Poems

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Elizabeth Stoddard

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Title: Poems

Author: Elizabeth Stoddard

Release Date: May 20, 2004 [EBook #12391]

Language: English

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POEMS

BY

ELIZABETH STODDARD

1895

CONTENTS

THE POET'S SECRET

NOVEMBER

MUSIC IN A CROWD

I LIVE WITHIN THE STRANGER'S GATE

THE HOUSE OF YOUTH

THE HOUSE BY THE SEA

CHRISTMAS COMES AGAIN

MARCH

THE SPRING AFAR

WHY?

AUGUST

OCTOBER

THE WILLOW BOUGHS ARE YELLOW NOW

IN THE STILL, STAR-LIT NIGHT

AUTUMN

THE AUTUMN SHEAF

IN THE CITY

I LOVE YOU, BUT A SENSE OF PAIN

NAMELESS PAIN

A BABY SONG

THE WIFE SPEAKS

THE HUSBAND SPEAKS

ONE MORN I LEFT HIM IN HIS BED

BEFORE THE MIRROR

THE SHADOWS ON THE WATER REACH

A SUMMER NIGHT

FAN ME WITH THESE LILIES FAIR

OH, THE WILD, WILD DAYS OF YOUTH!

ON MY BED OF A WINTER NIGHT

HALLO! MY FANCY, WHITHER WILT THOU GO?

YOU LEFT ME

O FRIEND, BEGIN A LOFTIER SONG

NOW THAT THE PAIN IS GONE, I TOO CAN SMILE

THE COLONEL'S SHIELD

A FEW IDLE WORDS

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ

THE RACE

THE WOLF-TAMER

THE ABBOT OF UNREASON

EL MANOLO

MERCEDES

THE BULL-FIGHT

ON THE CAMPAGNA

THE QUEEN DEPOSED

A UNIT

ZANTHON—MY FRIEND

ACHILLES IN ORCUS

ABOVE THE TREE

TO AN ARTIST

A LANDSCAPE

FROM THE HEADLAND

AS ONE

THE VISITINGS OF TRUTH KNOWN ELSEWHERE

WE MUST WAIT

UNRETURNING

CLOSED

MEMORY IS IMMORTAL

THE TRYST

NO ANSWER

ON THE HILLTOP

THE MESSAGE

EXILE

A SEASIDE IDYL

THE CHIMNEY-SWALLOW'S IDYL

LAST DAYS

POEMS

THE POET'S SECRET.

The poet's secret I must know,

If that will calm my restless mind.

I hail the seasons as they go,

I woo the sunshine, brave the wind.

I scan the lily and the rose,

I nod to every nodding tree,

I follow every stream that flows,

And wait beside the steadfast sea.

I question melancholy eyes,

I touch the lips of women fair:

Their lips and eyes may make me wise,

But what I seek for is not there.

In vain I watch the day and night,

In vain the world through space may roll:

I never see the mystic light

Which fills the poet's happy soul.

Through life I hear the rhythmic flow

Whose meaning into song must turn;

Revealing all he longs to know,

The secret each alone must learn.

NOVEMBER.

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;

Long have I listened to the wailing wind,

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds,

For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail

Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,

The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's bier

These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods.

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

MUSIC IN A CROWD.

When I hear music, whether waltz or psalm,

Among a crowd, I find myself alone;

It does not touch me with a soothing balm,

But brings an echo like a moan

From some far country where a palace rose,

In which I reigned with Cleopatra's pride:

Come, Charmian! bring the asp for my repose.

And queenly, men shall say, she died.

There lived and ruled a happy, noble race,

Primeval souls who held imperial power—

My kindred, gone forever from their place,

And I am here without a dower!

They were a Vision, though. And are these real,

These men and women, moving as in sleep,

Who, smiling, gesture to the same Ideal,

For which the music makes me weep?

Have they my longings for that other world

New to them yet? I grant that Music's swell

Is like the sea; they may be thither hurled

By storms that thunder and compel;

Or, like those voyagers in the land of streams,

Glide through its languid air, its languid wave,

To learn that Here and There are but two dreams,

That end in Nothing and the Grave!

I LIVE WITHIN THE STRANGER'S GATE.

I.

I live within the stranger's gate,

And count the hours

Since God let fall the bolt of fate!

Where the waves fall on yonder shore

In cloudy spray,

And where the winds forever roar,

The pillars of a mansion stand,

Without a roof;

The saddest ruin in the land!

II.

When sunset strikes across the sea

The wreck looms up;

Then Memory comes, and touches me.

I see a pitiful white face

Break through the mould

Decaying at the pillar's base,

And hands that beckon me to prayer.

But I still curse,

And wake the Furies slumbering there!

III.

In the strange drama of the Past

It was my part

To hold carousal to the last;

It was for me to