Charles Hamilton Musgrove

“ And hush my heart a little ere I speak
Lest the false note ring true on other ears;
The music rises and the empty cheers
Proclaim the harlequin, and lo! I stand
The painted fool again and kiss my hand
With jocund air to Folly's worshippers.
So day by day life's bitter bread is earned
With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke,
And frailer grows the soul that once was strong,—
The joyless soul of one whose trade has turned
Life's tragic mantle to a jester's cloak,
Life's diapason to a jester's song. ”

“ In that hour I fell from His hand.
I am a breath from God's forge,
And, being a part of creation, I shall also be a part of the end.
He has told me that there shall come a day
When the Seventh Angel shall open his last vial of wrath in the mid-air,
And in that day I shall dance with the thunder, the lightning, and the earthquake,
And, dancing, hear His voice cry out from Heaven's temple: "It is done!" ”

“ And the song that was born in my heart today
Will sing there till I die.
The long white road and the wide free sky,
And the city far away;
A good-night kiss in the twilight, lass,
And a kiss at the break of day;
For light are the loads we bear, my lass,
By highway and hill and grove,
And the sunlight is all for life, my lass,
And the starlight all for love. ”

“ Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art
Singing from her peaks of snow,
Wrapped in pale, unearthly glow,
Pleading with her poignant note
That forever seems to float
Farther down the vista that is calling to thy heart.
Hearken! From the heights
Where thy soul alights
Lift thy head to listen for the voice of Art is calling:
"Eagle-heart, child-heart,
Love is love, and art is art,
Answer while thy soul is strong;
Love is brief, but art is long;
Love is sighs, but art is song ”

“ With heart attuned unto the symboled love
That makes his face a radiant miracle!
The world hath need of thy great lesson now;
The money-changers throng the Temple gates;
The kiss of Judas burns from lips to brow;
The hate of Herod rankles in the hearts
Of scorners, and the poisoned crown of thorns
Which Greed has woven for humanity,
Bites like the chaplet that the Saviour wore
The day that He was crowned and crucified.
Methinks I see around the shining cross
Phantoms that shudder when the name of Christ
Is whispered by the multitude ”

“ Who of God's creatures, then, has lost his way?
'Tis not the chamois, eagle or the swan;
'Tis not the mountain torrent, or the birds
That twitter all day long within the wood;
'Tis not the Ammer flowing to the sea.
Who of God's creatures, then, has lost his way?
Let us go in the Coliseum where
The fresh-hewn cross is lifted to the sky;
Let us gaze on the reverential throng
That marks Christ's passion in a silent awe,
And think a moment on the world of Man—
Man, made in God's own image, yet the one
Of all God's creatures who has lost his way. ”

“ That the good are forgot while the evil perplex.
[85]
The Call.
When the north wind, riding o'er the uplands,
Shouted to the red leaves: "I am Death!"
Was it fear that sent them all a-flying,
Sighing, flying o'er the withered heath?
Life.
Life is just a web of doubt
Where, with iridescent gleams,
Flickers in or struggles out
Love, the golden moth of dreams.
Revelation.
I called your name, Man-in-the-Grave,
And straight her lips grew cold on mine,
And then I knew although I have
Her hand, her heart and soul are thine.
Tears of Men. ”

“ Shrines His great heart of love within the clod
The savage calls his god
And all idolatry is deified.
[18]
ODE TO THE NEW CENTURY.
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:
"Lo! the Great Mother travaileth, a king is born to the earth! ”

“ Is the force that holds the planets in a leash while God
Drives them in glittering galaxy around the sun.
[74] Here I am a weakling's symbol of a power
That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands,
And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light.
My soul is destiny and immortality;
It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along
The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty
Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea,
And the sea smiles;
My soul is the wingless word
That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of the void. ”

“ The benediction of starlight, and the moon's sweet canticle;
Here is one spot as God made it, far from the plainsman's range,
Or the march of the cycling seasons with their everlasting change.
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die;
But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay,
For God still keeps one playground where He and His whirlwinds play. ”

“ And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes.
I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars,
And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips
As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew,
The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward,
Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor,
And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining decks
Till comes my mood to end them, and I strew the racing foam with wreckage. ”

“ We have forsook the Temple of the Soul
To carp with sordid tradesmen face to face;
No more we hear the Sinaian thunders roll,
Or Jesus preaching in the market-place.
The money-changers flaunt their silks and gold ”

“ But lo! in that hour shall greet you,
At the end of your perilous path,
A mockery far more bitter
Than the sting of the frost king's wrath,
For this is the meed you shall gather
In the lands no man has trod:
The finger that beckoned you onward
Shall lift and point to God! ”

“ From his rebellious soul the serpent's blight.
II.
The fire that on the Magi's altars glowed
Spake to his soul in symbols and expressed
The immortal purity that without rest
Strives with the mortal grossness whose abode
Is in the heart. ”

“ At the Sign of the Heart of Dust.
[40]
THE PASSING RACE. I.
Silent as ever, stoic as of old,
The scattered nomads of that dusky race
Whose story shall forever be untold,
Sit mid the ruins of their dwelling place
And watch the white man's empire grow apace.
Passive as one who knows his earthly doom,
And only waits with calm but hopeless face
The while the seasons go with blight and bloom,
So live they day by day beside their nation's tomb. ”

“ The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,
The flower of faith that grows to unseen fruit.
I am the speech of prophets when their eyes
Behold some splendid vision of the soul;
The song of morning stars, the hills' replies,
The far call of the immaterial pole.
And, since I must be mateless, I shall win
One boon beyond the meed of common clay:
My life shall end where other lives begin,
And live when other lives have passed away.
[61]
COLUMBUS' LAST VOYAGE. (Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.) ”

“ I am the wrath that on the judgment day
Shall waste the seas, and wither up the stars,
And roll the heavens together like a scroll!
[13]
God.
I am the earthquake, hurricane and fire!
Through them I speak with man as through the stars,
The dews, the flowers, and every gentler thing;
Some learn my lesson in the paths of peace;
Some con it low at desolation's knee;
Only the fool hath said: "There is no God!"
[14]
A SONG FOR THE HILLS.
Here is the freedom men die for,—die for but never know ”