Short Poems

He, who has suffer'd Ship-wrack, feares to saile
Upon the Seas, though with a gentle gale.

Your little flame of life we guard
For the long night that must be hard:
Your eyes we teach to know the day
That shall make wonderful your way.
Bright be your flame, my soul, my son,
Whose pilgrimage I see begun:
And when these guiding hands are gone,
In love of all things good go on.

A wild sea—
stretching to Sado Isle
the River of Heaven

When Eve upon the first of men
—The apple pressed with specious cant,
O, what a thousand pities then
—That Adam was not Adam-ant!

On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature's whole
Are clad in April's bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.

Startled
By a single scream
Of the crane which is reposing
On the surface of the swamp,
All the (other) birds are crying.

Slow in thy tortuous track as grudging Fate,
When lives by Love made one stagnate apart,
Dost thou these lakes, reluctant Songo, mate;
Yet, even as Fate, Love's minister thou art.

Tired cattle stumbled on the dusty trail,
Men's hearts grew faint and women's cheeks turned pale.
But some there were who knew no cares nor fears—
The laughing babies of the pioneers.

The argent sea surged steep below,
Surged languid in such tropic glow;
And two great hearts kept surging so!
The fervid kiss of heaven lay
Precipitate on wood and sea.
Two great souls glowed with ecstasy,
The sea glowed scarce as warm as they.

Yet what to her were burning seas,
Or what to him was forest flame?
They loved; they loved the glorious trees;
The gleaming tides might rise or fall,—
They loved the whispering winds that came
From sea-lost spice-set isles unknown,
With breath not warmer than their own;
They loved, they loved,—and that was all.