Works

(MAY 20, 1910)

Full in the splendour of this morning hour,
With tramp of men and roll of muffled drums,
In what a pomp and pageantry of power,
Borne to his grave, our lord, King EDWARD, comes!
...

The coup d'etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.

'Greeting from those who are to die!...

From every quarter of your land
They give God thanks who turned away
Death and the needy madman's hand,
Death-fraught, which menaced you that day.

One school of many made to make...

Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke open bars and fell on Danae:
Or a dread vision as when Semele...

Avenging and bright fall the swift sword of Erin[1]
On him who the brave sons of Usna betrayed!
For every fond eye he hath wakened a tear in,
A drop from his heart-wounds shall weep o'er her blade.
...

How soothing sound the gentle airs that move
The innumerable leaves, high overhead,
When autumn first, from the long avenue,
That lifts its arching height of ancient shade,
Steals here and there a leaf!...

Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen,
Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat
Found, and each root malevolently fat
Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken...

Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport[570]


1.

The Moorish King rides up and down.
Through Granada's royal town:
From Elvira's gates to those...

I'm bin a-visitun 'bout a week
To my little Cousin's at Nameless Creek,
An' I'm got the hives an' a new straw hat,
An' I'm come back home where my beau lives at.

I left behind the ways of care,
The crowded hurrying hours,
I breathed again the woodland air,
I plucked the woodland flowers:

Bluebells as yet but half awake,
Primroses pale and cool,...

I knew thee first as one may know the fame
Of some apostle, as a man may know
The mid-day sun far-shining o'er the snow.
I hail'd thee prince of poets! I became
Vassal of thine, and warm'd me at the flame...

My Auntie has a camera, and when I'm out at play
And see her coming with it, I try to hide away.
For oh, it is so bothersome to hear her, with a laugh,...

"Qui color ater erat, nunc est contrarius atro."[1]

With singing of ballads, and crying of news,
With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes,
Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless,...

I.

Laura, my Laura! 'Yes, mother!' 'I want you, Laura; come down.'
'What is it, mother - what, dearest? O your loved face how it pales!
You tremble, alas and alas - you heard bad news from the town?'...

One moment I place your two bright pearls against my robe,
And the red silk mirrors a rose in each.

Why did I not meet you before I married?

See, there are two tears quivering at my lids;...

Proverbs, Chap. xxxi.

A woman pure, oh, who can find?
Her price is dearer far than gold,
And greater in her husband's mind,
Than shining gems, or pearls untold.
...

I may not rightly call thy name, -
Alas! thy forehead never knew
The kiss that happier children claim,
Nor glistened with baptismal dew.

Daughter of want and wrong and woe,...

Two crowned Kings, and One that stood alone
With no green weight of laurels round his head,
But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,
And wearied with man's never-ceasing moan...

My soul beheld a vision of the Master:
Methought He stood with grieved and questioning eyes,
Where Freedom drove its chariot to disaster
And toilers heard, unheeding, toilers' cries....

As I stood by yon roofless tower,
Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air,
Where th' howlet mourns in her ivy bower
And tells the midnight moon her care;

The winds were laid, the air was still,...