Works

Fashion on fashion on fashion,
(With only the truth growing old!)
And here's the new purple of passion,
(And love waiting out in the cold)
Who'll buy?

They are crying new lamps for Aladdin,...

Long, long ago He said,
He who could wake the dead,
And walk upon the sea--
"Come, follow Me.

"Leave your brown nets and bring
Only your hearts to sing,
Only your souls to pray,...

I.

(On many recent novels by the conventional unconventionalists.)

Old Pantaloon, lean-witted, dour and rich,
After grim years of soul-destroying greed,
Weds Columbine, that April-blooded witch...

(On a certain goddess, acclaimed as "new" but known in Babylon.)

I saw the assembled artists of our day
Waiting for light, for music and for song.
A woman stood before them, fresh as May...

(On Certain of the Bolsheviki "Idealists.")

With half the force and thought you waste in rage
Over your neighbor's house, or heart of stone,
You might have built your own new heritage,...

(On Certain Realists.)

You with the quick sardonic eye
For all the mockeries of life,
Beware, in this dark masque of things that seem,
Lest even that tragic irony,...

(An Answer)
...

With shadowy pen I write,
Till time be done,
Good news of some strange light,
Some far off sun.

(1916)


I.

I found a dreadful acre of the dead,
Marked with the only sign on earth that saves.
The wings of death were hurrying overhead,
The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;...

I.

If souls could sing to heaven's high King
As blackbirds pipe on earth,
How those delicious courts would ring
With gusts of lovely mirth!
What white-robed throng could lift a song...

"If I could whisper you all I know,"
Said the Old Fool in the Wood,
"You'd never say that green leaves grow.
You'd say, 'Ah, what a happy mood
The Master must be in today,
To think such thoughts,'...

Out of her darkened fishing-ports they go,
A fleet of little ships, whose every name--
Daffodil, Sea-lark, Rose and Surf and Snow,
Burns in this blackness like an altar-flame;
...

(1904)


The sunset lingered in the pale green West:
In rosy wastes the low soft evening star
Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And tawny sails came stealing o'er the bar.
...