TIMON OF ARCHIMEDES
As one who cleaves the circumambient air
Seeking in azure what it lacks in space,
And sees a young and finely chiselled face
Filled with foretastes of wisdom yet more rare;
Touching and yet untouched—unmeasured grace!
A breathing credo and a living prayer—
Yet of the earth, still earthy; debonair
The while in heaven it seeketh for a place.
So thy dear eyes and thy kind lips but say—
Ere from his cerements Timon seems to flit:
"What of the reaper grim with sickle keen?"
And then the sunlight ushers in new day
And for our tasks our bodies seem more fit—
"Might of the night, unfleeing, sight unseen."
Charles Battell Loomis.
ALONE
Alone! Alone!
I sit in the solitudes of the moonshades,
Soul-hungering in the moonshade solitudes sit I—
My heart-lifts beaten down in the wild wind-path.
Oppressed, and scourged and beaten down are my heart-lifts.
I fix my gaze on the eye-star, and the eye-star flings its dart
upon me.
I wonder why my soul is lost in wonder why I am,
And why the eye-star mocks me,
Why the wild wind beats down my heart-lifts;
Why I am stricken here in the moonshade solitudes.
Oh! why am I what I am,
And why am I anything?
Am I not as wild as the wind and more crazy?
Why do I sit in the moonshade, while the eye-star mocks me while I
ask what I am?
Why? Why?
Anonymous.
LINES BY A MEDIUM
I might not, if I could;
I should not, if I might;
Yet if I should I would,
And, shoulding, I should quite!