•^ 
 
 Book. ' C /hr f 
 
 Ci}FYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 Waco, Texas. U.S.A. 
 
Fugitive Verses 
 
 BY 
 
 Dorothy Scarborough 
 

 Copyright, 1912, by 
 Dorothy Scarborough 
 
 ©CI.A328547 
 ^1 
 
TO Douglass Scarborough McDaniel 
 
 OF Richmond, Virginia 
 
 My Sister.-who has always been 
 
 more than a sister to me. 
 
 this little book 
 
 is lovingly dedicated 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Absence 90 
 
 A Prayer .-. 80 
 
 As a Leaf. 97 
 
 A Song in the Night 18 
 
 Ballade 36 
 
 Butterflies in September 103 
 
 Carlota's Mirador 56 
 
 Carroll Chapel and Library 19 
 
 Catalina 70 
 
 Childhood 33 
 
 Drought in Texas 21 
 
 Dynamics 93 
 
 Father Tabb 35 
 
 For Whom We Should Pray 50 
 
 Grief. 27 
 
 In a Field of Buffalo Clover. 92 
 
 In England 42 
 
 In His Own Image 29 
 
 Mitla bv Moonlight 88 
 
 My Land of Dreams 43 
 
 My Mother's Glasses 11 
 
 Only 91 
 
 "Pobrecita" 58 
 
 Quatrain 31 
 
 Quatrain 87 
 
 Quatrain 96 
 
 Reflections 76 
 
 "Sad With the Happiness We Planned" 69 
 
 Shakespeare 30 
 
 Spring in Cameron Park 23 
 
The Bat 34 
 
 The Baylor Song 65 
 
 The Boon of Endless Quest 67 
 
 TheBorda Garden 73 
 
 The Brazos 14 
 
 The Cottonwood Tree 94 
 
 The Dug-Out 59 
 
 The Fire-Fly 68 
 
 The Gargoyle 17 
 
 The Greatest Gift 48 
 
 The Heaven of Dreams... 77 
 
 The Inner Court 74 
 
 The Limited Express 95 
 
 The Lone Watcher. 44 
 
 The Mesquite Tree 51 
 
 The Messageless 12 
 
 The Old Cathedral Chimes 63 
 
 The Old Church 28 
 
 The Organ Cactus 32 
 
 The Passing of the Prairie 98 
 
 The Power of an Endless Life 39 
 
 The Screech-owl 81 
 
 The Sea Gulls 16 
 
 The Smoke 54 
 
 The Southern Cross 53 
 
 Thk Yellow Jasmine _ 79 
 
 To a Slain Robin 41 
 
 To Evelyn Kyger. 37 
 
 To George Eliot 66 
 
 To Helen Keller. 22 
 
 White Hyacinths 61 
 
MY MOTHER'S GLASSES 11 
 
 I hold them close with loving hands, 
 
 These glasses worn and old, 
 With lenses chipped and beaten bands 
 
 Of quaint, old-fashioned gold. 
 The simple sight my heart unmans 
 
 As memories unfold 
 Of you, my Mother, who the lands 
 
 Of Heaven now behold! 
 
 As in the care-free childhood's days — 
 
 How I remember so — 
 You went your busy household ways, 
 
 As you were wont to go. 
 You needed "Mother's eyes" always — 
 
 How could I ever know 
 When God's Light shone on you its rays 
 
 Twould leave such dark below? 
 
 I've fancied with what glad surprise 
 
 You wakened suddenly 
 To glimpse the realms of Paradise 
 
 And all you longed to see. 
 Not with earth's dim, near-sighted eyes. 
 
 But vision clear and free! 
 I wonder if from those far skies 
 
 You ever look on me! 
 
 You need no more these aids to sight, 
 
 No sun nor stars to see; 
 No tears are in your eyes, but bright 
 
 Is your eternity. 
 I would not draw you from the Light 
 
 By which you clearly see, 
 But, Mother! since you left 'tis night 
 
 In this dark world for me! 
 
12 THE MESSAGELESS 
 
 Who has not felt the pathos of the heart 
 
 That longs, all unavailing, to impart 
 
 A living message to an insensate world, — 
 
 Who feels a flaming truth that might be hurled 
 
 Hot from his soul, but lacks the speech 
 
 That could avail his fellow-hearts to reach? 
 
 So, dumb and impotent, 
 
 He walks in banishment 
 
 Amid the thronging multitudes of men. 
 
 Sad beyond human ken. 
 
 Yet greater tragedy 
 
 Walks by us could we see 
 
 Into the hearts of those that throng and press. 
 
 For what if one be messageless ? 
 
 What matters then 
 
 The facile pen 
 
 The words 
 
 Like birds 
 
 That wing their easy flight 
 
 Into the vaporous nothingness of blue 
 
 If from that heavenward height 
 
 There fall not to the one whose eager view 
 
 Quick scans the sky 
 
 A faint yet high. 
 
 Remote 
 
 Yet rapturous note? 
 
Though you should capture and imprison long J J 
 
 The lark 
 
 In dark 
 
 And sunless crypt and hinder him from song, 
 
 You could not wrest from out that vivid heart 
 
 Remembrance of the joy that did impart 
 
 Such magic to his throat. 
 
 Though silenced each glad note, 
 
 He would remember still his impulse toward the sky. 
 
 Still know he was the lark, even though he droop 
 and die! 
 
 True inward music never can be stilled; 
 
 The heart that once is filled 
 
 With joy 
 
 Of song, or rapt or plaintive sweet, 
 
 Has known a blessing that the fleet. 
 
 Estranging years can never quite destroy. 
 
 But ah! how sad a thing 
 
 The heart that never felt the thrill to soar and sing! 
 
 How valueless 
 
 The wordy vehicles of thought 
 
 When one has naught 
 
 To express! 
 
 How empty is all language save to impart 
 
 Truth from some heart to famishing heart! 
 
 The stammering tongue that trembles sore 
 
 At each half -uttered word may yet say more 
 
 Than one whose speech is marble-pure but marble- 
 cold 
 
 And doth no message hold 
 
 Within its polished poverty of thought! 
 
 Ah, how much less than naught! 
 
 How useless is our altar howe'er fine 
 
 If in the secret shrine 
 
 Toward which our prayers aspire 
 
 There burn no flame of rapt but incommunicable 
 fire! 
 
14 THE BRAZOS 
 
 Lazy, loitering, yellow river. 
 Slipping past so sluggishly. 
 
 Pray, why are you such a laggard 
 On your errand to the sea? 
 
 Know you not that in impatience 
 Waits the Gulf of Mexico 
 
 For your tardy news of Texas, — 
 Of the orchards all a-row, 
 
 Of the green and golden grain-fields. 
 The tall soldier ranks of com, 
 
 Of the meadows where the Bob White 
 Whistles in the opal morn? 
 
 From the fenceless western ranges 
 Where the cattle wander free. 
 
 From the Llano Estacado 
 To the rice-swamps and the sea. 
 
 Past mesquite trees and the cactus 
 On you wander slow and calm. 
 
 To the heaven-kissing pine trees. 
 The magnolia blooms and palm. 
 
Past the fleecy fields of cotton 2g 
 
 Where the pickaninnies play 
 While the darkies sing and labor 
 
 Till the shadows dusk the day; 
 
 Past the patriarchal forests 
 
 Where the grey-beard moss hangs long, 
 Where the mills, incessant turning. 
 Keep a dreamy, rhythmic song; 
 
 Past the lowly homes and hamlets. 
 
 Past the sleepless cities' toil, 
 Where the wheels of thought go whirling 
 
 In a never-ending moil; 
 
 On you wander, still unhasting 
 
 Yet unresting in your flow, 
 While the laving, listless willows 
 
 Trail into your current slow. 
 
 If your waters had but language 
 
 what secrets they could tell! 
 Tell me, Brazos, won't you whisper 
 
 If I stoop and listen well? 
 
16 THE SEA-GULLS 
 
 Seaward the ship fares on. The dimming shore 
 
 Steadily fainter grows and yet more far. 
 
 Each pulsing throb of the vessel's mighty heart 
 
 Bears me the nearer to the land I love 
 
 And have not seen for long. In circling flight 
 
 The graceful gulls, like hovering thoughts of home 
 
 Drift over us. They poise and dip and float, 
 
 Up-borne upon the bodiless air with wings 
 
 That tireless seem, that haste not, neither rest. 
 
 With sinuous curves and slow, aerial ease 
 
 They follow, follow on. The monster ship 
 
 With turgid breath and strenuous-beating heart 
 
 Moves not more surely nor more swift than they 
 
 In their calm, languid grace that effortless 
 
 Bears them along. I watch them hour by hour 
 
 And yet their steadfast patience faileth not. 
 
 Those silver shining pinions never flag 
 
 Nor fold themselves to rest. Those snowy breasts 
 
 Are never cradled on the rocking sea. 
 
 The twilight darkens yet they follow on; 
 
 The stars bloom palely in the evening sky 
 
 And mellow lights cast rainbowed beams along 
 
 The deck and on the waves that leap and fall. 
 
 And yet those phantom forms with musical 
 
 And lonely cries pursue us still. They seem 
 
 Like dim, embodied dreams of constancy, 
 
 Of faith that fails not, love that never tires. 
 
 They mind me of the seeking thoughts of God 
 
 That through the trackless waste of days and years, 
 
 Through calms and storms, when we unconscious are 
 
 Of His dear tendance, and when we, poor fools! — 
 
 Would fain escape His fond administering, 
 
 Forever follow us. Through sunlit days 
 
 Of undimmed joy, through midnight darks of grief. 
 
 Through sin and shame, through victories hard won, 
 
 God's love and care encompass us about 
 
 To guard us and at last to guide us home. 
 
THE GARGOYLE 17 
 
 High from the crumbling wall he leans. 
 
 The odd, pathetic thing, 
 A gargoyle with his carven smile 
 
 Grotesquely menacing. 
 
 I used to smile at sight of him 
 
 But tears are now more near. 
 To see that tragi-comic mask 
 
 With strangely human leer. 
 
 He seems to mock humanity 
 
 With impotent disdain. 
 As, having seen so much of men. 
 
 Of laughter he is fain. 
 
 And ever in the garish day 
 
 And in the lonely night, 
 Tho men pass by regardlessly 
 
 It is the self-same sight. 
 
 When suns shine hot, when rains beat down. 
 
 When winds blow icy chill, 
 The gargoyle from his lonely niche 
 
 Forever mocks us still. 
 
 He changes not, he cannot change; 
 
 His fate is fixed in stone; 
 And on that mute, distorted face 
 
 The pitying stars look down. 
 
 Why did the sculptor so misuse 
 
 The passive stone, — to trace 
 A gargoyle where he might have carved 
 
 An angel's shining face? 
 
 Yet so we fashion our own lives. 
 
 And how asunder far 
 The angels that we might have been. 
 
 The gargoyles that we are! 
 
18 A SONG IN THE NIGHT 
 
 The midnight pall of black hung over all; 
 
 No light shone in the inky, unstarred sky; 
 And yet 'twas bright with fancies visional, 
 
 Athrill with dream-enchanted melody, — 
 For half-released from slumber's mystic thrall 
 
 I heard the mocking-bird's rapt minstrelsy! 
 
 At first, in tender, pleading, wooing tone 
 It voiced all lovers' ecstacy of plaint. 
 
 The little singer in the dark alone 
 Poured out his ravished heart without restraint, 
 
 As if to ease his soul by making moan 
 In pulsing notes, now full, now sweetly faint. 
 
 But ah! There came an anguished, quivering strain 
 Like trembling 'cello swept by hopeless hand. 
 
 It spoke of vanished dreams, of loves all vain, 
 Of amaranth and rue for soul's garland. 
 
 It wailed the Never-more, the Might-have-been, 
 The Late! — Too-late that piteous hopes remand. 
 
 And then as if to ease the woe which he 
 Had all unthinking brought Night's peace to mar 
 
 He cadenced an etherial symphony 
 Reechoed from celestial choir afar 
 
 That breathed of hope. And there peeped out to see 
 Our troubadour, one single, shimmering star! 
 
CARROLL CHAPEL AND LIBRARY 19 
 
 To the Memory of F. L. and Sara Carroll 
 
 When I pass by the building beautiful 
 That bears your name so greatly loved, there rush 
 
 A troop of memories ineffable 
 That touch my spirit with a tender hush. 
 
 I think of your two join^ lives that till 
 
 The even-time walked ever side by side 
 In faithful love that through earth's changes still, 
 
 Through toil and time, did steadfastly abide. 
 
 You cared not for the pomp and pageantry 
 
 Of social show nor for the glare of fame; 
 You spent your days in helpful ministry 
 
 And left the world a noble, stainless name. 
 
 You gave to Texas children you had taught 
 In simple truth and in God's love and fear; 
 
 Immortal, you still live in them and naught 
 Can dim the crowns of glory that you wear. 
 
20 You did not care to hoard your wealth, nor spent 
 
 It lavish on yourselves; what God had given 
 You rendered back to Him, and nobly lent 
 To others that for which you'd patient striven. 
 
 Your lives were silent prayers that like incense 
 Rose up to God, and since you went away 
 
 We still are molded by your influence 
 And still your memory cherish day by day. 
 
 Rich gifts of toil and loving sacrifice 
 You gave to Baylor through the years, and now 
 
 In pure and simple grandeur there doth rise 
 This building that through centuries shall show 
 
 Young men and women wisdom's ways and light 
 Them to the ever-lasting Life and Truth. 
 
 inmiortality of glory bright,— 
 power unceasing of eternal youth! 
 
 For even when the mordant tooth of time 
 Shall bring these milky marbles to decay, 
 
 When brick on brick shall crumble, still sublime 
 Your mission shall go on to endless day! 
 
DROUGHT IN TEXAS 21 
 
 The air was hot and dry, 
 
 Like a brazen bowl the sky. 
 The grass was dead and withered just as if a fire had 
 passed. 
 
 The baked earth cracked athirst, 
 
 Gaunt, leprous trees accurst. 
 In awful accusation lifted barren branches high. 
 
 Like seven-fold furnace blast, 
 
 Each hotter than the last. 
 Dust-laden winds came from the south in smothering, si- 
 moon blast. 
 
 When lo! a sudden, still 
 
 And breezeless pause came till 
 The very air in vivid expectation seemed to wait. 
 
 A lizard's lightning dart 
 
 Electric seemed to start 
 The tense, uncertain elements to know their wavering will 
 
 Tall cloud-banks' massy weight 
 
 Piled over till the late. 
 Thrice-longed-for, blessed rain-drops came apattering on 
 each heart. 
 
22 TO HELEN KELLER 
 
 Oh, soul that like a wind-harp is athrill 
 With trembling music, passion pure and clear, 
 And yet, withal, so lowly-sweet and dear, — 
 Thou wouldst earth's jarring discords softly still! 
 Oh, life like white-starred jasmine flowers that fill 
 With heavenly sweetness earth's rank atmosphere, 
 Thou seemst to bring far Paradise anear. 
 So snow-fragrant thy unselfish will! 
 Thou canst not hear the music of thy life 
 The while to us it seems divinely sweet! 
 Thou dost not understand how incense-rife 
 Thy influence, which unknown millions meet 
 Thou art shut out from worldly storm and strife 
 To hear within the angel pinions beat! 
 
SPRING IN CAMERON PARK 23 
 
 To Mrs. Flora Cameron and Her Children 
 
 The long, cold winter left our souls achill 
 And so we waited humbly for the Spring, 
 
 Our hearts anhungered for the ancient thrill, 
 That miracle past all imagining! 
 
 The solace of the cedars' faithful green 
 That, steadfast, chid the gray, impoverished boughs 
 
 Of spenthrift trees but sadder made the teen 
 That leadened the long days with winter's woes. 
 
 But soft a green all tender, nebulous, 
 As half-abashed lest captious eyes should see, 
 
 Pulsed over pallid trees and tremulous 
 Gave tokens of earth's age old mystery. 
 
 An answering signal thrilled o'er lawn and slope, 
 
 Adown each deep ravine's inmost recess. 
 To bid the wintered heart once more to hope 
 
 And joy in Spring's returning blessedness. 
 
 Soon red-bud boughs with crimson-purple bloom 
 
 Flamed like a conflagration in the wood. 
 While wild plum-blossoms' nectarous perfume 
 
 Showed thickets of snow-pure beatitude. 
 
 And as this perfect day I wander through 
 These scenes of happy childhood memories. 
 
 On every hand I find a beauty new. 
 Some token of fond Nature's glad surprise. 
 
24 Where listless willows trail their languorous limbs. 
 
 The red-brown Brazos tacitly slips by; 
 In yonder orchards, where the distance dims, 
 I see an Irised pomp and pageantry. 
 
 The soft, incessant stir of cotton-wood leaves 
 Is like the sound of gentle summer rain 
 
 That murmurous drips from low-sloped cottage eaves 
 And soothes the sleeper with its mild refrain. 
 
 On sun-lit slopes the lupin's purple blue 
 Blooms vast and free. With crests of cloud-tipped 
 white 
 
 And flecks of vivid scarlet flaming through, 
 The hyacinthine spikes stand tall and bright. 
 
 Blue water-leaf with tender, trailing stars, 
 Lights up the bosky hollows where the sun 
 
 Scarce shines, — so frail a rude touch mars 
 Their delicate beauty and their grace is gone! 
 
 High on a hill the brilliant claret-cup 
 All in a riot of intemperance bright 
 
 Such burning bowls for our carouse lifts up 
 As even Circe would have envied quite. 
 
 On a windy knoll the butterflies awing 
 Poise to dip deep in the heart o' the wild harebell 
 
 That wafted to and fro with soundless swing 
 Chimes out a silvern silence in its swell. 
 
 Beside the road in purple gonfalon 
 Waves the Phacelia, — depth on depth of rare. 
 
 Rich color in its folds that catch the sun 
 And shimmer in the soft and vibrant air. 
 
25 
 
 The pink primroses, rathe and sensitive, 
 
 As roseal-tender as a maiden's cheek 
 Yet strong through chilling gusts of wind to live, 
 Bloom fine yet common-place and bravely meek. 
 
 The vagrant moths and golden-bodied bees 
 Find sweets in the verbena's honeyed heart 
 
 And in the nameless yellow flowers one sees 
 Beside the wilding violets that upstart 
 
 So eager in the Spring. The dew-berry vines 
 With fading flower o' dreams trail here and there 
 
 And grape-vines with the errant bamboo twines 
 And waves its pendent tendrils in the air. 
 
 There darts a ruby-throated humming-bird 
 Straight to the blue bliss of the lupin field; 
 
 That scarlet flame that the thicket stirred 
 Was a tanager while a blue-jay wheeled 
 
 And darted over me. A mourning dove 
 
 Across the river wails her sobbing cry 
 While a mocking-bird from a tree above 
 
 Derides her grief and shrilly makes reply. 
 
 Through the lush green grass a chickadee flits; 
 
 (That black-gold flash was an oriole's wing!) 
 In a coat of green and gold a vireo sits 
 
 On yonder trembhng twig to blithely sing. 
 
 In rare, rejoicing music far away 
 
 Comes to me sweeter than the palinode 
 The sound of happy children at their play 
 
 Beyond the curving of the sun-lit road. 
 
26 
 
 world of beauty that the loving thought 
 Of generous souls has given to be our own 
 
 In fee fore'er — our city's pride — that naught 
 Our children's children ever can disown! 
 
 When Waco like a giant just awake 
 Shall shake the lethargy of years and leap 
 
 To great, undreamed-of strength and sudden make 
 The nations know her, still this gift she'll keep. 
 
 When Babel buildings tower into the skies 
 And myriad human midges fret and moil, 
 
 When festering tenements and factories 
 Hide aching hearts and ceaseless, half-paid toil. 
 
 This place shall be a haven of blessedness 
 Where weary hands may fold themselves awhile, 
 
 Where tired mothers bring their babes to rest, 
 And little children learn to play — and smile. 
 
 And looking past these givers and their gift 
 Our hearts in yearning, grateful plentitude 
 
 Unspoken prayer of thankfulness uplift 
 Unto the Source Divine of all things good. 
 
GRIEF 
 
 To kiss the clay-old lips we loved the best, 
 To see the inexorable coffin lid shut fast, 
 To hear the brutal clods fall on the breast 
 That sheltered us, — can such griefs ever pass? 
 
 To lie, wide-eyed, to wait the laggard dawn 
 While spirit writhes in longing wild, acute, 
 To see again a face forever gone, 
 To hear, just once, a voice but lately mute; 
 
 To feel how steadfast is the human heart 
 That can endure such woe and yet not break; 
 To leam to check the acrid tears that start 
 And hide beneath a smile a mortal ache, — 
 
 Nay, such griefs pass not, but are sanctified 
 By slow and solemn processes of soul. 
 As long as life their memories abide. 
 Yet not the bitter anguish known of old. 
 
 27 
 
28 
 
 THE OLD CHURCH 
 
 Forlorn and stark and desolate 
 
 It mutely questions why 
 It is abandoned to such fate, — 
 To worldly uses dedicate, — 
 That which to God was consecrate 
 
 And once held holily! 
 
 Now vaudeville is acted where 
 
 The pulpit stood for long, 
 While vulgar picture shows appear 
 Above the pool of baptism there; 
 Where once was heard the voice of prayer 
 
 Now rings the ribald song! 
 
 Below, where children learned God's word. 
 
 Men traffic now and buy. 
 They sell and bargain undeterred. 
 With God's name never thought nor heard! 
 Christian, is your soul not stirred 
 
 By such enormity? 
 
 think you not the Father grieves 
 
 To see it fallen so low? — 
 His house become a den of thieves 
 That the Holy Spirit sadly leaves, 
 While round it, mornings, noons and eves, 
 
 The lost souls come and go! 
 
 rather raze it to the sod 
 
 Than let it be defaced! 
 The temple of the living God, 
 Where erst His ministers have stood, 
 Where feet of worshippers have trod. 
 
 Should not be so disgraced! 
 
IN HIS OWN IMAGE 
 
 In Thine own image, Almighty God, 
 
 Thy word says Thou didst shape humanity. 
 
 Didst breathe upon insentient, witless clod 
 And dower it with Thine own divinity. 
 
 Yet some men crouch where they should stand erect, 
 Or crawl where they should walk upright, and lo! 
 
 Some are defaced with brutish, base defect 
 And scramble with the mark o' the beast on brow. 
 
 They have forgot to image Thee! And yet 
 No one so low but bears some trace of Thee; 
 
 Thy Godhead, never quite defaced, is set 
 Memorial on human frailty. 
 
 And others in the patient, trivial round 
 Or in the dizzy glare of earthly fame 
 
 Still keep Thy stature, lofty and sun crowned, 
 Still name, though silently. Thy holy name. 
 
 As in the wild white hour of danger late 
 Men gave their lives for others, as didst Thou 
 
 And with a prayerful courage faced their fate 
 Vicarous, as Thou hadst taught them how, — 
 
 Not for their own loved, cherished ones alone 
 Did these men bravely, grandly choose to die. 
 
 But for unlettered peasants, rude, unknown. 
 With helpless womanhood their only cry. 
 
 Such deeds uplift our fallen self-respect, 
 Show us our God-like stature once again. 
 
 Prove that mankind is nobler than we recked, 
 Immortal still, spite of the stoop and stain! 
 
 29 
 
30 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Thou art not dead, Shakespeare!— even though 
 The years are many since they shaped for thee 
 A tomb beside thine Avon's peaceful flow 
 Amid the scenes thou hadst loved tenderly. 
 Could Death strike lifeless that so wondrous mind 
 Or gravestones hide such genius free and vast? 
 Still thou dost live on page, in heart, and find 
 What royal reahns of love and state thou hast. 
 Immortal, thou didst linger mortal-wise 
 Awhile on earth, and with a god-like power 
 Gave life to many, — kings of high emprise, 
 Wise fools and lovers with a deathless dower. 
 E'en called the mighty dead to live again 
 To fame eternal by thy simple pen! 
 
01 
 
 Could I be happy even where *^ 
 
 Heaven's glad hosannas swell, 
 If through my sin another soul 
 
 Has stumbled into hell? 
 
32 
 
 THE ORGAN CACTUS 
 
 Up from the desert desolate and bleak 
 
 That stretches out as far as eye can reach 
 In wind-blown, mocking waves that never break 
 
 On any howsoever-distant beach, 
 The organ Cactus lifts its columns grand, 
 
 That, linked together, tower toward the sky, 
 A vast pipe organ in a lonely land 
 
 Ancient of days ere ever man came nigh! 
 
 Shall mighty touch of hurricane or storm 
 
 Awake majestic chords to life within? 
 Or shall the breath of Mexic breezes warm 
 
 Avail the sweeter melodies to win? 
 Perhaps in some hushed midnight's holy spell. 
 
 When soft on desert sands the moonbeams lie, 
 The hand divine that shaped so wondrous well 
 
 This organ vast will play his symphony! 
 
CHILDHOOD 33 
 
 Dear are our childhood's memories, — dear 
 
 The unbidden tears that come 
 When to our mind there troop unwavering, clear. 
 The thoughts of home. 
 
 Gone are those happy seasons,— -gone 
 
 Is childhood's magic spell. 
 Gone are the ones that in life's happy mom 
 We loved so well. 
 
 Sweet are our lowly home-loves, — sweet 
 
 To feel amid our pain 
 That in our Father's home some day we'll meet 
 Them all again. 
 
 Gone is our childhood's rapture,— gone 
 
 Its spirit undefiled; 
 Yet to His Kingdom we shall come, each one 
 A little child! 
 
34 THE BAT 
 
 The sun has died but still there shines till late 
 
 A yellow, cosmic light; 
 It seems the earth and sky do solemn wait 
 
 The coming of the night. 
 
 A solitary bat with soundless wing 
 
 Goes circling overhead; 
 My gaze clings to the curious, sombre thing 
 
 With fascinated dread. 
 
 It seems so mournful-lonely, set apart 
 
 From the dear company 
 Of joyous birds that every human heart 
 
 Doth cherish tenderly. 
 
 It hath no song nor plumage gay, — even so 
 
 Some homely birds we love 
 Just as some dear, familiar face we know 
 
 Doth strangely lovely prove. 
 
 But this wild creature with its gruesome grace 
 
 Pathetically wierd 
 Finds nowhere welcome but in every place 
 
 By all is shunned and feared. 
 
 So it avoids the light of garish day 
 And waits the kindlier night 
 
 Ere it fares forth to seek in devious way 
 Its dim, uncertain flight. 
 
 It even shuns in lonely sensitiveness 
 
 The others of its kind 
 And goes its darksome way companionless, 
 
 And desolately blind. 
 
 And yet Omnipotence created this 
 Which still a God doth prize. 
 
 And e'en the least and meanest thing of His 
 How shall we dare despise? 
 
FATHER TABB 35 
 
 Stilled is the voice that like a thrush 
 
 Piped such clear strain; 
 O'er all the Southland falls a hush 
 
 Of tender pain. 
 
 Though blind, he opened others' eyes 
 
 To visions rare, 
 Earth's priest and poet of the skies,— 
 
 His song a prayer! 
 
 The dim harmonics of the soul 
 
 He voiced so well, 
 I think he now must converse hold 
 
 With Israfel! 
 
36 BALLADE 
 
 I was sitting one day half asleep, 
 Wishing vain that the sermon would end, 
 When around me there swiftly did creep 
 A sweet breath such as tropic winds send. 
 Now what could such perfumery spend 
 As so swiftly my senses o'er-ran? 
 And pray how could the sermon contend 
 With the scent of a sandal-wood fan? 
 
 In its odors my soul seemed to steep, 
 
 All my wearisome thoughts to suspend. 
 
 And again with the fancy's quick leap 
 
 I was back where the tall palm trees bend, 
 
 China-town's curious mazes to wend, 
 
 With their intricate, labyrinth-plan. 
 
 Where each breath that I drew seemed to blend 
 
 With the scent of a sandal-wood fan. 
 
 There an Orient girl with her deep. 
 Subtle glance that enchantment did lend. 
 With her eye-lashes languorous sweep 
 Over me her charm seemed to extend. 
 Ah, my happiness used to depend 
 I Long ago, on the lips of Ah Tan, 
 
 Who her coquetry sweet would amend 
 With the scent of a sandal-wood fan! 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 When I wander to lands yet unkenned. 
 Having finished the whole of life's span. 
 Will the odors of heaven e'er blend 
 With the scent of a sandal wood fan? 
 
TO EVELYN KYGER 37 
 
 Like a snowy lily 
 
 Opening in the sun, 
 Pure so that the breezes 
 
 Scarce dare breathe upon 
 That so fragile beauty 
 
 Spirit-like and pale 
 (E'en the dew-drops gently 
 
 Touch a thing so frail!) 
 Love, thou wert among us 
 
 For a little horn- 
 Yet thou left upon us 
 
 Thy love's deathless dower. 
 
 With the lily's beauty 
 
 Thy young life did hold 
 All its chaliced sweetness. 
 
 Its rare heart of gold. 
 Yet as earth-flowers quickly 
 
 Perish and are fled 
 So thy mortal semblance 
 
 Swift evanished. 
 In the Father's gardens 
 
 Evermore to bloom 
 And to breathe eternal 
 
 Thy soul's rich perfume. 
 
3S hi^e a strain of music 
 
 Softly echoing 
 Seemed thy gentle spirit 
 
 Harmony to bring 
 To earth's fretful discords. 
 
 Thy soul paused to hear 
 Life's dim, hushed harmonics 
 
 With a reverent ear. 
 Love that yearns and listens^ 
 
 Shall't not hear ere long 
 In a near-by Heaven 
 
 That up-gathered song? 
 
 Innocent ai^d holy 
 
 Wert thou from thy birth; 
 Scarce thou knew that evil 
 
 Walked upou the earth. 
 With no fond hopes' shattered 
 
 Disillusionment, 
 With thy rapt ideals 
 
 All imstained, unspent. 
 Lovely, thou didst leave us 
 
 For a life more fair,-^ 
 A lily set to music, 
 
 A caroUed flower qf prayer. 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 39 
 
 It matters not on what far star 
 
 Of all Thy whirling, golden spheres 
 We'll see Thy glories gleam afar. 
 
 Past hmnan hopes and smiles and tears. 
 
 It matters not what strange, new bliss 
 
 Awaits us in that morning land; 
 There is more happiness in this 
 
 Than we could ever understand! 
 
 And of whatever worlds there are 
 
 Thou art the Lord, and this we know — 
 Thou wilt project afar, afar. 
 
 The life begun in brief below. 
 
 The power of an endless life, 
 
 glorious yet solemn thought! — 
 How with omnipotence 'tis rife 
 
 And with immortal presage fraught! — 
 
 That we shall never cease to be 
 
 Though endless aeons pass away, 
 But throughout Thy eternity 
 
 Shall be ourselves, as yesterday! 
 
 Ourselves and yet, oh, not the same! 
 
 For time works change even here on earth, 
 And by our altering flesh and frame 
 
 We reach a subtle, slow rebirth. 
 
 And is't not so with spirit, too? 
 
 We grow by what we feed upon; 
 As we our nobler thoughts renew 
 
 The baser perish and are gone. 
 
40 Here in this haste-racked life of ours 
 
 We breathless move from task to task, 
 Lacking the leisure for our powers 
 To gain the stature we would ask. 
 
 But in that other, better land. 
 
 Where Time no more stem lash shall wield, 
 Our natures fitly may expand, 
 
 Our souls their early promise yield. 
 
 We shall have space to dream and grow. 
 Room for a broader being, — room 
 
 For our dwarfed and starveling hearts to know 
 What glorious grace they may assume. 
 
 There shall no weakness blight nor mar 
 The spirit's flight, unfettered, free. 
 
 Nor pinions beat against the bar 
 Of prisoning mortality. 
 
 We shall be free from sin's wild snare. 
 With no dark doubts to hedge us in; 
 
 We shall be pure as angels are, 
 Yet with a knowledge born of sin. 
 
 Think! we shall learn all truth that lies 
 Hid now beyond our human ken; 
 
 Shall share the wisdom of the skies 
 Yet lose not that we had as men. 
 
 Aye, and a nobler service, too. 
 Shall give our talents all free scope, 
 
 A deeper love our souls embue, 
 A higher joy lead us to hope. 
 
 Daring our own best selves to be. 
 Free from the stress of sin's hot strife, 
 
 0, we shall feel through eternity 
 The power of an endless life! 
 
TO A SLAIN ROBIN 41 
 
 All mute on the ground thou liest, 
 
 A piteous, slaughtered thing, 
 And yet to heaven upcriest 
 Thy wrong, — that man deniest 
 
 Thy right to soar and sing, — 
 The song all silenced now and rent the rapturous wing! 
 
 The careless people pass thee 
 
 Indifferently by; 
 Nor eyes of pity ask thee 
 What hand it was that cast thee 
 
 Aside to bleed and die. 
 How harsh the wanton sport, the needless cruelty! 
 
 Ah, Bums should yet be living 
 
 To teach us to be kind. 
 For in our selfish striving 
 We sin past all forgiving 
 
 So heedless are and blind! 
 And if we show no mercy, can we mercy find? 
 Next summer will be sadder 
 
 Because one song is stilled 
 That would have made earth gladder. 
 And one more lyric ladder 
 
 To Heaven is unfullfiUed 
 Because one tiny form lies desolate and chilled! 
 
42 IN ENGLAND 
 
 Is yonder pallid, starveling moon 
 
 The one I used to see 
 Make midnight mist-enchanted noon 
 
 On Texas prairies free? 
 
 And are the sweet West winds that toss 
 My hair then onward roam 
 
 The ones that lately blew across 
 The cotton-fields at home? 
 
 Are these the self-same stars that shed 
 Their golden ray on ray 
 
 Athwart the graves of my dear dead 
 Five thousand miles away? 
 
MY LAND OF DREAMS 43 
 
 Oh, sunny land of dreams, my Mexico,— 
 Enchantress with a spell, seductive, golden! 
 Thy mountains crown^ with eternal snow, 
 Thy antique cities with their ruins olden 
 Unite the present with the long ago. 
 Oh, sunny land of dreams, my Mexico! 
 Thy myrtles, rosy-blooming, row on row. 
 Thy royal palms uplifted toward far heaven. 
 Thy dawns and sunsets with their golden glow. 
 Thy skies with angry tempests never riven, — 
 Almost too perfect seem for life below, 
 Oh, land of heavenly dreams, my Mexico! 
 
 Not till I left thee did I love thee so! 
 
 Thy very name hath potency of healing 
 
 Full many a pang this heart of mine doth know. 
 
 My thoughts like homing birds are ever stealing 
 
 Back to that land where I so long to go. 
 
 Dear land of happy dreams, my Mexico! 
 
44 THE LONE WATCHER 
 
 To Rufus C. Burleson 
 
 Steadfast and patient, with out-stretching hands. 
 
 Thy bronzed figure stands 
 
 On Baylor's campus here. That antique form 
 
 All bent with age, with years of stress and storm 
 
 Of ceaseless effort and divine unrest 
 
 To manifest 
 
 The verity of thy long-cherished dreams 
 
 Imperishable — meseems 
 
 Doth yet keep watch and ward. 
 
 By day and night doth guard 
 
 This Baylor thou didst love and serve so long! 
 
 The restless throng 
 
 Of hurrying students carelessly pass by 
 
 Sometimes regardlessly, 
 
 Yet oft they turn their young eyes to thy face 
 
 And in that reverent gaze 
 
 Pay homage to thy memory. 
 
 The years roll on, the changing springs unfold 
 
 And on the purple prairies as of old 
 
 The clover blooms. 
 
 In virginal, shy forest glooms 
 
 Spring the wild violets and their sister flowers. 
 
 While subtile showers 
 
 Gleam down athwart the meadows and the hills. 
 
Each joy that fills 45 
 
 The heart with painful sweetness unexprest, 
 
 Each stir of endless quest 
 
 With happy presage fraught. 
 
 Does it then touch thee not? 
 
 I love to think that thou hast still a share 
 
 (Mayhap past our compare) 
 
 In these our joys 
 
 That voice 
 
 Of happy student thrills thee as of old, 
 
 Even amid the manifold 
 
 Deep raptures of eternity. 
 
 This Texas thou didst love so tenderly, 
 
 Hath it not yet a part 
 
 In thy still-loving heart? 
 
 Hearts do not change; affections remain true 
 
 Though far our bodies wander from the view 
 
 Of those we love. Nor continents divide 
 
 Nor seas that waste and wide 
 
 Stretch cruelly 
 
 Can sunder us if we 
 
 But truly love, even here on earth. 
 
 And is't not so in that new life whose birth 
 
 Is mortal death, 
 
 Whose earliest knowledge is life's latest breath? 
 
 Ah, surely it is so! 
 
 Long years ago 
 
 Far in a distant state 
 
 In high enthusiasm thou didst dedicate 
 
 Thy life to Texas. Well was that fullfilled! 
 
 ThriUed 
 
 With young, ardent hopes and dreams unconquerable, 
 
 High-hearted zeal and courage to foretell 
 
 The unguessed greatness of this young, rude land. 
 
4S Thou earnest here to stand 
 
 In the fore-front of battle all-heroically 
 
 To live, to love, to labor and to die 
 
 For Texas, for thy God! 
 
 Though rough and lonely oft the path thou trod, 
 
 And sore the loss and strain the years did bring. 
 
 Thou hadst a faith unstaggering. 
 
 Sublime, 
 
 That in some future time 
 
 (Which seemed so laggard to thy longing heart!) 
 
 Thy Baylor, child of mighty sacrifice 
 
 Of tears and passionate prayers that heavenly wise 
 
 Scorned earthly failure, should her destiny attain. 
 
 And not in vain 
 
 Those years 
 
 When despite doubts and fears 
 
 Didst cry, "My heart is fixed. 
 
 Oh God, my heart is fixed!" 
 
 not in vain 
 
 The love of other hero souls that did maintain 
 
 The truth with thee and sent a challenge bold 
 
 In the face of the future. Oft has it been told 
 
 Since then 
 
 On printed page and in the lives of men 
 
 What Baylor's mission has been to the world, — 
 
 A torch of light, a flaming flag unfurled, 
 
 A signal to the cross of Calvary, 
 
 A ministry 
 
 Of self-regardless love. 
 
 Should Baylor ever prove 
 
 Untrue to her high task, how great her shame, 
 
 But not on thee the blame! 
 
Lone watcher 'neath the solemn stars, <^^ 
 
 Ere daylight nears 
 
 Thy place of vigil surely comes to thee 
 
 A troop of spirits bright and visionary, 
 
 The Baylor dead, 
 
 With faces radiant, unshadowed, — 
 
 Some who on Southern battle-field 
 
 Were slain, some who their lives did yield 
 
 On foreign lands in long-drawn martyrdom to truth; 
 
 Some who in youth 
 
 As some in age, who went 
 
 After a life of quiet service spent 
 
 For others — do they not return 
 
 As home-sick spirits yearn 
 
 For the simple things of home? 
 
 And as the deathless dead in memory come 
 
 To keep with thee 
 
 Thy faithful midnight watch, the company 
 
 Of joyous students solace thee by day. 
 
 These are thy best remembrancers alway. 
 
 Yea, these alone. 
 
 Their lives thy fitting monument, not bronze nor stone 
 
48 THE GREATEST GIFT 
 
 Of all the myriad blessings that 
 God gives us day by day 
 
 To bloom like starry flowerets 
 Along life's dusty way, 
 
 I wonder whether this is not 
 The greatest of them yet, — 
 
 Just the power to remember 
 And the power to forget? 
 
 How tragic could we not recall 
 Our golden hours, to live 
 
 Again and yet again the bliss 
 Their memory can give! 
 
 The simpler things are precious, too. 
 And how they linger long, — 
 
 The sunset sky, the book beloved, 
 The look, the word, the song! 
 
And, ah, our sacred griefs that time 4g 
 
 Can never quite destroy 
 But by the alchemy of years 
 
 Doth change to solemn joy, — 
 
 How blest that we forevermore 
 
 May keep them for our own. 
 And in the secret shrines of thought 
 
 Commume with them alone! 
 
 But there are many things as well 
 
 That wound and vex and fret, 
 And so we count among our boons 
 
 The power to forget. 
 
 And may the Father in His grace 
 
 Hereafter grant us yet 
 That we may through eternity 
 
 Remember— and forget! 
 
50 FOR WHOM WE SHOULD PRAY 
 
 I would be thankful, thinking how great blessings 
 Thou hast bestowed, God, upon my way; 
 
 I would be prayerful, knowing well my weakness. 
 The sins that do beset me day by day. 
 
 And yet not selfish even in my praying. 
 Forgetting others' needs at thought of mine, 
 
 I would be filled with Thine own great compassion, 
 Would share thy selfless sympathy divine. 
 
 I would ask blessings for the sick and helpless. 
 The young, young children set about with snares, 
 
 And for the old, the lonely, the forsaken. 
 The poor, in whose sad eyes gaunt hunger stares. 
 
 I would plead pardon for the weak and erring, — 
 Sin-blinded souls that somehow go astray. 
 
 That stagger 'neath a burden past our knowing 
 And wildly wonder how they missed the way. 
 
 And yet of all sad souls, to me the saddest 
 Are those that never think of Thee nor pray; 
 
 And so for prayerless lives and thankless spirits 
 I crave Thy tenderest pity, Lord, today! 
 
THE MESQUITE TREE 51 
 
 I love the magnolia and palm 
 
 Austere in their virginal pride, 
 
 As they lift themselves, stately and calm, 
 
 Southern hill-slopes or bayous beside. 
 
 The acacia, the myrtle, the bay. 
 
 Are dear with their incense-breath sweet, 
 
 But there's none that I cherish alway 
 
 Like the little gnarled Texas mesquite! 
 
 Of the trees of the North I love each 
 
 Whether ice-clad or tenderiy green, — 
 
 The tall linden, the maple, the beech, 
 
 In their glory of autumn's bright sheen. 
 
 There's a beauty about every one 
 
 That 'twould seem needeth naught to complete. 
 
 And yet strangely I say I love none 
 
 Like the little gnaried Texas mesquite! 
 
 I have stood rapt with awe to behold 
 California's famed Redwoods so grand. 
 And that tree countless centuries old. 
 That great Mexican giant that stands 
 As the largest in all of the world. 
 Yes, its wonders I often repeat. 
 And yet, — is your nose slightly curled? — 
 I love best my gnarled Texas mesquite! 
 
g2 There are trees that in forests grow tall, 
 
 In swamp, or on hill-side, or glade; 
 The mesquite knows none other at all 
 But afar on the plain gives its shade 
 To the place that most needeth a tree! 
 And whene'er the fierce sunbeams hot beat 
 On the cowboy or coyote, they flee 
 To the little gnarled Texas mesquite! 
 
 Oh, its branches are crooked and scarred, 
 
 And its verdure is scanty, I know. 
 
 And from neatly-kept parks 'tis disbarred, 
 
 Ne'ertheless, my heart loveth it so! 
 
 For its leaves are as lacy as ferns. 
 
 And its blossoms like plumes creamy-sweet,- 
 
 And I'll cling, even though the world spurns, 
 
 To my little gnarled Texas mesquite! 
 
THE SOUTHERN CROSS 53 
 
 Calm is the tropic night; no slightest breeze 
 
 The pois^ stillness of the leafage mars. 
 
 'Tis dark, save for the light of large-eyed stars 
 
 That glimmer through the lace-like Pepper trees. 
 
 The stately palms like soldiers stand at ease; 
 
 The plaintain leaves have furled their bannered bars. 
 
 Night's peace hath healed the wounds of Noon's fierce 
 
 wars 
 And to earth's myriad sorrows brought surcease. 
 
 Like figures on an antique goblet's brim, 
 Quaint arabesques the smooth-shorn grass emboss. 
 The worldless melody of Nature's hymn 
 Soothes from my soul its pettiness and dross. 
 And lo! above yon cloudlet's silver rim 
 There shineth softly clear the Southern Cros$| 
 
54 THE SMOKE 
 
 By the vessel's rail I love to lean 
 And watch the massive smoke-stack high 
 That casts a velvet pall between 
 The ocean and the sky. 
 
 The heavy, cumulus smoke-heaps 
 In inky blackness billow forth 
 As where the tempest cloud swift creeps 
 Athwart the wintry north. 
 
 But farther on grey banners wave. 
 Unfurling proudly, floating higher. 
 As to inspire the patriot brave 
 To face the battle's fire! 
 
 Yet farther, see! a silver veil 
 As for some timid, tender bride. 
 Floats in the twilight, shinmiering-pale 
 Across the waters wide. 
 
 What is that wraith-like, pallid trail 
 That in the distance seems to rest? 
 Is it a far-off, phantom sail. 
 Or billow's frothy crest? 
 
 ► This mortal breath is as the smoke. 
 
 So quickly vanishing afar, — 
 But lo! as if hope to evoke 
 
 There shineth one pale star! 
 
THE BAYLOR SONG 55 
 
 Dear mother of a mighty race 
 
 Of sons and daughters known afar, 
 Thou art enthroned in heart's high place 
 
 As worshipped mothers ever are. 
 Thine influence naught can efface. 
 
 Not even time's petrific mace! 
 
 Thou has no wealth of lands or marts; 
 
 Proud in thy simple poverty, 
 Thou hast withstood the barbed darts 
 
 Of many a year's adversity. 
 Thine is the wealth that love imparts, 
 
 A multitude of loyal hearts! 
 
 Yet once again with happy feet 
 We tread thy halls and campus through; 
 
 Again our love for thee repeat, 
 Our youth's high-hearted dreams renew. 
 
 Is any rapture half so sweet 
 As long-loved college-mates to greet? 
 
 Teach us of thy true heart's best lore. 
 
 Our Baylor, Alma Mater dear! 
 Make us more faithful than before, 
 
 With every swiftly-passing year. 
 As we thy fostering love implore. 
 
 Oh, help thou us to serve thee more. 
 
56 CARLOTA'S MIRADOR 
 
 The sun-light's amber splendor filled the air 
 
 In Cuemavaca, in old Mexico, 
 The while I wandered in a garden where 
 
 Seemed gathered all the sweetest flowers that blow; 
 Tall Pepper-trees with leaves like Maiden-hair 
 
 Cast lace-like shadows on the emerald grass 
 And myriad flower-petals floated fair 
 
 With every breath of vagrant winds that passed. 
 
 This was the place that proud Carlota loved 
 More than her palaces or buildings grand; 
 Twas here her swiftly-sped delight but proved 
 As dreams that crumble at magici^i's wand. 
 This Borda Garden, fairer then than now, — 
 Yet heavenly-fair even now, to me it seems, — 
 Keeps still the memory of that long ago 
 And of a vanished empress ever dreams. 
 
 The lake's unrippled waters seemed to sleep; 
 
 The snowy swans their plumage softly preen; 
 In yonder bosky grove the shadows deep 
 
 Hide flowers with their beauty half unseen. 
 The jasmine scenting all the tropic air, 
 
 The mangoes with their rosy-golden sheen, 
 The flowers that elsewhere never bloom so fair 
 
 Speak softly of a young, beloved queen. 
 
And in the garden's farthest corner high, 57 
 
 A-level with the massive stone built-wall, 
 A little summer-house set lovingly 
 
 That She might have a better view of all 
 The winding walks, the flower banks, the trees, 
 
 The fountain's silver spray, the lake's calm shore,— 
 Rose with its benches cunning-shaped for ease. 
 
 And this, they told me, was her Mirador. 
 
 Outside the garden lay a deep ravine 
 
 Beyond which rose the mountains, misty-blue, 
 And in the distance clear that stretched between 
 
 Magnolias and the rosy myrtles grew. 
 On a far height an old cathedral stood, 
 
 Toward which the lonely peons patiently 
 Toiled up the steep to bear their offerings crude. 
 
 How oft must she have viewed that tenderly! 
 
 And does she, — now that she is old and lone. 
 
 In Belgian mad-house shut so many years. 
 In thinking of the happy years agone. 
 
 With eyes made dim by burning, bitter tears, — 
 E'er think of this spot once loved best of all? 
 
 How hard that she can see it never more! 
 Deep pity made mine own tears softly fall 
 
 While I gazed from Carlota's Mirador. 
 
58 "POBRECITA" 
 
 "Pobrecita!" in soft whisper 
 Of the liquid Spanish tongue 
 Soothed the woes of a wee lisper 
 With her baby heart all wrung 
 By the sight of strangers round her 
 In the thronging market place, 
 Till her mother swiftly found her, 
 Gathered her in close embrace. 
 "Pobrecita!" 
 
 So I, older but still yearning 
 For like loving sympathy. 
 Find myself forever turning 
 Toward a voice that speaks to me. 
 In an alien land, a stranger. 
 Vexed by many a doubt and fear, 
 I forget all sense of danger 
 At my Father's accents dear, 
 "Pobrecita!" 
 
THE DUG-OUT 59 
 
 While riding on the plains one day 
 
 I lost my path and wandered 'round 
 Till, on the prairie's trackless way, 
 
 I came across a lonely momid. 
 
 It strangely sudden seemed to rise 
 
 Up from the endless waste of sand 
 'Twas fashioned in such curious wise 
 
 As by some necromancer's wand. 
 
 A wooden door hung to the west, 
 
 A shuttered window at one side. 
 Was it a house that, tenantless, 
 
 Did yet an occupant abide? 
 
 All eagerly I gazed within, 
 
 My eyes half-blinded by the gloom. 
 And saw what once a home had been 
 
 In that dark cellar of a room. 
 
 A bed, with covers backward thrown. 
 
 As when in haste one rises up, 
 A table rude with crumbs o'erstrewn, 
 
 A baby's little china cupl— 
 
^Q What else was there? Oh, just a few 
 
 Old dishes with their chips and rust, 
 A battered wooden chair or two, 
 And over all the mantling dust. 
 
 I know not why the simple thing 
 Had power to subtly touch me so. 
 
 But as I gazed I felt the sting 
 Of salt, hot tears' unbidden flow. 
 
 What tiny, dimpled hands had held 
 That little cup once lovingly? 
 
 And had the baby not rebelled 
 His treasure left behind to see? 
 
 Perhaps he had out-grown it then, 
 The baby cup and baby days; 
 
 Perchance afar with vicious men 
 He trod the smirching, hell-bound ways. 
 
 Or yet, mayhap, in quiet spot 
 
 Where prairie flowers blossomed round. 
 
 Where careless eyes could mark it not, 
 There rose a lonely little mound. 
 
 I cannot tell. But strangely there 
 
 In memory oft rises up 
 The picture of a dug-out bare 
 
 And of a little china cup! 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 61 
 
 "If I had but two loaves of bread. I would sell one and buy 
 white hyacinths to feed my somV— Eastern Proverb. 
 
 I think the Orientalist was wrong; 
 Such barter one need never make at all; 
 The white flowers of the soul by rights belong 
 To all whose hearts their beauty may enthrall. 
 It is our life's brown bread that costs us dear; 
 White hyacinths bloom round us fair and free, 
 If we have but the poet-vision clear 
 That needeth but to ope the eyes and seel 
 
 I sat upon the steps at dusk that night 
 To watch the stars bum palely, ray on ray. 
 And thought how many blossoms heavenly-white 
 Had bloomed beside my pathway yesterday. 
 The first was in the tender Shepherd Psalm 
 That sang itself to me the while I dressed. 
 I steeped my spirit in its healing calm 
 And felt anew its ecstasy of rest. 
 
 A baby's laugh that floated happily 
 
 Up to my window was the next soul-flower; 
 
 A mocking bird's insouciant melody 
 
 Atilt upon yon jasmine's white starred bower; 
 
 A noble poem read and read again 
 
 Until its magic soothed yet stirred my soul; 
 
 The far-off echo of a loved refrain, — 
 
 How fragrant-white the blossoms manifold! 
 
^2 The pause to look at young trees row on row. 
 
 Soft in their tremulous tenderness of green. 
 Where rapt, auroral flushes of peach-blow 
 Thrill up the slope of yonder deep ravine; 
 The arched cathedral aisle of meeting trees; 
 The sunset sky with glory all aflame, — 
 And were these not enough to give heart' s-ease 
 And petty cravings put to shame? 
 
 The half-hour in the twilight's tender calm 
 When, with closed eyes and listening heart, I lay 
 While one whose touch is magic brought the balm 
 Of improvised, soul-searching chords that stay 
 Forever in my inmost life apart! 
 Such are the flowers that their blooms unfold 
 Across the dusty high-way of my heart,— 
 These the white hyacinths that feed my soul! 
 
THE OLD CATHEDRAL CHIMES 63 
 
 What is that magic melody 
 
 That round me softly floats? 
 Is it angelic symphony 
 
 Attuned to earthly notes? 
 
 It steals upon the morning air 
 
 When all beside is still, 
 And calls me from my dream-land fair 
 
 With wonder-waking thrill. 
 
 It is the old cathedral chimes 
 
 Their matin sounding sweet; 
 Each dawn I hear their wordless rhymes 
 
 Their mysteries repeat. 
 
 So mournful-sweet, so softly-clear, 
 
 They fail, then live again. 
 I hush my very thoughts to hear 
 
 That rapt, inmiortal strain! 
 
^4 The miserere's mourning toll. 
 
 The penitential songs, 
 The sad Peccavi of the soul 
 Voice all earth's bitter wrongs. 
 
 The wailing of a soul that dies 
 While thick the shadows crawl, 
 
 A glad Hosanna from the skies 
 Are mingled with it all. 
 
 The "Holy! Holy! Holy!" rolls 
 
 Triimiphant in acclaim, 
 As if all earth and sky extols 
 
 That one divinest Name. 
 
 The rapture and the wondering awe 
 That shy Maid Mary felt 
 
 Breathe through the chimes as if she saw 
 The Angel yet, and knelt. 
 
•Now lettest me depart in peace!" ^5* 
 
 I hear old Simeon cry. 
 All earth's deep anguish finds heart's-ease 
 
 By a cross uplifted high. 
 
 The heavenly sweetness shrives my heart 
 
 Of each low-clinging care; 
 Its bahns a healing peace impart 
 
 As comfort follows prayer. 
 
 A thousand half-remembered things 
 
 Float dream-like through my brain; 
 I feel the brush of unseen wings 
 
 With that last, dying strain! 
 
6& TO GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Ah, man's great brain allied with woman's heart! 
 
 Ah, wisdom vast that puts our wits to shame! 
 
 There is a mighty magic in thy art 
 
 That casts a deathless glory round thy name. 
 
 Creator, with a power almost divine, 
 
 Thy living men and women throng the page; 
 
 And yet strange contrasts in their life and thine 
 
 Prove thee the Sphynx of this our modern age. 
 
 A sinful woman, striving yet to teach 
 
 The heavy train of woes that follow sin; 
 
 An agonist an unseen goal to reach, 
 
 But without hope the victor's crown to win; 
 
 A soul so sensitive to every breath, 
 
 Condemned at God's and man's high judgment bar, — 
 
 How coulds't thou pierce the glooms of life or death 
 
 And through the darkness see no Bethlehem star? 
 
THE BOON OF ENDLESS QUEST 67 
 
 Were we only flesh, not spirit, 
 
 Only clay untouched by fire, 
 There were then no inner strivings. 
 
 No vague impulse to aspire. 
 As it is, our life is tortured 
 
 By deep yearning and desire 
 And each dull clod feels the motive 
 
 Toward a nobler life and higher. 
 
 Can we never hope to fathom 
 
 What is meant by this behest? 
 Can we never sound the plummet 
 
 To the depths of our unrest? 
 Shall we die with all our passion 
 
 Unachieved and unconfessed? 
 Even so, life has no blessing 
 
 Like the boon of endless quest. 
 
68 THE FIRE-FLY 
 
 0, elfin creature with thy phosphor light, 
 A point of radiance in a starless gloom, — 
 
 Thou mak'st the sombre boskage of the night 
 With flower of flame, all palpitant, to bloom! 
 
 Dost know the darksome ways thou threadest through 
 Or is the trackless air a waste to thee? 
 
 Oh, if we mortals, though but dimly, knew 
 The Whence, the Whither, and the Way could see! 
 
 But hush, my soul! The God that lit the fire 
 Ephemeral in this poor insect's heart 
 
 Hath given thee a light diviner, higher, 
 A faith that more than knowledge can impart! 
 
"SAD WITH THE HAPPINESS WE PLANNED" 69 
 
 William Vaughn Moody 
 
 I used to marvel over-much at this 
 
 To me so enigmatic, cryptic phrase; 
 
 I could not fathom how't could be that bliss 
 
 Should e'er the slightest thought of sadness raise! 
 
 But that was in the days when life was young, 
 
 When every accent was alilt with song. 
 
 When joy was like a harp with tense cords strung 
 
 That trembled music every breeze along. 
 
 But now, since I am wiser grown, I feel 
 That joy and pain so closely are akin. 
 That when with bliss my very senses reel 
 I know a nameless, hauntless pang within. 
 Is it an anguish that joy cannot last? 
 Or is it a mute prescience of woe? 
 Or do I sense my imperfection vast 
 In this so-perfect world of God's below? 
 
 And then again, when sombre shadows steal 
 Athwart the vivid sunshine of my days, 
 When sorrow's depth of suffering I feel. 
 There's yet a joy within my heart always! 
 A joy that piercing griefs can never kill, 
 A rest that staggering burdens cannot crush. 
 A sense of God's dear presence with me still 
 My puny passions and my wailing cries to hush. 
 
70 CATALINA 
 
 In boat of glass I idly drift 
 From Catalina's Moonstone Beach 
 
 To where the marine gardens lift 
 Their fronded palms and flowers, each 
 
 Bathed in the mellow lights that sift 
 Unto the ocean's farthest reach. 
 
 The waveless waters stilly lie, 
 Unscarred by any winds that sweep. 
 
 As if some magic lullaby 
 Had hushed them to enchanted sleep. 
 
 And as I gazed, I feel that I 
 Am bound by that same thraldom deep. 
 
 Down through the waters, crystal-blue. 
 Far, far below, fair gardens lie. 
 
 Whose beauties pierce the senses through 
 With subtlest thrill of ecstasy. 
 
 'Tis like all fairy dreams come true 
 Or man's lost paradise brought nigh! 
 
 Tall, ferny trees so gently sway, 
 Almost an hundred feet in height. 
 
 With frond-like, lacy leaves that spray 
 And shimmer in the tender light 
 
 In colors that no artist may 
 E'er hope to paint so softly-bright. 
 
Far, far below, the ocean shows 7/ 
 
 Her myriad shyly tinted flowers 
 More beautiful by far than those 
 
 That bloom in any earthly bowers, 
 In all the shades of tender rose 
 
 Or violet cleansed by April showers. 
 
 Like films of apple-green chiffon 
 
 That gently float — and fall — and rise 
 An almost breathless breeze upon. 
 
 The delicatest leafage lies 
 As robes Titania might don 
 
 To glad my beauty-loving eyes! 
 
 All in amongst the leafy boughs 
 
 The gold and silver fishes play. 
 Or in the sleeping waters drowse 
 
 The mellow-amber hours away. 
 What is the magic that allows 
 
 Such perfect peace and charms alway? 
 
 All mingled tints of rose and pearl 
 
 The fluted shells lie on the sand: 
 Around them waving tendrils curl 
 
 As if by a magician's wand. 
 Ah, is there elsewhere in the world 
 
 So dream-enchanted Lotus-land? 
 
/^2 On yonder rock a sea-lion lies 
 
 As if to guard this place so fair. 
 
 Will Proteus in a fresh surprise 
 Perchance appear beside him there? 
 
 I look to see the Nereids rise 
 Or Mermaids comb their yellow hair! 
 
 I list for Triton's trumpet-roll 
 Across the waters, faintly-clear. 
 
 Ah, will this rapture e'er grow old 
 Or shall I feel forever here 
 
 The blissful pain that smites the soul 
 At sight of scene so perfect-fair? 
 
THE BORDA GARDEN 73 
 
 A RONDEL 
 
 Ah, garden fair of far-off Mexico! 
 
 Ah, dream-enchanted region of delight! 
 
 Mine eyes sink wearied from their task, when lol 
 
 Across my vision floats a vision bright 
 
 Of sleeping lake, of lilies all arow. 
 
 Of tall trees crowned with sunset's rosy light. 
 
 Ah, garden fair of far-off Mexico! 
 
 Ah, dream enchanted region of delight! 
 
 Thy groves were witness in the long ago 
 
 To proud Carlota's pageantry of might; 
 
 Thine aisles re-echoed soon her bitter woe, 
 
 Yet still thine undinmied beauty charms my sight. 
 
 Ah, garden fair, of far-off Mexico! 
 
 Ah, dream enchanted region of delight! 
 
74 THE INNER COURT 
 
 I knew a house in long ago 
 That rose from out the busy street 
 
 Of an old town in Mexico, 
 Where, all day long, the busy feet 
 
 Passed and repassed it to and fro. 
 
 In structure of the cold, grey stone 
 It looked forbidding, grim and bleak. 
 
 It seemed to stand there all alone, 
 While no one entrance seemed to seek. 
 
 In its dark halls no sun beams shone. 
 
 Yet as I passed it on a day 
 The heavy doors were open wide. 
 
 I paused a moment on my way 
 To cast a careless glance inside. 
 
 And ah! what wonders therein lay! 
 
 I saw a court or patio 
 
 Shut up within that massive square. 
 Where all the sweetest flowers that blow 
 
 Seemed gathered in one garden fair 
 'Neath the bright sky of Mexico. 
 
 The red, red, roses riotous grew, 
 The jasmine spilled its perfume sweet, 
 
 The bougainvalea's purple blue 
 Climbed up the topmost stone to greet. 
 
 While golden sun-beams sifted through. 
 
I know a heart, too,*— Life and I— 75 
 
 That seems so austere, proud and chill 
 
 As to repel the passer-by. 
 'Tis lonely, though around it still 
 
 The jostling throng, the traffic-cry. 
 
 Yet at the touch of sympathy 
 
 Or sound of gentle, human word, 
 That heart's closed doors wide open fly 
 
 And as I gaze my soul is stirred 
 At wealth of loves that in it lie! 
 
 The flowers of faith and peace and love, 
 
 The jasmine's holy star of hope, 
 Bathed in bright sunlight from above 
 
 Show all the heart's best blooms that ope 
 The warmth of life within to prove. 
 
 Perhaps you wonder, as did I, 
 
 At inner grace of court and heart. 
 There is a potent reason why 
 
 That one such beauty could impart, — 
 For each is open to the sky! 
 
76 REFLECTIONS 
 
 I stand at the prow and gaze far down 
 
 Into the tacit, lucid sea, 
 Where not the slightest breeze is blown 
 
 Upon that still transparency. 
 At unimagined depths of blue 
 
 The heavens' reflected hemisphere 
 Shines like a globule trembling through 
 
 With colors palpitantly clear. 
 
 And all the careless clouds that float 
 
 So idly in the summer sky 
 Are mirrowed in those deeps remote 
 
 And there as lightly, lightly lie. 
 The heavens above, the heavens below 
 
 Seem blended in that far blue line. 
 The earth no longer is. I know 
 
 My kinship with the worlds divine! 
 
 E'en as I wait the winds are bom 
 
 To lash to wrath the quiet sea; 
 The clouds, forbidding and forlorn 
 
 Now darken o'er me angrily. 
 And yet I feel that all is right. 
 
 For God is good and doth control,— 
 And never earthly storms can blight 
 
 The heaven that lies within the soul! 
 
THE HEAVEN OF DREAMS 77 
 
 Oh, where is Heaven? Tell me where, 
 
 Ye men that travel far! 
 Ye have traversed earth's farthest reach 
 
 From south to polar star; 
 
 Ye have explored vast continents 
 
 And girdled every sea,— 
 Yea, even the air obeys thy will; 
 
 Thy light ships whirl and flee, — 
 
 The earth is thine, and yet in all 
 
 Thy journeyings to and fro 
 Hast heaven fomid? Oh, tell me, pray; 
 
 I hunger so to know! 
 
 Ye savants of the far-flung stars, 
 
 That from high midnight towers 
 Explore a myriad worlds beyond 
 
 This atom-orb of ours. 
 
 Ye chart the paths of stars that faint 
 
 Illume the distant skies; 
 Ye know the heavens, but have ye found 
 
 Where Heaven really lies? 
 
78 And what is Heaven? I have heard 
 
 In mystic canticle 
 Of streets of gold, of jewels rare 
 And radiant-wonderful; 
 
 'Tis said that ever with bright harps 
 The saints God's praise attest, 
 
 While from earth's labor man may find 
 Eternity of rest. 
 
 But what of radiant youth that bums 
 With life's unceasing will. 
 
 That has no thought for rest but longs 
 For buoyant eifort still? 
 
 Perhaps the truths we've heard are but 
 Faint symbols, if we knew; 
 
 And is not Heaven just the place 
 
 Where our best dreams come true? 
 
THE YELLOW JASMINE 79 
 
 The yellow jasmine shakes on high 
 
 Her laughing golden bells, 
 While to the copse and wood-land nigh 
 
 Sweet odorance up- wells. 
 
 Like a graceful wood-nymph slim and fair, 
 
 Clad in a cool green gown. 
 With her unfilleted bright hair 
 
 In radiance floating down. 
 
 She weaves a spell of witchery 
 
 Across my dreaming brain. 
 And in the mists of memory 
 
 I see Her face again! 
 
60 A PRAYER 
 
 What can I give thee, Master mine, 
 
 My love to manifest? 
 I have no gems that bravely shine, 
 No gifts that glitter fair and fine, — 
 Only my heart, — lo, it is thine, 
 For thy behest! 
 
 How may I serve thee, Jesus, Lord? 
 
 I am so helpless, frail, — 
 Not mine to speak the far-flung word, 
 Not mine to wield the warrior sword; 
 If I my will with thine accord, 
 
 Will that avail? 
 
 How may I glorify thee, my King? 
 
 I am all silent, dumb; 
 I cannot preach nor speak nor sing; 
 No worthy laurels may I bring. 
 Myself prone at thy feet I fling,— 
 
 Savior, I come! 
 
THE SCREECH-OWL 81 
 
 Hushed is the calm and holy Southern night; 
 
 Tis dark, save for the pallid, meagre light 
 
 A few faint stars spill down. 
 
 And all around 
 
 A haunting sweetness from the golden bells 
 
 Of jasmine vine up- wells 
 
 To woo with thousand mingled memories 
 
 And mute, unspoken prophecies 
 
 The silence of my heart. 
 
 A fluttering start 
 
 Of wings sounds in the oak tree by the gate 
 
 And as I idly wait. 
 
 Thinking perchance to hear 
 
 The insouciant, flute-like clear 
 
 Voice of the mock-bird's midnight rhapsody, 
 
 Instead there comes to me 
 
 An eerie, awesome note, 
 
 Wild tremulos that float 
 
 Upon the startled stilness of the air. 
 
 And near me there 
 
 Well do I know the screech-owl's boding wail! 
 
 I hear it faint and fail. 
 
 Then rise again 
 
 In wierd refrain 
 
 Of melancholy presaging of doom. 
 
 Through the sweet gloom 
 
 Like oracle of fate 
 
 With woe predestinate. 
 
 It quavers palpitating, ominous and wild, 
 
 But sad as the sobbing of a lonely child. 
 
S2 Unhappy bird. 
 
 How hast thou stirred 
 
 So deep this heart of mine? 
 
 And do I then divine 
 
 Aright the meaning of thy mournful tune 
 
 That like some ancient, mystic rune 
 
 Boding bane and withering with woe 
 
 Doth fright me so? 
 
 Thou art an awesome, fearful thing 
 
 Although so slight 
 
 My weak, unaided woman's hands could quite 
 
 Crush out thy life. 
 
 And yet all rife 
 
 With menace indefinable, 
 
 Dread threatenings unutterable 
 
 And loathesome, helpless horror and affright 
 
 Is this erstwhile so happy summer night! 
 
 Thou seemest to fill the unquiet, darkening space 
 
 With gruesome grace, 
 
 And towerest to proportions vague and vast 
 
 Until at last. 
 
 Gigantic but invisible. 
 
 Enveloping, intangible. 
 
 Thou seemest the horrid specter of a dream 
 
 From which thy sobbing scream 
 
 But half avails to waken me. 
 
 So wild thy wizardry! 
 
Art thou a disembodied woe S3 
 
 Or spirit lone that flutters to and fro 
 
 Shut out alike from heaven, earth and hell? 
 
 Canst thou not tell 
 
 What age-old wrongs or griefs are thine? 
 
 Can power nor human nor divine 
 
 Avail to ease the torments that up-start 
 
 From thy so-anguished heart? 
 
 Ah, whose lost, haunted soul 
 
 Has permit to control 
 
 Thy tiny frame? 
 
 Could'st thou but name 
 
 Thy passion, — mayhap worse! — 
 
 Thy vulture-like remorse— 
 
 Perhaps Death would grant rest 
 
 To thy racked breast. 
 
g4 Whence is thy banishment? 
 
 Why this thy punishment 
 That, like the Wandering Jew, 
 For ancient sin with pain forever new 
 Thou'rt driven o'er earth's face 
 With never resting-place 
 Allowed to thee. 
 Ah, greater tragedy! 
 Thou'rt fated to impart 
 To every listening heart 
 A grief and horror like unto thine own. 
 Each one who hears thee shudders at the tone 
 Of dim, foreboding menace in thy notes, 
 The prophecy of certain ill that floats 
 From thy unquiet soul. 
 And sadder than the toll 
 Of passing-bell 
 The sounds that well 
 Low on the listening air, — 
 Despair 
 
 Both for thine own pang and the loss which thou 
 Foretellest, as e'en now. 
 To me the while I strain 
 Unwilling ears to hear again 
 The poignancy and presage of thy cry. 
 But hark! nigher and yet more nigh 
 With wailful sweetness 
 And broken incompleteness 
 Thy warning comes to me. 
 
Ah, bitter mystery! gg 
 
 Whose is the fate that thou dost call aloud? 
 
 Whose the loved form thy prophecies enshroud? 
 
 Can it be true that death doth stalk so near! 
 
 An icy fear 
 
 Benumbs my faltering heart. 
 
 As tears upstart 
 
 I murmur brokenly 
 
 "What if it should be I?" 
 
 How should I bear the physical pain of death, 
 
 The stopping of my breath? 
 
 How bear the loneliness of one mere atom hurled 
 
 Into the awful space of world on world? 
 
 What if my soul be summoned unaware. 
 
 Still wrapped in earth's ambitions, to appear 
 
 Alone 
 
 Before the face of Him that sittest on the throne? 
 
 Again that menacing cry! 
 
 Lord, let it not be I! 
 
S6 But with a deeper fear my heart's transfixed. 
 
 For, if the fates be fixed, 
 The oracle be sure and no escape there be. 
 If from our home must one too certainly 
 Face death alone, 
 
 How may I pray that I be not that one? 
 What if God hear my prayer 
 Myself to spare. 
 
 But smite the best-beloved from my side? 
 Ah, woe betide! 
 The truth how true. 
 Which I forgot, if e'er I really knew, — 
 All personal pangs above. 
 The suffering borne by those we love 
 Is our most bitter pain! 
 So, I am fain 
 To appropriate 
 Unto myself the fate. 
 
 The stroke of that grim, over-hanging sword. 
 And with bowed heart, I whisper, "Lord, 
 If it indeed must be. 
 If no escape have we. 
 If one from out our group must surely die, 
 Oh, grant it may be only I!" 
 
To bear our sorrows sunnily, g"^ 
 
 Not merely with a stoic calm,— 
 'Tis thus we wrest from misery 
 
 The victor's crown and palm. 
 
88 MITLA BY MOONLIGHT 
 
 In chill and silver moonbeams' sheen 
 That casts o'er all an austere grace, 
 
 The immemorial ruins seen 
 Still show each melancholy trace 
 
 Of Time's defacing chisel keen 
 In marks that nothing can efface. 
 
 The massive column's majesty, 
 The crumbling walls whose pictured skill 
 
 In fadeless colors yet doth lie, 
 The sacrificial altar still 
 
 So eloquent of cruelty, — 
 With visions vast my fancy fill. 
 
 Who was the architect that planned 
 In ages past this mighty fane? 
 
 At what proud priest's or king's command 
 Did myriad toiling peons strain 
 
 To build this Mitla temple grand? 
 And recked he not the cost, the pain? 
 
 Can no one tell when this was reared,— 
 What countless centuries agone? 
 
 Was it in days of Pharaoh feared, 
 Or in the pride of Solomon? 
 
 Perhaps it was when Jesus neared 
 His hour of agony alone! 
 
How many countless moons have shed S9 
 
 Their delicate and rare device 
 Upon the awful heaps of dead 
 
 Piled here in human sacrifice? 
 How strange that men should e'er be led 
 
 To worship in such cruel wise! 
 
 The ever-changing, changeless moon 
 
 That shone here centuries ago 
 Makes still a mist-enchanted noon 
 
 Tonight in Southern Mexico, — 
 By whose soft light the Aztec rune 
 
 Mocks yet our eager wish to know. 
 
 Shall Mitla in the far-off years,— 
 Perhaps ten thousand moons from now, — 
 
 Still witness human hopes and fears, 
 Still list to lovers' ardent vow? 
 
 And shall we then, in distant spheres. 
 Know all the things that vex us now? 
 
90 ABSENCE 
 
 Oh, friend of mine, though years should intervene 
 
 And tides of life should separate us far, 
 Though the wide continents should stretch between 
 
 Or seas divide, — 'twould constitute no bar! 
 But when we meet 'tis loneliness most keen! 
 
 The distance not so great to yonder star 
 As that which parts us when we closest seem. 
 
 I miss you most when we together are! 
 
 No alien face seems half so strange to me 
 As yours, with look unchanged; the bitterest part 
 
 Of dreaming is to wake from dreams to see 
 With backward-yearning look a hope depart! 
 
 Not death itself could sunder us if we 
 But knew that nearness that like aims impart, 
 
 While I, with hand in yours, feel bitterly 
 
 'Tis spirit's absence that most wrings the heart! 
 
ONLY 91 
 
 Just a piece of marble 
 Chipped and scarred and old. 
 Carved in vanished ages 
 By hands so soon grown cold, 
 Tell me, where's the magic 
 Such glory to impart? 
 Just a piece of marble 
 Carved from a sculptor's heart! 
 
 Just a few dim colors 
 On old canvas spread. 
 Yet a painter's vision 
 Lives, though he is dead! 
 As we stand before it. 
 Marvelous it seems. 
 Just a few faint colors 
 Mixed with an artist's dreams! 
 
 Just words strung together, — 
 Bursts of lyric song, — 
 Yet what wondrous fancies 
 Quick the rapt soul throng! 
 Almost heard are echoes 
 Of angel symphony. 
 Just words strung together — 
 Immortality! 
 
92 IN A FIELD OF BUFFALO CLOVER 
 
 I wandered in a valley virginal 
 
 Around which towered trees that touched the blue. 
 My soul was ravished by ambrosial 
 
 Perfume that thrilled my senses through and through; 
 I seemed to see a beauty magical 
 
 That haunted me. In vain I sought the clue 
 To that which seemed but a mystical, 
 
 Faint picture of a life that once I knew. 
 
 I seemed to see a trembling, phantom lake 
 
 All palpitant, whose depths of amethyst 
 Were like to fairy globules fit to break 
 
 At touch of Ughtest, vagrant wind that kissed 
 Their foam-flecked crests. The sun-light seemed to wake 
 
 To rain-bowed life the shimmering low-hung mists, 
 And elfin-fleets their snowy sails did shake 
 
 To steer their courses whereso'er they list. 
 
 And yet again, it seemed the summer sky 
 
 Lay at my feet, outstretching far and free! 
 That limpid blueness seemed all heaven brought nigh 
 
 Atremble in its rapt liquescency. 
 The ravelled fleeces of faint clouds trailed by 
 
 Across the blue, or so it seemed to me. 
 And as I gazed long-while, I felt that I 
 
 More near to God and His fair worlds be! 
 
DYNAMICS 93 
 
 My spirit answers to the sense of power. 
 
 That thrills in all things, — in the awful sweep 
 
 Of world on world, as in the whirl- wind's hour; 
 
 In changing seas, deep answering unto deep; 
 
 In vast machinery's measured, rythmic whirr; 
 
 In floatings of the pale-gold mists of morn; 
 
 In the wild lightning's dart 'tis minister 
 
 As in the grey-celled brain where thought is bom. 
 Lo! in the unfolding of yon still, small flower 
 Or in a baby's up-curled hand, what power! 
 
94 THE COTTON-WOOD TREE 
 
 The lyric leafage of the cotton-wood tree 
 Outside my window recollections bring 
 Of unforgotten, unforgettable things 
 More sweet because of their simplicity, — 
 The silver rain-drops' subtile harmony; 
 From cavalcades of corn low whisperings; 
 The sudden-whirring rush of skyward wings 
 In flight of free, unfettered rhapsody; 
 The rustle of soft, silken skirts that pass; 
 Low, echoing, half-heard laughter far away; 
 The flutter of blown leaves upon the grass; 
 The wind-song of a late November day, — 
 I hear these and forget that I, alas. 
 Stay pent within the city's dusty way. 
 
THE UMITED EXPRESS 95 
 
 Like a dream it glimmers by. 
 
 The Limited Express, 
 Surcharged with mystery. 
 
 With questions answerless. 
 
 Waves backward through the night 
 
 A smoke-wrought, velvet plume 
 While jeweled, glancing lights 
 
 The graying fields relume. 
 
 The red-lit windows frame 
 
 Faint faces, all unknown. 
 That in the shadows flame 
 
 An instant and are gone: 
 
 Ah, whence and whither fare 
 
 These friends I may now know? 
 What errands of despau:. 
 
 What quests of love, what woe. 
 
 What joy too great to last, 
 
 What mission sadly sweet 
 Doth send them speeding past,— 
 
 These friends I'll never meet? 
 
 What they might mean to me 
 
 My heart would fain divine, 
 Yet I shall never see 
 
 These unknown friends of mine! 
 
96 I know not by what ways of light 
 
 My soul was meant to come, 
 Nor what the hellish depths of night 
 My feet have faltered from! 
 
AS A LEAF 97 
 
 Through the dim, sunset-haunted woods I walked, 
 
 Alone with happy dreams. 
 The air was sweet with summer spiceries 
 
 While golden-rod's bright gleams 
 In multitudinous oriflames lit up 
 
 Each little open space 
 Where the solemn pine-trees, awe-struck, drew apart 
 
 To see the heaven's face. 
 
 The deep mid-summer calm was everywhere, 
 
 With its sweet sounds and scents; 
 Each summer attribute seemed vitalized 
 
 With gracious permanence. 
 I thought the happy time would last, — forgot 
 
 'Twas pitiably brief 
 Till there before me on the grass I saw 
 
 One blood-red, fallen leaf! 
 
 A sudden, chilling touch like frost-wind's breath 
 
 Crept o'er my saddened heart; 
 I felt how fleet, ephemeral are life's joys. 
 
 How swift the days depart! 
 We all do fade as leaves, ah, yes! and yet 
 
 How manifold and strange 
 The leaves, — how widely varied are the ways 
 
 In which they fall and change! 
 
 Some flutter, pallid, at the call of fate, 
 
 Some, like the sun-set heaven; 
 Some cling all sere and lonely to the bough, 
 
 Some in gay ranks are driven. 
 Lord, at the last, may it be mine to go 
 
 While still my world is fair, 
 With light and color, though it be of death. 
 
 Like that one red leaf there! 
 
98 THE PASSING OF THE PRAIRIE 
 
 Gone are our prairies known of old! — 
 
 Gone, gone those plains, 
 
 Those vast, empyrial, sunset-haunted sweeps 
 
 Of distance measureless. 
 
 Those soundless, tideless seas of gray-waved grass 
 
 Whose undulations never break on any beach 
 
 Or near or far. 
 
 Gone are those winter whitenesses, wide wastes of snow 
 
 Soft-patterned by the wind in flakes and wreaths 
 
 Of fairy-filigree all exquisite. 
 
 Fore-doomed to melt unseen by eye of man, 
 
 Unscarred by any trace 
 
 Save where the hungry cattle huddle up for warmth 
 
 Or a lone coyote skulks across the snow. 
 
 Gone are those Irised pampas of the spring, 
 
 Those level and illimitable fields of flowers 
 
 Whose myriad forms and colors follow each 
 
 In bright, bewildering sequences of bloom 
 
 As if the prodigal year 
 
 Were crowding all her sweets in one brief ecstasy. 
 
 Gone those unmeasured meadows 
 
 Where the riot of lupin's blue and white 
 
 Reflect the far sky with its trailing, fleecy clouds! 
 
Across those plains the buffaloes once roamed pp 
 
 And untamed, wind-swift horses raced and fled, 
 
 While Indians waged their unrecorded, passionate 
 
 Pursuits of love and war. 
 
 Now all is changed, — all, all! 
 
 Gone are the camp-fires and the wigwams, gone. 
 
 Of wild Comanches, the fierce Arabs of the prairies, 
 
 Of Caranchuas, the Apaches and the Wacoes 
 
 And all the kindred nomad bands of hunters. 
 
 Their ancient trails are now obliterated quite. 
 
 No more is heard their wild, unearthly war-cry 
 
 Nor their wailing song of death. 
 
 No more is seen their scalp-dance 
 
 Nor their painted gauds of war. 
 
 They left no trace behind them but a few lone mounds. 
 
 Some scattered arrow-heads that "pale-face" children 
 
 wonder at. 
 And is that eager life. 
 
 That savage lust for strife, that haughty strength, 
 That hate undying and that faithful love 
 Now altogether nothing and forgot? 
 This was the Indians' land. 
 Their primal home. 
 
 They loved it with a fierce, unreasoning rapture 
 And yet we 
 
 Desired and wrestled it from them. 
 We called them savages; 
 What ones we did not slay we sent afar 
 Into a mournful banishment 
 To eat their hearts out in their home-sick grief 
 Or fall before the evils of the town. 
 While we grow rich upon the land we stole 
 And smugly teach our children patriotism in the schools! 
 Ah, yes, the march of civilization must go on, — 
 But could we not have dwelt at peace 
 With these brown brothers. 
 Sons of God as well as we? 
 
20 But they are gone— their land knows them no more. 
 Where once they roamed rise schools and factories 
 To teach of arts they never dreamed of. 
 Where the thundering tread 
 Of buffalo once shook the earth 
 The fierce steam-dragon with his eye of fire 
 Now tears his way. 
 Where once the gracile form 
 Of antelope, the sinuous cougar and the wild. 
 Complaining coyote roamed at will 
 The click of reapers and the din of mills is heard. 
 The bear-grass and the cactus, the wild sage 
 Have been upturned for rows 
 On limitless rows of cotton 
 And vast standing ranks of corn. 
 Mesquite trees with their lace-like, tender leaves 
 And creamy, perfumed plumes 
 That grew at vagrant wish upon the plains 
 Have given place 
 
 To orchards orderly and even and well-kept. 
 The racing motor-cars now wheel and flee 
 Where once the prairie schooners 
 Sought their trackless way across the plains. 
 Where once the cow-boy on his lonely watch 
 Pillowed his head upon his saddle and gazed up 
 Into the wide and starry silences 
 Now gleam the unwinking lights of city streets. 
 The dug-out has become the lordly home. 
 
Soon, too, shall go the round-up and the fetes, 201 
 
 The orgies of the jocund branding-time. 
 
 Soon shall the dogy and the maverick be gone 
 
 As now the Indian and the buffalo! 
 
 The broncho shall be trained to pull the plow; 
 
 The valiant cow-boy with his world all changed 
 
 Must sadly fold his lariat and depart. 
 
 The rattle-snake that erst was wont to lie 
 
 Coiled in the sun, 
 
 In sullen stillness brooding o'er his immemorial wrongs 
 
 Till sharp and suddenly 
 
 He waking, raised his head to hiss and strike. 
 
 Must go! 
 
 The sovreign eagle floating in the dim. 
 
 Blue distance knows his kingdom is divided now, 
 
 His reign is o'er. 
 
 All, all is changed! 
 
2Q2 Ah, true, we ill could spare these fertile farms. 
 These pleasant homes. 
 World's progress must go on, 
 No matter what the cost. 
 Yet now that we are narrowed down 
 To little, tidy grass-plots and tilled fields 
 Shall not our natures be contracted, too? 
 Do not our souls need their unfenced ranges, wild and 
 
 free? 
 How shall we know again 
 
 Such wide, illimitable space to dream and grow? 
 Where shall we see again such wind-swept distances. 
 Such epic, star-sown nights. 
 Such lyric dawns? 
 
BUTTERFLIES IN SEPTEMBER 103 
 
 Idly afloat in the sunshine, 
 
 Glittering golden and brown, 
 White like the petals of hawthome 
 
 Wavering dreamily down, 
 Yellow like prim-roses winged. 
 
 Tawny like tiger-skins bright. 
 Flaming with hues of the sunset, 
 
 Silent as motes in the light, — 
 
 Butterflies everywhere flying 
 
 Seem but the blossoms a-wing. 
 Each in ineffable beauty, — 
 
 Imagineless, delicate thing! — 
 Looks like the soul of a flower 
 
 Yesterday withered and dead. 
 Haply in Arcady faded. 
 
 How many yesterdays fled! 
 
 Ah, must the frost-winds despoil then 
 
 Beauty too lovely to last? 
 Pallidly blown on the breezes 
 
 Autumn leaves fluttering past 
 Sorrowful hint of the future, — 
 
 Flowers all dead in the way. 
 Bird-songs all silenced in woodlands. 
 
 Fragile wings folded for aye. 
 
 for some land where the winter 
 
 Comes not with chill and with pain. 
 Where the bright beauty of summer 
 
 Never need vanish again! 
 Life with its manifold lessons 
 
 Teaches, however, this thing, — 
 Hearts that know never the winter 
 
 Miss all the rapture of spring! 
 
NOV 25 1912 
 
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