PAIN’S PURPOSE
How blind is he who prays that God will send
All pain from earth. Pain has its use and place;
Its ministry of holiness and grace.
The darker tones upon the canvas blend
With light and colour; and their shadows lend
The painting half its dignity. Efface
The sombre background, and you lose all trace
Of that perfection which is true art’s trend.
Life is an artist seeking to reveal
God’s majesty and beauty in each soul.
If from the palette mortal man could steal
The precious pigment, pain, why then the scroll
Would glare with colours meaningless and bright,
Or show an empty canvas, blurred with light.
MEMORY’S MANSION
In Memory’s Mansion are wonderful rooms,
And I wander about them at will;
And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms
Are sending sweet scents o’er the sill.
I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:
From a turret that looks on the wave.
But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade,
A stone standing guard, by a grave.
To Memory’s attic I clambered one day,
When the roof was resounding with rain.
And there, among relics long hidden away,
I rummaged with heart-ache and pain.
A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,
A pastime, out-grown, and forgot,
And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust,
Were lying heaped up in one spot.
And there on the floor of that garret was tossed
A friendship too fragile to last,
With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost
Vast fortunes of pain in the past.
A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright,
As tropical sunsets in spring,
Was spread out before me—a terrible sight—
A moth-eaten rag of a thing.
Then down the steep stairway I hurriedly went,
And into fair chambers below.
But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent,
Wherever my footsteps would go.
Though in Memory’s House I still wander full oft,
No more to the garret I climb;
And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft
To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.
OLD RHYTHM AND RHYME
They tell me new methods now govern the Muses,
The modes of expression have changed with the times;
That low is the rank of the poet who uses
The old-fashioned verse with intentional rhymes.
And quite out of date, too, is rhythmical metre;
The critics declare it an insult to art.
But oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the clear ring of it,
Oh the great pulse of it, right from the heart,
Art or no art.