THE GENTLE TRAVELLER
"Through many a land your journey ran,
And showed the best the world can boast
Now tell me, traveller, if you can,
The place that pleased you most."
She laid her hands upon my breast,
And murmured gently in my ear,
"The place I loved and liked the best
Was in your arms, my dear!"
SICILY, DECEMBER, 1908
O garden isle, beloved by Sun and Sea,—
Whose bluest billows kiss thy curving bays,
Whose amorous light enfolds thee in warm
rays
That fill with fruit each dark-leaved orange-
tree,—
What hidden hatred hath the Earth for thee?
Behold, again, in these dark, dreadful days,
She trembles with her wrath, and swiftly lays
Thy beauty waste in wreck and agony!
Is Nature, then, a strife of jealous powers,
And man the plaything of unconscious fate?
Not so, my troubled heart! God reigns above
And man is greatest in his darkest hours:
Walking amid the cities desolate,
The Son of God appears in human love.
Tertius and Henry van Dyke, January, 1909.
THE WINDOW
All night long, by a distant bell,
The passing hours were notched
On the dark, while her breathing rose and fell,
And the spark of life I watched
In her face was glowing or fading,—who could
tell?—
And the open window of the room,
With a flare of yellow light,
Was peering out into the gloom,
Like an eye that searched the night.
Oh, what do you see in the dark, little window, and
why do you fear?
"I see that the garden is crowded wtth creeping forms
of fear:
Little white ghosts in the locust-tree, that wave in the
night-wind's breath,
And low in the leafy laurels the lurking shadow of
death."