Nor a smile to hear in the orchard close The blackbird's song, When the boughs are flushing faintly to rose, And April days are long, And the world is white with the hawthorn snows. O long the way, but there comes a rest When the wild glad birds have flown to the nest, The fair pale lights that wake in the west! There bloometh many a kindly flower The silver feet of a summer shower "Hic Jacet" glimmers at evening hour. While one shall sleep, nor hearken o'erhead And on the heart where Pain lieth dead Alas! that a human heart should break Just from a bright false dream to wake, WANDERERS. Aн, my beloved! my best is all your due What marvel that my thoughts, grown recreant too, And lay them in your heart, and bid them rest? THE DEAD MOTHER. I HAD been buried a month and a year, The clods on my coffin were heavy and brown, The wreaths at my headstone were withered sere, No feet came now from the little town; I was forgotten, six months or more, And a new bride walked on my husband's floor. Below the dew and the grass-blades lying, And my hands relaxed from their quiet fold; Through mould and death-damp it pierced my heart, And I woke in the dark with a sudden start. I cast the coffin-lid off my face, From mouth and eyelids I thrust the clay, And I stood upright from the sleeper's place, And down through the graveyard I took my way. The frost on the rank grass shimmered like snow, And the ghostly graves stood white in a row. As I went down through the little town The kindly neighbors seemed sore afeard, I signed the holy sign on my brows, 'Twas cold, as cold as my bed in the sod. My two boys fought in that ghostly gloom For a mildewed crust that a mouse had gnawed; "Oh, mother, mother!" my Gretchen said, We have been hungry since you were dead." FRANKLIN EVERT DENTON. F 'RANKLIN EVERT DENTON was born on November 22, 1859, in Chardon, the countyseat of Geauga County, Ohio, a village of the Western Reserve. He is of pure American stock that dates back to the days of the Colonies. By inheritance and by early training he was a boy of strong literary instincts. At seven years of age he was perched upon a box before a compositor's case learning the mysteries of type-setting. This was in the office of the Geauga Republican, a weekly publication in his native village, and his connection with the paper, thus early begun, continued, with occasional intervals of schooling, for eighteen years. In 1884 he entered into the employ of the Geauga Leader, published in Burton, Ohio, acting for some time as its editor and manager. He removed to Cleveland in 1887 and joined the staff of The Ohio Sun and Voice, with which paper he still remains. The uneventful tenor of the young poet's life in a quiet village has left a lasting impression upon the trend of his imagination, and his literary taste. He filled the lack of routine schooling with persistent efforts at self-education, and the book that he studied most was the open book of Nature. He was a zealous reader, but not an omnivorous one. His selections were of the highest and most useful standards, and though he read much his remarkable memory gave him ample time for thorough mental digestion. He wrote verses at an early age, but it was not until his eighteenth year that he considered his poetical efforts worthy of publication. Encouraged by admiring friends, in 1883 he gathered his poems together and published them in book form. The volume met with much of mingled criticism and praise. It was the work of a youth whose circumscribed surroundings made commonplaces seem of large moment; it showed crudities of thought, yet from every page the true poetic soul was shining out. In the same year that he published his book he received a prize from the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette for the best story submitted to that paper. It was a metaphysical tale entitled "The Glass Dwarf" and attracted much attention at the time of publicaion. Mr. Denton's poems and stories have appeared in many periodicals and been much copied. He has written but little for publication during the last two years, devoting most of his limited leisure time to disciplining his powers for future work in his chosen field, a field which he persists in occupying whatever the result. His poetical ideals are of the highest class, and to them he has determined to adapt himself rather than to any so-called popular taste. W. R. R. THE SOUTH WIND. WHEN maples drip their arteries of sweet The dawn a fairer purple than of Tyre, The eyes of the Median mother are dried, And the Spartan maid's heart has forgotten its pride; The Kings and the Kingdoms have sought their dark beds, And the ages file over the low-lying heads; But those dead heroes live, and they camp, and they fight, Wherever the fettered arise in their might; The mountains may crumble, the ocean may dry, But the good of a deed that is great cannot die. The spirit, like ivy, thrives best in the cold, It is well that we sink in the Lethean wave; Give the figure of man its heroic relief; Were it not for death's shadow o'er land and o'er sea, No better than angels the righteous would be. ALARIC. LIKE the flakes of the snow in their Scythian home, Swept Alaric's Visigoths down upon Rome; And he was the sickle and Europe the wheat. Who rode a pale horse and who knew not defeat; They met on the shore of the blue southern sea, And humbly the conqueror bended his knee. A river was turned from its course, and the dead Was laid in a grave that was dug in its bed; There, shrouded in trophies and pillowed with spoils, The mourning host left him to rest from his toils, But the river they turned to its course as of old, They slaughtered the slaves who had hollowed the mold, So none but the taciturn stars as they rise And what if the place of his sleep is unknown? A monument hewn from the granite of deeds, Ah, naught is more true than what Pericles said, All the world is the shaft of the great who are dead. IT IS WELL. IT is well that we sink in the Lethean wave, cave; Our chance to be strong and our chance to be great Is the darkness and doubt that hang over our fate; NIGHT. SELF-AWED with its own glory is the night. Guarded his flocks, the while Jehovah's pen Who is the shrine where kneels his heart, and he, Who is of Nature ardent worshipper, Would in her presence unattended be; Would to her lips of inspiration list, With midnight's starry arbor for a tryst. OCTOBER. ALL day, like smiles that wreathe an old man's face, Whose seasons have been spent in doing good, The world is in the mighty arms of Him. QUATRAIN. BE there a traitor who deserves in sooth The keen axe of the headsman, it is he, Who hath committed treason unto the Celestial visions of his vanished youth. |