Elegy For The Doctor
LANDLORD, take a double fee, and let the banquet slide,
Send the viands, send the wine to cheer the poor outside,
Turn the glasses upside down, leave the room alight,
Let the flower-strown tables stand glittering all the night.
Everybody’s friend is gone, hushed his gentle mirth,
Sweeter-hearted comrade soul none shall know on earth,
Burly body, manly mind, upright lifted head,
Viking eyes and smiling lips—Dr. Drummond’s dead!
For the Club, for the feast, and for the busy street
Primal natural airs he brought, oh, so fresh and sweet,
Brattling rivers, gleaming lakes, wild-flower forest floors,
To heal the City’s weary heart with balms of out-of-doors.
But where the campfire-litten boughs swing swaying overhead,
And wondering wolf and lynx shrill wild the boding of their dread,
And strangely through the moony night the hooting owlets roam,
His tones would yearn in gladsome talk about the doors of Home.
In sympathy with every pain of all who bear the yoke,
There was a natural piety in all he wrote and spoke,
He warmed with Irish pride in deeds defying Might’s strong host,
Yet ever shared the Saxon sense for ruling at the roast.
He bore the poet’s shifting heart that puts itself in place
Of every humble kindly soul it knows of every race,
He felt their sorrow as their joy, but chose the strain to cheer
And help the differing breeds to share one patriot feeling here.
There was no better loyalist than this whose humors played
In pleasant human wise to serve the State two races made—
O Landlord, turn the glasses down, and leave the room alight,
And let the flower-sweet silence tell his shade our grief to-night.
Our Town's Comforter
IT touches the heart of “Our Mother”
with happiness queerly regretful
To muse on all they who instinctively
bring her their innermost grief,
For reasons she never can fathom
they come, as if wholly forgetful
Of fear to repose their confessions
with Our Town’s fount of relief.
What crucified faces of maidens
despairing in love’s desolation
Have streamed with the weeping they’ve hidden
from all, except Mother alone!
What stormy-heart fighters came wildly
lamenting their souls’ tribulation
At hearing the weaklings they’d vanquished
from terrible silences groan!
What saints who had failed of the halo,
because their stiff features retarded
The flow of affection from children
they loved, though with signals confused,
Would open, for Mother’s eyes only,
mysterious portals that guarded
Their yearning for all the caresses
their hickory manners refused.
When parents, grown aged, and basking
long years in the Town’s veneration,
Shrank bitter and dumb, at the blow of
an archangel son in disgrace,
How he knelt in despair with Our Mother,
and rose with the transfiguration
Of that which is God, or just mother,
that shines in her triumphant face.
Yet Mother is given to blaming
her nature for cold-hearted dealing;—
“Dear souls, how they pour out their troubles
to me, whose responses are wood!
Though I strive to console them, my sayings
seem void, to myself, of all feeling,
For I never can find an expression
to make my heart half understood.”
“And I never can love them enough
in their sadness, however I’m trying
To soften the life in my heart
till it break with their anguishing tears,
For it’s flooded with gladness to feel them
so helped by the balm of the crying,—
And, oh, what a shame I’m made happy
through sorrows they’ll carry for years.”
