Space cannot be found for it here, but following are a few verses from another beautiful poem, St. Ives' Poor. The idea of this poem is found in the old saying that in the giving of alms the Christ is revealed:
"For O, my Lord, the house-dove knows her nest
Above my window builded from the rain;
In the brown mere the heron finds her rest,
But these shall seek in vain.
"And O, my Lord, the thrush may fold his wing,
The curlew seek the long lift of the seas,
The wild swan sleep amid his journeying;
There is no place for these.
"Thy dead are sheltered; housed and warmed they wait
Under the golden fern, the falling foam;
But these Thy living wander desolate,
And have not any home."
And here is an exquisite poem, The Immortal, which is full of Miss Pickthall's own music:
"Beauty is still immortal in our eyes,
When sways no more the spirit-haunted reed,
When the wild grape shall build
No more her canopies,
When blows no more the moon-grey thistle seed,
When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
When the last eve has stilled
The wandering wing, and touched the dying foam,
When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
The little worlds die out along the dark—
"Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers;
Beauty that bade the showers
Beat on the violet's face,
Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place,
And hear new stars come singing from God's hand."
We cannot resist, before leaving Miss Pickthall, quoting a lovely little lyric of hers called simply Serenade:
"Dark is the Iris meadow,
Dark is the ivory tower,
And lightly the young moth's shadow
Sleeps on the passion flower.
"Gone are our day's red roses,
Lovely and lost and few,
But the first star uncloses
A silver bud in the blue.