The Prisoner
From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
He leaned against his window-bars to rest
And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.
It came with sundown noises from the moors,
Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.
He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
And certain scents stole up across the street
That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.
Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
And watched above the quiet tents of night.
Alas, that the old Mother should not know
How ached his heart to be entreated so,
Who heard her calling and who could not go!
Sonnet
To-day was but a dead day in my hands.
Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,
Mere idle winds above the faded grass.
And I, as though a captive held in bands,
Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands
Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass
And sink into his fabled sea of glass
With glory of farewell to many lands.
Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,
That I have suffered more than pain of toil,
Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,
And they who see new light on beaten ways!
The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars
And stares out into depth on depth of stars!
Folk Song
When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
At evenfall
And voices range
Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,
Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
Like migrant doves,
Wake and give wing
To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.
The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
The ancient charms
Of dew and dusk
Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,
And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
On new men's lips,
Some old song starts,
Made of the music of millennial hearts,
Whereto one listens as from long ago
And learns to know
That one day's tears
And love and life are as a thousand years',
And that some simple shepherd, singing of
His pain and love,
May haply find
His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.