To a Daffodil
Bright messenger of life renewed and love,
Joy fills thy golden chalice to the brim,
Fit symbol of the sacred seraphim
Who with their blazing phalanx headlong drove
The Star of Morning from his seat above,
Scattering celestial sparks through voidness dim,
To fall upon our planet's curving rim
And bloom as thy fair flowers in mead and grove.
As victory's anthem stirred the heavenly choir,
Awaking rapture in triumphant praise,
So thou in spring dost mortal souls inspire
With new-born hope and consecrated fire,
Reflected glory from ethereal rays,
To make divine the human heart's desire.
The Appian Way
Road of the dead! whose stately avenue
Of ruined tombs reveals the glorious past,
When proud patrician chariots rolling fast
And litters borne by slaves of ebon hue
Breasted the throng that ever thicker grew
And onward hurried where the portal vast
Showed praetor, tribune and plebeian massed
With traders from afar beyond the blue.
Road of the dead! thy voices haunted me,
Once as I lingered on a starlit night,
Seeing thy restless ghosts in fantasy:
And Peter paused again in act to flee:
With downcast eyes and pale with sudden fright,
Then whispered low: "Quo vadis Domine?"
Note.—Tradition has it that Peter in a moment of weakness fled to escape martyrdom, but was turned back by a vision of his Master. The little church of Quo vadis Domine on the Appian Way commemorates this.
From the Fields
The village chime drifts on the summer breeze,
In softened cadence o'er expanses green,
Across the river, winding slow between
Broad fields of clover where marauding bees
Lighten their toil with murmured harmonies,
Whilst corn in rolling waves of verdant sheen
Lends rhythmic movement to the rural scene
And sighs responsive to the wind-stirred trees.
The mingled voices, like a poet's rhyme,
Link with their music pensiveness and joy:
Yet each has meaning in its wayward time:
The wind of freedom sings in every clime,
The bee, that labour's sweetness cannot cloy,
And life is measured by the warning chime.