NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONOR

EVENSONG

A shepherd piping, herald of the Night
Who comes with Silence up the coloured vale,
Treading low gently, clad in greyish white,
Poignantly piping, sound your reedy wail!
For Day departed moves in funeral train
Tended by Twilight and, in deepest rose,
The splendid Sunset melts beneath the main
While sweet the Sea-wind with cool softness blows.
As when a mother gathers to her breast
The child who frets for Dad’s remembered smart,
Now Light fades quickly in the ashen west,
And Night-Peace falls across my troubled heart.
Flutes, for the night through let my mind be still,
And God keep safe with Him my stubborn will!

NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONOR

THE PROPHET

All day long he kept the sheep:—
Far and early, from the crowd,
On the hills from steep to steep,
Where the silence cried aloud;
And the shadow of the cloud
Wrapt him in a noonday sleep.
Where he dipped the water’s cool,
Filling boyish hands from thence,
Something breathed across the pool
Stir of sweet enlightenments;
And he drank, with thirsty sense,
Till his heart was brimmed and full.
Still, the hovering Voice unshed,
And the Vision unbeheld,
And the mute sky overhead,
And his longing, still withheld!
—Even when the two tears welled,
Salt, upon that lonely bread.
Vaguely blessed in the leaves,
Dim-companioned in the sun,
Eager mornings, wistful eyes,
Very hunger drew him on;
And To-morrow ever shone
With the glow the sunset weaves.
Even so, to that young heart,
Words and hands and Men were dear;
And the stir of lane and mart
After daylong vigil here.
Sunset called, and he drew near,
Still to find his path apart.
When the Bell, with gentle tongue,
Called the herd-bells home again,
Through the purple shades he swung,
Down the mountain, through the glen;
Towards the sound of fellow-men,—
Even from the light that clung.
Dimly too, as cloud on cloud,
Came that silent flock of his:
Thronging whiteness, in a crowd,
After homing twos and threes;
With the longing memories
Of all white things dreamed and vowed.
Through the fragrances, alone,
By the sudden-silent brook,
From the open world unknown,
To the close of speech and book;
There to find the foreign look
In the faces of his own.
Sharing was beyond his skill;
Shyly yet, he made essay:
Sought to dip, and share, and fill
Heart’s-desire, from day to day.
But their eyes, some foreign way,
Looked at him; and he was still.
Last, he reached his arms to sleep,
Where the Vision waited, dim,
Still beyond some deep-on-deep.
And the darkness folded him,
Eager heart and weary limb.—
All day long, he kept the sheep.

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

HARVEST-MOON: 1914

Over the twilight field,
The overflowing field,—
Over the glimmering field,
And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield
Of sheaves that still did writhe,
After the scythe;
The teeming field and darkly overstrewn
With all the garnered fulness of that noon—
Two looked upon each other.
One was a Woman men called their mother;
And one, the Harvest-Moon.
And one, the Harvest-Moon,
Who stood, who gazed
On those unquiet gleanings where they bled;
Till the lone Woman said:
“But we were crazed…
We should laugh now together, I and you,
We two.
You, for your dreaming it was worth
A star’s while to look on and light the Earth;
And I, forever telling to my mind,
Glory it was, and gladness, to give birth
To humankind!
Yes, I, that ever thought it not amiss
To give the breath to men,
For men to slay again:
Lording it over anguish but to give
My life that men might live
For this.
You will be laughing now, remembering
I called you once Dead World, and barren thing,
Yes, so we named you then,
You, far more wise
Than to give life to men.”
Over the field, that there
Gave back the skies
A shattered upward stare
From blank white eyes,—
Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune
Of throbbing clay, but dumb and quiet soon,
She looked; and went her way—
The Harvest-Moon.

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEAODY