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...

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.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art
Singing where the future lies
Wrapped in hues of Paradise,
Pleading with her poignant note...

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.)


Brave ships are these that bear thee home again...

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,
Forgot of all things save his jailer's hate
That turns the daylight from his iron grate
To make his prison more and more a hell;...

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff
That the glacier's torrent thundered under;
And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye
Looked out on the world of peak and sky
In silent wonder.
...

An Earthworm once loved a Star. In the hush of the summer night,
He lay quite close to the ground and gazed on its golden light;
He looked from his house of clay, and dreamed of wonderful things,...

What will I say when face to face with God
My naked soul shall come, seared with the stain
That men call sin? Why, God will understand;
He knew my pitiful story long before...