The poet stepped into a grimy den,
Where the sign above the door
Said: Money to lend, in sums to suit,
On Real Estate, &c.
I want, said the Poet,
(So many thousand dollars).
So said Cent per Cent, rubbing his hands,
Where is the property?
I offer, said the Poet,
My Castle in Spain,
'Tis a lovely house,
So many rooms, acres, &c.
Ambling, ambling round the ring,
Round the ring of daily duty,
Leap, Circus-rider, man, through the paper hoop of death,
—Ah, lightest thou, beyond death, on this same slow-ambling, padded
horse of life.
Youth, the circus-rider, fares gaily round the ring, standing with one
foot on the bare-backed horse—the Ideal. Presently, at the moment of
manhood, Life (exacting ring-master) causes another horse to be brought
in who passes under the rider's legs, and ambles on. This is the Real.
The young man takes up the reins, places a foot on each animal, and the
business now becomes serious.
For it is a differing pace, of these two, the Real and the Ideal.
And yet no man can be said to make the least success in life who does
not contrive to make them go well together.
The Age is an Adonis that pursues the boar Wealth: yet shall the rude
tusk of trade wound this blue-veined thigh,—if _Love_ come not to the
rescue; Adon despises Love.
Sometimes Providence seems to have a bee in his bonnet. Else why should
hell, the greatest risk, be the most improvable fact, and himself, the
only light, be the most completely undiscoverable? If the angels are
good company, why shut us out from them? I look for good boys for my
children. Hide not your light under a bushel, is His own command: and
yet He is completely obscured under the inexorable _quid pro quo_ of
Nature and the hateful measure of Evil.
[_Credo, and Other Poems_]
The black-birds giving a shimmer of sound,
{ transparent tremors
As midday hills give forth { luminous
of heat and haze.
FOR A FLOWER DECORATION OF
SOLDIERS' GRAVES
Unto your house, O sleepers,
Unto these graves that house you since ye died,
Unto these little rooms wherein ye sleep,
A serenade of Love who sings in flowers,
If sense more dim than thought
May pierce through the deep dream of death wherein ye lie.
In a silence embroidered with whispers of lovers,
As the darkness is purfled with fire-flies.
The feverish heaven with a stitch in the side,
Of lightning.
For Pray'r the Ocean is, where diversely
Men steer their course, each to a several coast,
Where all our interests so discordant be,
Half begging God for winds that
Would send the other half to hell.
As many blades of grass as be
In all thy horizontal round,
So many dreams brood over thee.
To stand with quietude in the midst of the prodigious Unknown which we
call the World, also to look with tranquil eyes upon the unfathomable
blackness which limits our view to the little space enclosed betwixt
birth and death.
So pray we to the God we dimly hope
Against calamities we clearly know.
It may be that the world can get along without God: but _I_ can not. The
universe-finity is to me like the chord of the dominant seventh, always
leading towards, always inviting onwards, a Chord of Progress; God is
the tonic Triad, a chord of Repose.