Short Poems

Lo! yonder rides the empress of the night!
Unveil'd she casts around her silver light;
Cease not, fair orb, thy slow majestic march,
Resume again thy seat in yon blue arch.
E'en now, as weary of the tedious way,
Thy head on ocean's bosom thou dost lay;
In his blue waves thou hid'st thy shining face,
And gloomy darkness takes its vacant place.

Lo, where the routed shadows pass,
Upon each lifted blade of grass
The tokens of a fray—
Pale life-drops from the heart of Night,
Mute witnesses of sudden flight
Before the host of Day.

With whispers of futurity
And echoes of the past,
Twin birds a shelter find in thee
Against the wintry blast,—
The fledgling Hope, that preens her wing,
Too timorous to fly,
And Memory, that comes to sing
Her coranach, and die.

So near me dwells my neighbor Death
That e'en what Silence pondereth
He catches word for word,
And promises, some future day,
To visit me upon his way,
And tell what he has heard.

If I am happy, and you,
And there are things to do,
It seems to be the reason
Of this world!

Creeds grow so thick along the way,
Their boughs hide God; I cannot pray.

You shrink affrighted when I boldly strike the strings of your own heart which you have always feared to strike for yourself—for that is all that I have done:
I have heard that melody in you which you have not heard in yourself,
I have listened awed: I have not dared until now to say anything lest speech might somehow jar the song you unknowing poured into my treasuring soul:
Now you are prepared for yourself and being prepared for yourself are prepared for others:

The dreamy drift of honeysuckle scent,
A sensuous breath of beauty on the night—
And we who shared the intimate delight
Of Life and Love with youth and rapture blent!
For such complete communion we were meant—
To be but one in thought, and that thought right.
To love the lovely and to find the Light!

Not by the power of Commerce, Art, or Pen,
Shall our great Empire stand; nor has it stood:
But by the noble deeds of noble men,
Heroic lives, and Heroes' outpoured blood.

A SUDDEN flash of heat,
A sudden sharp word said,
And at his guilty feet
The thing called love lay dead.