The Past and Gone are woven, and the Present now
Is in the web, with cruel, thorny bough,
For some frail mortals; but the Angel Sleep
Weaves ever future joys for those who weep.
The wind within the trees doth weave a melody,
The bright-winged birds weave dulcet harmony
With their alluring notes, and wood nymphs hear
And weave a sonnet for their lover’s ear.
Whether we in seclusion weave where none intrude
On mountain steep or in deep solitude
Of the dense bush, or mossy fen, or glade,
We weave our bed with web which we have made.
Then let us dream, and weave that no remorse
With silent shadow clouds our future course,
With love to guide, whose eyes wax never dim,
While weaving make some lives one long sweet hymn.
THE JACARANDA.
Once in a garden, Oh! So fair!
Was a leafy path, and I tell not where,
But it led to an arbor beneath the shade
Of a jacaranda, where sunlight played
And flickered and flashed through the tasselled leaves
In the crimson flush of long summer eves,
And in web and woof of the trellised roof
From sweet birds’ throats fell golden notes.
Once lovers murmured within that bower
Where grew the gracefullest purple flower,
And a trembling maiden’s soft answer stole
Through somebody’s ear and thrilled his soul,
And then with her dark eyes growing dim
She solemnly plighted her troth with him,
In the hush of night while the pale moonlight
Shed a silver shower o’er this lovers’ bower.
Once it fell on a summer day
This handsome lover sailed away,
And he had vowed he would faithful be
To the maiden he loved when o’er the sea,
So each day in the leafy arbor dim
The maiden waited and dreamed of him,
But no missive came, and she breathed his name
In stress and tears for three long years.
Once, in the witching gloaming hour,
Soft murmurs were heard within that bower,
For the lover, a knight, had come to take
The lady who waited for his dear sake,
And he told his tale, while her starry eyes
Tenderly glowed with sweet surprise,
And these lovers twain, reunited again,
Loved each other more than in days of yore.
And now, in that beautiful garden old,
Where the jacaranda its buds unfold,
They wander adown the paths so green,
Where once as lovers they talked unseen,
And the gracefullest flower that bloometh there
Is somebody’s darling with golden hair,
And still in the woof of the trellised roof,
From sweet birds’ throats fall liquid notes.