LILLA CABOT PERRY
A VALENTINE, UNSENT
Stay, flaming rose, ’twould grieve her heart
To see you fade away,
Unloved, unwelcome and apart
From every joy to-day.
Once long ago your tale was new,
Days distant yet so dear;
Why say her lover still is true,
When that is all her fear?
Why thus recall another’s pain,
Her tender heart to fret?
Best let her think he loves again,
Who never can forget!
MARGARET PERRY
SHIPBUILDERS
The German people reared them
An idol made of wood;
And Hindenburg before them
Lifelike and stupid stood.
To clothe him all in iron
And thus his soul express,
With nails and spikes they covered
His wooden nakedness.
And when they, thus had clothed him
All in a suit of mail,
Still came they, wild-eyed, looking
For space to drive a nail.
Whenever Teuton airmen
Slay boys and girls at play,
Or U-boats, drowning babies,
Create a holiday.
Then, gathering round their statue,
A happy German throng
Drive nails into the idol
To make him still more strong.
Avenge the babes, shipbuilders,
That on the seas have died;
Avenge the little children
Murdered for Wilhelm’s pride.
Come, gather at the shipyards,
And let your hammers ring,
For more than ships and cargoes
Waits on your fashioning.
Come, gather at the shipyards;
With every bolt you drive
Bethink you ’tis the Kaiser
Whose brutish head you rive.
Come, gather at the shipyards,
And swing with might and main;
’Tis Tirpitz and the Crown Prince
That you to-day have slain.
Come, gather at the shipyards,
And heat the metal hot,
For it is Bethmann Hollweg
You’re boiling in the pot.
Come, gather at the shipyards,—
And when the day is done,
You’ve spent it in driving spikes,
In Hindernburg the Hun.
Come, gather at the shipyards,
And toil with healthy hate,
For only you can save the world,
The Hun is at the gate.
ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER
UNFADING PICTURES
(“The air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers…. The old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt’s inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china … and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.”
—“David Copperfield,” Chapter XIII.)
How many are the scenes he limned,
With artist strokes, clear-cut and free—
Our Dickens; time shall not efface
Their charm, and they will ever grace
The halls of memory.
Oft and again we turn to them,
To contemplate in pleased review;
And like some picture on the screen
Comes now to mind a favorite scene
His master-pencil drew:—
Upon a sofa, stretched in sleep,
I see a small lad, spent and worn,
And by the window, stern and grim,
A silent figure watching him,
So dusty, ragged, torn.
Ah, now she rises from behind
The round green fan beside her chair;
“Poor fellow!” croons-and pity lends
Her voice new softness-and she bends
And brushes back his hair.
Then in his sleep he softly stirs.
Was that a dream, these murmured words?
He wakes! There by the casement sat
Miss Trotwood still; close by, her cat
And her canary birds.
The peaceful calm of that quaint room,
Its marks of comfort everywhere—
Old china and mahogany
And blowing in, fresh from the sea,
The perfume-laden air.
Poor little pilgrim so bereft,
So weary at his journey’s end!
What joy must then have filled his soul
To reach at last such happy goal—
To find—oh, such a friend!…
And then night came, and from his bed
He saw the sea, moonlit and bright,
And dreamed there came, to bless her son,
His mother, with her little one,
Adown that path of light.
Ah, greater blessing I’d not crave,
When my life’s pilgrimage is o’er,
Than such repose, content, and love;
Some shining path that leads above
To dear ones gone before!