Works

By A. C. S.


The Centuries kiss and commingle,
Cling, clasp, and are knit in a chain;
No cycle but scorns to be single,
No two but demur to be twain,...

Father of all! In every age,
In ev'ry clime ador'd,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou Great First Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confin'd...

When, soul in soul reflected,
We breathed an aethered air,
When we neglected
All things elsewhere,
And left the friendly friendless
To keep our love aglow,
We deemed it endless . . ....

Thou hast marked the lonely river,
On whose waveless bosom lay
Some deep mountain-shadow ever,
Dark'ning e'en the ripples' play -
Didst thou deem it had no murmur
Of soft music, though unheard?...

Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still,
While the sun goes down in glory,
And away o'er lonely plain and hill
Still runs the same old story:
The sheoaks sigh it all day long,...

Here, in this other world, they come and go
With easy dream-like movements to and fro.
They stare through lovely eyes, yet do not seek
An answering gaze, or that a man should speak....

Whose is the voice that will not let me rest?
I hear it speak.
Where is the shore will gratify my quest,
Show what I seek?
Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice,
With halting tongue;...

Paler than the water's white
Stood the maiden in the shade,
And more silent than the night
Were her lips together laid;

Eyes she hid so long and still
By lids wet with unshed tears,...

Was it a dream,
Or a whim of the night?
Or did they gleam
Upon my sight
An instant there in the wan moonlight?
I saw them all, I think,
Under the bowers,
The faery folk, in a moonbeam wink,...

Nations ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before These States;
Garner'd clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel'd their course, and pass'd on;...

Orchestrating violins thru whisky sky
clouds slide like billiard balls
a Jackie Gleason-Fats Domino
ricochet off greener velvet;
my pheasant escaping snow.

Jack Ketch the hangman...

Gentle as the air that kisses
The splendid and ignoble with one breath,
Gentle as obliterating Death--
Though you be gentler yet,
In days when the old, old things begin to fret...

Not his the part to win the goal,
The flaming goal that flies before,
Into whose course the apples roll
Of self that stay his feet the more.

Beyond himself he shall not win...

Down comes the winter rain -
Spoils my hat and bow -
Runs into the poll of me;
But mother won't know.

We've been out and caught a cold,
Knee-deep in snow;
Such a lucky thing it is...

The splendors of a southern sun
Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
And weaves a mystic spell;...

I saw the Christ down from His cross,
A tragic man lean-limbed and tall,
But weighed with suffering and loss.
His back was to a broken wall,
And out upon the tameless world...

Now ought we to laugh or to weep -
Was it comical, or was it grave?
When we who had waded breast deep
In passion's most turbulent wave
Met out on an isle in Time's ocean,...

Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes:
One hand among the deep curls of her brow,
I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs:
She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow.
...

Comes there, O Earth, no breathing time for thee,
No pause upon thy many-chequered lands?
Now resting on my bed with listless hands
I mourn thee resting not. Continually...

In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding
The world from zenith to outermost edge,...