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The Rose-Jar
Description:
Excerpt
As in a Rose-Jar
As in a rose-jar filled with petals sweet
Blown long ago in some old garden place,
Mayhap, where you and I, a little space,
Drank deep of love and knew that love was fleet—
Or leaves once gathered from a lost retreat
By one who never will again retrace
Her silent footsteps—one, whose gentle face
Was fairer than the roses at her feet;
So, deep within the vase of memory,
I keep my dust of roses fresh and dear
As in the days before I knew the smart
Of time and death. Nor aught can take from me
The haunting fragrance that still lingers here—
As in a rose-jar, so within my heart!
There is an island in the silent sea,
Whose marge the wistful waves lap listlessly—
An isle of rest for those who used to be.
For ne’er an echo wakes that towering wall,
Whose blackened crags answer none other call
Save the lone ocean’s rhythmic rise and fall.
Only the song the sea sings as she laves
That sleep-bound shore with sad caressing waves,
The while the dead sleep sweeter in their graves.
’Tis oh! so still they sleep within each tomb,
Cool in long shadows of the cypress gloom,
Breathing in death the moon-flower’s rank perfume.
They know not when slow barges on the mere
Enter the portals of that place austere—
Enter and so forever disappear!
And in this island of a silent sea,
Whose marge e’er wistful waves lap listlessly,
Is rest,—is peace for all eternity.
You and I
Over the hills where the pine-trees grow,
With a laugh to answer the wind at play.
Why do I laugh? I do not know,
But you and I once passed this way.
Down in the hollow now white with snow
My heart is singing a song today.
Why do I sing? I do not know,
But you and I were here in May.
When April spreads her mantle green
Across the pasture-lands of snow,
And Spring’s first scarlet breasts are seen
Where treetops rustle to and fro;
Then come fair fragrant dreams as though
Our lightest fancy to entrance
And paint us what we fain would know
Adown the lanes of Old Romance.
Anon, we see the golden sheen
Of burnished mail the sunbeams throw,
Flashing the poplars tall between,
As knights ride by to meet the foe;
Or, mayhap, shepherd lads who blow
On slender pipes, a pastoral dance—
Ah, strong were they in weal and woe
Adown the lanes of Old Romance!
But now the vast years intervene,
The fountain long has ceased its flow,
And silence rules the lone demesne
That once held such a goodly show;
Yet time, at least, does this bestow
Nor leave the best to fleeting chance—
They live again in fancy’s glow
Adown the lanes of Old Romance.
ENVOY
Sweet, still for us some blossoms grow
From out that dim and dear expanse—
Come, take my hand and we shall go
Adown the lanes of Old Romance!
A Voice From the Far Away
I heard a voice from the far away
Softly say this to me—
“You will find the heart of the world some day
And the why of the things that be;
You will see the grief of the yea and nay
And the price of frailty.
“And upon your lute you will weave a theme
Which the world will harken and know;
For every note of the song will teem
With a great soul’s overflow—
You will speak the meaning within a dream
And the pain in the afterglow.
“But for all of this there’s a price—
’Tis the price of minstrelsy—
You will never have of the things you play,
Sad singer of poetry,
And throughout your life you will go for aye,
Heart-hungry and silently!”
I heard a voice from the far away
Softly say this to me.
Throughout the vale again Narcissus cries
And Echo answers from her dark retreat,
While Zephyr heavy-laden with the sweet,
Fresh scent of blooms across the pasture hies;
Above, the blueness of the April skies,
Matched by the lure unto the wandering feet
That e’er must go ere Spring could be complete
To the green wood where laughing Eros lies....