Works

I.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art
Singing where the future lies
Wrapped in hues of Paradise,
Pleading with her poignant note...

Through shimmering skies the big clouds slowly sail;
A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech;
Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech
The brawling crows call down the sleepy vale;...

The snowy clouds, soft sleeping lambkins, lie
Along the dark blue meadows of the sky,
And the bright stars, like golden daffodils,
Are blooming thickly by.

And Luna, gentle shepherdess, the while...

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,
The day has finished the year that dies with a century's birth;
Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:...

"Give us this day our daily bread!" O prayer
By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry
For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair--
A beggar's plaint when Dives passes by.
...

She comes not with the conscious grace
Of gentle, winsome womanhood,
Nor yet, withal, the flaunting face
Of men and women understood,
But rather as a thing apart,
A wind-blown petal of a rose,...

O king! what is the quest that evermore
Foredooms thy feet to roam, yet blinds thine eyes?
Why seek ye still for life's imperfect prize,
Or turn thy weary sail from shore to shore,...

The Sky Line.

Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.
...

The city frets in the distance, lass,
The city so grim and gray,
A glare in the sky by night, my lass,
And a blot on the sky by day;
But we are out on the long white road,
And under the wide free sky,...

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid,
The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute,
The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,
The flower of faith that grows to unseen fruit.
...

Down at the end of the iron lane
I see the sunset's glare,
And the red bars lie across the sky
Like steps of a wondrous stair.

Below, the throng, with unlifted eye,...

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.)


Brave ships are these that bear thee home again...

Life to her was a perfect flower,
And every petal a jeweled hour,
Till all at once--we know not why--
God sent a frost from His clear blue sky.

Life to her was a fairy rune;...

North and south with the fickle tides,
With the wind from east to west,
The death-ship follows her track of doom,
But finds no port or rest.

Day after day the far white sails...

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,
Forgot of all things save his jailer's hate
That turns the daylight from his iron grate
To make his prison more and more a hell;...

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff
That the glacier's torrent thundered under;
And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye
Looked out on the world of peak and sky
In silent wonder.
...

An Earthworm once loved a Star. In the hush of the summer night,
He lay quite close to the ground and gazed on its golden light;
He looked from his house of clay, and dreamed of wonderful things,...

It wouldn't be fair to Belshazzar
When speaking of madness and mirth,
To draw from his revel a moral
For conscienceless sin in the earth,
For 'tis certain the King of Chaldea...

(Battleships of the Coronation Naval Review, Spithead, England, June 24, 1911.)


Hail, sceptered Mars, great god of wars!
Hail, Carnage, queen of blood!
And hail those muffled armaments--...

I.

"He has eyes like the Christ,"
The mother said, and smiled;
"He will be wise and good,
My wondering little child.
God grant him strength to do
Whate'er his tasks may be,...