There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard Your logic, my friend, is perfect, But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, Console if you will, I can bear it; 'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death. The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; With delight as it stood O my life, have we not had seasons But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, Have we not from the earth drawn juices All I feel, all I know? Sometimes a breath floats by me, Of memories that stay not and go not, That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something too vague, could I name it, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should once more have a poet, Such as it had In the ages glad, Long ago! AN AUTOGRAPH O'ER the wet sands an insect crept Ages ere man on earth was known And patient Time, while Nature slept, The slender tracing turned to stone. 'T was the first autograph: and ours? Prithee, how much of prose or song, In league with the creative powers, Shall 'scape Oblivion's broom so long. 24th June, 1886. William Wetmore Story Oh! for a storm and thunder- My cockatoo, creamy white, Look! listen! as backward and forward And shrieks as he madly swings! I will lie and dream of the past time, I wandered, where never the track And wandered my mate to greet. We toyed in the amber moonlight, Upon the warm flat sand, And struck at each other our massive arms How powerful he was and grand! As he crouched and gazed at me, For his love like his rage was rude; And his teeth in the swelling folds of my neck At times, in our play, drew blood. Often another suitor For I was flexile and fairFought for me in the moonlight, While I lay couching there, Till his blood was drained by the desert; He licked me and lay beside me Then down to the fountain we loitered, Where the antelopes came to drink; Like a bolt we sprang upon them, Ere they had time to shrink. We drank their blood and crushed them, And tore them limb from limb, And the hungriest lion doubted Ere he disputed with him. That was a life to live for ! Not this weak human life, Come to my arms, my hero! The shadows of twilight grow, Ere we were women and men, The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife; Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim Of nations was lifted in chorus, whoso brows wore the chaplet of fame, But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart, Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part; Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away, From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone, With Death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown, While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, its prean for those who have won; "When all our hopes and fears are dead, "This senseless stone, so coldly fair, "Its peace no sorrow shall destroy; "And there upon that silent face "And strangers, when we sleep in peace, Shall say, not quite unmoved, 'So smiled upon Praxiteles The Phryne whom he loved !'" Julia Ward Holve BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. |