Just To-day
“But just for to-day, tell me, Mother, where the desert ... in the fairy tale is.”—Rabindranath Tagore.
I.
The shepherds slip into the fields
Where Father’s gone himself.
The books I should be studying
Are still upon the shelf.
O Mother, let me close my sleepy eyes,
And tell me where the fairy desert lies.
II.
What makes you silent? Must you work
Like Father every hour?
Your hands are busy as two bees
Which suck a honey flower.
But, Mother, while the sunlight fills the skies,
Tell me where the Tagra Desert lies.
III.
At curfew Father will return,
And I shall lose you then.
I promise some day I shall learn
As much as other men.
So, Mother, just before the daylight flies
Tell me where the Tagra Desert lies.
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
To One Bereaved
You welcomed me with such a joyous mask
Across the silence of your hurt wide eyes,
That I too forced banalities and lies
And dared no comfort, though I came to ask
The many little questions, long rehearsed,
Which meant relief, and friendship. What we said
So lightly, never touched upon the dead,
Yet we both knew that when we laughed we cursed
The bitter God who could make laughter too,
Beside this sorrow. Strange, we did not stare
Mute sympathy: I only smiling sought
To show I knew how bitterly was bought
Your cheerful beauty. But I turned my chair,
Once, when you laughed——, and looked away from you.
D. G. CARTER.
Lady of the Sea
Night, and vessels softly lifting
From the surges of the sea,
Arms to breezes ever shifting
As they whisper low to me.
Silhouetted masts are weaving
Circles wavering to lean
Nearer waves in slumber heaving
Far below a cold moon’s sheen....
Clothed in glory, still and splendid,
Starlight shimmers in her hair,
And my lady’s form is blended
With the shadows, waiting there.
As in silence we are taken
In the evening’s soft embrace,
Would I never could awaken
From the wonder in her face.
R. P. CRENSHAW, JR.
Coelum non animum mutant
Qui trans mare currunt.
—Horace.
Sail forth across the jade-green sea and view the glades our fathers trod,
Their rolling lawns of deathless sod, their hoary castles dear to me.
Catch the pale vision of the past, the sound of stealthy slippered feet;
Rest on the moss-grown garden seat and find a lover’s shadow cast.
Creep into Catherine cubicle and sense her icy presence there;
Her figure bent and drawn with care as Alchemist o’er crucible.
Look down the waving lane of trees that lines the speckled road’s approach
Where glides the flashing golden coach with gay plumes trembling in the breeze.
Gaze up at Longeais from the moat and feel the ages slip away
Until its grey walls seem at bay before the host in armored coat.
Go to each ancient place above and bless it with your noiseless tread;
Your presence there should stir the dead with tremulous warm thoughts of love.
Leave here for me your image fair, graven in crystal carved by time,
Untarnished as a star sublime, unchanging as the love I bear.
God speed you under other skies, drink deep of Europe’s scented charm,
But keep the gesture of your arm, the wistful wonder in your eyes.
MORRIS TYLER.