_Hesperides_
Beyond the blue rim of the world,
Washed round with languid-lapsing seas,
Where the Wind’s wings were ever furled
The Ancients dreamed Hesperides.
Ship after ship each age sent forth
To find the Islands of the Blest;
The loosed winds drove them south and north,
But west they weathered, ever west.
Sky after sky they dropped behind,
Those mighty-handed, bearded men,
Till, seeking what they could not find,
They rounded upward, home again.
A desultory waif of time
Flying adventure from my mast,
’Twas thus I voyaged every clime
To come back to myself at last!
_Harry Kemp_
_Changeless_
They cannot change the hills; though they may hew
The fir-sweet slopes and cut their roadways through,
Yet will they stand, each long-loved mountain face
And smile at me from its appointed place;
And past their friendly crests the sun shall rise
To paint new pictures on the morning skies--
They cannot change the hills.
They cannot still the winds; the winds that shake
The hemlock fragrance free and sweep the lake,
The waves at dusk shall whisper to the shore
Their pebbled secrets as they did before;
The wild white clouds as in the days of old
Shall sink to rest in sunset seas of gold--
They cannot still the winds.
They cannot dim the stars; the crowding camps
That dot the dusk with closely-clustered lamps,
The jazz, the laughter, and the shrill tin blare
Of phonographs, the motor headlight’s flare--
These shall be stilled at last--the clamor cease
And leave a fir-sweet world of wave-lapped peace--
They cannot dim the stars!
_Martha Haskell Clark_
_Homesick_
O my garden! lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew,
Far across the leagues of distance flies my heart to-night to you,
And I see your stately lilies in the tender radiance gleam
With a dim, mysterious splendor, like the angels of a dream!
I can see the stealthy shadows creep along the ivied wall,
And the bosky depths of verdure where the drooping vine-leaves fall,
And the tall trees standing darkly with their crowns against the sky,
While overhead the harvest moon goes slowly sailing by.
I can see the trellised arbor, and the roses’ crimson glow,
And the lances of the larkspurs all glittering, row on row,
And the wilderness of hollyhocks, where brown bees seek their spoil,
And butterflies dance all day long, in glad and gay turmoil.
Oh, the broad paths running straightly, north and south and east and west!
Oh, the wild grape climbing sturdily to reach the oriole’s nest!
Oh, the bank where wild flowers blossom, ferns nod and mosses creep
In a tangled maze of beauty over all the wooded steep!
Just beyond the moonlit garden I can see the orchard trees,
With their dark boughs overladen, stirring softly in the breeze,
And the shadows on the greensward, and within the pasture bars
The white sheep huddling quietly beneath the pallid stars.
With a vague, half-startled wonder if some night in Paradise,
From the battlements of heaven I shall turn my longing eyes
All the dim, resplendent spaces and the mazy stardrifts through
To my garden lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew!
_Julia C. R. Dorr_
_If all the Skies_
If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling plash of rain.
If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence,
To break the endless song.
If life were always merry,
Our souls would seek relief,
And rest from weary laughter
In the quiet arms of grief.
_Henry van Dyke_
“_Gratias Ago_”
Since of earth, air and water,
The gods have made me part--
Let every human sin be mine
Except the thankless heart!
Privileged and greatly, I partake
Of sleep and death and birth;
And kneeling, drink the sacrament--
The good red wine of earth.
I shall not ask the High Gods
For aught that they can give;
They gave the greatest gift of all
When first they bade me live.
Great gift of dawn and starlight,
Of sea and grass and river;
With leave to toil and laugh and weep
And praise the Sun forever!
Be death the end or not the end,
Too richly blest am I
To seek the hill behind the hill,
The sky behind the sky.
Let the red earth that bore me
Give me her call again,
And I’ll lie still beneath her flowers
And sleep and not complain.
Let those the gods have blinded
Hold their long feud with Fate--
And clutch at toys that never yet
Could make one mean man great.
Let those that Earth has bastarded
Fret and contrive and plan--
But I will enter like an heir
The old estate of man!
_Geoffrey Howard_
_Song of Ballyshannon_
Take me home to Ballyshannon, for there’s music in the word;
The name o’ Ballyshannon is the sweetest ever heard!
The little hills are lying fair and green behind the town,
And the skies of Ballyshannon, why, they’re never known to frown.
Take me back and let me hearken to the plaintive Irish wind;
Take me back to Ballyshannon, where the neighbors’ hearts are kind.
I will wander in the moonlight out upon the ragged moor,
With the flaming gorse and heather,--I’ll not find it mean or poor.
In the glen with lads a-dancing, I will pass the night away;
For the nights in Ballyshannon, they are sweeter than the day.
Take me back to Ballyshannon, there’s a voice that calls to me;
For my heart’s in Ballyshannon on the other side the sea.
I came to Ballyshannon on a wet and mournful night,
And all the way was darkness, with never a ray of light;
The mist was waving round me and the winds were blowing free
When I came to Ballyshannon, sure my heart was whole in me.
I went from Ballyshannon when the sun was rolling high,
And every rowan bud was glad and looked me in the eye;
The clouds were white above me and the winds played in the tree,
Yet I went from Ballyshannon bearing little heart in me.
Sure my heart was crushed and broken; there were kisses on my mouth;
There were cruel words upon me like a summer’s parching drouth.
Woman’s wiles are full of mystery, they’re inconstant as the sea;
Just for sport in Ballyshannon, someone stole the heart of me.
The bells of Ballyshannon, I hear them on the wind,
And every care and sorrow my heart leaves far behind;
I can live and thrive a season upon an alien shore,
But I’m wanting Ballyshannon forever all the more;
And when light o’ life has left me and I’m like an empty byre,
Lay my bones in Ballyshannon, take me back to heart’s desire,
Where I’ll hear the bells a-ringing, folded arms beneath the sod,
For the bells of Ballyshannon, they will ring me home to God.
_Jeanne Robert Foster_
_A Song of the Road_
I lift my cap to Beauty,
I lift my cap to Love;
I bow before my Duty,
And know that God’s above!
My heart through shining arches
Of leaf and blossom goes;
My soul, triumphant, marches
Through life to life’s repose.
And I, through all this glory,
Nor know, nor fear my fate,--
The great things are so simple,
The simple are so great!
_Fred G. Bowles_
_After Sunset_
I have an understanding with the hills
At evening when the slanted radiance fills
Their hollows, and the great winds let them be,
And they are quiet and look down at me.
Oh, then I see the patience in their eyes
Out of the centuries that made them wise.
They lend me hoarded memory and I learn
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern,
And why a dream of forests must endure
Though every tree be slain: and how the pure,
Invisible beauty has a word so brief
A flower can say it or a shaken leaf,
But few may ever snare it in a song,
Though for the quest a life is not too long.
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The twilight close with gesture beautiful,
And shadows are their garments, and the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer,--
Their arms are strong around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and war.
_Grace Hazard Conkling_
_The Wanderer_
The ships are lying in the bay,
The gulls are swinging round their spars;
My soul as eagerly as they
Desires the margin of the stars.
So much do I love wandering,
So much I love the sea and sky,
That it will be a piteous thing
In one small grave to lie.
_Zoe Akins_
_The Trumpet of the Dawn_
Above the crestward-climbing pines,
Above the dewy slopes of lawn,
Above the copse’s coil of vines,
I have gone up to meet the dawn.
I have grown weary of the night
That from day’s gold mine eye debars,--
Of seeing up the purple height
Troop the processional of stars.
I yearn to mark the shattering beam
Backward the gates of darkness throw;
I long to hear across my dream
The wakening trump of morning blow.
Hark! ’tis the first bird-note!--and mark,
Flushing the east, a crimson ray!--
Soul, from the girdling wastes of dark
Go thou, too, up to meet the day!
_Clinton Scollard_
_Shared_
I said it in the meadow-path,
I say it on the mountain-stairs,--
The best things any mortal hath
Are those which every mortal shares.
The air we breathe, the sky, the breeze,
The light without us and within,--Life,
with its unlocked treasuries,--
God’s riches,--are for all to win.
The grass is softer to my tread
For rest it yields unnumbered feet;
Sweeter to me the wild-rose red,
Because she makes the whole world sweet.
* * * * *
And up the radiant, peopled way,
That opens into worlds unknown,
It will be life’s delight to say,
“Heaven is not Heaven for me alone.”
_Lucy Larcom_
_Up-Hill_
Does the road wind-up all the way?
_Yes, to the very end._
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
_From morn to night, my friend._
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin?
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
_You cannot miss that inn._
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
_Those who have gone before._
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
_They will not keep you standing at that door._
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
_Of labor you shall find the sum._
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
_Yea, beds for all who come._
_Christina Rossetti_
_The Epitaph_
Write on my grave when I am dead,
Whatever road I trod
That I admired and honorèd
The wondrous works of God.
That all the days and years I had,
The greatest and the least,
Each day with grateful heart and glad
I sat me to a feast.
That not alone for body’s meat
Which takes the lowest place
I gave Him grace when I did eat
And with a shining face.
But for the spirit filled and fed
That else must waste and die,
With sun and stars replenishèd
And dew and evening sky.
The beauty of the hills and seas
Brimmed that immortal cup;
And when I went by fields and trees
My heart was lifted up.
Lap me in the green grass and write
Upon the daisied sod
That still I praised with all my might
The wondrous works of God.
_Katharine Tynan_
_Index of Authors_
Abbey, Henry, 69
Addison, Medora, 253
Akins, Zoe, 24
Alling, Kenneth Slade, 250
Allingham, William, 44
Auslander, Joseph, 124, 246
Baker, Karl Wilson, 71
Banning, Kendall, 162
Bates, Katherine Lee, 172
Birchall, Sara Hamilton, 55, 57, 139, 144, 146, 156, 165, 175, 223
Blanden, Charles G., 42
Bowles, Fred G., 263
Braithwaite, William Stanley, 245
Brotherton, Alice Williams, 49
Brown, Thomas E., 41
Browning, Elizabeth, 53
Browning, Robert, 94, 212, 233
Burnet, Dana, 157
Burton, Richard, 95, 211, 216, 251
Byron, Lord, 100
Carman, Bliss, 17, 49, 53, 65, 75, 119, 136, 168, 171, 173, 176, 186,
200, 220, 226
Chalmers, Stephens, 140
Cheney, John Vance, 41, 239
Clark, Martha Haskell, 91, 104, 161, 257
Clifford, Ethel, 252
Cole, Samuel Valentine, 67
Cone, Helen Gray, 51, 56
Conkling, Grace Hazard, 240, 263
Converse, Florence, 244
Craik, Dina Mulock, 42
Crane, Jr. L. Burton, 28
Cunningham, Allan, 87
Davis, Fannie Stearns, 120, 158
Davies, Mary Carolyn, 163
Davies, William H., 76, 112
Dean, Harry W., 171
Dennen, Grace Atherton, 227
Deutsch, Babette, 229
Dickinson, Emily, 54, 210, 218, 225
Dorr, Julia C. R., 258
Driscoll, Louise, 5, 40, 189
Egbert, Ella Elizabeth, 224
Elliston, George, 210
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 52, 191, 233
Fenton, Cora D., 31
Foster, Jeanne Robert, 261
Fox-Smith, C., 133, 147
Fyleman, Rose, 228
Gale, Norman, 35, 193
Galsworthy, John, 110
Garland, Hamlin, 4, 109
Garrison, Theodosia, 15, 18, 114, 125, 175, 195, 219
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 61
Gore-Booth, Eva, 78, 241
Gould, Gerald, 155
Grover, Edwin Osgood, 135, 185
Guest, Edgar A., 10, 16, 34, 150, 155, 169, 234
Guiterman, Arthur, 121
Hagedorn, Hermann, 143
Hardy, Thomas, 184
Hare, Amory, 23
Hawkes, Robert Stephen, 249
Higginson, Ella, 203
Hood, Thomas, 228
Hopper, Nora, 81
Hovey, Richard, 12, 31, 79, 92, 122, 196
Howard, Geoffrey, 260
Hoyt, Helen, 132
Jennings, Leslie Nelson, 8
Johns, Orrick, 236
Kauffman, Ruth Wright, 165
Kemp, Harry, 77, 115, 134, 199, 213, 251, 257
Kenyon, Theda, 50
Ketchum, Arthur, 111, 131
King, Georgiana Goddard, 19
Kipling, Rudyard, 166
Knowles, Frederic Lawrence, 102
Lanier, Sidney, 66, 238
Laramore, Vivian Yeiser, 243
Larcom, Lucy, 44, 71, 160, 265
Laurence, Ray, 48
Le Gallienne, Richard, 111
Loveman, Robert, 209
Lowell, James Russell, 45
Mackay, Isabel Ecclestine, 19
Macleod, Fiona, 88
McGiffert, Gertrude Huntington, 27
McGroarty, John Steven, 32, 99
McLeod, Irene Ruthford, 126
McQuilland, Louis J., 25
Mannin, Ethel E., 80, 150, 178, 239
Markham, Edwin, 57
Masefield, John, 3, 75
Mason, Caroline Atherton, 112
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 125, 145, 249
Monro, Harold, 243
Montgomery, James Stuart, 22, 82, 104
Moreland, John Richard, 193
Morley, Christopher, 68