I
To build a house, with love for architect,
Ranks first and foremost in the joys of life.
And in a tiny cabin, shaped for two,
The space for happiness is just as great
As in a palace. What a world were this
If each soul born received a plot of ground;
A little plot, whereon a home might rise,
And beauteous green things grow!
We give the dead,
The idle vagrant dead, the Potter’s Field;
Yet to the living not one inch of soil.
Nay, we take from them soil, and sun, and air,
To fashion slums and hell-holes for the race.
And to our poor we say, ‘Go starve and die
As beggars die; so gain your heritage.’
II
That was a most uncanny dream; I thought the wraiths of those
Long buried in the Potter’s Field, in shredded shrouds arose;
They said, ‘Against the will of God
We have usurped the fertile sod,
Now will we make it yield.’
Oh! but it was a gruesome sight, to see those phantoms toil;
Each to his own small garden bent; each spaded up the soil;
(I never knew Ghosts laboured so.)
Each scattered seed, and watched, till lo!
The Graves were opulent.
Then all among the fragrant greens, the silent, spectral train
Walked, as if breathing in the breath of plant, and flower, and grain.
(I never knew Ghosts loved such things;
Perchance it brought back early springs
Before they thought of death.)
‘The mothers’ milk for living babes; the earth for living hosts;
The clean flame for the un-souled dead.’ (Oh, strange the words of Ghosts.)
‘If we had owned this little spot
In life, we need not lie and rot
Here in a pauper’s bed.’
THE MUSE AND THE POET
The Muse said, Let us sing a little song
Wherein no hint of wrong,
No echo of the great world need, or pain,
Shall mar the strain.
Lock fast the swinging portal of thy heart;
Keep sympathy apart.
Sing of the sunset, of the dawn, the sea;
Of any thing or nothing, so there be
No purpose to thy art.
Yea, let us make, art for Art’s sake.
And sing no more unto the hearts of men,
But for the critic’s pen.
With songs that are but words, sweet sounding words,
Like joyous jargon of the birds.
Tune now thy lyre, O Poet, and sing on.
Sing of
THE DAWN
The Virgin Night, all languorous with dreams
Of her belovèd Darkness, rose in fear,
Feeling the presence of another near.
Outside her curtained casement shone the gleams
Of burning orbs; and modestly she hid
Her brow and bosom with her dusky hair.
When lo! the bold intruder lurking there
Leaped through the fragile lattice, all unbid,
And half unveiled her. Then the swooning Night
Fell pale and dead, while yet her soul was white
Before that lawless Ravisher, the Light.
The Muse said, Poet, nay; thou host not caught
My meaning. For there lurks a thought
Back of thy song.
In art, all thought is wrong.
Re-string thy lyre; and let the echoes bound
To nothing but sweet sound.
Strike now the chords
And sing of