Shapes and Shadows
High on the world did our fathers of old,
Under the stars and stripes,
Blazon the name that we now must uphold,
Under the stars and stripes.
Vast in the past they have builded an arch
Over which Freedom has lighted her torch.
Follow it! Follow it! Come, let us march
Under the stars and stripes!
We in whose bodies the blood of them runs,
Under the stars and stripes,
We will acquit us as sons of their sons,
Under the stars and stripes.
Ever for justice, our heel upon wrong,
We in the light of our vengeance thrice strong!
Rally together! Come tramping along
Under the stars and stripes!
Out of our strength and a nation's great need,
Under the stars and stripes,
Heroes again as of old we shall breed,
Under the stars and stripes.
Broad to the winds be our banner unfurled!
Straight in Spain's face let defiance be hurled!
God on our side, we will battle the world
Under the stars and stripes!
Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold
God's message of Promethean fire!
The Flame that fell on bards of old
To hallow and inspire.
Yet let the Soul dream on and dare
No lessSong's height that these possess:
We can but fail; and may prepare
The way to some success.
The Evanescent Beautiful
Day after Day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.
But where are now the Glory and the Rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?
I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower – something's lost in me.
Return! Return! I cry, O Visions vanished,
O Voices banished, to my Soul again!—
The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.
August
Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,
Benign, of calm maturity, she stands
Among her meadows and her orchard-lands,
And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,
Out of the ripe abundance of her hands,
Bestows increase
And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,
Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,
Upon her bosom Summer's richest rose.
And he who follows where her footsteps lead,
By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,
Shall glimpse the glory of her visible dream,
In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:
She in whose path the very shadows gleam;
Whose humblest weed
Seems lovelier than June's loveliest flower, indeed,
And sweeter to the smell
Than April's self within a rainy dell.
Hers is a sumptuous simplicity
Within the fair Republic of her flowers,
Where you may see her standing hours on hours,
Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee
To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers
Of greenery,
A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;
Or, lounging on her hip,
Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip.
Aye, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:
The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,
On which the honour of your touch doth print
Itself as odour. Let me drink the hue
Of ironweed and mist-flow'r here that hint,
With purple and blue,
The rapture that your presence doth imbue
Their inmost essence with,
Immortal though as transient as a myth.
Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure
Me where you hide: the brooks', whose happy din
Tells where, the deep retired woods within,
Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lure
Tells where you slumber, your warm-nestling chin
Soft on the pure
Pink cushion of your palm … What better cure
For care and memory's ache
Than to behold you so and watch you wake!
The Higher Brotherhood
To come in touch with mysteries
Of beauty idealizing Earth,
Go seek the hills, grown old with trees,
The old hills wise with death and birth.
There you may hear the heart that beats
In streams, where music has its source;
And in wild rocks of green retreats
Behold the silent soul of force.
Above the love that emanates
From human passion, and reflects
The flesh, must be the love that waits
On Nature, whose high call elects
None to her secrets save the few
Who hold that facts are far less real
Than dreams, with which all facts indue
Themselves approaching the Ideal.
Gramarye
There