And as the sweet saint's loaves were turned, it is said,
To roses, so your roses turned to bread,
That hungering souls and weary might be fed.
Dear friends, my poor words do but paint you wrong,
Nor can I utter, in one trivial song,
The goodness I have honored for so long.
Only this leaf, a single petal flung,
One chord from a full harmony unsung,
May speak the life-long love that lacks a tongue.
CONTENTS.
To J. H. and E. W. H.
Prelude
Commissioned
The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey
"Of such as I have"
A Portrait
When?
On the Shore
Among the Lilies
November
Embalmed
Ginevra Degli Amieri
Easter Lilies
Ebb-Tide
Flood-Tide
A Year
Tokens
Her Going
A Lonely Moment
Communion
A Farewell
Ebb and Flow
Angelus
The Morning Comes Before the Sun
Laborare est Orare
Eighteen
Outward Bound
From East to West
Una
Two Ways to Love
After-Glow
Hope and I
Left Behind
Savoir c'est Pardonner
Morning
A Blind Singer
Mary
When Love went
Overshadowed
Time to Go
Gulf-Stream
My White Chrysanthemum
Till the Day Dawn
My Birthday
By the Cradle
A Thunder Storm
Through the Door
Readjustment
At the Gate
A Home
The Legend of Kintu
Easter
Bind-Weed
April
May
Secrets
How the Leaves Came Down
Barcaroles
My Rights
Solstice
In the Mist
Within
Menace
"He That Believeth Shall Not Make Haste"
My Little Ghost
Christmas
Benedicam Domino
PRELUDE.
Poems are heavenly things,
And only souls with wings
May reach them where they grow,
May pluck and bear below,
Feeding the nations thus
With food all glorious.
Verses are not of these;
They bloom on earthly trees,
Poised on a low-hung stem,
And those may gather them
Who cannot fly to where
The heavenly gardens are.
So I by devious ways
Have pulled some easy sprays
From the down-dropping bough
Which all may reach, and now
I knot them, bud and leaf,
Into a rhymed sheaf.
Not mine the pinion strong
To win the nobler song;
I only cull and bring
A hedge-row offering
Of berry, flower, and brake,
If haply some may take.