"So where the homeland twilight broods
Above the slopes of dusky pine,
Teach me your silence, solitudes;
Your reticence, grey hills, be mine!
"Whether all loveliness it lies,
Or but a lone waste scarred and torn,
How shall I know? For 'neath these skies
And in this valley I was born."
Here is a characteristic poem of Stringer's entitled War, written years ago, and yet reading as if the ink in which it was written were still wet:
"From hill to hill he harried me;
He stalked me day and night.
He neither knew nor hated me;
Not his nor mine the fight.
"He killed the man who stood by me,
For such they made his law.
Then foot by foot I fought to him,
Who neither knew nor saw.
"I aimed my rifle at his heart;
He leapt up in the air.
My screaming ball tore through his breast,
And lay embedded there.
"Lay but embedded there, and yet
Hissed home o'er hill and sea,
Straight to the aching heart of one
Who'd wronged not mine nor me."
As a specimen of Stringer's skill in handling of blank verse, here is a portion of the farewell between Sappho and Phaon in Sappho in Leucadia:
Sappho. But you,—
You will forget me, Phaon; there the sting.
The sorrow of the grave is not its green
And the salt tear upon its violet;
But the long years that bring the grey neglect,
When the glad grasses smooth the little mound,—
When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes
And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes,
And tears are not so bitter as they were,
Time sings so low to our bereavèd ears,—
So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud,
The garden of fond Grief all empty lies
And unregretted dip the languid oars
Of Charon thro' the gloom, and then are gone.