Helen Leah Reed

“ Thus could the Earth with strength her lover dower,
And very near to victory could bring.
So when I feel thy tender hand in mine,
I, too, dear love, against the world could stand,
Courage divine comes with thy lightest touch.
Afar from thee Antæus-like I pine,
But strength returns now as I clasp thy hand.
Ah! that so slight a thing should mean so much. ”

“ Distant no more, united in a thought.
Columbia! this thy lesson, learn it well—
The comity of Nations; this the plan
Of God from time's first dawn, that man with man,
Bound in one brotherhood in peace should dwell.
Great Voyager, whose caravels outsped [15]
Man's swiftest fancy in those earlier days!
If, looking far beyond the curving bays
Of this new world thy glowing spirit read
That here there stretched a mighty continent
Where a sure haven for mankind should be,
Small didst thou count thy peril on the sea,
Well knowing what thy sufferings had meant. ”

“ His ashes—and he cried "So shalt thou hold
What the whole world one time could not contain."
Thus died Severus.
TOWN AND COUNTRY
About the country they may talk who will,
Who praise it ever to the town's despite.
Let him extol the charms of wood and hill
Who finds them peerless. None disputes his right.
For me the town! Each well-worn footway old
To me is dearer than your grass-grown lane.
Not all who struggle here contend for gold;
Green-growing things quit not the soul of pain.
"God made the country." Ay, and God made man. ”

“ How should I know what things to buy, if not a subway sign were nigh
To show—the pills I ought to take my all-consuming thirst to slake;—
The hair restorer that will soothe my infant son with his first tooth;—
The ruddy catsup that is sure all family jars and ills to cure;—
The dollar watch that daintily we'll serve, wound-up, for early tea;—
The window-screens that will not hide our failings from the country-side;—
What breakfast-food is our true friend, the dime cigars that I should send
My wife to cure her racking cough. The hooks and eyes that won't come off
Ah! ”

“ Long hast thou endured—a little longer
Bear thy burden, for a fair to-morrow
Soon will gleam upon thy flower-spread valleys,
Soon will brighten all thy shadowy mountains;
Soon will sparkle on thy foaming torrents
Rushing toward the world beyond thy rivers.
Bulgar, Turk and Magyar long assailed thee.
Now the Teuton's cruel hand is on thee
Though he break thy heart and rack thy body,
'Tis not his to crush thy lofty spirit.
Serbia cannot die. ”

“ Yet what the subway "best" has writ
In flaming words, with weird device—that make I mine,—and pay the price.
[39]
TRIMMING
When your father, long ago, tried to train you—and you know
He thought mornings meant for school, and not for swimming—
How your heart beat loud in dread as relentlessly he said,
"You'll remember—when you've had another trimming."
When your daughter buys a hat, and you're wondering thereat,
As before the glass she stands, its beauty hymning;
Ah! the mischief in her eyes, as she pleads, "Show no surprise
At the cost. One has to pay for pretty trimming." ”

“ Should'st plunge the city into awful dread.
A prudent deity in pitchy darkness
The issue of futurity conceals,
And smiles when man beyond the right of mortals,
His fear about the time to come reveals.
Thou should'st concern thee only with the present, [48]
All else progresses as the river flows,
Which gliding at one time in middle channel
Toward the Tuscan Sea unruffled goes;
Or at another time, herds, trees, and houses,
And broken rocks to one destruction drags,
When wild the flood provokes the quiet current
With noise from neighboring woods and distant
crags. ”

“ Ship of State! fresh billows to sea will bear thee back,
Then turn about and bravely toward the harbor tack,
Thou see'st that thy naked sides defending oarsmen lack.
Behold! thy mast lies shattered before the swift south wind,
Listen! the yards are creaking, the ropes no longer bind,
Strength to endure the boisterous waves thy keel can hardly find. ”

“ Now all thy sails are ragged; the gods are swept away
To whom, borne down by peril, thy quaking soul would pray.
Though lofty be thy lineage, its pride is vain today.
The power and name thou boastest are now of no avail,
Thy stern is gayly painted, and still thy seamen quail,
Beware lest thou art made the sport of every idle gale.
Ah! dearly loved, my country; my fond yet heavy care!
Thy discords lately wearied me, but now I breathe a prayer
That thee the tides of faction, the glittering rocks may spare.
[52]
TO APOLLO. I-31
What prays the poet of enshrined Apollo? ”

“ Cease thou to ask what is to be to-morrow,
The day that Fortune gives, score thou as gain.
As when a boy, thou shalt not scorn love's sweetness,
Nor smoothly moving dancers shalt disdain
While crabbed age from thy fresh youth is distant. ”

“ Oh, the noise of Piccadilly—its rumble and its roar!
A tide of life's broad ocean surging toward the shore.
Who once has listened, ever can hear its long refrain
With haunting echo drowning or dirge or flaunting strain.
Who heeds it, in his vision may see a world-throng pass—
And over there the Green Park with laughing lad and lass;
While weary men and women and careless youth go by,
Where windows glow and glitter, and in the evening sky
A crescent moon is watching the laughing lass and lad. ”

“ Happy lad and lass they parted—now the pitying sky is gray.
Blood and fire! Through its heroes shall a nation live again.
Blare of trumpet! But in silence aching hearts must bear their pain.
Ah, the stillness of the trenches! ah, the rumble and the roar! ”

“ Pale at the thought, as in silence we weigh it,
Yield our dull souls to it, bending in thrall?
"Life after death"—look ahead, weakling spirit—
Sure is the way to a world that is ours.
Death is fruition, why then should we fear it?
Death—the fruition of life's budding powers.
[13]
MAN OF TODAY
For thee he thought,
The Greek, who by the sea
Lay in his lithe-limbed grace, as dreamily
He gazed upon the sky begemmed with stars,
And pondered mysteries. Ah, few the bars
To stop that lofty spirit in its flight
Compared with those that lock our souls in night.
For thee he thought! ”

“ For thee make one great harmony—a happy heart's refrain.
(On her eighty-sixth birthday.)
THE SOARER
There soars a warbler toward high Heaven,
His course seems sure and straight;—
So speeds an arrow from the bow-string,
Yet who can read his fate!
For while he carols like a seraph
Bound for a radiant star
Mayhap the fowler's eye, relentless,
Has doomed him from afar.
A longer life the crawling snail hath
Than thou—O wanderer bright—
Ah, let the sluggard crawl in safety,
Thine is the realm of light! ”

“ The dumb fishes as well, if it happen to please thee,
With the notes of the swan, 'tis from thee it comes now,
That I by the finger of those who are passing
The Lord of our own Roman lyre am shown,
For all inspiration, for all that is pleasing,
If it happen to please, thou hast made it my own. ”

“ Thou, upon whom thy years fourscore
So lightly sit, thou hast a store
Of memories such as they alone
May have whose hearts all truth have known.
Now may this year bring thee no less
Than all the past of happiness! ”

“ Who when three times invoked, hast so well understood,
And young mothers in child-birth hast rescued from death,
Goddess, triply endowed!
Let this tree overhanging my house here, this pine
Be for thee, that each year I shall consecrate thine,
Happy still—with the blood of a boar, whose last breath,
Planned a side-long attack.
[53]
TO MELPOMENE. IV-3
Oh, him whom at birth you with favor regarded
Melpomene! never an Isthmian game
Shall render renowned, though he's skilled as a boxer,
Nor shall a swift horse lead him onward to fame. ”

“ Where pallid children play, where poor folk greet,
And crowded houses dirty, dimly lit,
On whose dull walls all misery is writ,
Houses wherein the herded cannot fight
The ambushed evil lurking day and night. ”

“ Shall lead us on toward a height sublime.
For thee He taught!
Man—man! thou heir of all the ages, thou,
Man of today! uplift thy drooping brow!
Think, work, fight, teach—thine heritage pass on
Tenfold increased. He'll reap who has foregone
Life's little, limited delights,—in measure
As selfless he has sown his earthly treasure.
[14]
THE FADING VISION
The vision fades—dome, pinnacle and tower,
All the white beauty of the lake-side dream,
The artist's ideal, the poet's theme
Vanish away. Yet for no fleeting hour
Was this proud fabric raised. ”

“ I'd like to shoot that camera there with my wooden gun.
Perhaps, a fire engine, I am rushing to a fire,
While people loudly call for help as flames rise higher and higher.
I hurry toward the hydrant here, for oh! the flames are hot!
When Auntie with her camera cries, "What a fine snapshot!" ”

“ The name we honor here today
Each clan may claim with equal clatter
British, euphonious, clear and short,
Rede me a name of better sort!
Read at a meeting of a Genealogical Society.
[44]
THE RIVALS
Said the Bicycle to the Automobile:
"How high and mighty and gay you feel;
Yet I can remember the day when I
Would let no other one pass me by
Cart horse and roadster and racehorse too,
Far ahead of them all I flew.
Now my tires are unpumped and my warning bell
The attention of nobody can compel. ”

“ Safe hid from Jack Frost's piercing breath, he never saw them there,
And the flowers still bloom for Margery, to thank her for her care.
[35]
A CURIOSITY
I knew a little boy, not very long ago,
Who was as bright and happy as any boy you know.
He had an only fault, and you will all agree
That from a fault like this a boy himself might free.
"I wonder who is there, oh, see! now, why is this?"
And "Oh, where are they going?" and "Tell me what it is?"
Ah! "which" and "why" and "who," and "what" and "where" and "when,"
We often wished that never need we hear those words again. ”

“ Of ships wrecked in the lowest depths takes care,
Liber, his brows adorned with living vine-leaf,
Brings to good issue every honest prayer.
[56]
TO THALIARCHUS. I-9
You see how our Soracte now is standing
Hoary with heavy snow, and now its weight
To bear the struggling woods are hardly able,
And with the bitter cold the streams stagnate.
The cold melt thou away, oh, Thaliarchus,
By heaping logs upon thy fire, again
Replenishing, and from a Sabine flagon
Wine of a four years' vintage draw thou then.
Leave to the gods the rest ”

“ As a horseman, than Bellerophon he's really something greater;
Never worsted in a hand-fight, nor a race.
Skilled to shoot the flying stag-herd in the open,—swift he later
Snares the boar, close-hidden in a shady place.
[50]
THE HARDY YOUTH. III-2
The hardy youth, my friends, in bitter warfare
To narrow poverty must learn to bend,
And, for his spear a horseman to be dreaded,
Courageous Parthians into flight must send.
And he must try all dangerous adventures,
His life out in the open he must pass ”

“ Of the smooth-tongued, wordy trimmer's pretty trimming.
[40]
THE ANNEX
"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage"
High halls do not a College make, nor book-lined shelves a sage.
So might I follow haltingly these olden words to show
That even in this newer home the Annex may not know
A greater zeal for learning than the old house could bestow.
But comparisons are odious, so I'll merely try to say
That cherished deep within the hearts of many here today
Is the memory of that early home in the classic Appian Way. ”

“ The Christian Union, Jack Frost and the Flowers. New York Sun, The Rivals. Metropolitan Magazine, Strength Renewed. Christian Endeavor World, Town and Country. Boston Transcript, Summer in London; His Monument; Memorial Day. Boston Herald, The Cry of the Women. Ladies' Home Journal, The Christmas Letter. Woman's Home Companion, Frightened. The Delineator, The Victim; A Modern Grandmother. The Youth's Companion, A Curiosity. ”