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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Songs, Merry and Sad, by John McNeill
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+Songs, Merry and Sad
+
+by John Charles McNeill
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #xxx]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Songs, Merry and Sad, by John McNeill
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+
+
+
+
+
+Songs, Merry and Sad
+
+by John Charles McNeill
+
+
+[American (North Carolina) poet.  1874-1907.]
+
+
+
+To
+JOSEPH P. CALDWELL
+("The Old Man")
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+The Bride
+"Oh, Ask Me Not"
+Isabel
+To ------
+To Melvin Gardner:  Suicide
+Away Down Home
+For Jane's Birthday
+A Secret
+The Old Bad Woman
+Valentine
+A Photograph
+Jesse Covington
+An Idyl
+Home Songs
+M. W. Ransom
+Protest
+Oblivion
+Now!
+Tommy Smith
+Before Bedtime
+"If I Could Glimpse Him"
+Attraction
+Love's Fashion
+Alcestis
+Reminiscence
+Sonnet
+Lines
+An Easter Hymn
+A Christmas Hymn
+When I Go Home
+Odessa
+Trifles
+Sunburnt Boys
+Gray Days
+An Invalid
+A Caged Mocking-Bird
+Dawn
+Harvest
+Two Pictures
+October
+The Old Clock
+Tear Stains
+A Prayer
+She Being Young
+Paul Jones
+The Drudge
+The Wife
+Vision
+September
+Barefooted
+Pardon Time
+The Rattlesnake
+The Prisoner
+Sonnet
+Folk Song
+"97":  The Fast Mail
+Sundown
+At Sea
+L'envoi
+
+
+
+
+Songs, Merry and Sad
+
+
+
+
+The Bride
+
+
+
+The little white bride is left alone
+With him, her lord; the guests have gone;
+    The festal hall is dim.
+No jesting now, nor answering mirth.
+The hush of sleep falls on the earth
+    And leaves her here with him.
+
+Why should there be, O little white bride,
+When the world has left you by his side,
+    A tear to brim your eyes?
+Some old love-face that comes again,
+Some old love-moment sweet with pain
+    Of passionate memories?
+
+Does your heart yearn back with last regret
+For the maiden meads of mignonette
+    And the fairy-haunted wood,
+That you had not withheld from love,
+A little while, the freedom of
+    Your happy maidenhood?
+
+Or is it but a nameless fear,
+A wordless joy, that calls the tear
+    In dumb appeal to rise,
+When, looking on him where he stands,
+You yield up all into his hands,
+    Pleading into his eyes?
+
+For days that laugh or nights that weep
+You two strike oars across the deep
+    With life's tide at the brim;
+And all time's beauty, all love's grace
+Beams, little bride, upon your face
+    Here, looking up at him.
+
+
+
+
+"Oh, Ask Me Not"
+
+
+
+Love, should I set my heart upon a crown,
+ Squander my years, and gain it,
+What recompense of pleasure could I own?
+ For youth's red drops would stain it.
+
+Much have I thought on what our lives may mean,
+ And what their best endeavor,
+Seeing we may not come again to glean,
+ But, losing, lose forever.
+
+Seeing how zealots, making choice of pain,
+ From home and country parted,
+Have thought it life to leave their fellows slain,
+ Their women broken-hearted;
+
+How teasing truth a thousand faces claims,
+ As in a broken mirror,
+And what a father died for in the flames
+ His own son scorns as error;
+
+How even they whose hearts were sweet with song
+ Must quaff oblivion's potion,
+And, soon or late, their sails be lost along
+ The all-surrounding ocean:
+
+Oh, ask me not the haven of our ships,
+ Nor what flag floats above you!
+I hold you close, I kiss your sweet, sweet lips,
+ And love you, love you, love you!
+
+
+
+
+Isabel
+
+
+
+When first I stood before you,
+    Isabel,
+I stood there to adore you,
+    In your spell;
+For all that grace composes,
+And all that beauty knows is
+Your face above the roses,
+    Isabel.
+
+You knew the charm of flowers,
+    Isabel,
+Which, like incarnate hours,
+    Rose and fell
+At your bosom, glowed and gloried,
+White and pale and pink and florid,
+And you touched them with your forehead,
+    Isabel.
+
+Amid the jest and laughter,
+    Isabel,
+I saw you, and thereafter,
+    Ill or well,
+There was nothing else worth seeing,
+Worth following or fleeing,
+And no reason else for being,
+    Isabel.
+
+
+
+
+To ------
+
+
+
+Some time, far hence, when Autumn sheds
+ Her frost upon your hair,
+And you together sit at dusk,
+ May I come to you there?
+And lightly will our hearts turn back
+ To this, then distant, day
+When, while the world was clad in flowers,
+ You two were wed in May.
+
+When we shall sit about your board
+ Three old friends met again,
+Joy will be with us, but not much
+ Of jest and laughter then;
+For Autumn's large content and calm,
+ Like heaven's own smile, will bless
+The harvest of your happy lives
+ With store of happiness.
+
+May you, who, flankt about with flowers,
+ Will plight your faith to-day,
+Hold, evermore enthroned, the love
+ Which you have crowned in May;
+And Time will sleep upon his scythe,
+ The swallow rest his wing,
+Seeing that you at autumntide
+ Still clasp the hands of spring.
+
+
+
+
+To Melvin Gardner:  Suicide
+
+
+
+A flight of doves, with wanton wings,
+ Flash white against the sky.
+In the leafy copse an oriole sings,
+ And a robin sings hard by.
+Sun and shadow are out on the hills;
+The swallow has followed the daffodils;
+In leaf and blade, life throbs and thrills
+ Through the wild, warm heart of May.
+
+To have seen the sun come back, to have seen
+ Children again at play,
+To have heard the thrush where the woods are green
+ Welcome the new-born day,
+To have felt the soft grass cool to the feet,
+To have smelt earth's incense, heavenly sweet,
+To have shared the laughter along the street,
+ And, then, to have died in May!
+
+A thousand roses will blossom red,
+ A thousand hearts be gay,
+For the summer lingers just ahead
+ And June is on her way;
+The bee must bestir him to fill his cells,
+The moon and the stars will weave new spells
+Of love and the music of marriage bells --
+ And, oh, to be dead in May!
+
+
+
+
+Away Down Home
+
+
+
+'T will not be long before they hear
+ The bullbat on the hill,
+And in the valley through the dusk
+ The pastoral whippoorwill.
+A few more friendly suns will call
+ The bluets through the loam
+And star the lanes with buttercups
+    Away down home.
+
+"Knee-deep!" from reedy places
+ Will sing the river frogs.
+The terrapins will sun themselves
+ On all the jutting logs.
+The angler's cautious oar will leave
+ A trail of drifting foam
+Along the shady currents
+    Away down home.
+
+The mocking-bird will feel again
+ The glory of his wings,
+And wanton through the balmy air
+ And sunshine while he sings,
+With a new cadence in his call,
+ The glint-wing'd crow will roam
+From field to newly-furrowed field
+    Away down home.
+
+When dogwood blossoms mingle
+ With the maple's modest red,
+And sweet arbutus wakes at last
+ From out her winter's bed,
+'T would not seem strange at all to meet
+ A dryad or a gnome,
+Or Pan or Psyche in the woods
+    Away down home.
+
+Then come with me, thou weary heart!
+ Forget thy brooding ills,
+Since God has come to walk among
+ His valleys and his hills!
+The mart will never miss thee,
+ Nor the scholar's dusty tome,
+And the Mother waits to bless thee,
+    Away down home.
+
+
+
+
+For Jane's Birthday
+
+
+
+If fate had held a careless knife
+ And clipped one line that drew,
+Of all the myriad lines of life,
+ From Eden up to you;
+If, in the wars and wastes of time,
+ One sire had met the sword,
+One mother died before her prime
+ Or wed some other lord;
+
+Or had some other age been blest,
+ Long past or yet to be,
+And you had been the world's sweet guest
+ Before or after me:
+I wonder how this rose would seem,
+ Or yonder hillside cot;
+For, dear, I cannot even dream
+ A world where you are not!
+
+Thus heaven forfends that I shall drink
+ The gall that might have been,
+If aught had broken a single link
+ Along the lists of men;
+And heaven forgives me, whom it loves,
+ For feigning such distress:
+My heart is happiest when it proves
+ Its depth of happiness.
+
+Enough to see you where you are,
+ Radiant with maiden mirth!
+To bless whatever blessed star
+ Presided o'er your birth,
+That, on this immemorial morn,
+ When heaven was bending low,
+The gods were kind and you were born
+ Twenty sweet years ago!
+
+
+
+
+A Secret
+
+
+
+A little baby went to sleep
+ One night in his white bed,
+And the moon came by to take a peep
+ At the little baby head.
+
+A wind, as wandering winds will do,
+ Brought to the baby there
+Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew
+ Out on some hill somewhere.
+
+And wind and flower and pale moonbeam
+ About the baby's bed
+Stirred and woke the funniest dream
+ In the little sleepy head.
+
+He thought he was all sorts of things
+ From a lion to a cat;
+Sometimes he thought he flew on wings,
+ Or fell and fell, so that
+
+When morning broke he was right glad
+ But much surprised to see
+Himself a soft, pink little lad
+ Just like he used to be.
+
+I would not give this story fame
+ If there were room to doubt it,
+But when he learned to talk, he came
+ And told me all about it.
+
+
+
+
+The Old Bad Woman
+
+
+
+The Old Bad Woman was coming along,
+Busily humming a sort of song.
+
+You could barely see, below her bonnet,
+Her chin where her long nose rested on it.
+
+One tooth thrust out on her lower lip,
+And she held one hand upon her hip.
+
+Then we went to thinking mighty fast,
+For we knew our time had come at last.
+
+For what we had done and didn't do
+The Old Bad Woman would put us through.
+
+If you cried enough to fill your hat,
+She wouldn't care; she was used to that.
+
+Of the jam we had eaten, she would know;
+How we ran barefooted in the snow;
+
+How we cried when they made us take our bath;
+How we tied the grass across the path;
+
+How we bound together the cat and cur --
+We couldn't deny these things to her.
+
+She pulled her nose up off her chin
+And blinked at us with an awful grin.
+
+And we almost died, becaze and because
+Her bony fingers looked like claws.
+
+When she came on up to where we were,
+How could we be polite to her?
+
+You needn't guess how she put us through.
+If you are bad, she'll visit you.
+
+And when she leaves and hobbles off
+You'll think that she has done enough;
+
+For the Old Bad Woman will and can
+Be just as bad as the Old Bad Man!
+
+
+
+
+Valentine
+
+
+
+This is the time for birds to mate;
+   To-day the dove
+Will mark the ancient amorous date
+   With moans of love;
+The crow will change his call to prate
+   His hopes thereof.
+
+The starling will display the red
+   That lights his wings;
+The wren will know the sweet things said
+   By him who swings
+And ducks and dips his crested head
+   And sings and sings.
+
+They are obedient to their blood,
+   Nor ask a sign,
+Save buoyant air and swelling bud,
+   At hands divine,
+But choose, each in the barren wood,
+   His valentine.
+
+In caution's maze they never wait
+   Until they die;
+They flock the season's open gate
+   Ere time steals by.
+Love, shall we see and imitate,
+   You, love, and I?
+
+
+
+
+A Photograph
+
+
+
+When in this room I turn in pondering pace
+And find thine eyes upon me where I stand,
+Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand,
+I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face.
+
+Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace
+Of curving throat, too sweet for beaded band,
+It seems as if some wizard's magic wand
+Had wrought thee for the love of all the race.
+
+Dear face, that will not turn about to see
+The tulips, glorying in the casement sun,
+Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run
+
+Down the damp walls, but follow only me,
+Would that Pygmalion's goddess might be won
+To change this lifeless image into thee!
+
+
+
+
+Jesse Covington
+
+
+
+If I have had some merry times
+ In roaming up and down the earth,
+Have made some happy-hearted rhymes
+ And had my brimming share of mirth,
+And if this song should live in fame
+ When my brief day is dead and gone,
+Let it recall with mine the name
+ Of old man Jesse Covington.
+
+Let it recall his waggish heart --
+ Yeke-hey, yeke-hey, hey-diddle-diddle --
+When, while the fire-logs fell apart,
+ He snatched the bow across his fiddle,
+And looked on, with his eyes half shut,
+ Which meant his soul was wild with fun,
+At our mad capers through the hut
+ Of old man Jesse Covington.
+
+For all the thrilling tales he told,
+ For all the tunes the fiddle knew,
+For all the glorious nights of old
+ We boys and he have rollicked through,
+For laughter all unknown to wealth
+ That roared responsive to a pun,
+A hale, ripe age and ruddy health
+ To old man Jesse Covington!
+
+
+
+
+An Idyl
+
+
+
+Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
+ That fought the current's crest,
+Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
+ Wild wasps had glued their nest.
+
+And in a sprawling cypress' grot,
+ Sheltered and safe from flood,
+Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
+ To shape his house of mud.
+
+In a warm crevice of the bark
+ A basking scorpion clung,
+With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
+ And yellow, twinkling tongue.
+
+A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
+ To do some petty slaughter,
+And set the spiders all a-run
+ On little stilts of water.
+
+Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
+ A deep, cathedral hush,
+Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole,
+ Sweet thrush replied to thrush.
+
+An angler came to cast his fly
+ Beneath a baffling tree.
+I smiled, when I had caught his eye,
+ And he smiled back at me.
+
+When stretched beside a shady elm
+ I watched the dozy heat,
+Nature was moving in her realm,
+ For I could hear her feet.
+
+
+
+
+Home Songs
+
+
+
+The little loves and sorrows are my song:
+ The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires,
+ Where memory broods by winter's evening fires
+O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;
+The little cares and carols that belong
+ To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,
+ And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires
+Wake with the dawn, unfevered, fair, and strong.
+
+If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,
+ And tell the meaning in a mother's eyes;
+Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep
+ Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies,
+More worth than legions in the dust of strife,
+Time, looking back at last, should count my life.
+
+
+
+
+M. W. Ransom
+
+  (Died October 8, 1904)
+
+
+
+For him, who in a hundred battles stood
+ Scorning the cannon's mouth,
+Grimy with flame and red with foeman's blood,
+ For thy sweet sake, O South;
+
+Who, wise as brave, yielded his conquered sword
+ At a vain war's surcease,
+And spoke, thy champion still, the statesman's word
+ In the calm halls of peace;
+
+Who pressed the ruddy wine to thy faint lips,
+ Where thy torn body lay,
+And saw afar time's white in-sailing ships
+ Bringing a happier day:
+
+Oh, mourn for him, dear land that gave him birth!
+ Bow low thy sorrowing head!
+Let thy seared leaves fall silent on the earth
+ Whereunder he lies dead!
+
+In field and hall, in valor and in grace,
+ In wisdom's livery,
+Gentle and brave, he moved with knightly pace,
+ A worthy son of thee!
+
+
+
+
+Protest
+
+
+
+Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
+ Of Pan and oaten quills
+And little songs that, from the dictionary,
+ Learn lore of streams and hills,
+Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
+ And calculated thrills!
+
+Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
+ Is ardor quenched in art
+Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
+ A money-measured heart,
+Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
+ Its bells about the mart?
+
+The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
+ Where rugged voices cry;
+It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
+ The souls of men who die,
+And step by even step its rank progresses,
+ An army marshalled by.
+
+If it be better so, that Babel noises,
+ Losing all course and ken,
+And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices
+ Should never wake again
+To shock a world of modulated voices
+ And mediocre men,
+
+Then he is blest who wears the painted feather
+ And may not turn about
+To dusks when muses romped the dewy heather
+ In unrestricted rout
+And dawns when, if the stars had sung together,
+ The sons of God would shout!
+
+
+
+
+Oblivion
+
+
+
+Green moss will creep
+Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.
+
+Each year will bring
+Another brood of birds to nest and sing.
+
+At dawn will go
+New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.
+
+Night will call home
+The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.
+
+She will not ask,
+The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,
+
+Nor will she care
+To know if I were brave or you were fair.
+
+No one will think
+What chalice life had offered us to drink,
+
+When from our clay
+The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.
+
+
+
+
+Now!
+
+
+
+Her brown hair knew no royal crest,
+ No gems nor jeweled charms,
+No roses her bright cheek caressed,
+ No lilies kissed her arms.
+In simple, modest womanhood
+ Clad, as was meet, in white,
+The fairest flower of all, she stood
+ Amid the softest light.
+
+It had been worth a perilous quest
+ To see the court she drew, --
+My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
+ My lily moist with dew;
+Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
+ The gay throng let us be,
+To see her turn at last and reach
+ Her white hands out to me.
+
+
+
+
+Tommy Smith
+
+
+
+When summer's languor drugs my veins
+ And fills with sleep the droning times,
+Like sluggish dreams among my brains,
+ There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,
+Idle as clouds that stray through heaven
+ And vague as if they were a myth,
+But in these rhymes is always given
+ A health for old Bluebritches Smith.
+
+Among my thoughts of what is good
+ In olden times and distant lands,
+Is that do-nothing neighborhood
+ Where the old cider-hogshead stands
+To welcome with its brimming gourd
+ The canny crowd of kin and kith
+Who meet about the bibulous board
+ Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.
+
+In years to come, when stealthy change
+ Hath stolen the cider-press away
+And the gnarled orchards of the grange
+ Have fallen before a slow decay,
+Were I so cunning, I would carve
+ From some time-scorning monolith
+A sculpture that should well preserve
+ The fame of old Bluebritches Smith.
+
+
+
+
+Before Bedtime
+
+
+
+The cat sleeps in a chimney jam
+ With ashes in her fur,
+An' Tige, from on the yuther side,
+ He keeps his eye on her.
+
+The jar o' curds is on the hearth,
+ An' I'm the one to turn it.
+I'll crawl in bed an' go to sleep
+ When maw begins to churn it.
+
+Paw bends to read his almanax
+ An' study out the weather,
+An' bud has got a gourd o' grease
+ To ile his harness leather.
+
+Sis looks an' looks into the fire,
+ Half-squintin' through her lashes,
+An' I jis watch my tater where
+ It shoots smoke through the ashes.
+
+
+
+
+"If I Could Glimpse Him"
+
+
+
+When in the Scorpion circles low
+ The sun with fainter, dreamier light,
+And at a far-off hint of snow
+ The giddy swallows take to flight,
+And droning insects sadly know
+ That cooler falls the autumn night;
+
+When airs breathe drowsily and sweet,
+ Charming the woods to colors gay,
+And distant pastures send the bleat
+ Of hungry lambs at break of day,
+Old Hermes' wings grow on my feet,
+ And, good-by, home!  I'm called away!
+
+There on the hills should I behold,
+ Sitting upon an old gray stone
+That humps its back up through the mold,
+ And piping in a monotone,
+Pan, as he sat in days of old,
+ My joy would bid surprise begone!
+
+Dear Pan!  'Tis he that calls me out;
+ He, lying in some hazel copse,
+Where lazily he turns about
+ And munches each nut as it drops,
+Well pleased to see me swamped in doubt
+ At sound of his much-changing stops.
+
+If I could glimpse him by the vine
+ Where purple fox-grapes hang their store,
+I'd tell him, in his leafy shrine,
+ How poets say he lives no more.
+He'd laugh, and pluck a muscadine,
+ And fall to piping, as of yore!
+
+
+
+
+Attraction
+
+
+
+He who wills life wills its condition sweet,
+Having made love its mother, joy its quest,
+That its perpetual sequence might not rest
+On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet;
+
+For reason moves with cautious, careful feet,
+Debating whether life or death were best,
+And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest
+In many a heart which life hath set to beat.
+
+But I will cast my fate with love, and trust
+Her honeyed heart that guides the pollened bee
+And sets the happy wing-seeds fluttering free;
+
+And I will bless the law which saith, Thou must!
+And, wet with sea or shod with weary dust,
+Will follow back and back and back to thee!
+
+
+
+
+Love's Fashion
+
+
+
+Oh, I can jest with Margaret
+ And laugh a gay good-night,
+But when I take my Helen's hand
+ I dare not clasp it tight.
+
+I dare not hold her dear white hand
+ More than a quivering space,
+And I should bless a breeze that blew
+ Her hair into my face.
+
+'T is Margaret I call sweet names:
+ Helen is too, too dear
+For me to stammer little words
+ Of love into her ear.
+
+So now, good-night, fair Margaret,
+ And kiss me e'er we part!
+But one dumb touch of Helen's hand,
+ And, oh, my heart, my heart!
+
+
+
+
+Alcestis
+
+
+
+Not long the living weep above their dead,
+And you will grieve, Admetus, but not long.
+The winter's silence in these desolate halls
+Will break with April's laughter on your lips;
+The bees among the flowers, the birds that mate,
+The widowed year, grown gaunt with memory
+And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come
+With lotus comfort, feeding all your veins.
+The vining brier will crawl across my grave,
+And you will woo another in my stead.
+Those tender, foolish names you called me by,
+Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied,
+The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed
+Life's busy stir, and left us two alone,
+Will you remember? or, when dawn creeps in,
+And you bend o'er another's pillowed head,
+Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face,
+Until her low love-laughter welcomes you,
+Will you, down-gazing at her waking eyes,
+Forget?
+    So have I loved you, my Admetus,
+I thank the cruel fates who clip my life
+To lengthen yours, they tarry not for age
+To dim my eye and blanch my cheek, but now
+Take me, while my lips are sweet to you
+And youth hides yet amid this hair of mine,
+Brown in the shadow, golden in the light.
+Bend down and kiss me, dying for your sake,
+Not gratefully, but sadly, love's farewell;
+And if the flowering year's oblivion
+Lend a new passion to thy life, far down
+In the dim Stygian shadows wandering,
+I will not know, but still will cherish there,
+Where no change comes, thy love upon my lips.
+
+
+
+
+Reminiscence
+
+
+
+We sang old love-songs on the way
+ In sad and merry snatches,
+Your fingers o'er the strings astray
+ Strumming the random catches.
+
+And ever, as the skiff plied on
+ Among the trailing willows,
+Trekking the darker deeps to shun
+ The gleaming sandy shallows,
+
+It seemed that we had, ages gone,
+ In some far summer weather,
+When this same faery moonlight shone,
+ Sung these same songs together.
+
+And every grassy cape we passed,
+ And every reedy island,
+Even the bank'd cloud in the west
+ That loomed a sombre highland;
+
+And you, with dewmist on your hair,
+ Crowned with a wreath of lilies,
+Laughing like Lalage the fair
+ And tender-eyed like Phyllis:
+
+I know not if 't were here at home,
+ By some old wizard's orders,
+Or long ago in Crete or Rome
+ Or fair Provencal borders,
+
+But now, as when a faint flame breaks
+ From out its smouldering embers,
+My heart stirs in its sleep, and wakes,
+ And yet but half-remembers
+
+That you and I some other time
+ Moved through this dream of glory,
+Like lovers in an ancient rhyme,
+ A long-forgotten story.
+
+
+
+
+Sonnet
+
+
+
+I would that love were subject unto law!
+ Upon his person I should lay distraint
+ And force him thus to answer my complaint,
+Which I, in well-considered counts, should draw.
+Not free to fly, he needs must seek some flaw
+ To mar my pleading, though his heart were faint;
+ Declare his counsel to me, and acquaint
+Himself with maxim, precedent, and saw.
+
+Ah, I could win him with authorities,
+ If suing thus in such a sober court;
+ Could read him many an ancient rhym'd report
+Of such sad cases, tears would fill his eyes
+ And he confess a judgment, or resort
+To some well-pleasing terms of compromise!
+
+
+
+
+Lines
+
+
+
+To you, dear mother heart, whose hair is gray
+Above this page to-day,
+Whose face, though lined with many a smile and care,
+Grows year by year more fair,
+
+Be tenderest tribute set in perfect rhyme,
+That haply passing time
+May cull and keep it for strange lips to pay
+When we have gone our way;
+
+And, to strange men, weary of field and street,
+Should this, my song, seem sweet,
+Yours be the joy, for all that made it so
+You know, dear heart, you know.
+
+
+
+
+An Easter Hymn
+
+
+
+The Sun has come again and fed
+ The lily's lamp with light,
+And raised from dust a rose, rich red,
+ And a little star-flower, white;
+He also guards the Pleiades
+ And holds his planets true:
+But we -- we know not which of these
+ The easier task to do.
+
+But, since from heaven he stoops to breathe
+ A flower to balmy air,
+Surely our lives are not beneath
+ The kindness of his care;
+And, as he guides the blade that gropes
+ Up from the barren sod,
+So, from the ashes of our hopes,
+ Will beauty grow toward God.
+
+Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life, --
+ We know but that thou art, --
+Thou seest, through all our waste of strife,
+ One groping human heart,
+Weary of words and broken sight,
+ But moved with deep accord
+To worship where thy lilies light
+ The altar of its Lord.
+
+
+
+
+A Christmas Hymn
+
+
+
+Near where the shepherds watched by night
+ And heard the angels o'er them,
+The wise men saw the starry light
+ Stand still at last before them.
+No armored castle there to ward
+ His precious life from danger,
+But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord
+ Lay in a lowly manger.
+No booming bells proclaimed his birth,
+ No armies marshalled by,
+No iron thunders shook the earth,
+ No rockets clomb the sky;
+The temples builded in his name
+ Were shapeless granite then,
+And all the choirs that sang his fame
+ Were later breeds of men.
+But, while the world about him slept,
+ Nor cared that he was born,
+One gentle face above him kept
+ Its mother watch till morn;
+And, if his baby eyes could tell
+ What grace and glory were,
+No roar of gun, no boom of bell
+ Were worth the look of her.
+Now praise to God that ere his grace
+ Was scorned and he reviled
+He looked into his mother's face,
+ A little helpless child;
+And praise to God that ere men strove
+ About his tomb in war
+One loved him with a mother's love,
+ Nor knew a creed therefor.
+
+
+
+
+When I Go Home
+
+
+
+When I go home, green, green will glow the grass,
+Whereon the flight of sun and cloud will pass;
+ Long lines of wood-ducks through the deepening gloam
+Will hold above the west, as wrought on brass,
+ And fragrant furrows will have delved the loam,
+        When I go home.
+
+When I go home, the dogwood stars will dash
+The solemn woods above the bearded ash,
+ The yellow-jasmine, whence its vine hath clomb,
+Will blaze the valleys with its golden flash,
+ And every orchard flaunt its polychrome,
+        When I go home.
+
+When I go home and stroll about the farm,
+The thicket and the barnyard will be warm.
+ Jess will be there, and Nigger Bill, and Tom --
+On whom time's chisel works no hint of harm --
+ And, oh, 'twill be a day to rest and roam,
+        When I go home!
+
+
+
+
+Odessa
+
+
+
+A horror of great darkness over them,
+No cloud of fire to guide and cover them,
+Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread,
+They crouch on alien soil among their dead.
+
+"Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,"
+This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord,
+Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand years
+Is black with blood and blotted out with tears.
+
+Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,
+And wept beside the streams of Babylon,
+Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen
+Into a wider wilderness of men?
+
+Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,
+Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,
+And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficed
+For all the hate that grew from love of Christ!
+
+Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry,
+Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die,
+Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem,
+There being no sword that wills to succor them, --
+
+And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee,
+And all thy people lift their eyes to thee,
+When, for the darkness' horror over them,
+Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them.
+
+
+
+
+Trifles
+
+
+
+What shall I bring you, sweet?
+ A posy prankt with every April hue:
+ The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,
+ Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?
+
+Or shall I bring you, sweet,
+ Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset,
+ Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet,
+ That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget?
+
+What shall I bring you, sweet?
+ Was ever trifle yet so held amiss
+ As not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss,
+ And merit dalliance at a long, long kiss?
+
+
+
+
+Sunburnt Boys
+
+
+
+Down on the Lumbee river
+ Where the eddies ripple cool
+Your boat, I know, glides stealthily
+ About some shady pool.
+The summer's heats have lulled asleep
+ The fish-hawk's chattering noise,
+And all the swamp lies hushed about
+ You sunburnt boys.
+
+You see the minnow's waves that rock
+ The cradled lily leaves.
+From a far field some farmer's song,
+ Singing among his sheaves,
+Comes mellow to you where you sit,
+ Each man with boatman's poise,
+There, in the shimmering water lights,
+ You sunburnt boys.
+
+I know your haunts:  each gnarly bole
+ That guards the waterside,
+Each tuft of flags and rushes where
+ The river reptiles hide,
+Each dimpling nook wherein the bass
+ His eager life employs
+Until he dies -- the captive of
+ You sunburnt boys.
+
+You will not -- will you? -- soon forget
+ When I was one of you,
+Nor love me less that time has borne
+ My craft to currents new;
+Nor shall I ever cease to share
+ Your hardships and your joys,
+Robust, rough-spoken, gentle-hearted
+ Sunburnt boys!
+
+
+
+
+Gray Days
+
+
+
+A soaking sedge,
+A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,
+
+Low clouds and rain,
+And loneliness and languor worse than pain.
+
+Mottled with moss,
+Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.
+
+Shrill streaks of light
+Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,
+
+And low between,
+The sombre cedar and the ivy green.
+
+Upon the stone
+Of each in turn who called this land his own
+
+The gray rain beats
+And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,
+
+And at my eaves
+A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.
+
+
+
+
+An Invalid
+
+
+
+I care not what his name for God may be,
+ Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell,
+ The alphabet whereby he strives to spell
+His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee,
+Since, with his grave before him, he can see
+ White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell
+ Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell,
+Seems but the waiting tongue of liberty.
+
+For names and knowledge, idle breed of breath,
+ And cant and creed, the progeny of strife,
+ Thronging the safe, companioned streets of life,
+Shrink trembling from the cold, clear eye of death,
+ And learn too late why dying lips can smile:
+ That goodness is the only creed worth while.
+
+
+
+
+A Caged Mocking-Bird
+
+
+
+I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
+ And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
+In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
+ The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,
+ Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,
+And twitter where the autumn hedges run,
+Join all the months of music into one.
+
+I shut my eyes:  the shy wood-thrush is there,
+ And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;
+Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere
+ A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;
+ From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;
+And when the oriole sets his full heart free
+Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.
+
+The vision-bringer hangs upon a nail
+ Before a dusty window, looking dim
+On marts where trade goes hot with box and bale;
+ The sad-eyed passers have no time for him.
+ His captor sits, with beaded face and grim,
+Plying a listless awl, as in a dream
+Of pastures winding by a shady stream.
+
+Gray bird, what spirit bides with thee unseen?
+ For now, when every songster finds his love
+And makes his nest where woods are deep and green,
+ Free as the winds, thy song should mock the dove.
+ If I were thou, my grief in moans should move
+At thinking -- otherwhere, by others' art
+Charmed and forgetful -- of mine own sweetheart.
+
+But I, who weep when fortune seems unkind
+ To prison me within a space of walls,
+When far-off grottoes hold my loves enshrined
+ And every love is cruel when it calls;
+ Who sulk for hills and fern-fledged waterfalls, --
+I blush to offer sorrow unto thee,
+Master of fate, scorner of destiny!
+
+
+
+
+Dawn
+
+
+
+The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
+ Again, with waking life along its way,
+The landscape marches westward mile on mile
+ And time throbs white into another day.
+
+Though eager life must wait on livelihood,
+ And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,
+Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, would
+ That ours might be this day the eagle's heart!
+
+
+
+
+Harvest
+
+
+
+Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;
+Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;
+ A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;
+ The twitter of killdees keen in the air;
+The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam
+        On the last load home.
+
+There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke
+Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak.
+ The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her
+ Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh,
+And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loam
+        On the last load home.
+
+
+
+
+Two Pictures
+
+
+
+One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm,
+ A halo, like an angel's, on her hair.
+She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm.
+ A holy presence hovers round her there,
+ And she, for all her mother-pains more fair,
+Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stir
+The hearts of men bear worship unto her.
+
+Another wanders where the cold wind blows,
+ Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife.
+Homeless forever, at her bosom close
+ She holds the purchase of her love and life,
+ Of motherhood, unglorified as wife;
+And bitterer than the world's relentless scorn
+The knowing her child were happier never born.
+
+Whence are the halo and the fiery shame
+ That fashion thus a crown and curse of love?
+Have roted words such power to bless and blame?
+ Ay, men have stained a raven from many a dove,
+ And all the grace and all the grief hereof
+Are the two words which bore one's lips apart
+And which the other hoarded in her heart.
+
+He who stooped down and wrote upon the sand,
+ The God-heart in him touched to tenderness,
+Saw deep, saw what we cannot understand, --
+ We, who draw near the shrine of one to bless
+ The while we scourge another's sore distress,
+And judge like gods between the ill and good,
+The glory and the guilt of womanhood.
+
+
+
+
+October
+
+
+
+The thought of old, dear things is in thine eyes,
+O, month of memories!
+Musing on days thine heart hath sorrow of,
+Old joy, dead hope, dear love,
+
+I see thee stand where all thy sisters meet
+To cast down at thy feet
+The garnered largess of the fruitful year,
+And on thy cheek a tear.
+
+Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf
+To blind the eyes of grief;
+Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit
+That sorrow may be mute;
+
+A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,
+Ere the gray dusk may creep
+Sober and sad along thy dusty ways,
+Like a lone nun, who prays;
+
+High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;
+Thy lazy lizard sprawls
+On his gray stone, and many slow winds creep
+About thy hedge, asleep;
+
+The sun swings farther toward his love, the south,
+To kiss her glowing mouth;
+And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers,
+Is deeply hid in flowers.
+
+Would that thy streams were Lethe, and might flow
+Where lotus blossoms blow,
+And all the sweets wherewith thy riches bless
+Might hold no bitterness!
+
+Would, in thy beauty, we might all forget
+Dead days and old regret,
+And through thy realm might fare us forth to roam,
+Having no thought for home!
+
+And yet I feel, beneath thy queen's attire,
+Woven of blood and fire,
+Beneath the golden glory of thy charm
+Thy mother heart beats warm,
+
+And if, mayhap, a wandering child of thee,
+Weary of land and sea,
+Should turn him homeward from his dreamer's quest
+To sob upon thy breast,
+
+Thine arm would fold him tenderly, to prove
+How thine eyes brimmed with love,
+And thy dear hand, with all a mother's care,
+Would rest upon his hair.
+
+
+
+
+The Old Clock
+
+
+
+All day low clouds and slanting rain
+Have swept the woods and dimmed the plain.
+Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak,
+And caught and swirled away the smoke,
+But, all day long, the wooden clock
+        Went on, Nic-noc, nic-noc.
+
+When deep at night I wake with fear,
+And shudder in the dark to hear
+The roaring storm's unguided strength,
+Peace steals into my heart at length,
+When, calm amid the shout and shock,
+        I hear, Nic-noc, nic-noc.
+
+And all the winter long 't is I
+Who bless its sheer monotony --
+Its scorn of days, which cares no whit
+For time, except to measure it:
+The prosy, dozy, cosy clock,
+        Nic-noc, nic-noc, nic-noc!
+
+
+
+
+Tear Stains
+
+
+
+Tear-marks stain from page to page
+ This book my fathers left to me, --
+So dull that nothing but its age
+ Were worth its freight across the sea.
+
+But tear stains!  When, by whom, and why?
+ Thus takes my fancy to its wings;
+For grief is old, and one may cry
+ About so many things!
+
+
+
+
+A Prayer
+
+
+
+If many years should dim my inward sight,
+ Till, stirred with no emotion,
+I might stand gazing at the fall of night
+ Across the gloaming ocean;
+
+Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,
+ Would seem an oft-told story,
+And the old sorrow of heroic wars
+ Be faded of its glory;
+
+Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk,
+ The noise of field and city,
+The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,
+ I felt no thrill of pity;
+
+Till dawn should come without her old desire,
+ And day brood o'er her stages, --
+O let me die, too frail for nature's hire,
+ And rest a million ages.
+
+
+
+
+She Being Young
+
+
+
+The home of love is her blue eyes,
+Wherein all joy, all beauty lies,
+More sweet than hopes of paradise,
+    She being young.
+
+Speak of her with a miser's praise;
+She craves no golden speech; her ways
+Wind through charmed nights and magic days,
+    She being young.
+
+She is so far from pain and death,
+So warm her cheek, so sweet her breath
+Glad words are all the words she saith,
+    She being young.
+
+Seeing her face, it seems not far
+To Troy's heroic field of war,
+To Troy and all great things that are,
+    She being young.
+
+
+
+
+Paul Jones
+
+
+
+A century of silent suns
+ Have set since he was laid on sleep,
+And now they bear with booming guns
+ And streaming banners o'er the deep
+A withered skin and clammy hair
+ Upon a frame of human bones:
+Whose corse?  We neither know nor care,
+ Content to name it John Paul Jones.
+
+His dust were as another's dust;
+ His bones -- what boots it where they lie?
+What matter where his sword is rust,
+ Or where, now dark, his eagle eye?
+No foe need fear his arm again,
+ Nor love, nor praise can make him whole;
+But o'er the farthest sons of men
+ Will brood the glory of his soul.
+
+Careless though cenotaph or tomb
+ Shall tower his country's monument,
+Let banners float and cannon boom,
+ A million-throated shout be spent,
+Until his widowed sea shall laugh
+ With sunlight in her mantling foam,
+While, to his tomb or cenotaph,
+ We bid our hero welcome home.
+
+Twice exiled, let his ashes rest
+ At home, afar, or in the wave,
+But keep his great heart with us, lest
+ Our nation's greatness find its grave;
+And, while the vast deep listens by,
+ When armored wrong makes terms to right,
+Keep on our lips his proud reply,
+ "Sir, I have but begun to fight!"
+
+
+
+
+The Drudge
+
+
+
+Repose upon her soulless face,
+ Dig the grave and leave her;
+But breathe a prayer that, in his grace,
+He who so loved this toiling race
+ To endless rest receive her.
+
+Oh, can it be the gates ajar
+ Wait not her humble quest,
+Whose life was but a patient war
+Against the death that stalked from far
+ With neither haste nor rest;
+
+To whom were sun and moon and cloud,
+ The streamlet's pebbly coil,
+The transient, May-bound, feathered crowd,
+The storm's frank fury, thunder-browed,
+ But witness of her toil;
+
+Whose weary feet knew not the bliss
+ Of dance by jocund reed;
+Who never dallied at a kiss!
+If heaven refuses her, life is
+ A tragedy indeed!
+
+
+
+
+The Wife
+
+
+
+They locked him in a prison cell,
+    Murky and mean.
+She kissed him there a wife's farewell
+    The bars between.
+And when she turned to go, the crowd,
+Thinking to see her shamed and bowed,
+Saw her pass out as calm and proud
+    As any queen.
+
+She passed a kinsman on the street,
+    To whose sad eyes
+She made reply with smile as sweet
+    As April skies.
+To one who loved her once and knew
+The sorrow of her life, she threw
+A gay word, ere his tale was due
+    Of sympathies.
+
+She met a playmate, whose red rose
+    Had never a thorn,
+Whom fortune guided when she chose
+    Her marriage morn,
+And, smiling, looked her in the eye;
+But, seeing the tears of sympathy,
+Her smile died, and she passed on by
+    In quiet scorn.
+
+They could not know how, when by night
+    The city slept,
+A sleepless woman, still and white,
+    The watches kept;
+How her wife-loyal heart had borne
+The keen pain of a flowerless thorn,
+How hot the tears that smiles and scorn
+    Had held unwept.
+
+
+
+
+Vision
+
+
+
+The wintry sun was pale
+ On hill and hedge;
+The wind smote with its flail
+ The seeded sedge;
+High up above the world,
+ New taught to fly,
+The withered leaves were hurled
+ About the sky;
+And there, through death and dearth,
+ It went and came, --
+The Glory of the earth
+ That hath no name.
+
+I know not what it is;
+ I only know
+It quivers in the bliss
+ Where roses blow,
+That on the winter's breath
+ It broods in space,
+And o'er the face of death
+ I see its face,
+And start and stand between
+ Delight and dole,
+As though mine eyes had seen
+ A living Soul.
+
+And I have followed it,
+ As thou hast done,
+Where April shadows flit
+ Beneath the sun;
+In dawn and dusk and star,
+ In joy and fear,
+Have seen its glory far
+ And felt it near,
+And dared recall his name
+ Who stood unshod
+Before a fireless flame,
+ And called it God.
+
+
+
+
+September
+
+
+
+I have not been among the woods,
+Nor seen the milk-weeds burst their hoods,
+
+The downy thistle-seeds take wing,
+Nor the squirrel at his garnering.
+
+And yet I know that, up to God,
+The mute month holds her goldenrod,
+
+That clump and copse, o'errun with vines,
+Twinkle with clustered muscadines,
+
+And in deserted churchyard places
+Dwarf apples smile with sunburnt faces.
+
+I know how, ere her green is shed,
+The dogwood pranks herself with red;
+
+How the pale dawn, chilled through and through,
+Comes drenched and draggled with her dew;
+
+How all day long the sunlight seems
+As if it lit a land of dreams,
+
+Till evening, with her mist and cloud,
+Begins to weave her royal shroud.
+
+If yet, as in old Homer's land,
+Gods walk with mortals, hand in hand,
+
+Somewhere to-day, in this sweet weather,
+Thinkest thou not they walk together?
+
+
+
+
+Barefooted
+
+
+
+The girls all like to see the bluets in the lane
+ And the saucy johnny-jump-ups in the meadow,
+But, we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again,
+ Throwin' a sort of summer-lookin' shadow;
+For the very first mild mornin' when the woods are white
+ (And we needn't even ask a soul about it)
+We leave our shoes right where we pulled them off at night,
+ And, barefooted once again, we run and shout it:
+  You may take the country over --
+  When the bluebird turns a rover,
+  And the wind is soft and hazy,
+  And you feel a little lazy,
+  And the hunters quit the possums --
+  It's the time for dogwood blossoms.
+
+We feel so light we wish there were more fences here;
+ We'd like to jump and jump them, all together!
+No sleds for us, no guns, nor even 'simmon beer,
+ No nothin' but the blossoms and fair weather!
+The meadow is a little sticky right at first,
+ But a few short days 'll wipe away that trouble.
+To feel so good and gay, I wouldn't mind the worst
+ That could be done by any field o' stubble.
+  O, all the trees are seemin' sappy!
+  O, all the folks are smilin' happy!
+ And there's joy in every little bit of room;
+  But the happiest of them all
+  At the Shanghai rooster's call
+ Are we barefoots when the dogwoods burst abloom!
+
+
+
+
+Pardon Time
+
+
+
+Give over now; forbear.  The moonlight steeps
+In silver silence towered castle-keeps
+ And cottage crofts, where apples bend the bough.
+Peace guards us round, and many a tired heart sleeps.
+ Let me brush back the shadow from your brow.
+        Give over now.
+
+On such a night, how sweet, how sweet is life,
+Even to the insect piper with his fife!
+ And must your troubled face still bear the blight
+Of strength that runs itself to waste in strife?
+ For love's own heart should throb through all the light
+        Of such a night.
+
+
+
+
+The Rattlesnake
+
+
+
+Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,
+Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,
+Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate.
+
+Is 't lure, or warning?  Those small bells may sing
+Like Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing,
+To lead stark life where mailed death is king;
+
+Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill,
+Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill,
+And life and death fight equal in her will.
+
+
+
+
+The Prisoner
+
+
+
+From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
+He leaned against his window-bars to rest
+And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.
+
+It came with sundown noises from the moors,
+Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
+Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.
+
+He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
+And certain scents stole up across the street
+That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.
+
+Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
+Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
+And watched above the quiet tents of night.
+
+Alas, that the old Mother should not know
+How ached his heart to be entreated so,
+Who heard her calling and who could not go!
+
+
+
+
+Sonnet
+
+
+
+To-day was but a dead day in my hands.
+ Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,
+ Mere idle winds above the faded grass.
+And I, as though a captive held in bands,
+Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands
+ Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass
+ And sink into his fabled sea of glass
+With glory of farewell to many lands.
+
+Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,
+ That I have suffered more than pain of toil,
+ Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,
+And they who see new light on beaten ways!
+The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars
+And stares out into depth on depth of stars!
+
+
+
+
+Folk Song
+
+
+
+When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
+        At evenfall
+        And voices range
+Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,
+
+Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
+        Like migrant doves,
+        Wake and give wing
+To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.
+
+The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
+        The ancient charms
+        Of dew and dusk
+Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,
+
+And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
+        On new men's lips,
+        Some old song starts,
+Made of the music of millennial hearts,
+
+Whereto one listens as from long ago
+        And learns to know
+        That one day's tears
+And love and life are as a thousand years',
+
+And that some simple shepherd, singing of
+        His pain and love,
+        May haply find
+His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.
+
+
+
+
+"97":  The Fast Mail
+
+
+
+Where the rails converge to the station yard
+She stands one moment, breathing hard,
+
+And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,
+She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,
+
+And out, through the tracks that lead astray,
+Cautiously, slowly she picks her way,
+
+And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve,
+When she swings her nose to the westward curve,
+
+And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky,
+With a bound of speed and a conquering cry.
+
+The hazy horizon is all she sees,
+Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees,
+
+Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land,
+Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand,
+
+Nor the cots and hamlets that know no more
+Than a shriek and a flash and a flying roar;
+
+But, bearing her tidings, she trembles and throbs,
+And laughs in her throat, and quivers and sobs;
+
+And the fire in her heart is a red core of heat,
+That drives like a passion through forest and street,
+
+Till she sees the ships in their harbor at rest,
+And sniffs at the trail to the end of her quest.
+
+If I were the driver who handles her reins,
+Up hill and down hill and over the plains,
+
+To watch the slow mountains give back in the west,
+To know the new reaches that wait every crest,
+
+To hold, when she swerves, with a confident clutch,
+And feel how she shivers and springs to the touch,
+
+With the snow on her back and the sun in her face,
+And nothing but time as a quarry to chase,
+
+I should grip hard my teeth, and look where she led,
+And brace myself stooping, and give her her head,
+
+And urge her, and soothe her, and serve all her need,
+And exult in the thunder and thrill of her speed.
+
+
+
+
+Sundown
+
+
+
+Hills, wrapped in gray, standing along the west;
+ Clouds, dimly lighted, gathering slowly;
+The star of peace at watch above the crest --
+ Oh, holy, holy, holy!
+
+We know, O Lord, so little what is best;
+ Wingless, we move so lowly;
+But in thy calm all-knowledge let us rest --
+ Oh, holy, holy, holy!
+
+
+
+
+At Sea
+
+
+
+When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion,
+ Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod,
+We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean,
+ A great gray hush, like the shadow of God.
+
+The sky dome cut with its compass in sunder
+ A circle of sea from the darkened land, --
+A circle of tremulous waste and wonder,
+ O'er which one groped with a childish hand.
+
+The true stars came to their stations in heaven,
+ The false stars shivered deep down in the sea,
+And the white crests went like monsters, driven
+ By winds that never would let them be,
+
+And there, where the elements mingled and muttered,
+ We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart,
+Full of the vastness that never was uttered
+ By symbol of words or by echo of art.
+
+
+
+
+L'envoi
+
+
+
+God willed, who never needed speech,
+   "Let all things be:"
+And, lo, the starry firmament
+   And land and sea
+And his first thought of life that lives
+   In you and me.
+
+His circle of eternity
+   We see in part;
+Our spirits are his breath, our hearts
+   Beat from his heart;
+Hence we have played as little gods
+   And called it art.
+
+Lacking his power, we shared his dream
+   Of perfect things;
+Between the tents of hope and sweet
+   Rememberings
+Have sat in ashes, but our souls
+   Went forth on wings.
+
+Where life fell short of some desire
+   In you and me,
+Feeling for beauty which our eyes
+   Could never see,
+Behold, from out the void we willed
+   That it should be,
+
+And sometimes dreamed our lisping songs
+   Of humanhood
+Might voice his silent harmony
+   Of waste and wood,
+And he, beholding his and ours,
+   Might find it good.
+
+
+
+
+[End of original text.]
+
+
+
+
+
+Notes:
+
+
+
+John Charles McNeill was born in Scotland County, near Laurinburg,
+North Carolina, on 26 July 1874, and died on 17 October 1907
+(when he was 33 years old).  He only produced this one volume before he died,
+though he planned a second, which was published posthumously.
+"Songs, Merry and Sad", first published in Charlotte in 1906,
+went through at least five printings over more than 60 years.
+(This text is taken from the very first edition.)
+
+Both of McNeill's grandfathers came from Scotland.
+
+McNeill attended Wake Forest College, where he received both
+his Bachelor's and Master's degrees.  In 1899-1900 he taught English
+at Mercer University.
+
+Some of his poems were published nationally as early as 1901.
+More of his poems were published by `The Charlotte Observer' starting in 1903,
+and in 1904 he joined its staff.
+
+
+This etext was created by entering the text (manually) twice,
+once from the first printing (1906) and once from the second printing
+(no date), and comparing the two.  There were some slight differences
+in the two printings.
+
+A portrait of John Charles McNeill faces the title page (p. 3)
+in the second printing, but is absent in the first.
+
+The first printing gives the publisher as Stone & Barringer Co.
+and gives the date as 1906.  The second printing gives the publisher
+as Stone Publishing Co., and gives no date.  Both were printed
+in Charlotte, N.C.
+
+One error was corrected (the second printing also corrected this error):
+
+(p. 73)
+[ A holy presence hovers round here there, ]
+  changed to:
+[ A holy presence hovers round her there, ]
+
+
+The second printing also changed the title of the poem
+[ To Melvin Gardner:  Suicide ], on p. 19, to [ To Melvin Gardner: ]
+-- in the text, but not in the table of Contents.  This may have been done
+in deference to the family -- attitudes on suicide were once quite different
+than now -- but as it has been quite some time, and the original title
+gives more meaning to the poem, it has been retained.
+
+The Title of the poem [ Now! ] did not have the exclamation point
+in the table of Contents.  It has been added to match the text.
+The Title of the poem [ "97":  The Fast Mail ] appeared as such
+in the text, but as ["97:"  The Fast Mail ] in the Contents.
+The latter was changed to match the text.
+
+In the original, the book's title does not separate the Contents
+from the first poem.  It has been placed there as a sort of divider.
+
+In two places ASCII fails to provide enough characters for a correct rendering.
+They are the words Provencal (the c with a cedilla) and mailed
+(the e with an acute accent, to indicate that the word is to be said
+with two syllables).  These occur in "Reminiscence" and "The Rattlesnake".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Songs, Merry and Sad, by John Charles McNeill
+
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