TAKE HEART

ALL day the stormy wind has blown
From off the dark and rainy sea;
No bird has past the window flown,
The only song has been the moan
The wind made in the willow-tree.

This is the summer's burial-time:

She died when dropped the earliest leaves; And, cold upon her rosy prime,

Fell direful autumn's frosty rime;
Yet I am not as one that grieves, ·

For well I know o'er sunny seas
The bluebird waits for April skies;
And at the roots of forest trees
The May-flowers sleep in fragrant ease,
The violets hide their azure eyes.

O thou, by winds of grief o'erblown,
Beside some golden summer's bier,
Take heart! Thy birds are only flown,
Thy blossoms sleeping, tearful sown,
To greet thee in the immortal year!

Edna Dean Proctor.

THE MAKING OF MAN

As the insect from the rock
Takes the color of its wing;
As the boulder from the shock
Of the ocean's rhythmic swing

SEA-BLOWN

Makes itself a perfect form,
Learns a calmer front to raise;
As the shell, enamelled warm

With the prism's mystic rays,
Praises wind and wave that make
All its chambers fair and strong;
As the mighty poets take

Grief and pain to build their song: Even so for every soul,

Whatsoe'er its lot may be, Building, as the heavens roll,

Something large and strong and free, Things that hurt and things that mar Shape the man for perfect praise; Shock and strain and ruin are

Friendlier than the smiling days.

181

John White Chadwick.

BYRON

IN men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line

Between the two, where God has not.

SEA-BLOWN

Joaquin Miller.

Ah! there be souls none understand;
Like clouds, they cannot touch the land.
Unanchored ships, they blow and blow,
Sail to and fro, and then go down

In unknown seas that none shall know,
Without one ripple of renown.

Call these not fools, the test of worth
Is not the hold you have of earth.
Ay, there be gentlest souls sea-blown
That know not any harbor known.
Now it may be the reason is,

They touch on fairer shores than this.

Joaquin Miller.

COLUMBUS

BEHIND him lay the gray Azores,

Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.

The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.

Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?"
"Why, say 'Sail on! sail on! and on!""

"My men grow mutinous day by day;

My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray

Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say at break of day,

'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!""

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said,

THE YUKON

"Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way,

For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say" He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!"

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.

He curls his lip, he lies in wait,

With lifted teeth, as if to bite!

Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?"
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck

A light! a light! a light! a light!

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"

183

Joaquin Miller.

THE YUKON

THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.

She bared her full white breast, she dared The sun e'er show his face again.

She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,

Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared
The fearful meaning, the mad pain,
The weary eyes, the poor dazed brain,
That came at last to feel, to see
The dread, dead touch of lunacy.

How loud the silence! Oh, how loud!
How more than beautiful the shroud
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth
Above the black, slow-moving pall
As at some fearful funeral!

The moon blares as mad trumpets blare
To marshaled warriors long and loud;
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud,
But oh, beware that moon, beware
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare!

Beware white silence more than white! Beware the five-horned starry rune; Beware the groaning gorge below; Beware the wide, white world of snow, Where trees hang white as hooded nun No thing not white, not one, not one! But most beware that mad white moon.

All day, all day, all night, all night
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day.