Puslapio vaizdai
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DE PROFUNDIS

You must be troubled, Asthore,
Because last night you came
And stood on the moonlit floor,
And called again my name.
In dreams I felt your tears,
In dreams mine eyes were wet;
O, dead for seven long years!
And can you not forget?
Are you not happy yet?

The mass-bell shall be rung,
The mass be said and sung,
And God will surely hear;
Go back and sleep, my dear!

You went away when you heard

The red cock's clarion crow. You have given my heart a sword, You have given my life a woe,

I, who your burden bore,

On whom your sorrows fell;
You had to travel, Asthore,
Your bitter need to tell,
And I was faring well!

The mass-bell shall be rung,
The mass be said and sung,
And God will surely hear;
Go back and sleep, my dear!

SINGING STARS

"WHAT Sawest thou, Orion, thou hunter of the star-lands,

On that night star-sown and azure when thou cam'st in splendor sweeping, And amid thy starry brethren from the near lands and the far lands

All the night above a stable on the earth thy watch wert keeping?"

"Oh, I saw the stable surely, and the young Child and the Mother, And the placid beasts still gazing with their mild eyes full of loving. And I saw the trembling radiance of the Star, my lordliest brother, Light the earth and all the heavens as he kept his guard unmoving.

"There were kings that came from Eastward with their ivory, spice, and sendal, With gold fillets in their dark hair, and gold broidered robes and stately,

And the shepherds, gazing star-ward, over yonder hill did wend all,

And the silly sheep went meekly, and the wise dog marvelled greatly.

"Oh we knew, we stars, the stable held our King, His glory shaded,

That His baby hands were poising all the spheres and constellations;

Berenice shook her hair down, like a shower of stardust braided,

And Arcturus, pale as silver, bent his brows in adorations.

"The stars sang all together, sang their love-songs with the angels, With the Cherubim and Seraphim their shrilly trumpets blended.

They have never sung together since that night of great evangels,

And the young Child in the manger, and the time of bondage ended.'

THE SAD MOTHER

O WHEN the half-light weaves
Wild shadows on the floor,
How ghostly come the withered leaves
Stealing about my door!

I sit and hold my breath,

Lone in the lonely house;

Naught breaks the silence still as death, Only a creeping mouse.

The patter of leaves, it may be,

But liker patter of feet, The small feet of my own baby That never felt the heat.

The small feet of my son,

Cold as the graveyard sod; My little, dumb, unchristened one That may not win to God.

"Come in, dear babe," I cry,

Opening the door so wide. The leaves go stealing softly by ; How dark it is outside!

And though I kneel and pray

Long on the threshold-stone, The little feet press on their way, And I am ever alone.

THE DEAD COACH

AT night when sick folk wakeful lie,
I heard the dead coach passing by,
And heard it passing wild and fleet,
And knew my time was come not yet.

Click-clack, click-clack, the hoofs went past,
Who takes the dead coach travels fast,
On and away through the wild night,
The dead must rest ere morning light.

If one might follow on its track
The coach and horses, midnight black,
Within should sit a shape of doom
That beckons one and all to come.

God pity them to-night who wait
To hear the dead coach at their gate,
And him who hears, though sense be
dim,

The mournful dead coach stop for him.

He shall go down with a still face,
And mount the steps and take his place,
The door be shut, the order said!
How fast the pace is with the dead!

Click-clack, click-clack, the hour is chill,
The dead coach climbs the distant hill.
Now, God, the Father of us all,
Wipe Thou the widow's tears that fall!

Map Kendall

A PURE HYPOTHESIS

(A Lover, in Four-dimensioned space, describes a Dream.)

Aн, love, the teacher we decried,
That erudite professor grim,

In mathematics drenched and dyed,
Too hastily we scouted him.

He said: "The bounds of Time and Space,
The categories we revere,

May be in quite another case

In quite another sphere."

He told us: "Science can conceive

A race whose feeble comprehension Can't be persuaded to believe

That there exists our Fourth Dimension,

Whom Time and Space for ever balk;

But of these beings incomplete, Whether upon their heads they walk Or stand upon their feet —

"We cannot tell, we do not know,
Imagination stops confounded;
We can but say 'It may be so,'

To every theory propounded."
Too glad were we in this our scheme
Of things, his notions to embrace,
But I have dreamed an awful dream
Of Three-dimensioned Space!

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Ah, what if on some lurid star

There should exist a hapless race, Who live and love, who think and are, In Three-dimensioned Space!

A BOARD SCHOOL PASTORAL

ALONE I stay; for I am lame,
I cannot join them at the game,
The lads and lasses;
But many a summer holiday
I sit apart and watch them play,
And well I know my heart can say,
When Ella passes.

Of all the maidens in the place,
'Tis Ella has the sunniest face,

Her eyes are clearest.

Of all the girls, or here or there, 'Tis Ella's voice is soft and rare, And Ella has the darkest hair,

And Ella's dearest.

Oh, strong the lads for bat or ball,
But I in wit am first of all

The master praises.

The master's mien is grave and wise;
But, while I look into his eyes,

My heart, that o'er the schoolroom flies,
At Ella gazes.

And Hal's below me every day;
For Hal is wild, and he is gay,

He loves not learning.

But when the swiftest runners meet, Oh, who but Hal is proud and fleet, And there's a smile I know will greet His glad returning.

They call me moody, dull, and blind, They say with books I maze my mind, The lads and lasses;

-

But little do they know- ah me! How with my book upon my knee I dream and dream, but ever see Where Ella passes.

A LEGEND

Ay, an old story, yet it might

Have truth in it - who knows?

Of the heroine's breaking down one night Jnst ere the curtain rose.

And suddenly, when fear and doubt
Had shaken every heart,
There stepped an unknown actress out
To take the heroine's part.

But oh the magic of her face,
And oh the songs she sung,
And oh the rapture in the place,
And oh the flowers they flung!

But she never stooped: they lay all night
As when she turned away

And left them—and the saddest light
Shone in her eyes of
gray.

She gave a smile in glancing round,
And sighed, one fancied, then -
But never they knew where she was bound,
Or saw her face again.

But the old prompter, gray and frail,
They heard him murmur low :

"It only could be Meg Coverdale,
Died thirty years ago,

"In that old part who took the town ;
And she was fair, as fair

As when they shut the coffin down
On the gleam of her golden hair ;

"And it was n't hard to understand
How a lass so fair as she

Could never rest in the Promised Land
Where none but angels be."

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