The Lost Poem
Flushed with fancies, I bethought me,
'Into music I will set them,
Like a pearl into its setting
Of the finest golden fretting;
Never shall the world forget them;
It shall sing me, ring me back the melody;
It shall rise and bless the poem while it blesseth me.'
But, ah me! some faintness ailed me,
Or it ailed the music rather.
Was it all a stir of gladness?
Was it half a pang of sadness?
Do my best, I could not gather
From my heart's store any chord of harmony;
No other thought was music to me but the thought of thee.
Proud as joy my failure makes me!
Proud I sit and sing about it;
Not in finest poet-fashion,
Not for deepest poet's passion,
Would my soul have gone without it,
While the old earth asketh song or psalmody,
Heart, remember! love shall still the truest music be!
The Lost Colors
FROWNING, the mountain stronghold stood,
Whose front no mortal could assail;
For more than twice three hundred years
The terror of the Indian vale.
By blood and fire the robber band
Answered the helpless village wail.
Hot was his heart and cool his thought,
When Napier from his Englishmen
Up to the bandits’ rampart glanced,
And down upon his ranks again.
Summoned to dare a deed like that,
Which of them all would answer then?
What sullen regiment is this
That lifts its eyes to dread Cutchee?
Abased, its standard bears no flag.
For thus the punishment shall be
That England metes to Englishmen
Who shame her once by mutiny.
From out the disgraced Sixty-Fourth
There stepped a hundred men of might.
Cried Napier: “Now prove to me
I read my soldiers’ hearts aright!
Form! Forward! Charge, my volunteers!
Your colors are on yonder height!”
So sad is shame, so wise is trust!
The challenge echoed bugle-clear.
Like fire along the Sixty-Fourth
From rank to file rang cheer on cheer.
In death and glory up the pass
They fought for all to brave men dear.
Old is the tale, but read anew
In every warring human heart.
What rebel hours, what coward shame,
Upon the aching memory start!
To find the ideal forfeited,
—What tears can teach the holy art?
Thou great Commander! leading on
Through weakest darkness to strong light;
By any anguish, give us back
Our life’s young standard, pure and bright.
O fair, lost Colors of the soul!
For your sake storm we any height.
Absent!
You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.
Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side;
Cold as a cause outlived, or lost,
Vague as the legends told
At twilight, of a mystic band
Circling an Age of Gold.
Unseen, unheard, unfelt-and yet,
Beneath the army blue
Our heart-beats sounded real enough
When we were boys like you.
We turned us from your fabled lore,
With ancient passion rife;
No myth, our solemn laying down
Of love, and hope, and life.
No myth, the clasped and severed hands,
No dream, the last replies.
Upon the desolated home
To-day, the sunlight lies.
Take, sons of peace, your heritage-
Our loss, your legacy;
Our action be your fables fair,
Our facts, your poetry.
O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours-the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.
Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour;
Yours to become all that we were,
And all we might have been;
Yours the fine eye that separates
The unseen from the seen.
The Lost Winter
Deep-hearted as an untried joy
The warm light blushes on the bay,
And placid as long happiness
The perfect sky of Florida.
Silent and swift the gulls wheel by,-
Fair silver spots seen flittingly
To sparkle like lost thoughts, and dip
And vanish in a silver sea.
And green with an immortal spring
The little lonely islands stand;
And lover-like, the winds caress
The fresh-plucked roses in my hand.
And sweet with all the scents of June,
And gentle with the breath of May,
And passionate with harvest calm,
Dawns the strange face of Christmas-day.
O vanished world of ache and chill!
If purple-cold the shadows blow
Somewhere upon the shrunken cheeks
Of wan, tormented drifts of snow;
And if, beneath the steady stare
Of a pale sunset's freezing eye,
The coming tempest, lurking, stabs
The lonely traveller hurrying by,-1
What art can make me understand?
What care I, can I care to know?
Star-like, among the tender grass,
The little white wild-flowers show!
There is no winter in the world!
There is no winter anywhere!
Earth turns her face upon her arm,
And sleeps within the golden air.
If once within the story told-
Of peace or pain, of calm or strife-
The clear revealéd sequencés
Of every finished human life,
It chanceth that the record reads:
This wanderer, something torn and tossed
By certain storms he had passed through,
And something faint and chilly, lost
Just here a little while the sense
Of winter from his heavy heart,
And felt within his life the roots
Of spring eternal stir and start;
Could not one blessed little while,
For very happiness, believe
That anywhere upon God's earth
Souls could be cold and worn and live,-
That blessed once a glory were
Enough, I think, to crown one's days.
O swift-departing days of youth,
Lend me your evanescent grace
Of fancy, while my graver years
Like happy children rise and bless
The shadow of the memory of
Love's sweet and helpless selfishness!
Ah, many, many years shall learn
To blush and bloom as young years may,
But only once the soul forget
All else but its own Florida!
