Henry A. Beers

“ Holding the boughs o'erhead, with cautious foot
He felt his way along the mossy root
That edged the brimming pool; then paused and dreamed.
Half like a dryad of the tree he seemed,
Half like the naiad of the stream below,
Suspended there between the water's flow
And the green tree-top world; the love-sick air
Coaxing with softest touch his body fair
A little longer yet to be content
Outside of its own crystal element. ”

“ All our lives we have been waiting for that weary daub to rise;
We have peeped behind its edges, "as if we were God's spies;"
We have listened for the signal; yet still, as in our youth,
The colored screen of matter hangs between us and the truth. ”

“ Idle our dreams, and we,
Blown by the wind, as the light family
Of leaves." But still I dream,
And still those planets seem
Through heaven their high, unbending course to take;
And a voice cries: "Freedom and Truth are we,
And Immortality:
God is our sun." ”

“ So they who once have caught the glimpse divine:
They have but wet their lips with goblins' wine,
And, plagued with thirst immortal, must endure
The visions of the heavenly calenture,—
Of springs and dewy evening meadows rave,
While hotly round them shines the tropic wave,
And the false islands of mirage appear,
Uplifted from some transcendental sphere
Far down below the blue horizon line.
And thirst like theirs is nursed by songs like thine. ”

“ Say, will your leaves unclose
Ever again?
ON A MINIATURE Thine old-world eyes—each one a violet
Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth—
Set me a dreaming. Have our eyes not met
In childhood—in a garden of the South?
Thy lips are trembling with a song of France,
My cousin, and thine eyes are dimly sweet ”

“ Whose nun-like pallor would beseem
The violet better than the rose:
There's not a bud among you blows
With scent or hue to lure the bee:
Only the thorn that on you grows—
Only the thorn grows hardily. ”

“ Beauty like thine makes usurpation fair.
IM SCHWARZWALD The winter sunset, red upon the snow,
Lights up the narrow way that I should go;
Winding o'er bare white hilltops, whereon lie
Dark churches and the holy evening sky. ”

“ AS YOU LIKE IT Here while I read the light forsakes the pane;
Metempsychosis of the twilight gray—
Into green aisles of Epping or Ardenne
The level lines of print stretch far away.
The book-leaves whisper like the forest-leaves ”

“ Blossoms Time's flower, the steadfast amethyst.
"Here's pansies, they're for thoughts"—weak thoughts though fair;
June sees their opening, June their swift decay.
But those stone bourgeons stand for thoughts more rare,
Whose patient crystals colored day by day.
Might I so cut my flowers within the rock,
And prison there their sweet escaping breath;
Their petals then the winter's frost should mock,
And only Time's slow chisel work their death. ”

“ The plaudits echo through the wide parquet
Where the fair audience upon the grass,
Each knight beside his lady-love, is set,
While overhead the merry winds do pass.
The little river murmurs in its reeds,
And somewhere in the verdurous solitude
The wood-thrush drops a cool contralto note,
An orchestra well-tuned unto their mood.
As runs the play so runs the afternoon;
The curtain and the sun fall side by side;
The epilogue is spoke, the twilight come;
Then homeward through the darkening glades they ride.
THE OLD CITY Ancient city, down thy street
Minstrels make their music sweet ”

“ The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white,
I find upon the footway through the sedge,
Trodden by tramps along the water's edge.
Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below
Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go
Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine
More tonic than the incense of the pine. ”

“ Thy wooden trunk should tremble, thy boughs stir:
But at the pressure of her tender form
Thy inmost pith should feel her and grow warm:
The torpid sap should race along the vein;
The resinous buds should swell, and once again
Fresh needles shoot, as though the breeze of spring
Already through the woods came whispering.
WAITING FOR WINTER What honey in the year's last flowers can hide,
These little yellow butterflies may know:
With falling leaves they waver to and fro,
Or on the swinging tops of asters ride. ”

“ I lay in thine, sad bride, this princely hand—
In all the world there is no nobler name—
And thou, brave groom—though 'tis not what we planned—
Take her, she will be true: be thou the same.
Courage and sorrow: might these two give birth?
O thought too bold, O dream too sweet, too wild?
Though joy—dear joy—be dead and cold in earth,
Her ghost is peace, and love is sorrow's child.
THE PASTURE BARS The hunted stag, now nearly spent,
Turns homeward to his lair:
The wounded Bedouin seeks his tent
And finds safe shelter there. ”

“ And men would ask: "Is this the best—
Is this the whole his life expressed?"
Haply he had no care to tell
To all the thoughts which flung their spell
Around us when the night grew deep,
Making it seem a loss to sleep,
Exalting the low, dingy room
To some high auditorium.
And when we parted homeward, still
They followed us beyond the hill. ”

“ To other woods the trail leads on,
To other worlds and new,
Where they who keep the secret here
Will keep the promise too.
TO IMOGEN AT THE HARP Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen:
Dein Sinn ist zu—dein Herz ist todt. ”

“ And through the cedar branches sparkles blue the sea;
Hear the sweet piano—hear the German lass
Sing Freut" euch des Lebens—Oh! "I love I love the free!"
Second Student:
I like the canary better;
Look, how he swells his throttle!
He gurgles like musical water
That dances and sings in a bottle.
ABOVE.
Second Mason:
D'ye mind the students down in the grove
Drinking their wine and beer?
That's an easy life they lead.
First Mason:
So do we up here
When the weathercock points west
And the look-off's clear.
Third Mason:
House-top Jim's the boy for work! ”