CharmingPoetry.com

SHELL-MUSIC
*OU with the shell to your ear,
What do you hear, Slim and so white In the moonlight?
“Oh, I hear surging and shouting and singing, The sea-folk at market their little bells ringing,
The tall weeds about them, the green world above! Oh, blithe are the pedlars of ribbons and laces, Yet blither and sweeter upon the wide spaces The footfalls of Love!”
You with the shell to your ear, What do you hear, Waves at your feet, White and so sweet?
“Oh, I hear cooing and kissing and cooing, The sound of sea-folk in their coral groves wooing.
The red branches round them, the green world above Oh, sweet are the songs of the witching sea-daughters, But sweeter, far sweeter, upon the wide waters, The footfalls of Love!”
You with the shell to your ear, What do you hear, Large eyes aglow, Forehead of snow?

THE RED-TRESSED MAIDEN
RED she is in a robe of sable, Rosy with pictures and tales to tell : She is a fairy, and yet no fable,
Weaving the dreams that we love so well.
Out in the dark where the night-winds hurry And dead leaves carpet the silent bush,
She has a charm for minds that worry,
For the worn white face a fresh young blush.
Tell her a story of some love laid in
The grave long since with a maiden white
She will not taunt you, the Red-Tressed Maiden Dressed in her mantle of starless night.
With fingers potent as rich wine chosen From dusty cellars where years lie dead,
She melts the ice in the veins long frozen, The blood runs chainless, and young and red.
Her ears have hearkened the joyous laughter, Man-made, maid-lifted through years and years
To frescoed dome and to smoky rafter, And tears and tears and ceaseless tears.
Old as the world, and some say older, Is she, and yet she is young and sweet:

Poems :
Rock’d in his cradle, sleeping like a stone,
The outworn frame of spirit false or true, The poor old earth embowell’d, her substance gone,-
She, like a wandering barque without a crew, Drifting away the serial ocean through,
The floating grave of a departed race, Whose history, if angel pen has drew,
In heaven’s sarcophagus shall keep sad place.

Victoria College.
Thou shalt be greater than the city that lies
Beneath thee, though the wave curve tender foam
Athwart her beach, thou hast a fairer home
Where mountains watch thee with eternal eyes.
Within thy sanctuary men shall prize
The charm of Greece, the majesty of Rome,
And Science through thy starry-circled dome
Shall trail her robe of unimagined dyes.
As thou hast gathered round thee all that brood
Of sacrifice for knowledge, who foresee
Regeneration, humbleness, and faith
Won through the yoke of Pallas, thou shalt be
Memory for those that build thy walls when death
Had given them else forgotten solitude.

MUROLS.
REARED on base of rock volcanic, Streaming with a force titanic When the height of Tartaret
Like a hell did burn ; Well they wrought who toiled to set Bastion, wall, and parapet, Donjon, keep, and oubliette
Fortress in Auvergne !
Raised erstwhile to guard the weaker From the banded plunder-seeker, Wasting ail the sunny plain,
Robbers, stark and stern ; Who for feud or sport or gain Laid in waste the fields of grain, Burnt the cottage and the fane
Fortress in Auvergne !

A WARDROBE
I SAID “The dark deed matters nought, And this green gown becomes her well ; For phrase and rhyme oft hide the thought, As pearls are hid ‘twixt shell and shell.
“My Lady Lyric, go your way,
Dance daintily around the globe, Nor mind what carping critics say,
Nor whence you got your shining robe.”
I have a wardrobe, quaintly hung
With brave brocade and gleaming silk,
Plumed hats, and collars richly strung, With gems outgiving fire and milk.
No thief may raid its rare contents, No years decay, nor moth devour;
It is not lavender that scents The air, nor is it any flower.
Full fifty poets, day and night,
In mirth and pain and dark despair
Sat weaving for the world’s delight The wondrous fabrics shining there.
“My peasant maid shall seem a queen,”
I said, “if she be rich-arrayed” ; And in another’s cloak of green
I dressed the shoulders of my maid.

MUROLS.
Upon the dark Phlegraean field Their harmless scythes the mowers wield, And nought but kine thy walls do shield Fortress in Auvergne !
Keep, o’er foeman’s storm prevailing, Now the tender ivy’s scaling, And where warrior crests did nod
Wave living plumes of fern ; Where the warder watched and trod, Bloom eyebright, thyme, and golden-rod : Thou hast a tale to tell to God
Murols in Auvergne !

HEART-DEATHS.
HEARTS oft die bitter deaths before
The breath is breathed away, And number weary twilights o’er, Ere the last evening gray.
I ‘ve sometimes looked on closM eyes,
And folded hands of snow, And said, ” It was no sacrifice ;
The heart went long ago.”
O blessed Death, that makes our bed
Beneath the daisies deep ! mocking Life, when hearts have fled,
And eyes must watch and weep !

THE COTTAGE LOAF.
A desert hearth ; and Time has led Forgotten memories home, Till evening lifts her silky head Through fairy clouds of foam.
Beyond them glows the ample blue Where hours fell down from skies That poured their exquisiteness through Our unpolluted eyes;
That held a world below their lids, Whose argosies were blown By winds that saw the pyramids Eise from a heart of stone.
Love threw a loop around us Age Can never all unfold ; Nor close for evermore the page Where sleeping words are scrolled ;
That kissed us when the waking birds At dawn a song had thrown, The mother’s kiss, the only words That we may call our own !
All these are thine, for thou hast given A chain that binds my heart To something less of earth than heaven- The soul’s serener part;

ANCIENT MEXICO.
Her day of glory past unsung,
She sleeps in evening’s fading glow,
With bands of shadow o’er her flung The sunbeams slant on Mexico.
Around her tower the solemn hills, Her lakes reposing far below ;
Deep silence all her borders fills The sunbeams slant on Mexico.
The busy tides of Aztec life
Have ebbed, no more again to flow ; J Tis o’er, the fever of the strife
The sunbeams slant on Mexico.
Her dark mysterious worship past,
Her tebcallis lying low, Oblivion’s night uprising fast,
The sunbeams slant on Mexico.