sandaled feet on mercy bent;
Here is the hillside garden where you sang
Your Canticle of the Sun,
Lifting your love in music up to God,
O Humble One!
Below the garden gleams the Umbrian plain,
Shriven with sudden rain,
And olive orchards glow more softly gray.
It must have been on such an April day
You chanted here your rapture of the Spring-
Your voice and spirit worshipping:
["Laudate sie mi Signore]-praise
Be unto Thee, O Lord, for Brother Sun,
For Sister Moon and stars upon the night!
[Laudate Si... per frate vento]-praise
For Brother Wind and for the lovely air;
For Sister Water, precious, humble, pure,
And for our Mother Earth, who nurtures us!
[Laudato Si... per frate focu]-praise
Be unto Thee, O Lord, for Brother Fire,
Robust and bright, and beautiful and strong...
Upward through all the rapt and mounting song,
Francesco, little sandaled Friend of Man,
Your love for all created things arose!
Surging above Assisi's narrow span,
It swept beyond the fields of Italy,
And still in undiminished music flows
Beyond the Alps, beyond the farthest sea!
A thousand years go by, and are forgot;
A thousand men, and are remembered not;
Uncounted voices echo, and are still,
The feet of nations vanish.., [these remain]:
Your sandal-print upon the Umbrian plain,
Your Canticle upon Assisi's hill!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
A writhing snake of splendid flame,
The caravan of Sheba came,
Came flashing through a shifting mist
Of sapphire, gold and amethyst,
With spices bound in crimson silk
On camels white as foaming milk,
And elephants that moved to cries
Of ebon slaves with snowy eyes.
The cargoes glowed like crackling brands
Searing the desert's dingy sands
Until the pathway that they made
Stabbed through it like a burnished blade.
Then, as elusive frankincense
Leaves moments changed to monuments,
Like burning ghosts they glittered on
Over the white hills and were gone.
And when they came again that way
Another hour, another day,
Their splendor had deserted them
And lingered in Jerusalem.
And yet they say the desert palms
Still whisper: "Gold was in her hair!
How red her lips, like rubies there!
How pale the ivory of her arms!"
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.
I hear the great winds moaning, moaning;
I hear the solemn bells intoning.
Across the latticed window frame
The leafless ivy branches toss and bend
Against an opaque, leaden sky.
Within a myriad, minute crevices
The cold draft shrills and skirls.
Dim, muffled footfalls come and go,
As ghostly soft as fantasies
Conjured from empty nothingness.
Two tall and slender tapers at my head
Burn shadow-casting darts of light.
The sombre arras undulate
Until their imaged pictures seem alive.
A black-robed, kneeling priest
Mutters many monotoned prayers.
Death waits me with the night.
Comes one,
Supple, and young, and fair,
His deep-set eyes alight with dream.
Comes one,
Henry, Prince of Portugal,
Proud scion of proud ancestry.
Comes one,
To pause awhile-
Upon the eve of his adventuring-
To pause awhile with me-
Lest I die alone.
As one within a trance
I place my paling hand in his-
"O Son, light of my heart,
Whence blows the wind this night?"
Then softly he answers,
Softly, earnestly,
With eyes all vision-haunted:
"O Mother of mine,
The wind blows from the north,
White-winged, white-maned, unleashed."
Comes one
Errant with youth:
And I, the lonely mother,
The Queen, awaiting death,
Smile back the weary tears;
Smile one last, convincing smile;
Kiss him, my son, and say,
"Go Henry, upon the wind!
Seek you the lone star of achievement!
I, loving you, will it so!"
I hear the great winds moaning, moaning;
I hear the solemn bells intoning.
My life, as an echo, passes,
As a falling comet,
As a hull-down sail,
As a smile upon lips grown still.
Shall my soul at last made free
Follow across the spaceless seas,
Follow across the day, the night,
To where he fares adventuring,
My lad become a man,
And there find solacement and peace,
And watch beside his heart,-
Forever and ever?
I hear the great winds moaning, moaning;
I hear the solemn bells intoning;
Then softly, so softly,
Like the warmth of summer sunshine,
Like the breath from off the twilight,
Comes the sleep of no awakening,
The sleep of calm unending;
And quiet dwells about me;
And slowly, so slowly,
Down distance immeasurable
Drops the sound of great winds moaning, moaning,
The sound of solemn bells intoning;
And all is very still,
And, lo, I am at one with God.
-ARTHUR CREW INMAN.
*Philippa was Queen of Portugal and mother of Prince Henry the Navigator.
Bring me no mortal blossoms, for I know
That I go hence unwept in all your tears.
No final mingling of flesh and snow
In earth grown kindlier with the barren years
Shall be my portion, This you mourn, not I,
Knowing I lie so empty of desire-
A torch from which full seas have swept the fire
And cast the faggot by.
Now I belong to peace, but had you heard
More than your own shrill tongues, you might have known
The thunder of the god-engendered word
Cradled in mortal singing, for your own,
As once I knew. Now, seeing this hour has come,
Why should these lips of clay go pale and quiver,
Since Lethe is but one more earthly river,
And none but earthly lovers drink therefrom?
Only the dead remember! In your eyes
That see these quiet limbs so nearly dust
Lies the droll certainty of my disguise.
Death is one mask you will not force, I trust.
Although you bound so many on my soul
That, though the years blow onward, I must be
Forever quickened into memory
As changeful as the little waves that roll
Along these sands at Leucas; till no man
Shall know the faring of my pure intent.
For poets and seas take beauty where they can,
Saving her to themselves, past accident
Of men's protesting, or of gods' denying.
Behold me! I am free of yesterday
And of all time save now. For where I stand
Age dares not climb-all fear drifts far away.
And Phaon never was....
-MARGUERITE STEEDMAN.
*Sappho, the most famous woman poet the world has ever produced, is
supposed to have committed suicide because she could not win the love of
Phaon, a shepherd. She leaped over the cliffs at Leucas, and was drowned
in the sea.