Excerpt
Friend, for the sake of loves we hold in common,The love of books, of paintings, rhyme and fiction;And for the sake of that divine affliction,The love of art, passing the love of woman;—By which all life's made nobler, superhuman,Lifting the soul above, and, without frictionOf Time, that puts failure in his prediction,—Works to some end through hearts that dreams illumine:To you I pour this Cup of Dreams—a striver,And dreamer too in this sad world,—unwittingOf that you do, the help that still assureth,—Lifts up the heart, struck down by that dark driver,Despair, who, on Life's pack-horse—effort—sitting,Rides down Ambition through whom Art endureth.
THRENODY IN MAY (In memory of Madison Cawein.) Again the earth, miraculous with May,Unfolds its vernal arras. YesteryearWe strolled together 'neath the greening trees,And heard the robin tune its flute note clear,And watched above the white cloud squadrons veer.And saw their shifting shadows drift awayAdown the Hudson, as ships seek the seas.The scene is still the same. The violetUnlids its virgin eye; its amber oreThe dandelion shows, and yet, and yet,He comes no more, no more! He of the open and the generous heart,The soul that sensed all flowerful loveliness,The nature as the nature of a child;Who found some rapture in the wind's caress.Beauty in humble weed and mint and cress.And sang, with his incomparable art,The magic wonder of the wood and wild.The little people of the reeds and grassMurmur their blithe, companionable lore,The rills renew their minstrelsy. Alas,He comes no more, no more! And yet it seems as though he needs must come,Albeit he has cast off mortality,Such was his passion for the bourgeoning time,Such to his spirit was the ecstasyThe hills and valleys chorus when set free,No music mute, no lyric instinct dumb,But keyed to utterance of immortal rhyme.Ah, haply in some other fairer springHe sees bright tides sweep over slope and shore,But here how vain is ell my visioning!He comes no more, no more! Poet and friend, wherever you may fareEnwrapt in dreams, I love to think of youWandering amid the meads of asphodel,Holding high converse with the exalted fewWho sought and found below the elusive clueTo beauty, and in that diviner airBowing in worship still to its sweet spell.Why sorrow, then, though fate unkindly laysUpon our questioning hearts this burden sore,And though through all our length of hastening daysHe comes no more, no more! Clinton Scollard.
FOREWORD
It is with a sense of sadness and regret that this book, written by one who universally has endeared himself to lovers of nature through his revelation of her mysteries, must be prefaced as containing the last songs of this exquisite singer of the South.
When the final word is spoken it is fitting that it be by one of authority. William Dean Howells, in the pages of The North American Review, offers this tribute:
"I had read his poetry and loved it from the beginning, and in each successive expression of it, I had delighted in its expanding and maturing beauty....