My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.
I heard the mournful loon
In the marsh beneath the moon.
And then — with feathery thunder — the bird of my desire
Broke from the cover
Flashing silver fire.
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.
The pale clouds gazed aghast
As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript and held him fast.
My soul dropt through the air — with heavenly plunder? —
Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?
Nay! but a piteous freight,
A dark and heavy weight
Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled, —
All of the wonder
Gone that ever filled
Its guise with glory. Oh, bird that I have killed,
How brilliantly you flew
Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you!
Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.
~I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon —
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!~
I beat forever
The fens and the sedges.
The pledge is still the same — for all disastrous pledges,
All hopes resigned!
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find.
Dilemma. [Orrick Johns]
What though the moon should come
With a blinding glow,
And the stars have a game
On the wood's edge,
A man would have to still
Cut and weed and sow,
And lay a white line
When he plants a hedge.
What though God
With a great sound of rain
Came to talk of violets
And things people do,
I would have to labor
And dig with my brain
Still to get a truth
Out of all words new.
To a Portrait of Whistler in the Brooklyn Art Museum. [Eleanor Rogers Cox]
What waspish whim of Fate
Was this that bade you here
Hold dim, unhonored state,
No single courtier near?
Is there, of all who pass,
No choice, discerning few
To poise the ribboned glass
And gaze enwrapt on you?
Sword-soul that from its sheath
Laughed leaping to the fray,
How calmly underneath
Goes Brooklyn on her way!