PROVENÇAL LOVERS Who'd care with folk like these to dine? "To purgatory I would go With pleasant comrades whom we know, "There, too, are jousts and joyance rare, The pretty dames, the pretty brides, "Sweet players on the cithern strings, To have you with me there below," Said Aucassin to Nicolette. 155 Edmund Clarence Stedman. THEOCRITUS Ay! Unto thee belong The pipe and song, Loved by the satyr and the faun! Thine, the blood-red revels, Soft valleys unto thee, And Aphrodite's shrine, And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn! But unto us, to us, The stalwart glories of the North; Ours is the sounding main, And ours the voices uttering forth By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain; A tale of viewless islands in the deep Washed by the waves' white fire; Of mariners rocked asleep, In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire Of Neptune and his train; To us, to us, The dark-leaved shadow and the shining birch, The flight of gold through hollow woodlands driven, Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, These, all, to us are given! And eyes that eager evermore shall search INDIRECTION Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring; These, these, to us! The sacred youth and maid, Coy and half afraid; The sorrowful earthly pall, Winter and wintry rain, And autumn's gathered grain, With whispering music in their fall; These unto us! And unto thee, Theocritus, To thee, The immortal childhood of the world, And beckoning signal of a sail unfurled! INDIRECTION 157 Annie Fields. FAIR are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer; Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer; Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing; Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the flowing; Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him, Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him. Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and hidden; Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden; Under the joy that is felt, lie the infinite issues of feeling; Crowning the glory revealed, is the glory that crowns the revealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater; Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator; Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving. Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing; The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing; And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine, Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine. Richard Realf. SOME DAY OF DAYS SOME day, some day of days, threading the street With idle, heedless pace, Unlooking for such grace I shall behold your face! Some day, some day of days, thus may we meet. SUNDERED Perchance the sun may shine from skies of May, Or winter's icy chill Touch whitely vale and hill. What matter? I shall thrill Through every vein with summer on that day. 159 Once more life's perfect youth will all come back, And for a moment there I shall stand fresh and fair, And drop the garment care; Once more my perfect youth will nothing lack. I shut my eyes now, thinking how 't will be Will slip its long control, Of dreary Fate's dark, separating sea; And glance to glance, and hand to hand in greet ing, The past with all its fears, Its silences and tears, Its lonely, yearning years, Shall vanish in the moment of that meeting. Nora Perry. SUNDERED I CHALLENGE not the oracle That drove you from my board: That scatters as I hoard. |