Katharine Lee Bates: Verses about Sorrow

HOPE of the Nations, lift thy stricken heart.
Thyself art Sorrow, and to thee the cry
Of battle-anguish comes more piercingly
Than even in those months of sneer and smart,
When thou so steadfastly didst bear thy part,
True Champion of Peace. And now, when high
The war-storm rages, when horne's darlings die
By mangled thousands, lift thy stricken heart
For a white shield of mercy, torch that throws
Its reconciling gleam across the seas.
O thou in love and grief pre-eminent,
Divine shall be thy comfort to appease
These bleeding Christian armies, sudden foes
That slaughter in a fierce astonishment.

HONOR to him whose very blood remembers
The old, enchanted dream-song of the Rhine,
Although his house of life. is fair with shine
Of fires new-kindled on the buried embers;
Whose heart is wistful for the flowers he tended
Beside his mother, for the caryen gnome
And climbing bear and cuckoo-clock of home,
For the whispering forest path two lovers wended;
Who none the less, still strange in speech and manner,
With our young Freedom keeps his plighted faith,
Sides with his children's hope against the wraith
Of his own childhood, hails the Starry Banner
As emblem of his country now, to-morrow;
A patriot by duty, not by birth.
The costliest loyalty has purest worth.
Honor to him who draws the sword in sorrow!

THE best of life, what is it but white moments?
Those swift illuminations when we see
The flying shadows on the fragrant meadows
As God beholds them from eternity.
White moments, when the bliss of being worships,
And fear and shame are heretics that burn
In holy fire of exquisite desire
For love's surrender and for love's return.
White moments, when a Power above the artist
Catches his plodding chisel, sets it free,
And from each urgent stroke there springs emergent
The wayward grace that laughs at industry.
White moments, when the drowsing soul, sense-muffled,
Is stung awake by some keen arrow-flight
And rends the bestial, claiming its celestial
Succession in the lineage of light.
White moments, when the spirit, long confronted
By all the bitter formulæ of fate,
Inveterate romancer, finds its answer
In some mysterious faith inviolate.
White moments, when the silence steals on sorrow,
And in that hush the heart becomes aware
Of wings that brood it, visions that seclude it
Forevermore from folly, fear and care.
The best of life, what is it but white moments?
Freedoms that break the chain and fling the load,
Irradiations, ardors, consecrations,
— The starry shrines along our pilgrim road.

(A medieval Spanish legend slanderously setting forth the utter unreason of woman.)
ROMAQUIA sat and wept her
Lace mantilla full of tears.
King Abit laid by his scepter,
Left the Council of the Peers.
'Now what sorrow makes thee cry, mate?
Queen of Seville, sobbing so?'
''Tis your Andalusian climate.
Oh, I want to see the snow.'
'Speak thy wish and it is granted;
Thine to bid and mine to please.'
All the hills and plains he planted
With a myriad almond trees.
When the suns of February
Made them white with blossoming,
Romaquia was so merry
That she kissed the happy king.
'Every ill has its panacea,'
Wrote the learned King Abit,
Smiling on his Romaquia,
While he wondered at his wit.
Romaquia sat and wept her
Dainty fan into a dud.
King Abit threw by his scepter
With an unmajestic thud.
'What's the trouble, top of treasures?'
'See those women by the flood
Kneading bricks, but I've no pleasures.
I can't dabble in the mud.'
Loud he called his master mason
And in bower of eglantine
Built a jade and jasper basin,
Filled with rose-water and wine.
Then for mud he poured in spices,
Ginger, mace and cinnamon,
Sugar, honey, syrups, ices,
That the Queen might have her fun.
'Every ill has its panacea,'
Wrote the learned King Abit
Wondering if his Romaquia
Recognized her husband's wit.
Romaquia in her garden
Watered all the trees with salt
Till they faded, and the warden
Was beheaded for the fault
Of his lachrymose sultana.
Oleander, citron, balm,
Orange, lemon and banana,
The pomegranate, myrtle, palm,
All were drooping for distresses
That the Queen poured out in tears,
Pouting at the King's caresses
Till he longed to box her ears.
'Let me be!' she snapped.''You squeeze me,
Clumsy thing! You never try
In the very least to please me,
So of course I have to cry.'
'Every ill has its panacea,'
Wrote the rueful King Abit,
'Every ill but Romaquia.
Wives' caprices wear out wit.'

Must I, who walk alone,
Come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet
With a strange dew of tears?


So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our homely, laureate flowers.
Sonnets and odes
Fringing our daily roads.
Can amaranth and asphodel
Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?
Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,
Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,
Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,
Simplicities of mirth,
Must follow them above
With touches of vague homesickness that pass
Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.
Beneath some foreign arch of sky,
How many a time the rover
You or I,
For life oft sundered look from look,
And voice from voice, the transient dearth
Schooling my soul to brook
This distance that no messages may span,
Would chance
Upon our wilding by a lonely well,
Or drowsy watermill,
Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,
Or where the nightingales of old romance
With tragical contraltos fill
Dim solitudes of infinite desire;
And once I joyed to meet
Our peasant gadabout
A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,
Twinkling a saucy eye
As potentates paced by.

Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame
From friendship's altar fire!
How proudly we would pluck and tame
The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!
How swiftly they were sent
Far, far away
On journeys wide,
By sea and continent,
Green miles and blue leagues over,
From each of us to each,
That so our hearts might reach,
And touch within the yellow clover,
Love's letter to be glad about
Like sunshine when it came!

My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;
Let love then make me brave
To bear the keen hurts of
This careless summertide,
Ay, of our own poor flower,
Changed with our fatal hour,
For all its sunshine vanished when you died;
Only white clover blossoms on your grave.