GEORGE CABOT LODGE
THE WORLDS
I saw an idler on a summer day
Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;
And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,
And languid Follies smiled from every nook.
I saw an artist in a world of dreams,
His rainbow rising from his radiant task,
To throw its magic prism beams
O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.
I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world
Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,
His skyward pinions ever closer furled
Before the grim necessity of bread!
I saw a sinner working hard to be
Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;
I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea
Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.
I saw a mother living in her child—
I saw a saint among his fellow men—
Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled
And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then
I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly
In their ethereal remoteness swung,
Than these near human orbits wherein we
Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!
“Love seek through all—less there be one
Least soul unlit within the night—
And over all, the selfsame sun
Give each creation light!”
MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI
THE RIOT
You may think my life is quiet.
I find it full of change,
An ever-varied diet,
As piquant as ’tis strange.
Wild thoughts are always flying,
Like sparks across my brain,
Now flashing out, now dying,
To kindle soon again.
Fine fancies set me thrilling,
And subtle monsters creep
Before my sight unwilling:
They even haunt my sleep.
One broad, perpetual riot
Enfolds me night and day.
You think my life is quiet?
You don’t know what you say.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
HUNGER
I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint,
Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint,
And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins,
A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.
I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell,
Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell,
Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks,
Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.
I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn
With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn.
There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod.
I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD