Cross Roads

Excerpt

PREFACE

The candlelight sweeps softly through the room,
Filling dim surfaces with golden laughter,
Touching with mystery each high hung rafter,
Cutting a path of promise through the gloom.

Slim little elves dance gently on each taper,
Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shrouded
corners—
And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners,
Great shadows sway like wind-blown sheets of paper.

Gently as fingers drawn across your hair,
I see the yellow flicker of it creep—
And in a silence that is kin to sleep,
I feel a world away from pain and care.

Roads stretch like arms across the world outside,
Roads reach to strife, to happiness, to fame—
Here, in the candlelight, I speak your name,
Here we are at life's cross way, side by side!

OH, THERE ARE BROOKS THERE, AND FIELDS THERE AND NOOKS
THERE—
NOOKS WHERE A SEEKER MAY FIND FOREST FLOWERS;
BLUE IS THE SKY THERE, AND SOFT WINDS CREEP BY THERE,
SINGING A SONG THROUGH THE LONG SUMMER HOURS.

The woods lay dreaming in a topaz dream,
And we, who silently roamed hand in hand,
Were pilgrims in a strange, enchanted land,
Where life was love, and love was all a-gleam.

And old remembered songs came back to greet
Our ears, from other worlds of long ago,
The worlds that we of earth may seldom know—
And to those songs we timed our vagrant feet.

We did not speak, we did not need to say
The thought that lay so buried in our hearts—
The thoughts as sweet as springtime rain, that
starts
The buds to blossoming in wistful May.

We did not need to speak, we could not speak,
The wonder words that we in silence knew—
We walked, as very little children do,
Who feel, but cannot tell, the thing they seek.

Beyond a screen of bushes, bending low,
We knew that fair Titania lay at rest,
Her pillowed head upon her lover's breast,
Her kisses swift as birds that come and go!

And underneath a wall of mottled stone,
We knew the sleeping beauty lay in state,
Entangled in a mist of tears, to wait
The prince whose kiss would raise her to a throne.

Perhaps a witch with single flaming eye,
Was watching from beneath the hemlock tree;
And fairies that our gaze might never see,
Laughed at us as we, hand in hand, crept by.

Laughed at us? No, I somehow think they knew
That you and I were kin to them that day!
I think they knew that we were years away
From everything but make-believe, come true.

I think they knew that, singing through the air,
There thrilled a vague, insistent, harp-like call—
And that, where woodbine blazed against the wall,
You held me close and kissed my wind-tossed hair!

WATERIN' TH' HORSES

I took th' horses to th' brook—to water 'em you know,
Th' air was cold with just a touch o' frost;
And as we went a-joggin' down I couldn't help but
think,
O' city folk an' all the things they lost.

O' cause they have their lighted streets—their Great
White Way an' such,
O' course they have their buildings large an' tall;
But, my! they never know th' joy o' ridin' ter th'
brook,
An' somehow I don't envy 'em at all...!