HOME THOUGHTS
I am tired of the dust
And the fever and noise
And the meaningless faces of men;
And I want to go home!
Oh, day after day I get thinking of home
Where the black firs fringe the skyline,
And the birds wheel down the silence,
And the hemlocks whisper peace,
And the hill-winds cool the blood,
And the dusk is crowned with glory,
And the lone horizon softens,
And the world's at home with God!
Oh, I want to go there!
I want to go home!
LIFE
A rind of light hangs low
On the rim of the world;
A sound of feet disturbs
The quiet of the cell
Where a rope and a beam looms high
At the end of the yard.
But in the dusk
Of that walled yard waits a woman;
And as the thing from its cell,
Still guarded and chained and bound,
Crosses that little space,
Silent, for ten brief steps,
A woman hangs on his neck.
And that walk from a cell to a sleep
Is known as Life,
And those ten dark steps
Of tangled rapture and tears
Men still call Love.
SOME DAY, O SEEKER OF DREAMS
Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek even us!
Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and hunger and want
For the Ways to the Lonelier Height!
So let us, Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart,
For out of their dust they will call to us yet!
Let us wait, and sing, and be wise,
As the sea has waited and sung,
As the hills through the night have been wise!
For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love,
Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death,
The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak!
And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend,
They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night;
And when they have learned of our lips,
Still back to our feet they will grope
For that ultimate essence and core of all song,
To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars,
Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one!