Surely, indeed, he loved it well,
This lustrous speck in a waste of waters,
Where with shimmer of weed and sheen of shell
The great Pacific her bounty scatters.
Here Nature poured in his listening ear
Her secrets of earth and sea and skyland,
Till the far-off things of Earth seemed near
To Nature’s child in his Treasure Island.
Here, as foam-flakes hurled by the blast,
As burning sparks from the anvil beaten,
His aspirations found vent at last
In the bygone years by the locust eaten.
Still with shudder of surf and splash of spray,
The surge to the curve of the cove advances,
And the breeze still sighs to the isle from the bay
Of his tender fancies, his gay romances.
VOICES
THE scent of violets,
Subtle, fragrant and faint,
Breathing a reticence,
An unaustere restraint,
Finds a nook in my heart
And wakes an old-time woe—
Long, how long, do you ask?
Oh, centuries ago.
The keening of violins,
Tenuous, passionel,
Wailing of stark despairs,
A madness of farewell,
Shadows all my soul
With night of forgotten things,
Blood and a passion of tears,
The yoke of accursed kings.
The ring of a splendid phrase
Flung out in the teeth of might,
The call of a great lost cause
Sounds in my ears to-night,
Falls on my ears to-night,
And the anguish disappears,
Swept by exultant defeat
Into the night of the years.
SOME IMMORTALS AND A MORAL
[“If the Immortals were privileged to revisit the glimpses of the moon their reappearance on earth might cause many bitter disappointments.”—Literary Paper.]