Glamour
THE knowledge of love
Is like sudden sun upon a river--
The slipping water
Is instantly opaque and glorious.
No longer can we look into it
Counting the pebbles,
Watching the ribboned water-reeds,
Or searching idly
For that something which we lost
(A ring with gems)
It is all glamour, now!
We turn away, shading our eyes.
Lake Louise
I THINK that when the Master Jeweler tells
His beads of beauty over, seeking there
One gem to name as most supremely fair,
To you He turns, O lake of hidden wells!
So very lovely are you, Lake Louise,
The stars which crown your lifted peaks at even
Mistake you for a little sea in heaven
And nightly launch their shining argosies.
From shore to dim-lit shore a ripple slips,
The happy sigh of faintly stirring night
Where safe she sleeps upon this virgin height
Captive of dream and smiling with white lips.
Surely a spell, creation-old, was made
For you, O lake of silences, that all
Earth's fretting voices here should muted fall,
As if a finger on their lips were laid!
Wet Weather
IT is the English in me that loves the soft, wet weather--
The cloud upon the mountain, the mist upon the sea,
The sea-gull flying low and near with rain upon each feather,
The scent of deep, green woodlands where the buds are breaking free.
A world all hot with sunshine, with a hot, white sky above it--
Oh then I feel an alien in a land I'd call my own;
The rain is like a friend's caress, I lean to it and love it,
'Tis like a finger on a nerve that thrills for it alone!
Is it the secret kinship which each new life is given
To link it by an age-long chain to those whose lives are through,
That wheresoever he may go, by fate or fancy driven,
The home-star rises in his heart to keep the compass true?
Ah, 'tis the English in me that loves the soft, gray weather--
The little mists that trail along like bits of wind-flung foam,
The primrose and the violet--all wet and sweet together,
And the sound of water calling, as it used to call at home.
