Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

The Puritans' Christmas

Their only thought religion,What Christmas joys had they,The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers whoKnew naught of holiday?—A log-church in the clearing'Mid solitudes of snow,The wild-beast and the wilderness,And lurking Indian foe.No time had they for pleasure,Whom God had put to school;A sermon was their Christmas cheer,A psalm their only Yule.They deemed it joy sufficient,—Nor would Christ take it ill,—That service to Himself and GodEmployed their spirits still.And so through faith and prayerTheir powers were renewed,And souls made strong to shape a World,And tame a solitude.A type of revolution,Wrought from an iron plan,In the largest mold of libertyGod cast the Puritan.A better land they founded,That Freedom had for bride,The shackles of old despotismStruck from her limbs and side.With faith within to guide them,And courage to perform,A nation, from a wilderness,They hewed with their strong arm.For liberty to worship,And right to do and dare,They faced the savage and the stormWith voices raised in prayer.For God it was who summoned,And God it was who led,And God would not forsake the loveThat must be clothed and fed.Great need had they of courage!Great need of faith had they!And lacking these—how otherwiseFor us had been this day!

Spring

(After the German of Goethe, Faust, II)When on the mountain tops ray-crowned ApolloTurns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart,Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats followGlad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains;And slope and vale and meadowland grow green;While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains,Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.With measured stride, deliberate and steady,The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep,But shelter for th' assembled herd is readyIn many hollows that the walled rocks heap:The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places,In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse!Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces,Tree, crowding tree, lifts high its heavy boughs.Old forests, where the gnarly oak stands regnantBristling with twigs that still repullulate,And, swoln with spring, with sappy sweetness pregnant,The maple blushes with its leafy weight.And, mother-like, in cirques of quiet shadows,Milk flows, warm milk, that keeps all things alive;Fruit is not far, th' abundance of the meadows,And honey oozes from the hollow hive.

Lines

Within the world of every man's desireThree things have power to lift his soul above,Through dreams, religion, and ecstatic fire,The star-like shapes of Beauty, Truth, and Love.I never hoped that, this side far-off Heaven,These three,—whom all exalted souls pursue,—I e'er should see; until to me 't was given,Lady, to meet the three, made one, in you.

When Ships put out to Sea

IIt's "Sweet, good-bye," when pennants flyAnd ships put out to sea;It's a loving kiss, and a tear or twoIn an eye of brown or an eye of blue;—And you'll remember me,Sweetheart,And you'll remember me.IIIt's "Friend or foe?" when signals blowAnd ships sight ships at sea;It's clear for action, and man the guns,As the battle nears or the battle runs;—And you'll remember me,Sweetheart,And you'll remember me.IIIIt's deck to deck, and wrath and wreckWhen ships meet ships at sea;It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,And hull and turret a roaring hell;—And you'll remember me,Sweetheart,And you'll remember me.IVIt's doom and death, and pause a breathWhen ships go down at sea;It's hate is over and love begins,And war is cruel whoever wins;—And you'll remember me,Sweetheart,And you'll remember me.

The "Kentucky"

(Battleship, launched March 24, 1898.)IHere's to her who bears the nameOf our State;May the glory of her fameBe as great!In the battle's dread eclipse,When she opens iron lips,When our ships confront the shipsOf the foe,May each word of steel she utters carry woe!Here's to her!IIHere's to her, who, like a knightMailed of old,From far sea to sea the RightShall uphold.May she always deal defeat,—When contending navies meet,And the battle's screaming sleetBlinds and stuns,—With the red, terrific thunder of her guns.Here's to her!IIIHere's to her who bears the nameOf our State;May the glory of her fameBe as great!Like a beacon, like a star,May she lead our squadrons far,—When the hurricane of warShakes the world,—With her pennant in the vanward broad unfurled.Here's to her!

Quatrains

IMoths and FirefliesSince Fancy taught me in her school of spellsI know her tricks—These are not moths at all,Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland bellesWhose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.IIAutumn Wild-FlowersLike colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.IIIThe Wind in the PinesWhen winds go organing through the pinesOn hill and headland, darkly gleaming,Meseems I hear sonorous linesOf Iliads that the woods are dreaming.IVOpportunityBehold a hag whom Life denies a kissAs he rides questward in knighterrant-wise;Only when he hath passed her is it hisTo know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.VDreamsThey mock the present and they haunt the past,And in the future there is naught agleamWith hope, the soul desires, that at lastThe heart pursuing does not find a dream.VIThe StarsThese—the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,In which he reads his blessing or his curse—Are syllables with which God speaks His nameIn the vast utterance of the universe.VIIBeautyHigh as a star, yet lowly as a flower,Unknown she takes her unassuming placeAt Earth's proud masquerade—the appointed hourStrikes, and, behold, the marvel of her face.

Processional

Universes are the pagesOf that book whose words are ages;Of that book which destinyOpens in eternity.There each syllable expressesSilence; there each thought a guess is;In whose rhetoric's cosmic runesRoll the worlds and swarming moons.There the systems, we call solar,Equatorial and polar,Write their lines of rushing lightOn the awful leaves of night.There the comets, vast and streaming,Punctuate the heavens' gleamingScroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,Periods to each starry line.There, initials huge, the LionLooms and measureless Orion;And, as 'neath a chapter done,Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.Constellated, hieroglyphic,Numbering each page terrific,Fiery on the nebular black,Flames the hurling zodiac.In that book, o'er which ChaldeanWisdom pored and many an eonOf philosophy long dead,This is all that man has read:—He has read how good and evil,—In creation's wild upheaval,—Warred; while God wrought terribleAt foundations red of Hell.He has read of man and woman;Laws and gods, both beast and human;Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,Vanished now and turned to dust.Arts and manners that have crumbled;Cities buried; empires tumbled:Time but breathed on them its breath;Earth is builded of their death.These but lived their little hour,Filled with pride and pomp and power;What availed them all at last?We shall pass as they have past.Still the human heart will dream onLove, part angel and part demon;Yet, I question, what securesOur belief that aught endures?In that book, o'er which ChaldeanWisdom pored and many an eonOf philosophy long dead,This is all that man has read.