Works

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears
A moment's weakness left upon my cheek,
And hush my heart a little ere I speak
Lest the false note ring true on other ears;
The music rises and the empty cheers...

I.

I dreamed a mighty dream. It seemed mine eyes
Sealed for the moment were to things terrene,
And then there came a strange, great wind that blew
From undiscovered lands, and took my soul...

Lucifer craved one boon of God
After his fall, as his own to hold;
So He gave him a mite in heaven's sight,
But lo! the gift that He gave was--Gold.

And Lucifer wrought with the rugged ore...

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
To a sky that is voiceless, too.

Upward the vast blue arch,
Downward the blue abyss,...

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;
Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,...

You were a red rose then, I know,
Red as her wine--yea, redder still,--
Say rather her blood; and ages ago
(You know how destiny hath its will)
I placed you deep in her gorgeous hair,...

The poet painted a woman's soul,
Human, trusting and kind,
And then he drew the soul of a man,
Brutal and base and blind;

And the woman loved in the old, old way,
And the man in the way of men,...

Once in a dream of Babylon
I sat with Lilith and Cain
At the world-old drama, "From God to God,"
In the House of Things Profane;
Trumpets and lights, and the players
Swung to the stage, and then...

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.)


Once more upon the ocean's heaving breast
He lays his head, not like the lover bold...

As one, a poet of a fairy's train,
Might sit beside a violet's stem and view
Its opening petals, watch the wondrous blue
Thrill through their fibers, and their secret gain...

I came your way in the years gone by,
In the summers that now are old,
And then there was light in your beaming eye,
And love was living and hopes were high
At the Sign of the Heart of Gold.
...

I am the outer gate of life where sit
Faith and Unfaith, those two interpreters
That spell in diverse ways what God has writ
In symbols on the archway of the years.
...

I thought today within the crowded mart
I saw thee for a moment, friend of mine,
And all at once my blood leapt fast and fine
And a new light broke on my shadowed heart....

I might have met his anger with a smile
For so it was that I had set my heart
To mask deception with a wanton's guile,
And save the tears that now begin to start.
...

They were three old men with hoary hair
And beards of wintry gray,
And they digged a grave in the yellow soil,
And they crooned this song as they plied their toil,
In the fading light of day:
...

I.

Mouths have they, but they speak not:
Yet something in the certainty of faith
To their disciples saith:
"Believe on me and vengeance I will wreak not."
The word that conquers death--...

The sun must rise, the sun must set,
Nor ever change in plan may be,
Though dawn to stricken wretch may bring
The hempen rope and gallows tree,
And eventide to happy bride
Love's crown of love in Arcady.

Today we are the fruits of yesterday
And what tomorrow shall of us demand,--
The helpless tools within the Master's hand
To do His will and never say Him nay.
He blends our souls with iron, fire or clay,...

The Child.

I hear you weeping, mother, dear,--
I hear you wake and weep;
What brings the tears into your eyes
When you should be asleep?
I hear my name upon your lips;
What is it that you say...

O wanderer! whoever thou mayest be,
I beg of thee to pass in silence here
And leave me with my empty sepulchre
Beside the ceaseless turmoil of the sea;
Pass me as one whom life's old tragedy...