PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
I have been given eyes
Which are neither foolish nor wise,
Seeing through joy or pain
Beauty alone remain.
I have been given an ear
Which catches nothing clear,
But only along the day
A song stealing away.
My feet and hands never could
Do anything evil or good:
Instead of these things,
A swift mouth that sings.
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME
(For F. V. Branford)
The shepherd sings:
’Way down in Dixie,
Way down in Dixie,
Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay....’
With shaded eyes he stands to look
Across the hills where the clouds swoon,
He singing, leans upon his crook,
He sings, he sings no more.
The wind is muffled in the tangled hair
Of sheep that drift along the noon.
The mild sheep stare
With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June.
Two skylarks soar
With singing flame
Into the sun whence first they came.
All else is only grasshoppers
Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs,
Who, like a slow tree moving, goes
Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.
See! the sun smites
With molten lights
The turned wing of a gull that glows
Aslant the violet, the profound
Dome of the mid-June heights.
Alas! again the grasshoppers,
The birds, the slumber-winging bees,
Alas! again for those and these
Demure things drowned;
Drowned in vain raucous words men made
Where no lark rose with swift and sweet
Ascent and where no dim sheep strayed
About the stone immensities,
Where no sheep strayed and where no bees
Probed any flowers nor swung a blade
Of grass with pollened feet.
He sings:
‘In Dixie,
Way down in Dixie,
Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay
Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay....’