sing, and be wise,
As the sea has waited and sung,
As the hills through the night have been wise!
For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love,
Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death,
The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak!
And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend,
They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night;
And when they have learned of our lips,
Still back to our feet they will grope
For that ultimate essence and core of all song,
To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars,
Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one!

BLACK HOURS

I have drunk deep
Of the well of bitterness.
Black hours have harried me,
Blind fate has bludgeoned my bent head,
And on my brow the iron crown
Of sorrow has been crushed.
And being mortal, I have cried aloud
At anguish ineluctable.
But over each black hour has hung
Forlorn this star of knowledge:
The path of pain too great to be endured
Leads always unto peace;
And when the granite road of anguish mounts
Up and still up to its one ultimate
And dizzy height of torture,
Softly it dips and meets
The valley of endless rest!

BEFORE RENEWAL

Summer is dead.
And love is gone.
And life is glad of this.
For sad were both, with having given much;
And bowed were both, with great desires fulfilled;
And both were grown too sadly wise
Ever to live again.
Too aged with hours o'er-passionate,
Too deeply sung by throats
That took no thought of weariness,
Moving too madly toward the crest of things,
Giving too freely of the fountaining sap,
Crowding too gladly into grass and leaves,
Breathing too blindly into flower and song!
Again the lyric hope may thrill the world,
Again the sap may sweeten into leaves,
Again will grey-eyed April come
With all her choiring throats;
But not to-day—
For the course is run.
And the cruse is full,
And the loin ungirt,
And the hour ordained!
And now there is need of rest;
And need of renewal there is;
And need of silence,
And need of sleep.
Too clear the light
Now lies on hill and valley;
And little is left to say,
And nothing is left to give.
Summer is dead;
And love is gone!

HILL-TOP HOURS

I am through with regret.
No more shall I kennel with pain.
I have called to this whimpering soul,
This soul that is sodden with tears
And sour with the reek of the years!
And now we shall glory in light!
Like a tatter of sail in the wind,
Like a tangle of net on the sand,
Like a hound stretched out in the heat,
My soul shall lie in the sun,
And be drowsy with peace,
And not think of the past!

LETTERS FROM HOME

Letters from Home, you said.
Unopened they lay on the shack-sill
As you stared with me at the prairie
And the foothills bathed with light.
Letters from Home, you whispered,
And the homeland casements shone
Through the homeland dusk again,
And the sound of the birds came back,
And the soft green sorrowing hills,
And the sigh of remembered names,
The wine of remembered youth,—
Oh, these came back,
Back with those idle words
Of "Letters from Home"!

Over such desolate leagues,
Over such sundering seas,
Out of the lost dead years,
After the days of waiting,
After the ache had died,
After the brine of failure,
After the outland peace
Of the trail that never turns back,
Now that the night-wind whispers
How Home shall never again be home,
And now that the arms of the Far-away
Have drawn us close to its breast,
Out of the dead that is proved not dead,
To waken the sorrow that should have died,
To tighten the throat that never shall sing,
To sadden the trails that we still must ride,
Too late they come to us here—
Our Letters from Home!

CHAINS

I watched the men at work on the stubborn rock,
But mostly the one man poised on a drill
Above the steam that hissed and billowed about him
White in the frosty air,
Where the lordly house would stand.

Majestic, muscular, high like a god,
He stood,
And controlled and stopped
And started his thundering drill,
Offhand and careless and lordly as Thor,
Begrimed and solemn and crowned with sweat,
Where the great steel chains swung over the buckets of rock.

Then out of a nearby house came a youth,
All gloved and encased in fur and touched with content,
Thin-shouldered and frail and finished,
Leading a house-dog out on a silver chain.
He peered at the figure that fought with the drill
Above the billowing steam and tumult of sound,
Peered up for a moment impassive,
With almost pitying eyes,
And then went pensively down the Avenue's calm,
In the clear white light of the noonday sun,
Not holding, but held by his silvery chain!

THE DRUMS

A village wrapped in slumber,
Silent between the hills,
Empty of moon-lit marketplace,
Empty of moving life—
Such is my quiet heart.
Shadowy-walled it rests,
Sleeping its heavy sleep;
But sudden across the dark
Tingles a sound of drums!
The drums, the drums, the distant drums,
The throb of the drums strikes up,
The beat of the drums awakes!
Then loud through the little streets,
And strange to the startled roofs,
The drums, the drums approach and pound,
And throb and clamour and thrill and pass,
And between the echoing house-walls
All swart and grim they go,
The battalions of regret,
After the drums, the valiant drums
That die away in the night!

ANÆSTHESIA

I caught the smell of ether
From the glass-roofed room
Where the hospital stood.
Suddenly all about me
I felt a mist of anguish
And the old, old hour of dread
When Death had shambled by.

Yellow with time it is,
This letter on which I look;
But up from it comes a perfume
That stabs me still to the heart;
And suddenly, at the odour,
Through a ghost-like mist I know
Rapture and love and wild regret
When Life, and You, went by.

A SUMMER NIGHT

Mournful the summer moon
Rose from the quiet sea.
Golden and sad and full of regret
As though it would ask of earth
Where all her lovers had vanished
And whither had gone the rose-red lips
That had sighed to her light of old.
Then I caught a pulse of music,
Brokenly, out at the pier-end,
And I heard the voices of girls
Going home in the dark,
Laughing along the sea-wall
Over a lover's word!

SAPPHO'S TOMB

I

In an old and ashen island,
Beside a city grey with death,
They are seeking Sappho's tomb!