5535^ 
 
 In 5^ 
 
PS 2359 
 
 .M14 
 
 S6 
 
 1922 
 
 
 Copy 
 
 1 
 
To Cecile 
 

 y 
 
 orewor 
 
 d 
 
 First Series of 70 Sonnets begun in 
 1899 and originally printed by William 
 Marion Reedy in St. Louis Mirror, 1900. 
 Afterwards published in book form in 
 1901. 
 
 Second Series of 70 Sonnets and Proem 
 begun in 1909, and first printed by Samuel 
 Travers Clover in Los Angeles Saturday 
 Night, 1922. Acknowledgment is herewith 
 made to Mr. Clover for courtesy of per- 
 mission to re-print this series. 
 
 A"- 
 
 uu 
 
 2 72 
 
IISlDEX 
 
 Page 
 
 Life At Its Best 8 
 
 The Wooing 9 
 
 In tlie Fields 9 
 
 Jealousy 10 
 
 Books 10 
 
 Love Without Passion 11 
 
 On the Hills 11 
 
 Worship 12 
 
 Recollections 12 
 
 Women 13 
 
 Ideals 13 
 
 In Idle Hours 14 
 
 Selfishness 14 
 
 Music 15 
 
 A Woman's World 15 
 
 By Moonlight 16 
 
 Companionship 16 
 
 Apart 17 
 
 Apple Trees 17 
 
 Reserve 18 
 
 Vanity 18 
 
 In the Woods 19 
 
 Gold 19 
 
 To My Wife 20 
 
 A Woman's Love 20 
 
 Midsummer 21 
 
 Sisterhood 21 
 
 Water Lilies 22 
 
 Love's Philosophy 22 
 
 To the Woman 23 
 
 To the Man 23 
 
 Morning 24 
 
 Two Loves 24 
 
 On a Country Road 25 
 
 Reincarnation 25 
 
 Analvsis 26 
 
 Tact 26 
 
 In Idleness 27 
 
 A Burden of Vain Wishes 27 
 
 Wisdom 9 28 
 
 Lost Days 28 
 
 Evening 29 
 
 Youth 29 
 
 Tapestry 30 
 
 Sumach 30 
 
Page 
 
 Love Letters 31 
 
 December 31 
 
 The Flight of Time 32 
 
 Late Violets 32 
 
 Autumn Reveries 33 
 
 Rosemary 33 
 
 Dawn 34 
 
 Noon 34 
 
 Night 35 
 
 Anniversary 35 
 
 Happiness 36 
 
 In Days To Come 36 
 
 Hero- Worship 37 
 
 Waiting 37 
 
 Dreams 38 
 
 Affinity 38 
 
 Laughter 39 
 
 Sanctuary 39 
 
 In the Beech Woods 40 
 
 Contentment 40 
 
 Sorrow 41 
 
 In Winter Paths 41 
 
 Steadfastness 42 
 
 Pictures 42 
 
 Shadows 43 
 
 Life's Pantomime 44 
 
 Seaward 45 
 
 Laura and Petrarch 45 
 
 Sea-Longings 46 
 
 Spring 46 
 
 Swallows 47 
 
 Wild Lilies 47 
 
 En Silhouette 48 
 
 Sea-Memories 48 
 
 Mother and Daughter 49 
 
 Mother and Son 49 
 
 Siwash 50 
 
 Jason 50 
 
 Death 51 
 
 The Lark 51 
 
 Faults 52 
 
 Sooke Hills 52 
 
 The House of God 53 
 
 Illusions 53 
 
 Reticence 54 
 
 The Sun Dial 54 
 
 Something Worth While 55 
 
 Madonna Mia 55 
 
Page 
 
 Tenderness 56 
 
 Shells 56 
 
 In Absence 57 
 
 Summer 57 
 
 Roses 58 
 
 To You 58 
 
 Midas 59 
 
 Mount Arrowsmith 59 
 
 Other Men 60 
 
 Other Women 60 
 
 By the Firelight 61 
 
 Wreck Bay 61 
 
 Before the Mirror 62 
 
 Sea-Mysteries 62 
 
 Heart's-ease 63 
 
 Soul-Pact 63 
 
 Sea-Harps 64 
 
 Michael Angelo 64 
 
 A Woman's Charm 65 
 
 Gypsies 65 
 
 Contrasts 66 
 
 Time's Reckoning 66 
 
 Lights and Shadows 67 
 
 Autumn 67 
 
 Cadboro Woods 68 
 
 In Woodland Ways 68 
 
 Outdoors 69 
 
 Dallas Roads 69 
 
 Courage 70 
 
 Comradeship 70 
 
 M^etempsychosis 71 
 
 Unrevealed 71 
 
 For Cecile 72 
 
 Chopin 72 
 
 Long After 73 
 
 The Downs 73 
 
 Bag-pipes 74 
 
 Robert Burns 74 
 
 The Shears of Fate 75 
 
 From a Balcony 75 
 
 Burnt-OfTerings 76 
 
 Stars 76 
 
 Winter 77 
 
 Mortmain 77 
 
 Fame 78 
 
 Driftwood 78 
 
 At the Last 79 
 
Sonnets to a Wife 
 
 First and Second Series 
 
 Written for Cecile McGaffey 
 
 Copyrighted 1922 
 
 By Ernest McGaffey 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PROEM 
 
 Consider then the lihes of the field 
 Even such as they, which neither toil nor spin; 
 Clo3-ed with faint scent that mounts as ether thin 
 In meadowy ways beneath the sun's bright shield. 
 Lo ! with sheer joyance is their languor sealed 
 Enwrapped of Spring, to April's self akin, 
 Making each day a cloister, where, within 
 Clad all in white, they saint-like seem revealed. 
 Grow as the lilies ; stainless and serene 
 Accepting largess of the sun and rain, 
 Fresh as their fragrance, like them, lily-fair; 
 Free as their life, with happiness as keen, 
 Ever remote from grief's despite or pain 
 Yourself a flower more precious still and rare. 
 
Sonnets to a Wife 
 
 First Series of Seventy 
 'Begun in 1899 
 
 Sonnet I 
 LIFE AT ITS BEST 
 
 Life at its best is but a troubled sea; 
 
 The ship is launched with snowy-spreading sail 
 
 To face the reefs, the billows and the gale 
 And meet the perils that are yet to be. 
 The shore she left fades dimly in the lee 
 
 And on the beach the forms and faces fail ; 
 
 Come what come may, or rain or sun or hail 
 The ship glides on, the mariner is free. 
 
 But Ah! what joy when backward o'er the foam 
 From stress of storms and far, unfriendly lands, 
 
 Held in the hollow of the sky's vast dome 
 To mark at last the well-remembered sands ; 
 
 To know once more the harbor of a home 
 And welcome of a woman's outstretched hands. 
 
 ©Ci.AG81191 
 
Sonnet II 
 THE WOOING 
 
 Not with the thoughts of others do I seek 
 To wake your interest and hold it fast; 
 Not with a fancy from the buried past 
 
 Some honeyed fragment of the ancient Greek, 
 
 Have I essayed in halting form to speak, 
 But I have all such cunning outward cast 
 And trusted to the Saxon words at last 
 
 To light your eyes — put color in your cheek. 
 
 The simplest speech is truest; when I say 
 
 "I love you!" in those three words I have said 
 
 All that I know, or compass, or can feel. 
 
 Let those who will adopt the tortuous way 
 
 The while their thought in speech obscure is led 
 
 Round, round and round, a wheel within a wheel. 
 
 Sonnet UI 
 IN THE FIELDS 
 
 When on the hills the golden sunlight lies, 
 And apple-trees are heavy with the snow 
 Of drifted bloorn that shades the grass below,. 
 
 While far above are realms of cloudless skies ; 
 
 When overhead the wandering swallow flies 
 And butterflies in loops of color go ; 
 Then as we wait together do I know 
 
 Some touch, some hint, some gleam of Paradise. 
 
 The sweet song-sparrow from the poplar sings 
 
 The swaying leaves put forth their emerald shields, 
 
 E^ach trembling blossom where the barred bee clings 
 Its store of sweets through drowsy hours yields; 
 
 What sense of life, what joy that almost stings 
 With you and I there loitering in the fields. 
 
10 
 
 Sonnet IV 
 JEALOUSY 
 
 If to be jealous is to hope to gain 
 
 Your every longing — make all other men 
 
 As misty to your memory as when 
 The shadows slip across a window-pane; 
 If to be jealous is to wish to reign 
 
 Your one true lover, chide me once again; 
 
 Call me as jealous as Othello then 
 And all your chiding will be given in vain. 
 
 For I am one who cannot hide my thought 
 And curb my tongue and make my cheek a liar ; 
 
 The tissue of my nature was not wrought 
 Of lifeless clay, devoid of Pagan fire, 
 
 And long in storm and anguish have I sought 
 And now have found, at last, my Heart's Desire. 
 
 Sonnet V 
 
 BOOKS 
 
 Tomes from dull minds I oftentimes have read 
 And disquisitions of the great and wise, 
 And sought to learn the secrets of the skies 
 
 On wintry nights with starry scripture spread ; 
 
 Through all-absorbing passage have I sped 
 Of romance and of deeds of high emprise, 
 But nothing found compared to your dear eyes 
 
 Nor poems like to what your lips have said. 
 
 To read a woman in the higher sense 
 Is quite beyond the power of men's wit ; 
 
 Who says he does is made of vain pretense 
 And never can by wisdom benefit. 
 
 Her look is more than spoken eloquence 
 Her voice the sweetest lyric ever writ. 
 
11 
 
 Sonnet VI 
 LOVE WITHOUT PASSION 
 
 Love without passion is a flower without sun 
 Reft of the wind's touch, banished from tlie rain, 
 Wrought against nature — therefore wrought in vain 
 
 However fine its tissue may be spun; 
 
 Its petals fade and crumble one by one 
 And in the dust and under dust are Iain ; 
 Love without passion is the dying strain 
 
 From shattered lutes that all to minors run. 
 
 True love is as the rose; the roses glow 
 
 With life and color in the summer air ; 
 The winds of Autumn through the garden blow 
 
 The leaves are scattered and the vines are bare. 
 The snows depart, the grass springs up and lo ! 
 
 Again the ruddy rose is blooming there. 
 
 Sonnet VII 
 ON THE HILLS 
 
 When in the valley where the river ran 
 And sunlight rippled on its current fair. 
 While shadowed vistas of Autumnal air 
 
 Re-echoed with the dying notes of Pan : 
 
 When twilight's herald came in night's dusk van 
 While sank the sun in western splendor there, 
 What joy for you and me all this to share 
 
 Mid wooded glades and chords ^olian. 
 
 And in the hush that followed as we saw 
 The after-glow dye deep the waiting slopes. 
 While brooding silence hushed the sombre rills. 
 Then fell upon our hearts a happy awe 
 
 And light and shade of mingled fears and hopes. 
 Star-signalled on the ramparts of the hills. 
 
12 
 
 Sonnet VIII 
 WORSHIP 
 
 Gods, idols, fetiches of wood and stone 
 Of carven ivory and of beaten brass. 
 They rise and fall, they flourish and they pass 
 
 Or stand disfigured in some desert lone ; 
 
 Creeds come and go and on the sands are strown 
 And wither like the winter-shaken grass, 
 And all such things are shadows on a glass 
 
 To this one love which I for you have known. 
 
 For in my Pagan heart I hold you dear 
 
 More than a miser might his store of gold; 
 Or ship-wrecked tar the rescuing sail unfurled. 
 In my religion you are worship here 
 Beyond all Gods or temples manifold. 
 The sole and only woman in the world. 
 
 Sonnet IX 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 To conjure up old memories; to say 
 "Do you remember that in such a June, 
 An orchard oriole sang us a tune 
 
 Melodiously from out a branching spray 
 
 Of leafy denseness ; or on such a day 
 We saw the silver spectre of the moon 
 Long after dawn, and nearing unto noon 
 
 A merest wraith of sickle gaunt and grey?" 
 
 These are love's echoes, faintly heard and fine 
 But ever-present, never dim nor mute 
 That you and I in comradeship do share ; 
 Sweet symphonies that breathe a sense divine 
 Like mystic chords that linger by a lute, 
 Though all the silver strings are shattered there. 
 
13 
 
 Sonnet X 
 WOMEN 
 
 Of such a woman it may well be said 
 
 She has a graceful carriage ; or is fair ; 
 
 And of another she has golden hair 
 And praise the poise and beauty of her head ; 
 Some women may be witty and well read 
 
 And some may charm by throats and bosoms bare. 
 
 All are Eve's daughters, all her power share 
 To conquer man and lead him by a thread. 
 
 But more than seeming grace or outward sign 
 Of loveliness that like a flower is seen, 
 
 Is what she keeps shrined sacred and apart ; 
 Some glow of soul like sparkle in the wine 
 Some shadowy look, like Autumn pool serene 
 The reflex of the pureness of her heart. 
 
 Sonnet XI 
 
 Not rhapsodies for what we cannot reach 
 Nor longing for Vvhat lies beyond our power, 
 But just to make life lovely as a flower 
 
 By gift of tenderness in thought and speech ; 
 
 Thus rain and dew their loving lessons teach 
 In lace-like gleam or sudden-dropping shower, 
 And so shall we, through every passing hour 
 
 Hold fast to higher visions, each for each. 
 
 Fidelity and courtesy; and touch 
 
 Of hopefulness to meet the coming years. 
 And strength to view the days that backward roll, 
 These will I give you, and in pledging such 
 
 Cast off the shadows of all crowding fears 
 And act a man's part truly, heart and soul. 
 
14 
 
 Sonnet XII 
 IN IDLE HOURS 
 
 In idle hours to backward look and see 
 The tracery of wind across the grass, 
 To mark the clouds that float in snowy mass 
 
 With filmy-trailing pennants flowing free ; 
 
 To hear a robin in the maple tree, 
 
 And see the pool's reflection like a glass 
 Where light and shade alternate come and pass. 
 
 With muffled mellow murmurings of the bee : 
 
 This was to drink of nature's brimming cup 
 In woodland nooks of slumberous solitude 
 
 Where summer holds a golden beaker up 
 And all the earth by beauty's self is wooed ; 
 
 Do you remember where the dead leaf fell 
 
 The violet's blue, the empty acorn shell ? 
 
 Sonnet XIII 
 SELFISHNESS 
 
 I want no child to take one jot from me 
 
 Of this, your love ; no helpless, dimpled hands 
 To hold their place as strong as iron bands ; 
 
 I'd lock your heart and throw away the key. 
 
 As now you are so I would have you be 
 
 Till from Life's glass should fall the latest sands ; 
 Till on the hearth the ultimate dull brands 
 
 Fade out and leave us to Eternity. 
 
 I know the children's power ; and I know 
 
 Your soul would flower and blossom to a child; 
 
 And loving you, I would not have it so 
 Lest I of my sole treasure were beguiled ; 
 
 To learn that bitter lesson late in life 
 
 How far a mother loves bevond a wife. 
 
15 
 
 Sonnet XIV 
 MUSIC 
 
 A wind-song in the rushes, or a sigh 
 
 From Autumn's chorus in the naked trees ; 
 The white-stoled chanting of the stately seas 
 
 Against a Hne of cHffs that tower high — 
 
 A plover's rippling whistle in the sky 
 Or wailing of the flutes in minor keys, 
 I in my time have harked to all of these 
 
 And reedy plash of waters lisping by. 
 
 But Oh ! how harsh such chords must ever seem 
 Since in my heart I hear an echo come 
 
 More sweet and low than plaint of mourning-dove; 
 The reflex of the note that is my dream 
 That music which makes other music dumb, 
 The voice of the one woman whom I love. 
 
 Sonnet XV 
 A WOMAN'S WORLD 
 
 The man she loves; and all he means to her 
 Is what a woman's world is; in her way 
 Of living and of loving day by day 
 
 Sometimes her dreaming eyes will fill and blur, 
 
 And memories of him will come to stir 
 Her heart-strings ; as a blossom's self might sway. 
 When through the flowery-scented paths of May 
 
 Drift down the echoes of the winds that were. 
 
 The little things are what she treasures most; 
 Sv/eet, subtle courtesies of hand and speech. 
 For these the lover's attitude still teach 
 Better than costly gift or idle boast; 
 As one who reckons not without his host 
 Holding her near and dear, yet out of reach. 
 
lo 
 
 50NNET XVI 
 
 BY MOONLIGHT 
 
 In shadow-haunted hush of lonely place 
 With ripples lapping by the reedy shores, 
 And glint of stars along the watery floors 
 
 I see again the profile of your face ; 
 
 The moonlight trailed across your wrist like lace 
 Then disappeared behind its cloudy doors, 
 While we sat idly with the idle oars 
 
 Twixt earth and sky, as balancing in space. 
 
 How strange and beautiful to us it seemed 
 Held in the hollow of the night to float, 
 With muffled liquid whisperings round the boat 
 
 While overhead the constellations dream.ed ; 
 
 Some faint-heard rustle from the distant sands 
 
 And silence brooding o'er our close-locked hands. 
 
 Sonnet XVII 
 COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 The sense of comradeship which now we feel 
 Grew slowly as an oak does, and as strong. 
 For now to one another we belong 
 
 In all that makes a man and woman leal ; 
 
 Our lives are linked as firm as welded steel 
 
 And in our thoughts sweet harmonies do throng, 
 Like half-remicmbered echoes of a song 
 
 As days and nights above our pathway wheel. 
 
 So do the perfume and the joy of days 
 Live with us and the season's sway dispute. 
 
 Spring, Summer, Autumn, they may go their ways 
 And bring nor bud nor blossom an it suit; 
 
 Yet what reck we, beside the wintry fire 
 
 Sitting alone, I and my Heart's Desire ? 
 
17 
 
 Sonnet XVIII 
 APART 
 
 Bleak, saddened hours, when separate we knew 
 Days when the sun sank glowing in the west, 
 And quietly the shadows onv/ard pressed 
 
 Until the twilight blotted out the blue ; 
 
 Ihe first faint stars came slowly to the view 
 As home-bound birds flew silent to their nest, 
 While swift as light our thoughts in eager quest 
 
 Pierced outward, yours to me and mine to you. 
 
 Now in the years when we together dream 
 
 Those days apart have lost their sombre look ; 
 Mere dog-eared pages of Time's well-thumbed book 
 
 And not to us belonging do tliey seem. 
 Thus fate at last hath offered full amends 
 And made those lovers who were once but friends. 
 
 Sonnet XIX 
 APPLE TREES 
 
 First to our sight their branches brown and bare 
 Stood naked in the days of early Spring, 
 Where haply showed the brilliant azure wing 
 
 Of some conceited jay-bird roaming there; 
 
 And then came May and all the waiting air 
 Was white with dainty blossoms quivering, 
 With hordes of bees that gathered there to cling 
 
 And all those honeyed sweets to claim and share. 
 
 But best of all was in the days of June, 
 When thick and full the canopy of leaves 
 Put back the sun with sheltering emerald eaves. 
 
 And housed us from the fervent light of noon ; 
 How happily we told there in the shade 
 Of dreams of one another, unafraid. 
 
18 
 
 Sonnet XX 
 RESERVE 
 
 Some men proclaim their love and let it go 
 In pitiful wild words that all may see, 
 How they have sighed or bended low the knee. 
 
 God's will be done ; I was not fashioned so ; 
 
 I know what utter love is and I know 
 What this our life together holds for me, 
 But keep it sacred, as not meant to be 
 
 Flung gossip-ward to the four winds that blow. 
 
 I marvel at those singers who aspire 
 To lay their souls bare to the rabble throng ; 
 For you my lips have trembled into song 
 
 And you shall judge if I lack aught of fire, 
 
 If that my heart-beats have not rung like chimes 
 Within the echoing transept of these rhymes. 
 
 Sonnet XXI 
 VANITY 
 
 To be as charming in your husband's sight 
 As erst you were when he your lover came, 
 Go linger by the mirror's polished frame 
 
 And put all weariness to utter flight ; 
 
 Come with a smile and let your eyes be bright 
 Be gay, be sad, but never be the same ; 
 And thus your lover you may always claim 
 
 Else lost mayhap by holding him too light. 
 
 An this be vanity — to add a rose 
 
 To glow upon your bosom, train your hair 
 So in his eyes you may be passing fair — 
 
 Why, let it stand; a woman better knows 
 That careless hands and sloven taste in dress 
 May mar the spell of her own loveliness. 
 
19 
 
 Sonnet XXII 
 IN THE WOODS 
 
 Deep in the glimmering depths of woods to wait 
 Where countless leaves with every breeze unfold, 
 To watch the sunshine weave its thread of gold 
 
 Where tree trunks stand in tall procession straight ; 
 
 To hear the flicker challenging his mate 
 
 With chattering note far piercing clear and bold, 
 And mark hov; dimly in the forest old 
 
 The lights and shadows softly palpitate : 
 
 And there, shut closely from the outer world 
 To lie on some green slope and idly dream. 
 
 Touch hands and smile while over us unfurled 
 The leafy banners of the noontide gleam — 
 
 That was to find the Ponce de Leon spring 
 
 Of youth, and hope, and blossoms burgeoning. 
 
 Sonnet XXIII 
 GOLD 
 
 There is a gold unlocked by miser's key 
 And gold is found in lees of sparkling wine, 
 And there is gold along the swaying vine 
 
 Where yellow half-blown roses drooping be ; 
 
 Gold and to spare among the sands at sea 
 And palest gold in saffron stars that shine ; 
 With gold deep-digged from many a hidden mine 
 
 And golden leaves upon the willow tree. 
 
 But all this aureate glitter is for naught 
 When I in dreamful mood my love behold, 
 Crowned with her tangled locks of tawny gold 
 
 Like corn-silk in the breeze's meshes caught; 
 No other gold may match it, none so fair 
 As that which gathers in a woman's hair. 
 
20 
 
 Sonnet XXIV 
 TO MY WIFE 
 
 I, as an actor, have played well my part 
 Not showing how the sons of men I scorn ; 
 Those shriveled, greedy souls who crave the corn 
 
 The oil and wine, the treasures of the mart ; 
 
 Deep in my soul I burn the flame for Art 
 As one who was a lyric poet born, 
 As one who leads a singer's hope forlorn 
 
 Yet with unshrinking and unconquered heart. 
 
 I can exist on what a Spartan can 
 
 Endure as granite ; smile when friends do fail ; 
 
 Face Poverty and see the years grow stale 
 Or bide my time with any sort of man. 
 
 Full in the teeth of Fate I fling the glove 
 
 Come age, come death, while I have you My Love ! 
 
 Sonnet XXV 
 A WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 If I have fought my baser self and raised 
 My thoughts to high ideals, it is due 
 To this the love that I have found in you 
 
 As I in your dear eyes have longing gazed; 
 
 When I look back I find myself amazed 
 
 At what I was ; what mire I floundered through. 
 So far I* wandered from the pure and true 
 
 While all my good intentions fitful blazed. 
 
 A man is half a savage and he needs 
 
 The woman's presence to arouse his soul ; 
 
 Her love has given the world his noblest deeds. 
 She is the light that warns him from the shoal 
 
 The reefs — the rocks — where fell destruction leads 
 And dark engulfing waters silent roll. 
 
21 
 
 Sonnet XXVI 
 MIDSUMMER 
 
 The red-winged black-bird whistled from the reeds 
 The cat-tail stalks rose thickly straight and tall. 
 By meadow-slopes rang sweet a carnival 
 
 Of bobolinks down-fluttering on the meads ; 
 
 From ribbon-grass and downy road-side weeds 
 Fine powdered particles of dust would fall, 
 And where the sun shone through an old stone wall 
 
 Danced in its light a multitude of seeds. 
 
 Then came a hush in Nature — one that fell 
 Like shadows on the leaves so soft it seemed, 
 
 Or like that pause which follows when a bell 
 Peals, and is silent; and we sat and dreamed, 
 
 While all around the waters wove their spell 
 And far above the cloudless azure gleamed. 
 
 Sonnet XXVII 
 SISTERHOOD 
 
 All women born are sisters; low or high 
 Good, bad, indifferent or how you name, 
 Your silk-beruffled and most haughty dame 
 
 Whose ornate motor speeds like shadow by, 
 
 Your drunken courtesan with hair awry 
 
 Barred, marred and scarred by branding irons of 
 
 shame — 
 Lo ! in their childhood they were all the same 
 
 And have no false distinctions when they die. 
 
 Oh! sisters, to your own sex most unkind, 
 
 How will it fare you when you waste your breath 
 And sink like bubbles in the sea of Death, 
 
 If to your sisters you were deaf and blind? 
 Remember His forgiveness, which sufficed 
 For Magdalen, who washed the feet of Christ! 
 
22 
 
 Sonnet XXVIII 
 WATER-LILIES 
 
 We rowed the boat among them as they lay 
 Pale lilies, snowy and with hearts of gold. 
 That sprang from under depths of oozy mould 
 
 And starred the waters of a Summer day; 
 
 And I remember after, that in play 
 
 You wound them round your forehead fold on fold, 
 And feigned you were a Naiad, shy and cold 
 
 Or water-sprite or mocking woodland fay. 
 
 \et an you were a Naiad this I know 
 
 That you were courted by the amorous sun, 
 Who kissed your creamy lilies one by one 
 
 Till they had drooped beneath his fervent glow; 
 But ere they withered in the twilight there 
 They left their gold hearts tangled in your hair. 
 
 Sonnet XXIX 
 LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A rock stands harmless from a little rain 
 
 But many storms will wear its strength away ; 
 And thus in life when men and women say 
 
 Those bitter words which hasten strife and pain 
 
 And still repeat till hope of peace is vain; 
 Lo ! as the hour-glass sands divide the day 
 So these small things have parted tliem for aye. 
 
 And Love through such harsh means itself hath slain. 
 
 A venomed adder is the human tongue 
 
 When tipped with anger, be it either sex ; 
 And who when stirred with controversy, recks 
 
 How deep or keen the cruel words have stung? 
 Curb then the lips and emulate the dove 
 Lest wounding one whose life is in your love. 
 
23 
 
 Sonnet XXX 
 TO THE WOMAN 
 
 To lead, not drive him is the wiser plan 
 For tactfulness will tame him all the years, 
 And tenderness, not tyranny he fears 
 
 For men were ever but a stubborn clan ; 
 
 And long ago since first the world began 
 And stars rose dimly in the primal spheres, 
 A little wit, diplomacy, and tears 
 
 What havoc have they wrought with every man ! 
 
 So shall you conquer as the gentle rain 
 Soothing his vanity to gain your ends. 
 Moulding his v/ishes till they meet your own; 
 
 Thus as a child his confidence you gain 
 For still to flattery his heart unbends, 
 Only a child, a little larger grown. 
 
 Sonnet XXXI 
 TO THE MAN 
 
 H you a woman would desire to hold 
 Faithful and true and guided by your will, 
 Be sure no art nor flattery's fine skill 
 
 Shall e'er deceive her, nor will gifts or gold ; 
 
 By love alone her spirit is controlled 
 This is her law, her Deity, until 
 The light falls pale upon her forehead still 
 
 The red lips ashen and the heart grown cold. 
 
 So shall you woo her if you wish to win 
 Her heart and soul, to wear her like a flower, 
 
 To drain her kisses and keep back her tears ; 
 
 Filling v/ith love the space she lingers in ; 
 Making her dream of you each passing hour 
 
 With trebled longing through the iron years. 
 
24 
 
 Sonnet XXXII 
 MORNING 
 
 The kildee's cry along the sandy shore 
 The pine-tops in the distance, and a still 
 Far sense of brooding on each wooded hill ; 
 
 The fallen trunk of a huge sycamore 
 
 Around whose roots the river's waters pour, 
 And everywhere a subtle dawning thrill 
 That grows and spreads and palpitates until 
 
 The red sun peeps above the eastern door. 
 
 What joy to stand above our vantage ground 
 Beneath the shade of overhanging beech ; 
 
 To drink in every chord of sylvan sound 
 
 Learning the lessons that the woods can teach; 
 
 Our hearts and souls by sympathy thus bound 
 And happy more in thought and less in speech 1 
 
 Sonnet XXXIII 
 TWO LOVES 
 
 If, loving you, I sometimes seem as sad 
 
 Or dull or tinged with hint of sober mood. 
 
 It is because I feel my life renewed 
 Having your love ; and still my treasures add 
 As misers do ; and what of woe I've had 
 
 No more with its gaunt shadows may intrude ; 
 
 Thus silence fills the happy interlude 
 While I sit wordless, worshipping, and glad. 
 
 A boy's love and a man's love intertwined 
 
 I give to you to govern all the time. 
 
 Whether it run to reason or to rhyme. 
 The passion and the purity combined; 
 
 The man's love, strong to fight and work and plan 
 
 The boy's, to wake the lover in the man. 
 
25 
 
 SOXNET XXXIV 
 ON A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 A whitened length of grayish dust that leads 
 
 Past a rough bridge where grape-vines idly trail ; 
 
 From distant woods the whistle of a quail 
 And butterflies that flit above the weeds. 
 Horizonward a bluish haze recedes 
 
 And flaunts a snowy cloud-shape like a sail ; 
 
 The scent of strawberries along a swale 
 Comes pungently to anyone who heeds. 
 
 How slowly and how joyous passed that day 
 The wayside roses climbing in a throng ; 
 
 The far-brought odor of the new-mown hay 
 The cherries dangling as we rode along ; 
 
 And cheering us along the homeward way 
 
 The sweet-wrought flutings of the robin's song! 
 
 Sonnet XXXV 
 REINCARNATION 
 
 The flower you gathered, blossomed long ago 
 Warmed by past sunshine, jeweled with the rain 
 Of bygone years ; the river's liquid strain 
 
 Which now you hear was once the purling fiow 
 
 Of a lost stream ; the very winds that blow 
 Have come and gone, will come and go again; 
 And where the primal grass has decked the plain 
 
 Year after year the later grasses grow. 
 
 And thus with every line that lovers trace ; 
 
 However dear or passionate the word. 
 
 The self -same thought in a dead bosom stirred 
 Has brought the roses to some woman's face ; 
 
 And all the worship that my rhyming brings 
 
 Is but an echo of forgotten things. 
 
26 
 
 Sonnet XXXVI 
 ANALYSIS 
 
 To weigh as in a finely balanced scale 
 
 Each thought and action that the season brings, 
 Is but to fret the spirit with those things 
 
 Which after all are of the least avail. 
 
 It is enough to know we shall not fail 
 In all the sweet and high imaginings, 
 The nobler thoughts which lend to Love his wings 
 
 Though Time and Fate and even Death assail. 
 
 Analysis is common, and may seem 
 
 Through instances, conclusive as the leaf 
 Borne to the Ark by the returning dove; 
 
 But oftentimes may prove to be a theme 
 Which sends the v/orm of jealousy and grief 
 To blight the blossom of a perfect love. 
 
 Sonnet XXXVII 
 TACT 
 
 A woman's crowning glory is her tact 
 
 The art of knowing when and what to say; 
 
 When to be grave, indifferent, or gay, 
 And seem so charming in her every act 
 That as a magnet she will men attract 
 
 And easily compel them to her sway. 
 
 So shall she rule, or golden hair or gray 
 The subtlest type of womanhood in fact. 
 
 For tact is more than beauty, more than wit 
 Akin to genius, and the sum of ail 
 
 Which makes the woman who is blessed with it, 
 A Queen by right in hovel or in hall ; 
 
 Sweet as the honeyed lines by poet writ 
 And true as rings the wild-bird's madrigal. 
 
27 
 
 So^TTs^ETT XXXVIII 
 
 IN IDLENESS 
 
 To lie upon the grass and watch the herds 
 Deep standing in the river, and to see 
 The barred gold glisten on the bumble-bee 
 
 And note the noisy gossip of the birds ; 
 
 To mark the blue horizon-rim that girds 
 That purple world beyond, Infinity — 
 Under the shade of a wild-cherry tree 
 
 To wait and listen, hampered not by words : 
 
 This was our gladness on a long June day 
 Companioned by the lazy lapse of hours. 
 
 While ebbed the slow, enchanted time away 
 
 Where bird-songs came like intermittent shower:: 
 
 And drowsy sweet upon us where we lay, 
 The perfume of the elderberry flowers. 
 
 Sonnet XXXIX 
 A BURDEN OF VAIN WISHES 
 
 A burden of vain wishes ; hopes that died 
 Vague dreams of fame and wraiths of brave renown 
 Pass in the sunlight, motes that vanish down 
 
 Beyond me, standing on this old hill- side, 
 
 And disappear in circling vistas wide 
 
 Like Autumn leaves that scatter worn and brown. 
 When Summer lays aside her tattered crown 
 
 And sombre winds and rusted fields abide. 
 
 A burden of vain wishes ! Nay, not so ! 
 
 Your hand-clasp is my haven and my hope, 
 Your love and faith the utmost gross and scope 
 
 Of dreams and fact — this at the last I know, 
 Here, waiting while the sunset's after-glow 
 Burns like a torch in valley and on slope. 
 
28 
 
 Sonnet XL 
 WISDOM 
 
 There is a culture deeper far than books 
 And intellect beyond the ken of schools; 
 Wise sajangs sometimes on the lips of fools 
 
 And knowledge stored in many quiet nooks. 
 
 A woman is as cultured as she looks 
 
 Speaks, acts, and smiles, and merely bookish rules 
 She well may scorn as being clumsy tools 
 
 With which dull fishers file their rusty hooks. 
 
 This intellect that scholars prattle of 
 
 Why, what does it accomplish? Every age 
 
 Has witnessed through the perfidy of Love 
 How woman shows the folly of the sage ! 
 
 Nay ! then, Sir Oracle, reserve thy wit 
 
 Some woman's eyes shall give thee need of it. 
 
 Sonnet XLI 
 LOST DAYS 
 
 The tapestry of shadows — ghosts of dreams 
 That flickered through the silence and v/ere gone, 
 Lost days that we together leaned upon 
 
 Have faded; and the recollection seems 
 
 As dim as sunken starlight in the streams. 
 When on a Summer night reflections wan 
 From cloudy heights to watery depths are drawn, 
 
 To glimmer in the current's under-gleams. 
 
 Lost days but cherished; mirrored in a haze 
 
 Of threadbare seasons. Winter, Autumn, Spring ; 
 
 And Summer with her moss-begirdled ways 
 And flash and flutter of a bird's soft wing; 
 
 But who shall pierce the labyrinthian maze 
 To tell us where their shades are wandering? 
 
29 
 
 SONNETT XLII 
 
 EVENING 
 
 The tree-toad's call from branches cool and green 
 And from the grass a cricket's rasping cry; 
 An afterglow across the Eastern sky 
 
 Red as a far-flung fire-brand's ruddy sheen; 
 
 The lapping of swift ripples shot between 
 Old logs that rigid in the current lie, 
 The shadow of our boat that passes by 
 
 Above brown sands that dimly now are seen : 
 
 This was to float with silence and the night 
 Wove through the mesh of twilight like a strand: 
 
 To note the twisting of a bat's weird flight 
 And glint of fire-flies on the shelving sand. 
 
 To be removed from earthly essence quite 
 Tv/o shadov/s drifting into shadow-land. 
 
 Sonnet XUII 
 YOUTH 
 
 Age is not always given with gray hair 
 
 Nor youth encompassed in the fewest years ; 
 Since doubt and pain with their attendant tears 
 
 Are dauntless etchers of the lines of care ; 
 
 Youth is most present m the joys we share 
 As swift or slow the season disappears. — 
 The verve, the gladness which puts by all fears 
 
 The hopes we nourish and the smiles we wear. 
 
 I think of you as always being young 
 Untouched by sorrow and unworn by time, 
 Spring's blossoms opening in your tender smile ; 
 
 Like her of whom the elder Bards have sung 
 Chanting her praise in many a noble rhyme — 
 Like Cleopatra by Egyptian Nile. 
 
30 
 
 Sonnet XLIV 
 TAPESTRY 
 
 In the deep twilight when my random thought 
 Weaves in the silence and surrounding shade. 
 Webs of odd fancies glittering like brocade 
 
 Or sombre woof of darker musings brought; 
 
 Then have the hours with mystery still fraught 
 Full on the wall a motley texture laid, 
 Within the loom of darkness spun and made 
 
 In divers hues together firmly wrought. 
 
 And all the warp of this weird spinning seems 
 Forever old and yet forever new; 
 
 With rusted spots and sudden golden gleams 
 A subtle blending of the false and true ; 
 
 The dull threads hinting of my wasted dreams 
 The bright ones telling of my love for you. 
 
 Sonnet XLV 
 SUMACH 
 
 We climbed the slope above the valley's edge 
 Behind, the country road a ribbon lay 
 Of powdery dust down-winding dim and gray; 
 
 A bird sang sweetly from a thorny hedge 
 
 And ripples circled in the river sedge, 
 
 While brown October dozed the hours away; 
 And northward and beyond the hillside clay 
 
 The clustering sumach flamed along a ledge. 
 
 The life of ruddy Autumn filled its veins 
 
 Deep-glowing masses glinting in the sun, 
 Redder than the wild strawberry where it stains 
 The woodland ways mid light and shadow spun : 
 A gorgeous dream, a color-draught divine 
 Spilled on the golden afternoon like wine. 
 
31 
 
 SONNKT XLVI 
 LOVE LETTERS 
 
 Let the light flame consume them and be done 
 While their charred fragments in the embers He, 
 The old, sweet record of the days gone by 
 
 Read them and burn them, lingering one by one ; 
 
 The swift months gather and the seasons run 
 With none to tell us of the when or why; 
 Let them as ashes vanish in the sky 
 
 Since this our courtship has but just begun. 
 
 Better to miss them when we parted be 
 Than through some fault or lapsing of the years, 
 To have them made a target for the sneers 
 
 Or jest, or scorn, of Curiosity; 
 
 For there are those who tear such things apart 
 To feast and mumble on a human heart. 
 
 Sonnet XLVII 
 DECEMBER 
 
 The sleet drives sharply on the window-panes 
 And naked trees like scaffolds darkly stand; 
 The sudden grasp of winter on the land 
 
 Locks fields and streams in glittering icy chains ; 
 
 The north-wind wails in keen Polaric strains 
 And dead leaves dance a ghostly saraband. 
 While cloud-fleets dim, by shapes fantastic manned 
 
 Sail westward where the sunset coldly wanes. 
 
 But by the blaze of our red-glowing grate 
 We see beyond the armored line of eaves, 
 And mark the flashing of a flicker's wing ; 
 
 And violets in the blue flames seem to wait 
 While shining through a mist of latticed leaves. 
 Beckons and laughs the sweet, fresh face of Spring. 
 
32 
 
 Sonnet XLVIII 
 THE FLIGHT OF TIME 
 
 The flight of Time will through the cycles wing 
 And one age follow on another's path ; 
 The leaves of May will feel November's wrath 
 
 And January blossom into Spring; 
 
 And side by side we onward wandering 
 Shall learn the lesson that each season hath, 
 The bud and shard, the glow and aftermath 
 
 The hopes that vanish and the dreams that cling. 
 
 A day is like a swallow's shadow cast 
 On sleeping waters ; for an instant there 
 Etched by the restless pinion in mid-air 
 
 Vague and elusive as the fleeting past; 
 So let us cleave to gladness in our day 
 While Time, that miser, hoards the hours away. 
 
 Sonnet XUX 
 LATE VIOLETS 
 
 Fast-hidden in October's grassy swales 
 Late violets lay; we found them, you and I 
 While gusty winds unbridled galloped by 
 
 And smoky Indian-summer filled the vales ; 
 
 And when the grass divided in the gales 
 They glinted there like bits of Autumn sky, 
 Then disappeared as sylvan fairies shy 
 
 When clamor rude their close retreat assails. 
 
 Late violets ; blue as deep-sea depths unstirred 
 They nestled there ; and heard the pulse of earth 
 Reverberate within its hollow girth 
 
 Like to a giant echo faint and blurred; 
 And far beyond the sweep of Winter's wing 
 We saw their paler sisters of the Spring. 
 
33 
 
 Sonnet L 
 AUTUMN REVERIES 
 
 Along the slopes the fading stubbles show 
 And in the woods a purple vapor swims, 
 While hickory-nuts from the wind-shaken limbs 
 
 Drop down and nestle in the leaves below; 
 
 The sumach burns with ever-deepening glow 
 And shadows lurk about the shallow rims 
 Of silent pools ; while eastward slowly dims 
 
 The penciled flight of a departing crow. 
 
 And you and I here on this russet hill 
 
 Drink deep the beaker of Autumnal wine, 
 
 Held to our lips ; and feel the nameless thrill 
 That ebbs and flows in changing shade and shine ; 
 
 The breeze is dead ; the trees are rapt and still 
 As pilgrims kneeling at a desert shrine. 
 
 Sonnet LI 
 ROSEMARY 
 
 Rosemary for remembrance — may this be 
 A leaf where treasured happiness is sealed 
 Unknown to others ; which to us will yield 
 
 (Our memory the magic opening key) 
 
 A fragrant scent of the lost days set free 
 A music to our listening ears revealed; 
 As a rough shell that sometimes holds concealed 
 
 The myriad murmurous secrets of the sea. 
 
 For something to the written line belongs 
 
 Beyond the word that's uttered; through the pen 
 This verse mayhap shall come to live again 
 
 And take its place among remembered songs ; 
 When you and I and all our love and trust 
 Are blended into long- forgotten dust. 
 
34 
 
 Sonnet LH 
 DAWN 
 
 The grey dawn flooded in the lonely room 
 That mourned your absence; on the western wall 
 The sallow shafts of sunbeams struck, to fall 
 
 As sadly as they would across a tomb ; 
 
 A shadow in the corner was a plume 
 
 That night had dropped from off her sable pall ; 
 A thorny rose stood leafless in the hall 
 
 Your going thus had robbed it of its bloom. 
 
 The very pictures were aware of this 
 As silver-stoled and silent slowly came 
 The first reluctant messengers of dawn ; 
 
 Of all you are and all you are to miss 
 
 Byron seem.ed speaking from his oval frame, 
 And Greek Aspasia whispered "she is gone!" 
 
 Sonnet LIII 
 NOON 
 
 The book I hold within my idle clasp 
 
 Is closed and sealed for aught I care indeed ; 
 My mind has now no leisure hour to read 
 
 No tale of love nor old romance to grasp ; 
 
 My thoughts hang shattered as a broken hasp 
 
 And touch of hands, not Fancy's touch I need ; 
 For since you left my heart begins to bleed 
 
 Where Memory has pierced it like an asp. 
 
 To love you and to lose you for a day 
 A loss irreparable to me it seems — 
 The sting of Fate, the worm that never dies. 
 
 I cannot live to have you long away 
 And see, alas ! as only in my dreams 
 The light of recognition in your eyes. 
 
35 
 
 Sonnet LIV 
 NIGHT 
 
 What shadows troop across the fading floor 
 
 What hush floats ever as the shadows turn! 
 
 Like ashes brooding in a sullen urn 
 Mocking the shades of those who went before. 
 My thoughts lie heavy, and I dream no more 
 
 But ever for your absent face I yearn ; 
 
 And grudgingly my sombre lesson learn 
 Of waiting for your footstep at the door. 
 
 Mayhap my wish is selfish; just to see 
 Your hand in mine ; to know that you are here 
 Close, with the lyrics of your tears or smiles ; 
 
 I cannot say what this will mean to me, 
 Nor all the ways in which I hold you dear 
 Across this void of unrelenting miles. 
 
 Sonnet LV 
 ANNIVERSARY 
 
 This is that day of days when long ago 
 We stood together by an ancient man, 
 And heard him drone about the Scriptural plan 
 
 Which plighted men and women here below ; 
 
 And westward burned the Autum.n afterglow 
 While scarlet vines across the branches ran, 
 And flying leaves, a russet caravan 
 
 Fled down the vales in rustling overflow. 
 
 I scarcely recollect the spoken words, 
 
 Nor care I for the ceremony vain 
 
 Which said forsooth that God had made us one, 
 Since Love had mated us as mate the birds — 
 
 And on the windows was the west's bright stain 
 
 The parting benediction of tlje sun. 
 
S6 
 
 Sonnet LVI 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 Not to be happy in our own conceit 
 
 Of faith, and truth, and well-remembered days, 
 
 In breezy woods and empty pastoral ways 
 Where the brown waves of leaves Autumnal beat ; 
 But more to wish that other souls may meet 
 
 And find their comrades in this earthly maze ; 
 
 That men and women like to us will gaze 
 Each in each other's eyes and find life sweet. 
 
 When you and I together silent wait 
 
 Not only do these thoughts of Thee and Me, 
 
 Knock at our hearts as at an inner gate 
 But through the wonder and the mystery. 
 
 Deep in our dreams we pray a kindly fate 
 For lovers past, and lovers yet to be. 
 
 Sonnet LVII 
 IN DAYS TO COME 
 
 In days to come when we are old and gray 
 Bent with the years and disciplined by Time, 
 Trem.bling and feeble we will scan this rhyme 
 
 Whose light for us has almost dimmed away, — 
 
 And haply then remember if we may 
 
 Some sweet suggestion of our youth sublime. 
 Some keen reminder which like pungent thyme 
 
 Shall bring the memory of our Summer day. 
 
 There is no life but loving ; naught but Youth 
 To make love perfect; when the rose-leaves fall 
 The perfume withers while the birds are dumb. 
 
 And thus indeed I could in very truth 
 
 Pray that we both might early yield this thrall, 
 And so lose Winter in the days to come. 
 
Z1 
 
 Sonnet LVIII 
 HERO-WORSHIP 
 
 To every man some doting woman lends 
 A halo of enchantment ; in her eyes 
 He is most noble, loving, brave and wise ; 
 
 This worship like to incense pure ascends 
 
 And with her dreams in painted glamour blends 
 Like rainbow melting in the western skies ; 
 His lightest word is something dear to prize 
 
 His chance caress for sorrow full amends. 
 
 Oh, mystery ! that woman cannot see 
 
 Her own superiority to man, 
 
 Which soars on high like eagle's wing above — 
 Just as it was, has been, will ever be 
 
 Because ordained by God's primeval plan, 
 
 Her greater faith, fidelity, and love. 
 
 Sonnet LIX 
 WAITING 
 
 To picture you when far apart from me 
 To guess how you might occupy the day ; 
 Whether the moments slowly glide away 
 
 And if the hours or swift or tedious be; 
 
 And never from this patient vigil free 
 But like a statue in the sculptor's clay, 
 Musing and brooding, or as Moslems pray 
 
 Stretching my hands through silence out to the? 
 
 There is so little time, Love, after all 
 To walk together ; such a little while 
 Before our lives will melt as in a breath ; 
 
 How soon, Alas, the leaves of April fall ! 
 How much I miss the joyance of your smile 
 And waiting seems the bitterness of death. 
 
38 
 
 Sonnet LX 
 DREAMS 
 
 Not always have we prudent sowed the seed 
 Of thoughts prosaic, as to wisely reap 
 The less impassioned memories that keep 
 
 Our lives more commonplace in word and deed ; 
 
 For Fancy sometimes blows upon her reed 
 And Romance dimly rises, half-asleep, 
 While over heart and brain and spirit sweep 
 Faint chords like wings from opened cages freed. 
 
 Either a song of gladness or of tears 
 In sunshine rippling or on shadow cast, 
 Thus to our ears this mocking music seems ; 
 
 Something to listen for through flying years 
 Rapt echoes of the future or the past, 
 The respite and the recompense of dreams. 
 
 Sonnet LXI 
 AFFINITY 
 
 The sparks fly always upward, and my soul 
 
 Spreads wings to meet yours as its one true mate. 
 Whether the paths be blossom-crowned or strait 
 
 Whether in gladness or in bitter dole ; 
 
 No voice but yours can soothe me or control 
 No words save yours my ways illuminate ; 
 I am content to follow, lead or wait 
 
 My eyes fixed ever on the distant goal. 
 
 Not oak and vine are we but lovers twain 
 Who face the world together side by side. 
 And so shall bide until our latest breath ; 
 
 In storm or shine, in burning sun or rain 
 
 Through life's long ways in comradeship allied, 
 Not to be parted by the hands of death. 
 
39 
 
 Sonnet LXII 
 LAUGHTER 
 
 The touch of mirth still cherish as is best 
 
 Laughter, with hps slow-spreading to a smile; 
 What were this world without the quip and wile 
 
 The cap and bells, the old time-honored jest 
 
 And subtle tang of humor's Attic zest; 
 
 Still with your merriment the way beguile, 
 A little joy shall last the longest while 
 
 Be gay, look up, be merry with the rest. 
 
 For mark the limpid quibbles of the streams 
 The joyousness that sunshine scatters far, 
 The crooning exultation of the seal 
 
 Better be glad with careless John-a-Dreams 
 Than linger where the sober sages are. 
 And lose the wiser sense of jollity. 
 
 Sonnet LXIII 
 SANCTUARY 
 
 As from the toil and turmoil of the world 
 I come to bring good fortune or defeat, 
 And once again your loving eyes to meet 
 
 Then droops the rest, like a lone banner furled 
 
 By idle winds; for all my thoughts are whirled 
 Toward you like a cloud of swallows fleet; 
 And all the cares tliat follow at my feet 
 
 Like wraiths against the darkness back are hurled. 
 
 Home is where love is, and no doubt can pierce 
 That inner space where you and I do dwell. 
 Nor cast a lurking shadow on its floor; 
 However beats the tide beyond us fierce 
 However prowls with ululating yell, 
 
 The ever-watchful wolf beside the door. 
 
40 
 
 Sonnet LXIV 
 IN THE BEECH WOODS 
 
 Broad screens which shut the dawnlight from the earth 
 Of virent leaves dense woven thick across ; 
 And under foot were strips of velvet moss 
 
 That sloped around the beech-trees' mighty girth. 
 
 No bird-song breaking into sudden mirth 
 But silence, and a sadness for such loss, 
 With here and there a shred of sunlight's gloss 
 
 To lighten up the forest's flowerless dearth. 
 
 So must the Eden garden once have stood 
 
 When Adam and his bride went on their way ; 
 No birds nor flowers in the pleasant wood 
 But sombre aisles and solemn spaces gray. 
 Do you remember how we found it there? 
 A green cathedral ghostly-still and bare ! 
 
 Sonnet LXV 
 CONTENTMENT 
 
 To glean the fields of life and take the grain 
 
 With thorns or poppies as the Gods decree ; 
 
 To lightly jest at Winter's wrath and see 
 Flowers in frost upon the window-pane ; 
 To build our airy castle-walls in Spain 
 
 However bare the near surroundings be — 
 
 This is the secret of content ; the key 
 Which men have given all the world to gain. 
 
 We find it where the sun and shadows meet 
 In sylvan spaces cloistered from the town, 
 Where vague yet clear its presence may be seen 
 It rustles in the dead leaves at our feet 
 It catches at the ruffle of your gown, 
 And beckons on with happy eyes serene. 
 
41 
 
 Sonnet LXVI 
 SORROW 
 
 The saving grace of sorrow has been ours 
 
 So that this present happiness is sweet; 
 
 Yea ! doubly so since long ago our feet 
 Were pierced by thorns, and seldom touched by flowers ; 
 Past sadness with a rarer joy endowers 
 
 These days in which our pulses higher beat; 
 
 Like blossoms which uplift, the sun to greet 
 After the stress of sudden chilling showers. 
 
 Fire tempers steel; and thus the test of pain 
 
 Shall make souls steadfast, and the true heart strong 
 And bring tranquillity from stormy years ; 
 Life's cruel lessons are not learned in vain 
 And rightly runs the burden of the song, 
 
 "They lightest laugh who knew the touch of tears." 
 
 Sonnet LXVII 
 IN WINTER PATHS 
 
 The tumbled drifts like fixed and frozen seas 
 Are billowed up around us all in white, 
 The swirling winds on leafless branches smite 
 
 And round about the trunks of naked trees 
 
 Flit restlessly the black-capped chickadees 
 Shy bits of grey in brief and silent flight; 
 The woods are blacker than at dead of night 
 
 And under icy shields the waters freeze. 
 
 But yonder was a spray where on a time 
 The robin sang; in that lone reach remote 
 Wild violets gathered, bluer than the sea; 
 Nor shall this dearth banish the water's rhyme 
 
 The green of the grass, the blue-bird's April note, 
 While side by side you wander here with me. 
 
42 
 
 Sonnet LXVIII 
 STEADFASTNESS 
 
 We will not dread the future nor the past 
 There is enough to live for day by day, 
 Time and to spare for either work or play 
 
 And the long slumber coming at the last; 
 
 Cxod and Eternity are much too vast 
 
 To fret us while we linger by the way. 
 Sometimes we shall be sad and sometimes gay 
 
 But heart v/ith heart and hand in hand stand fast. 
 
 Let others seek the solace of the shrine 
 Under the cryptic and inscriptcd dome 
 
 That shuts from sight the far blue heavens above 
 For us the essence of the true divine 
 The hum.an joys that touch and sweeten home— 
 And that denied the angels — which is Love. 
 
 Sonnet LXIX 
 PICTURES 
 
 There have been pictures that were reckoned fair 
 In olden times by cunning painters wrought, 
 And far across the tides of ocean brought 
 
 To hang at last like jewels old and rare 
 
 In stately halls; but none that would compare 
 To some one woman, by the Graces taught, 
 With roses at her bosom, perfume-fraught 
 
 And motes of golden sunlight in her hair. 
 
 Tim.e picks their crumbling canvas into shreds 
 Till dust at length it sinks in the abyss. 
 
 And with the winds in errant circle blows ; 
 But ere l^ate comes to snip the tightened threads 
 There is no picture which is like to this — 
 The one fair woman — at her breast a rose. 
 
43 
 
 Sonnet LXX 
 SHADOWS 
 
 If we are naught but shadows, as they say 
 Seen briefly as a sunset while we pass, 
 If life is tinkling cymbals — sounding brass — 
 
 And love a dream that quickly fades away 
 
 Fate may not rob us ; we have had our day ; 
 Have heard the music and have drained our glass. 
 And if we are to perish as the grass 
 
 Death cannot quench the spark which lit our clay. 
 
 For Love beyond all else is vestal flame 
 That burns forever, constant as is Time 
 
 Steadfast and bright as is the Northern star ; 
 And when, like mist, we vanish as we came 
 Alayhap our passion shall imbue this rhyme 
 With life for others, shadows though we are. 
 
44 
 
 Sonnets to a Wife 
 
 Second Series of Seventy 
 Begun in 1909 
 
 SONXET LXXI 
 LIFE'S PANTOMIME 
 
 I act a role in life's crude pantomime 
 As one who stands behind the prison bars, 
 And sees above him never- faltering stars 
 
 March on, march on, in majesty sublime; 
 
 Still in my heart do lyric echoes chime 
 Still on my brow I wear a singer's scars. 
 And know the gnawing agony which mars 
 
 The one who sells his birthright for a rhyme. 
 
 Yet after all, the part is played for you 
 As half-amused, half-scornfully I scan 
 
 The passing show ; what must be done I do 
 And this at last may be the loftiest plan, 
 
 Still to yourself and to myself am true 
 If not a Poet, then at least a man. 
 
45 
 
 Sonnet LXXII 
 SEAWARD 
 
 Within this rugged island of our home 
 Upon a sloping down we meditate, 
 And mark from out the narrow Georgian Strait 
 
 These inward roIHng billows curl and comb ; 
 
 The tides are weaving tapestries of foam 
 Strand after strand along the tossing spate, 
 While cloudless blue, as if to compensate 
 
 For stormy seas, is arched the zenith's dom£. 
 
 Before us is a rack of spindrift spume 
 
 The gulls' wings, and the prows of outbound ship* 
 Like cameos cut, a distant sky upon ; 
 Behind us is an aureate waste of broom 
 And now unfurled from under night's eclipse, 
 The iridescent oriflamme of dawn. 
 
 Sonnet LXXIII 
 LAURA AND PETRARCH 
 
 Petrarch, the Poet, madly worshipped Laura 
 
 Yet like a beggar vainly seeking alms, 
 
 Never attained the winning of her charms ; 
 Sang of her beauty, nursed his rhythmic sorrow 
 Hoped against hope, and ever sought to borrow 
 
 Balm for his soul in sighing sonnet-forms ; 
 
 Ah ! but the rounded heaven of her arms ! 
 Fie on a slave who waits upon tomorrow. 
 
 Unhappy Bard, thus star-like to enshrine her 
 However fame thy laurel-wreath assures ; 
 
 I count my wooing infinitely finer 
 
 The flower that buds, and blossoms, and matures 
 
 Body and soul to take her and divine her 
 To love the woman and to make her yours. 
 
46 
 
 Sonnet LXXIV 
 SEA-LONGINGS 
 
 I think a pulse of this mad ocean wide 
 
 Beats in my soul ; the same response and urge 
 Untamable; the ponderous lift and surge 
 
 As here we watch the headless horsemen ride; 
 
 Look how that breaker's curved, impetuous stride 
 Stamps on the sands and sinks within their verge. 
 So do my longings with oblivion merge 
 
 Like buried shells which coiling sea-weeds hide. 
 
 Could only one then of my lyrics last 
 Along with this far-swinging rush and pour; 
 
 Hovering a space, as do these gulls who cast 
 Their shadows downward on the tumbling shore ; 
 
 Saved from that futile wreckage of the Past 
 The unremembered flotsam of No-miore. 
 
 Sonnet LXXV 
 SPRING 
 
 The dog-wood blossom stars an emerald glade 
 Pale as Narcissus when he stooped to see 
 Bending to earth a slowly-drooping knee 
 
 His boyish reflex mid a pool inlaid; 
 
 In dormant creeks the water-lilies wade 
 Through silvery vapor vanishes the bee, 
 While naked Spring, in leaf-clad chastity 
 
 Seems Eve in- Eden's garden, unafraid. 
 
 I find you in the flowers and the grass 
 
 In hyacinth whorls and primrose cups unsheathed, 
 I think of you where ivy tendrils cling ; 
 You are a Naiad in the water's glass 
 
 Psyche herself, with odorous violets wreathed, 
 The idyl and awakening of Spring. 
 
47 
 
 Sonnet LXXVI 
 SWALLOWS 
 
 They swerve and pass, they ever rise and dip 
 And to these pools in pHant motion bring, 
 The tokens of their pilgrim wandering 
 
 Upon a limpid scroll of watery scrip 
 
 Which ruffles to each signing pinion-tip, 
 As though the im^print of a sv/allow's wing 
 Wrote March-borne tidings of the ides of Spring, 
 
 In jewelled drops that to the surface drip. 
 
 How often have we caught their sinuous flight 
 In penciled tracings through the upper air ; 
 
 Wheeling and following to our watchful sight 
 O'er salt lagoon and pastured spaces bare, 
 
 Till twilight deepened with approaching night 
 And smoothed the waters into velvet there. 
 
 Sonnet LXXVII 
 WILD LILIES 
 
 What time the noiseless steps of wayward Spring- 
 Reached and passed on mid forest-ways unseen, 
 Where polished leaf and tufted mosses green 
 
 In chequered light were softly wavering : 
 
 There did we mark the pensive Goddess fling 
 Her sacred lilies ; thickly sown between 
 Amid the roots and trembling bladed sheen 
 
 Where dewdrops and the cobweb's gossamer cling. 
 
 Wild lilies ; sheltered in this cool retreat 
 Like neophytes to nun-like peace withdrawn ; 
 
 And paler than the timorous marguerite 
 By altars fair of bird-wing-haunted lawn; 
 
 Their heads down-bent, submissively to greet 
 
 Through eastward tinge the Angelus of the Dawn. 
 
48 
 
 Sonnet LXXVIII 
 EN SILHOUETTE 
 
 How stealthily uncoiling does it creep 
 About us here, this chiaroscuro dim, 
 How shadowy the bats around us skim 
 
 While seas beyond move restless in their sleep ; 
 
 Hark to the winds, their rallying cohorts sweep 
 Northward to meet a vague horizon-rim, 
 While starlit bubbles, beading over-brim 
 
 Night's chalice poured from her Cimmerian steep. 
 
 That winking light, which tells of an abode 
 
 These whispers murmured from the inky stream 
 
 That meteor's rush, how rocket-like it glowed 
 How strange our voices in this darkness seem; 
 
 The while we hear in lapping chords below 
 The wash of waves in soft adagio. 
 
 Sonnet LXXIX 
 SEA MEMORIES 
 
 White shells ; green dulse ; and pebble-dotted strands 
 Below our path with shapes of rock and hill. 
 And brackish tides which never can be still ; 
 
 Lovers slow walking with close-folded hands — 
 
 One mast far out, that tree-like lonely stands 
 With listless sails to either droop or fill 
 As the wind veers ; and over all a thrill 
 
 Of seas unsailed and venturous foreign lands. 
 
 A century from now will see the same. 
 
 Green dulse, white shells, a convoluted beach 
 And panoramas of or storms or calms ; 
 Sails to reflect the sunset's molten flame 
 While facing westward, rapt and lost for speech 
 Will other lovers wait with clinging palms. 
 
49 
 
 Sonnet LXXX 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 This idolizing girl who to you turns 
 And twines herself about your Mother-love, 
 Which lioness-fierce, yet gentle as the dove 
 
 Within your bosom heaving throbs and burns — 
 
 As flower with flower, a vestal maiden yearns 
 Lifting her face to meet your face above ; 
 Herself the semblance and reminder of 
 
 Some lily rising from the terrace urns. 
 
 So in good time mayhap she may be blest 
 With her own child ; as now you are by her. 
 More goodly than or frankincense or myrrh 
 
 The incense of her kisses at your breast ; 
 
 So once you twined v\^ithin your Mother's arms 
 With all your own and all your daughter's charms. 
 
 Sonnet LXXXI 
 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 For one blurred instant, looking on you two 
 It seemed I was a little boy again ; 
 Purged of the vileness of the sons of men 
 
 With eyes as clear as drops of morning dew; 
 
 Yet this was sheerest paradox I knew — 
 Born of some inner fantasy, as when 
 Lost days drift upward to the startled ken. 
 
 And for our love and pity doubly sue. 
 
 Sweet, baby eyes ; twin fountains undefiled 
 And in their depths my profile shadowed there 
 Beyond the dominance of wasting care ; 
 
 O my dead youth ! was ever I a child ? 
 What master-chemist mixes this alloy 
 The child in man, the Father in the boy! 
 
50 
 
 Sonnet LXXII 
 SIWASH 
 
 This plaited wicker basket which you raise 
 In smiling token bidding me to look, 
 Unfolds the past like opening a book 
 
 Of which I know each retrospect and phrase; 
 
 It shows again the walled Alberni bays 
 
 Where we our pilgrimage to westward took. 
 By mossy bank, and fern-frequented nook 
 
 And undulating droop of lowland braes. 
 
 How clear my recollection paints it all! 
 
 The Beaufort peaks uprearing one by one ; 
 The Somass river eddying to its fall 
 
 With ripple-harps where turbulent rapids run, 
 Just you and I ; a wood-bird's languorous call 
 
 And Indian children playing in the sun. 
 
 Sonnet LXXXIII 
 JASON 
 
 At such an hour and loitering by the shore 
 When hazy quiet sends a dreamful peace, 
 Where winds are lulled, and tidal ebbings cease 
 
 While that the sea is sapphire to its core, — 
 
 There have we talked of legendary lore 
 
 Sirens and mermaids ; chronicles of Greece, 
 And that far voyage for the gilded fleece 
 
 By Jason hazarded in days of yore. 
 
 Aye ! so they strove, as heroes do and dare 
 And yet what joy to Jason and his crew, 
 
 Could they have found this one sole treasure rare 
 For which men search the universes through ; 
 Some woman waiting by the sands like you 
 
 Shaming the sunlight with her golden hair. 
 
"51 
 
 Sonnet LXXXIV 
 DEATH 
 
 There is no death; so nature makes reply 
 
 While twig and leaf are quivering in the sun, 
 While buds expand or glancing waters run 
 
 Through shell-paved shallows racing swiftly by; 
 
 And you and I, our sudden-severed tie 
 Shall with the earth be woven into one, 
 When stars arise and after day is done 
 
 Though each by each in dreamless slumber lie. 
 
 Since all must live as long as lasts the earth 
 Dust unto dust, even as a Prophet saith ! 
 
 Revive with flowers and join the sunbeam's mirth 
 However ceases this our mortal breath. 
 
 Why shun the later and the happier birth? 
 
 How thankless, then, this coward fear of death! 
 
 Sonnet LXXXV 
 THE LARK 
 
 Above the daisied uplands of the Spring 
 
 Beyond the flowering slopes at Gordon Head, 
 We saw a bird with pinions wide outspread 
 
 That mounted up and up on rising wing; 
 
 Breathless we listened to a sky-lark sing 
 In rippling aria through cloud-land shed, 
 Till last in ecstasy the carol fled 
 
 To leave us tranced, and wholly v/ondering. 
 
 This was the herald in the shape of bird 
 
 Who sprang one morning from an English lea, 
 And drew his hearer to the heights along; 
 This was the lark that Percy Shelley heard 
 And fired by rival classic minstrelsy, 
 Made him immortal in a Poet's song. 
 
52 
 
 Sonnet LXXXVI 
 FAULTS 
 
 Think of me always as a man who came 
 Into your life to serve you with a song; 
 Strong in his hate and in his loving strong 
 
 In triumph or adversity the same. 
 
 Knowing the hollowness of wealth and fame 
 Striving for right, and challenging the wrong, 
 With dreams and fancies still that upward sprung 
 
 As mounting sparks leap higher than the flame. 
 
 Thus shall you weigh me as I would be weighed 
 Much as I lack, yet giving me my due ; 
 
 Judging how far my destiny was swayed 
 Just with the boon of being loved by you ; 
 
 Making my faults the most of me, and then 
 
 Holding me different from the lesser men. 
 
 Sonnet LXXXVII 
 SOOKE HILLS 
 
 So often from this overhanging quay 
 Have we at sundown scanned the western hills, 
 Darkling where haze of deepening purple spills 
 
 Lilac and amethyst in a gloomering sea 
 
 Vaguely defined in its immensity ; 
 
 While nearer seen the inner harbor fills 
 With log-booms towing to the dusty mxills, 
 
 Where saw and belt hold screaming jubilee. 
 
 And peering outward on this pictured vast 
 While duskily the evening shades withdrew. 
 
 At times we marked a coppery outline cast 
 Faint on the wave and fading in the blue — 
 
 A tribal relic of the Island's past 
 The Songhee, paddling in his carved canoe. 
 
53 
 
 Sonnet LXXXVIII 
 THE HOUSE OF GOD 
 
 The organ's dolorous minor pierces through 
 And garnet sunlight slowly falling, stains 
 Lord Christ, imprinted on these window-panes 
 
 Red as the blood the soldier's spear-thrust drew 
 
 And in this spacious temple I and you 
 Where leisurely a formal service reigns, 
 Sit silent ; while the sermon's rhetoric deigns 
 
 Its flattery to each fashionable pew. 
 
 Yet all this brings no twinge of penitence 
 To my stern soul, which other ritual craves ; 
 
 Such as I've heard with heart-felt reverence 
 Choralled by winds mid forest architraves ; 
 
 Or low-intoned near some sea-eminence 
 The suppliant susurrus of the waves. 
 
 Sonnet LXXXIX 
 ILLUSIONS 
 
 We live as though there was no pen to trace 
 
 The payment of the last appointed debt ; 
 
 And still each hour death spreads his fated net 
 Entangling Age and Youth's pathetic grace; 
 We love as we had conquered time and space 
 
 We two remote on dream-land's parapet; 
 
 Twin spirits in a spirit-circle met 
 Where phantom forms and masquers interlace. 
 
 This be a symbol for both night and day 
 Love without fear; whatever is or seems; 
 
 Before life's fires are sunk to dull decay 
 
 And the long lights have faded from the streams. 
 
 This is a truth forever and for aye 
 All but illusions are as idle dreams. 
 
54 
 
 Sonnet XC 
 RETICENCE 
 
 They say reserve will often set a seal 
 
 Close upon lips which otherwise would speak, 
 And with the medium of language seek 
 
 Their inner minds to presently reveal 
 
 The joy that thrills them, or the pain they feel ; 
 So men have curbed through diffidence or pique, 
 The impulse flashed from brain to burning cheek 
 
 As spark that flies from clashing flint and steel. 
 
 Sometimes when most I love you I am curst 
 With this strange hesitance of heart and soul ; 
 
 Even as a rose before the bud has burst 
 To write its passion on the garden scroll, 
 
 In crimson petals of untold desire 
 
 Steeped in a revery and aglow with fire. 
 
 Sonnet XCI 
 THE SUN-DIAL 
 
 It stands alone in consecrated ground 
 As old as this old yew-tree's hoary moss 
 Which waits beside ; its shadow flung across 
 
 That follows slow the tireless hours around 
 
 Has you and me together often found 
 
 Watching the sun's rays sift their feathery dross, 
 Counting the moments and their constant loss 
 
 While sullen fate went by without a sound. 
 
 And now forgotten, but in bygone days 
 
 Here in their turn have others wooers come. 
 
 To muse amid these memory-haunted ways 
 And prove with Time his never-ending sum ; 
 
 Closed eyes, Alas ! which nevermore may gaze 
 Closed lips, Ah ! me, that now are stricken dumb. 
 
55 
 
 Sonnet XCII 
 SOMETHING WORTH WHILE 
 
 To tramp a tread-mill round o'er street and pave 
 Be-calendered of dry commercial days, 
 As by this bastion's sea-encircling sprays 
 
 The sentinel walks onward by the wave : — 
 
 A sordid score of petty tasks to brave 
 
 And delve among the compost for what pays 
 The current charge, — seems in this tortuous maze 
 
 The humdrum occupation of a slave. 
 
 Yet could I on some immemorial page 
 
 Recall one interval you did beguile, 
 Past all corrosion of or death or age 
 
 Etch but the least enchantment of your smile. 
 
 Ah ! that, indeed, were something worth my while 
 To break the bonds of life's dread vassalage. 
 
 Sonnet XCIII 
 MADONNA MIA 
 
 It may be partly true that Raphael 
 Across whose tomb the centuries have filed, 
 By what he grouped of Mother and of Child 
 
 In coloring and technique did excel 
 
 All other artists; just what lends the spell 
 Which lingers in their eyes expression mild, 
 That couples love with long reconciled 
 
 In his Madonna, history does not tell. 
 
 I saw a picture painted here today 
 Like Raphael's, but fairer far to me ; 
 
 In luminous color framed against the grey 
 Unutterable sadness of the sea. 
 Yourself, My Love, our baby on your knee 
 
 And in the wind your gold hair blown astray. 
 
56 
 
 Sonnet XCIV 
 TENDERNESS 
 
 Because upon the Spartan I relied 
 
 Not seeking solace from a God on high, 
 Some name me cold and hardened ; even I 
 
 As one to whom is callousness implied ; 
 
 You know the adamant nature of my pride 
 Which shall exist beyond the day I die, 
 Not from my lips has welled the despairing cry 
 
 Although I have been ten times crucified. 
 
 With those perchance world-wounded over-much 
 No outward scars upon the soul remain ; 
 
 Do I then, lack in sympathy's close touch 
 What answer gives your inmost heart's refrain? 
 
 For if it be you think of me as such^ 
 
 Then have I loved and sung of you in vain. 
 
 Sonnet XCV 
 SHELLS 
 
 The lisping symphonies of the shells you bring 
 Dripping with brine, to lay within my hand, 
 A.re something dreamers only understand 
 
 The tones they murmur and the runes they sing ; 
 
 Still through their arches do beseechings ring 
 Like those which ebb-tides plash along the sand, 
 When seas are draped with night's funereal band 
 
 As evening fails, and cormorants take wing. 
 
 Such were the melodies Ulysses fought 
 Sinking and rising with an ocean swell ; 
 
 And down to us on wings of legend brought 
 Caged by the pearly chambers of a shell ; 
 
 For in these sea-born spirals it is thought 
 1^ The imprisoned spirits of the Sirens dwell. 
 
57 
 
 SoNxNET XCVI 
 
 IN ABSENCE 
 
 The dawn-light knits a mesh of mottled pearl 
 Across the reddening threshold of the morn ; 
 Slow tides move, and another day is born 
 
 Where sunny hosts their guidons now unfurl ; 
 
 The noon-beams over closing blossoms curl 
 
 Till homing birds and gathering shades forewarn, 
 And I stand dreamingly and all forlorn 
 
 With thoughts that rise and southward to you whirl. 
 
 Like arrow loosed my soul to meet you flies 
 The hours indeed seem more as lagging years; 
 
 Yet while I w^ait, heart-visioned to mine eyes 
 Your very self, in a mirage appears ; 
 
 As though beside this desert-stretching sea 
 
 You rose, and came, and smiled and spoke to me. 
 
 Sonnet XCVII 
 SUMMER 
 
 The fir-trees climb this broken mountain-side 
 The mother-grouse leads forth her downy brood ; 
 I cannot feel what men call solitude 
 
 Amid such sylvanry aloft enskyed 
 
 In fleecy rings; for, instinct as my guide. 
 My nature seems comipanioned and imbued 
 With cloud and glen ; though language is all crude 
 
 To well translate what is to words denied. 
 
 The loveliness of summer walks these dells. 
 Above, a sharp peak cuts the violet sky 
 As if it sprang to clear the barriered blue ; 
 Below, the Saanich inlet arching swells 
 And here with heart-recounted longing, I 
 Do wait and question, thinking aye of you. 
 
58 
 
 Sonnet XCVIII 
 ROSES 
 
 Roses and roses ; roses flaring red 
 Yellow and pink or petalled as the snow, 
 Beside the windings of this parterre grow 
 
 On many a trim and quaintly terraced bed ; 
 
 Their radiant tinges lavishly outspread 
 
 Through leaves that waver when the south-winds blow 
 In faint and tender flute-like tremolo, 
 
 Past gate and arbor whisperingly sped. 
 
 You seem a rose here by this pebbly walk 
 
 Red for your lips a white rose for your hand. 
 
 I would give much an chance might grant me this 
 That bending like a blown rose on the stalk, 
 You, turning to this pathway where I stand 
 Drop me one ruddy petal of a kiss. 
 
 Sonnet XCIX 
 TO YOU 
 
 Something harmonious is in your eyes 
 Akin to swaying waters, where the moon 
 Leads the tides on in foamy rigadoon. 
 
 While curtseying waves alternate dip and rise ; 
 
 Something there is which in their pathos lies 
 Sad as a plaint of this unmemoried tune. 
 Which drifts in poignance through the leaves of June 
 
 O'er-canopied by slumbering Summer skies. 
 
 Thus brown as Autumn do they with me bide 
 And touched with m.elody as is the wind 
 That sounds its syrinx by untrodden ways ; 
 And they will draw me as the moon the tide 
 Howevermore though stricken years be thinned, 
 Down all the length of these my nights and days. 
 
59 
 
 Sonnet C 
 BROOM 
 
 Here Midas had his wish; for near and far 
 The saffron broom in solid masses hfts, 
 Fold upon fold in packed and glittering drifts 
 
 Without a speck its burnished shield to mar ; 
 
 Below, the tide across a shingly bar 
 
 Swept by the foam incessant trails and shifts, 
 Where a cramped sea crawls upward through its rifts 
 
 Of cliffs deep-graven by their wave-worn scar. 
 
 When first we saw this greet us on a marge 
 Of noon-lit brightness glimmering to the sea, 
 It turned our thoughts to tournaments of old; 
 King Richard of the lion-heart at charge, 
 Crusades and Knights, the Age of Chivalry 
 And jousting on the-field-of-the-cloth-of-gold. 
 
 Sonnet CI 
 MOUNT ARROWSMITH 
 
 The mountain road wound upward like a snake 
 A sluggish python wallowing in dust, 
 And gnarled arbutus shed its barky crust 
 
 There by the wayside tawny flake on flake ; 
 
 The river through a steep-descending brake 
 Past log and boulder tarnished deep with rust, 
 A sword-sharp current downward headlong thrust 
 
 And sheathed in its cataract in a void opaque. 
 
 And looking skyward from a path we saw 
 Beyond the fir-trees massed in plumy crowds, 
 
 A sight that filled our very souls with awe — 
 Mount Arrowsmith, attended by the clouds ; 
 
 Majestic looming and with rainbow spanned 
 
 A Titan figure poised by God's own hand. 
 
60 
 
 Sonnet CII 
 OTHER MEN 
 
 I was not good, like others you had met 
 I would I had been perfect for your sake; 
 My stubbornness not even death may break 
 
 Though marbled to f orgetfulness ; and yet 
 
 How keen were then my anguish could regret 
 For what I was, the slightest ripple make 
 On this, our love ; or cause your heart to ache 
 
 Or your dear eyes with sorrowing thoughts be wet. 
 
 If I had sinned be sure I paid the wage. 
 
 If I repented, so men do; what then? 
 This I affirm as truth shall be my gage 
 
 As I have said and say it once again, 
 From passionate youth and on to fiery age 
 
 I was not chained to earth like other men. 
 
 Sonnet CIII 
 OTHER WOMEN 
 
 Tlie chords of Sappho's fragmentary line 
 Re-echo with a v/orld-compelling strain ; 
 And Greek Aspasia by the Attic main 
 
 The star of Pericles v/ill ever shine ; 
 
 Enchantresses with outward selves divine 
 The form of Ruth beside the sickled grain, 
 Rebecca's face, the Templar's suing vain 
 
 Lucrece's fate and Tarquin's base design. 
 
 I conjure up their m.emory, musing so; 
 
 The waywardness or constancy they knew. 
 And her whose sorcery wrought colossal woe 
 
 That Trojan temptress whom Kit Marlowe drew 
 I know themx all and truer yet I know 
 
 There is no woman in the world but you. 
 
61 
 
 Sonnet CIV 
 BY THE FIRELIGHT 
 
 The back-log shrinks and dwindles to a shred 
 As we sit here before the fire-side glow, 
 We two alone ; as once in long ago 
 
 Together then the lambent coals we read; 
 
 How quickly there the plastic hours were sped 
 
 While dimmed our half-charred castles sinking low, 
 Till that awakening which stirred us so 
 
 The life-pact wedded and the words we said. 
 
 Prone rest these ashes whence a hearth-stone ghost 
 A space agone had darted up the flue, 
 
 And flickeringly a thin flare sinks and dies ; 
 Sometimes I think that silence says the most, — 
 I tell you nothing with my lips that you 
 Have not repeated to me with your eyes. 
 
 Sonnet CV 
 WRECK BAY 
 
 Black with the raging fury of despair 
 On barricades of scarred outlying stone 
 The waves break baffled; and uprearing thrown 
 
 Hissing and snaky, with ophidian stare, 
 
 Medusa heads with wild and tangled hair 
 From wrinkled foreheads backward streaming blown, 
 In bas-relief are on the sky-line shown 
 
 Above the ramparts serrated and bare. 
 
 Yet menaced by such writhing shapes as these 
 And marking how the billowy squadrons form. 
 
 To Triton's conch-shell, shrilled in wind-lashed keys 
 The battle-spirit in my veins runs warm ; 
 
 I feel myself a rover of the seas 
 A Viking, and a comrade of the storm. 
 
62 
 
 Sonnet CVI 
 BEFORE THE MIRROR 
 
 Before the mirror as you thoughtful sit 
 To try effects, arrange a ribbon's bow, 
 Eve's (laughters in your dalliance I know ; 
 
 Scotch Mary with her coquetry and wit 
 
 Rare Heloise with long-fringed eyes love-lit 
 And Guinevere, v/hom Lancelot worshipped so ; 
 On such a glass, in letterings of woe 
 
 How many a man has had misfortune writ. 
 
 Here in their day have lovely women stood 
 Poising like sv/allows o'er a lucent pool, 
 
 To train a curl, to tie a silken hood 
 
 And practice lures that men might play the fool 
 
 Thus Cleopatra did her arts employ 
 
 So Helen gazed when Paris came from Troy. 
 
 Sonnet CVH 
 SEA-MYSTERIES 
 
 If Neptune rose with gleaming trident where 
 These ocean deeps lie open to our sight. 
 As here we pause and note the scurrying flight 
 
 Of broad-winged scoters through the salty air, — 
 
 Could he from lost mythology declare 
 
 Who m.ade yon sea? Who spun its foam-crests bright? 
 What power conceived such transcendental might 
 
 And ploughed the furrows on its brow of care ? 
 
 Ah ! Who shall e'er Creation's veil uplift 
 Or guess the problem of the rolling spheres? 
 Enough for us to know the Almighty reigns. 
 The mystery of love is our great gift 
 Though silent are the cabalistic years. 
 
 And the sea's riddle still unsolved remains. 
 
63 
 
 Sonnet CVIII 
 HEART'S EASE 
 
 Not castled walls with gargoyle niche grotesque 
 Telling of Knights and noble Dames of old. 
 Nor yet demesnes whose fountain-rims unfold 
 
 With Roman marbles rising statuesque — 
 
 Nor where in mellowing orange arabesque 
 The sunshine strikes across ancestral wold, 
 And stark tradition lends a glamour cold 
 
 Of mediaeval and of picturesque. 
 
 Not such for us; nor very far to roam 
 
 From this our hearth-stone, save on fancy's 
 Our joy to feel what hooded twilight brings 
 
 While star by star lights up the heavenly dome; 
 
 With children's voices calling through the home 
 And treasured store of soul-regarded things. 
 
 wnigs : 
 
 Sonnet CIX 
 SOUL-PACT 
 
 Grandsires and Grandams, chilled to icebergs gaze 
 
 From portraits old, then fade to nothingness ; 
 
 Fathers and Mothers falter in the stress 
 Of life's deliberate and relentless ways ; 
 Brothers and sisters, each as pass the days 
 
 Like glow-worm shimmers still are less and less; 
 
 While friends, whose lapsing memories we confess 
 How nebulous they seem amidst the maze. 
 
 Lovers alone defy the ban of years 
 Here where the sea mourns we may so declare, 
 And love alone hath warrant to endure. 
 This is the essence of our world-careers 
 That while all change and variance we share, 
 Of only one another are we sure. 
 
64 
 
 Sonnet CX 
 SEA-HARPS 
 
 We two who love the sea in all its moods 
 Tenses and colors, tarry here and wait 
 While a red globe beyond the western gate 
 
 Sinks and is gone ; and utter silence broods 
 
 Above these ebbing ocean solitudes ; 
 
 And where Arcturus reigns in glittering state, 
 Heaven's dusky vaults in splendor radiate 
 
 And muffled ripples thrill night's interludes. 
 
 But entering on this muteness conies the moan 
 Of dirge-like winds that rise from spectral caves 
 Gulf-murm.urs, sibilance of sand-fretted waves 
 
 And threnodies from twisted conch-trumps blown ; 
 Borne in across the tides to thee and me 
 The century-chorded harpings of the sea. 
 
 Sonnet CXI 
 MICHAEL ANGELO 
 
 Old Angelo, the sculptor Buonarotti 
 Michael surnamed and Painter born and Bard, 
 vStill like a giant always stands on guard • 
 
 A cavalier invincible and haughty; 
 
 And yet 'tis rumored he was sometimes naughty 
 Among the ladies ; thus his name is marred 
 However high his varied skill be starred, 
 
 However pure through marble statues taught he.' 
 
 So, Buonarotti ! did you sin ? well, then. 
 
 Such venial fault with Bards is counted human 
 And sculptors, too ; mayhap j^ou found what men 
 Have always learned if gifted with acumen, 
 Huw much the chisel falls below the pen 
 How far are both transcended by the woman. 
 
65 
 
 Sonnet CXI I 
 A WOMAN'S CHARM 
 
 A woman's charm is all beyond dispute 
 Yet still unread; yet everywhere adored, 
 However high scholastic wisdom soared 
 
 Or man's experience has taken root; 
 
 Science and Art are most discreetly mute 
 Nor Sibyl's tongue an answer will afford, 
 More than dead echoes which are dimly stored 
 
 Fast in the shell of some mid-century lute. 
 
 And this enigma I have found in you 
 
 Thoughever m.uch you are m.y dream and hope ; 
 
 Unanalyzed as is the crystal dew 
 
 That gems the clover of a May-day slope; 
 
 Elusive as quick-silver ; ever new 
 And fragrant as the breath of heliotrope. 
 
 Sonnet CXHI 
 GYPSIES 
 
 In some existence as apart from this 
 We two were gypsies ; sleeping by a hedge, 
 Camping at night by underwood or sedge 
 
 And sharing guerdon of un wedded bliss ; 
 
 But now such vagrom errancies we miss 
 For law and order dulls the dagger's edge, 
 Not as those lovers who were used to pledge 
 
 Their Romany vows with knife-thrust or with kiss. 
 
 The wanderlust is still within our blood 
 Howevermore those former days estranged; 
 The times the times, and not ourselves have changed 
 
 Since last I sat beneath the hawthorn bud, 
 A gypsy tinker, fiddling for scant alms 
 While you told fortunes with prophetic palms. 
 
66 
 
 Sonnet CXIV 
 CONTRASTS 
 
 What do I bring you for this past decade 
 
 How stands the balance of the lost and gained ? 
 My manhood, has it waxed or has it waned 
 
 As back and forth the ticking pendulum swayed? 
 
 How many inroads have these ten years made 
 On what I was ? Has then some rusting stained 
 The once fresh leaves which, when the March-light 
 reigned, 
 
 Upon the branches of my Spring-time played ! 
 
 I cannot judge; but leave the task to you 
 Since introspection may not hit the mark ; 
 Yet once, My Love, I had the vital spark 
 
 A temper and a will to dare and do ; 
 
 H Time has blent his Autumn with my Springs 
 How fares the wall whereon the dead vine clings? 
 
 Sonnet CXV 
 TIME'S RECKONING 
 
 Last night and now this morning, and today 
 And then tomorrow ; thus the days drift on 
 A marshalling of hours from dusk to dawn ; 
 
 The seasons that with helpless mortals play 
 
 Like cats with mice ; so runs the world away ; 
 As it has been through all the aeons drawn 
 As it will be when we are dead and gone, 
 
 To Lethe and forgetfulness a prey. 
 
 Time's reckoning; but not with you and me 
 However others to such fiat yield. 
 
 For year by year like sweetly-blowing thyme, 
 Your grace and loveliness will blossoming be 
 In these my songs, as verified and sealed 
 Here with the living signet of a rhyme. 
 
67 
 
 Sonnet CXVI 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 
 
 Dawnlight that drew a pastel of those hours 
 We paced the beach and noted oily swells 
 Roll in from leeward ; noon-light's fervent spells 
 
 Searing the tips of harlequin marsh flowers ; 
 
 Twilight, that mingled in with dank mist-showers 
 To close the cloisters of the hermit shells, 
 While through a clammy fog the clarion bells 
 
 Rung hollowly from out their rock-bound towers. 
 
 But most we loved the moonlight's argent track 
 Shifted across the channel like a lance, 
 And bringing tales to stir an ocean's breast; 
 The conquering folds of Nelson's Union Jack 
 Spain's foiled Armada, made the sport of chance 
 And Walter Raleigh sailing to the west. 
 
 Sonnet CXVH 
 AUTUMN 
 
 October's tracery intensive showed 
 This morning as we two haphazard strolled 
 In foliage that the maple branches hold 
 
 To strew betimes upon a country road; 
 
 And leaf on leaf by wanton zephyr sowed 
 
 Lay crisply curled along the darkening mould. 
 While Autumn brown, sun-tanned and sombre-stoled 
 
 Through wavering woods and down the path-way strode. 
 
 Strange that a fortnight makes the flowers to wane 
 Dyeing the leaves with amber tintings clear 
 As birds fly south and days are turned a-chill ; 
 Bleak messengers, the boisterous wind and rain 
 Descending sharp or whistling keen and drear 
 By Cadboro Bay and on to Cedar Hill. 
 
68 
 
 Sonnet CXVIII 
 CADBORO WOODS 
 
 The flicker's chattering in fanfaron shrill 
 Loud in the timber in staccato spoke, 
 And then he dropped from out a knotted oak 
 
 Crossing above the leaf-strewn forest sill, 
 
 Dipping and rising to a neighboring hill 
 An arc of gold 'mid Indian-summer smoke ; 
 Again his challenge like a bugle broke 
 
 The echoes answered, and then all was still. 
 
 Do you remember where, upon that day 
 
 We found a trickling streamlet's secret cup? 
 A cooling rill that gem.-like bubbled up 
 
 A liquid opal, shyly hid away ! 
 
 Do you recall how sea and heaven pierced through 
 Wave beside sky, the blue against the blue? 
 
 Sonnet CXIX 
 IN WOODLAND WAYS 
 
 We rambled down and past a woodland bight 
 Where weed and bramble sparsely interlaced 
 A gorgeous China pheasant rose in haste 
 
 And set the air on fire with his flight ; 
 
 The valley quail dispersing left and right 
 Whirred level-winged across a thistled waste, 
 While pale Diana, crescent-slim and chaste 
 
 Smiled on us from a doorway of the night. 
 
 To us. My Love, that was a day of days 
 Clipped from the tattered almanac of Time ; 
 
 To wander forth in sylvan-shaded ways 
 Where orange sprigs of honeysuckle climb. 
 
 With Bacchant tempters beckoning through the maze 
 And taste the wine of Autumn at its prime. 
 
69 
 
 Sonnet CXX 
 OUTDOORS 
 
 However far our journeying steps have strayed 
 In love of nature we are closely bound, 
 With prescience of the Druid-temples crowned 
 
 On hills austere, by stream or rustic shade ; 
 
 Brother and sister to each grassy blade 
 
 Comrade and friend to marshes sere embrowned, 
 And kindred-linked where jarring skies resound 
 
 To the deep thunder's rumbling cannonade. 
 
 This is the season's priceless heritage ; 
 
 The potent spell which true earth-worship wields. 
 And this a tryst that youth will keep with age 
 
 Till the last breath to dissolution yields ; 
 Like Sir John Falstaff on the Poet's page 
 
 Dying a boy and babbling of green fields. 
 
 Sonnet CXXI 
 DALLAS ROADS 
 
 Against an angle of the staunch sea wall 
 The tide leaps, hurled by equinoctial gales ; 
 And from these heights we look on tautened sails 
 
 That tensely stretch from full-rigged main-masts tall 
 
 The tireless gulls a-wing complaining call 
 And on the shore a wind monotonous wails, 
 While one stray sun-glint in a pennant trails 
 
 Its fallow length where breaking white-caps fall. 
 
 How vivid will the picture of this day 
 
 In summer dawns when then remembered, be? 
 
 These serried ranks of blind September spray 
 This rocking storm, the canvas off to lee. 
 
 And you and I, uplifted with the sway 
 
 And grim Samsonian wrestlings of the sea. 
 
70 
 
 Sonnet CXXII 
 COURAGE 
 
 Here in this life you find the crucial test 
 
 The irony of death and fate defied ; 
 
 Like those old Grecian warriors who died 
 Sword under shield at war's resolved behest; 
 This was our touchstone for the forward quest 
 
 As onward we were faring side by side, 
 
 Fronting the years that passed us, while we cried 
 "Welcome the coming, speed the departing guest," 
 
 God give us courage, as there is a God 
 To dare the utmost rigor of our doom, 
 
 And tread the white-hot plowshares mile on mile. 
 To cringe not under stroke of chastening rod 
 But wear as from the cradle to the tomb. 
 The uncorroding armor of a smile. 
 
 Sonnet CXXIII 
 COMRADESHIP 
 
 Still, as the months drift, we are nearer grown 
 To one another ; closer year by year. 
 Firmer united and more trebly dear 
 
 While days, as leaves, across our path are strown 
 
 Thus in this way Love's miracle is known 
 The word of promise holding to the ear, 
 So that our souls as listening can hear 
 
 The heart's low murmur in an undertone. 
 
 All that can bring mementoes of the past 
 We cherish as the present hours unfold ; 
 Etchings of sunrise luminously scrolled 
 
 And after-glow by storm-rack overcast ; 
 Kisses and tears; the comradeship we share 
 The joys divided and the pangs we bear. 
 
71 
 
 Sonnet CXXIV 
 METEMPSYCHOSIS 
 
 If it be true in dying that the soul 
 By reason of the laws which so ordain, 
 Seeks for another, to on earth remain 
 
 As part and parcel of a destined whole ; — 
 
 Then, as the needle wheels toward the pole 
 
 How straight my wraith in this return would fain 
 Clinging to you, lost vantage to regain 
 
 Cleave through existence till it reached its goal. 
 
 No dread of parting ever comes to me 
 
 Nor finding one to take your place instead ; 
 
 The love we pledged is for eternity 
 I care not how the horoscope is read ; 
 
 Not to be severed by Infinity 
 
 However fare the living or the dead. 
 
 Sonnet CXXV 
 UNREVEALED 
 
 This is that labyrinth men call the sea 
 Cruel and willful as a woman's whim; 
 Over its reefs the buoyant sea-fowl skim 
 
 In wisps and skeins that waver restlessly; 
 Behold its secret, sourceless pedigree 
 Written in ages when the earth lay dim, 
 And hark to its Circean-chanted hymn 
 
 Which was, which is, and evermore will be. 
 
 Above this crag's wave-battered citadel 
 
 We lie and glimpse the wake of outbound ships, 
 While basks the sea in drowsy indolence ; 
 Its secret hidden in a sculptured shell 
 With white foam-fingers ever at its lips. 
 More than a Sphynx in its dumb reticence. 
 
72 
 
 Sonnet CXXVI 
 FOR CECILE 
 
 You know my mood, both somber and elate 
 
 Yet sanguine-hued, though time wears on apace ; 
 
 Steeled by the one remembrance of your face 
 Through all our years to steadfast watch and wait, 
 Home was for me where you have been my mate 
 
 In crowded towns or lonely country-place. 
 
 As one whose dour tenacity of race 
 Makes you alone my idol consecrate. 
 
 Fade out. O sun, in the enkindled west 
 
 Beyond these hills, yon headland and the sea; 
 
 Die down, O winds, past this torn hemlock's crest 
 Which ragged looms, a lightning-blasted tree ; 
 
 Not God Himself shall have the strength to wrest 
 Two souls apart, grown close like you to me. 
 
 Sonnet CXXVH 
 CHOPIN 
 
 By wooded shores we hear orchestral strains 
 Of Chopin's genius echoing 'mid the leaves ; 
 An oboe sighs, the throbbing 'cello grieves 
 
 With wailing flute and violin refrains ; 
 
 Then swift the theme its final height attains 
 And whelmingly the blinding harmony cleaves 
 Then sinks ; while last a quivering minor weaves 
 
 Rises and falls, and past the surge-roll wanes. 
 
 Solve me the maskery of this wizard Pole 
 Whose nocturne dies in spangled vaults above ; 
 What was the amour he was dreaming of 
 
 Writ for all time on fate's clandestine scroll ? 
 
 What woman's voice had sirenized his soul 
 How much is music and how much is love? 
 
73 
 
 Sonnet CXXVIII 
 LONG AFTER 
 
 Long after, when this same far sun will shake 
 FHnging its torches on the restless sea, 
 There will be those will muse of you and me 
 
 When they their walks by woods and beaches take. 
 
 Because of what love's reveries awake — 
 These lines for future ages held in fee, 
 Upwelling now and circling liquidly 
 
 Like ripples on the bosom of a lake. 
 
 Long afterward ; what matters then to us 
 
 Unless it be that haply some may say, 
 "As these did love with full hearts tremulous 
 
 We too adore, forever and for aye." 
 And speaking so, shall rightly even thus 
 
 Unseal the memory of our yesterday. 
 
 Sonnet CXXIX 
 THE DOWNS 
 
 Their crisp declivities to eastward glide 
 
 Star-sprinkled with a million glistering flowers, 
 Where lazy fiood of intermingled hours 
 
 Seeps with the seeping of a turquoise tide ; 
 
 Ear out the Straits in conscious might divide 
 With peace which broods, or vengeful storm that scourj 
 These hillsides from the ridged Olympic towers 
 
 Whose snow-thatched peaks immutably abide. 
 
 How prized by us was this serenity 
 Of sane repose and all-inviolate hush. 
 
 Shut from the jangling bedlam of the towns; 
 To stand and face a prophesying sea 
 
 The moon uprisen, or morning's carmine blush 
 There bv the stillness of the shelving downs. 
 
74 
 
 Sonnet CXXX 
 BAG-PIPES 
 
 From skirling bag-pipes in a thicket green 
 
 Beyond the coigne of Beacon Hill's tall mound, 
 Come Gaelic marches, fittingly renowned 
 
 By pipers played in forest depths unseen ; 
 
 Against this withered broom we careless lean 
 Its denseness in the citron sunshine drowned, 
 While still the pipes in droning discord pound 
 
 The tremorous air, the downs that stretch between. 
 
 And then I clutch a knife-scarred wooden bench — 
 This of all music, is most glad and gay 
 
 Your fifes and bugles are mere pots and pans; 
 I see the flags, the fighting, and the trench — 
 By God ! I had forgotten Lucknow's day 
 
 The Campbell pipes, the gathering of the clans. 
 
 Sonnet CXXXI 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 Beside these oaks on carven granite lone 
 
 Kneels Robert Burns at Highland Mary's feet; 
 Beyond, the waves a solemn requiem beat 
 
 A prologue to this tragedy in stone 
 
 And figured bronze ; whence is the plow-boy flown 
 Who loved so wildly and who sang so sweet 
 That fate gave way, and signalled a retreat 
 
 When the world claimed the singer as her own. 
 
 Love while we may ; let this be our decree 
 
 Lest the heart's rapture might remain unsaid; 
 
 This hour, this day was given me and thee 
 Leaving the rabble to its idols wed; 
 
 Here as we journey downward to the sea 
 That chants the glory of the deathless dead. 
 
75 
 
 Sonnet CXXXII 
 THE SHEARS OF FATE 
 
 Still hang the keen, arrested shears of fate 
 
 Above our heads, where fortune bids them stay; 
 
 While plies the whirring loom of night and day 
 With warp and woof of threads dispassionate ; 
 The seasons pass in their accustomed state 
 
 Spring's dryad step and Winter's hodden grey ; 
 
 Yet time at length, brooking no more delay 
 Shall usher us through death's amorphous gate. 
 
 We might have parted when the years were young 
 Much joy have missed, some ills had waved aside, 
 Yet aye the three weird sisters testify, — • 
 So ye have walked life's thorny lanes among 
 By hope sustained, in perfect love allied 
 Or late, or soon, what matters it to die? 
 
 Sonnet CXXXHI 
 FROM A BALCONY 
 
 From this our balcony we view the sea 
 
 Star-gemmed and moon-bedappled where it shines 
 In midnight's hushes ; honeysuckle vines 
 
 Waft up their fragrance here unceasingly ; 
 
 And close at hand a slim arbutus tree 
 
 Crinkled and brown unswerving upward twines ; 
 While drifting past from harped aeolian pines 
 
 Comes a faint breeze attuned in elfin key. 
 
 Not always may we know such occult sense 
 
 Of zones transfigured ; still and more than still, 
 
 When wood and shore are wrapped in rays intense 
 While the moon sleeps on yonder curtained hill ; 
 
 Yet shall the fairies oft this romance write 
 
 In starry script across a page of night. 
 
76 
 
 Sonnet CXXXIV 
 BURNT OFFERINGS 
 
 I offer ashes of the days and nights 
 
 To lay upon the altar of your life; 
 
 All that is sacred to the name of wife 
 I would inscribe ; as one who musing writes 
 His record with a stylus which indites 
 
 A calendar of passing seasons; rife 
 
 With what was registered of joy or strife 
 Of garnered sorrows or of brief delights. 
 
 Burnt-offerings these; and from a Pagan heart. 
 Mere cinders of the hours and days and weeks 
 Brought silently to render up their plea ; 
 Here where the foam-shapes from the tide-rips start 
 Carving us statues of the sandalled Greeks, 
 And Aphrodite, rising from the sea. 
 
 Sonnet CXXXV 
 STARS 
 
 We see the same illuminative stars 
 As once they twinkled, and are twinkling yet, 
 Since time first counted them as brilliants set 
 
 Orion, Venus, Jupiter and Mars ; 
 
 Shining above Napoleonic wars 
 And warning Romeo and Juliet, 
 Or gleaming cold where crowded waters fret 
 
 The sandy confines of these tidal bars. 
 
 So as of eld they gather in the sky 
 Whose distant bourne shall ever be untrod, 
 And cast their luster over ebon sod 
 
 From where they beam, held rigidly on high ; 
 Lighting the gateway to the halls of God 
 
 The mystic flambeaux of eternity. 
 
11 
 
 Sonnet CXXXVI 
 WINTER 
 
 I had an image of a land of snows 
 Of groined and fluted architecture white, 
 Where field and stream beneath the chill despite 
 
 Of bitter days in ivory stiffness froze; 
 
 And where within an icy garden close 
 No blossom nodded in the deadly blight 
 Of winter's tyranny ; while banished quite 
 
 Were garlandry of lily and of rose. 
 
 But here December sunlight's broidery 
 
 Silvers Oak Bay; and balmy west winds blow; 
 
 And sparkling up to us the lissome sea 
 Paces a stately minuet below ; 
 
 And mid the garden's burgeoning poetry- 
 Are wall-flowers and a budding jacqueminot. 
 
 Sonnet CXXXVII 
 MORTMAIN 
 
 If you were first to seek the far beyond 
 Although I pray that we may go together — 
 Nor time nor distance could release the tether 
 
 Which binds us firmly in enduring bond ; 
 
 To you alone my heart and soul respond 
 
 Not caring through the circling seasons whether 
 Spring dons her leaves, or clash of stormy weather 
 
 Flings wide those leaves when Winter waves his wand. 
 
 For night and day I should remember well 
 Your every look and gesture ; to my eyes 
 Your face would be the first star in the skies; 
 
 Your voice would seem the murmur of this shell. 
 And I should feel, by these mysterious sands 
 The spirit-clasp and clinging of your hands. 
 
78 
 
 Sonnet CXXXVIII 
 FAME 
 
 A craving thirst for fame was never mine 
 
 It was enough to dream and go my way ; 
 
 To search for fire deep-hidden in my clay 
 And keep my youth mid the slow years decline; 
 To strive ; to suffer ; yet to make no sign 
 
 Salute the Gods and what they willed, obey ; 
 
 And in the varying periods and their sway 
 To weld my hopes and happiness with thine. 
 
 And to that false lure of the unwary sought 
 The Tantalus-fruit by mortals miscalled fame, 
 I am not urged; but leave my lusty rhyme 
 As some male foundling through the snow is brought, 
 To live or die ; with or without a name 
 Abandoned on the door-step cold of Time. 
 
 Sonnet CXXXIX 
 DRIFTWOOD 
 
 This drift-wood in compact alignment piled 
 Along the beach, or wind-rowed on these rocks, 
 Was winter's harvest, gleaned from scything shocks 
 
 Of wave on wave in January wild ; 
 
 Here Boreas from his northern caves exiled 
 Sang in the rigging at the outer docks. 
 While straining ropes and humming tackle-blocks 
 
 With creaking whine the sailor's watch beguiled. 
 
 But now the sea in amethystine mass 
 Stretches away as level as a floor, 
 Where I and April, reminiscent stand; 
 And mindful still, and stooping as I pass 
 I take a bit of drift-wood from the shore 
 And write your name there, on the unruffled sand. 
 
79 
 
 Sonnet CXL 
 AT THE LAST 
 
 When that my ashes have been laid to rest 
 The crumbled embers of a burned-out fire, 
 I, who have written, daring to aspire 
 
 High as the highest, noblest as the best : — 
 
 All of earth's yearnings knocking at my breast 
 Brother to sorrow, bond-man of the lyre, 
 Who that has loved me like my Heart's Desire 
 
 Or half the story of my vigil guessed. 
 
 Not as the man that I have had to be 
 Shall I to her and other years belong; 
 
 Never a moment from the vision free 
 
 How should they know me, this benighted throng? 
 
 Proud as was Lucifer, stoic as the sea 
 
 Dreamer of dreams and singer of the song. 
 
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